"You're welcome to come," Nikolai said. "I go to the mountains to witness the Snow Faces. The season approaches."

 

 

Michael followed them through an orderly grove of small, thick-trunked trees. They kept to a brick pathway with low railings on each side. "Who is Emma?" he asked.

 

 

"You'll see," Nikolai said, his face expressing the tenderest sentiment. He touched his cheek with his fingers and shook his head. "You must promise."

 

 

"Promise what?"

 

 

Nikolai shook his head violently. "Never mind," he said, whirling and pointing his finger. "Did you see?" Ulath walked on, ignoring them.

 

 

"See what?"

 

 

"One of the Ban's Arborals. They tend her library."

 

 

"The trees?"

 

 

Nikolai nodded gravely. "Come. We mustn't lag."

 

 

The house of the Ban of Hours was made of wood, magnificently carved and fitted. The roof was high and conical, eight-sided for the first half of its height, then broken into three progressively narrower sections with fewer sides, the highest having three. A tower at the apex was made of brass and carried a silver crescent moon. Two wings protruded from beneath the central structure's conical roof at a forty-five degree angle, flanking a triangular courtyard. Flowers grew in disorganized profusion in the courtyard; roses of all colors, including blue, scented the air and also seemed to warm it. Ulath glanced back at Michael.

 

 

"The Ban of Hours has lived here for ages," she said. "Since long before the city was built."

 

 

"They moved the house here," Nikolai said.

 

 

They took a path beside the flowers and entered the Ban's house through a tall, narrow black door at the apex of the triangle. The interior of the rotunda was surrounded by slabs of black marble veined with green. These blocked direct light from windows set in alcoves in the outer wall. Soft, whispering voices issued from behind the slabs. Michael felt dozens of feathery touches on his aura. He gently rebuffed them and the voices stilled. Nikolai stood by Ulath in the center of the room. Both seemed to be waiting.

 

 

"The Ban of Hours is very powerful," Nikolai said. "There is confusion in her presence, and time is not the same. Do not be afraid. She will not harm us."

 

 

After a few minutes, Ulath shuddered and bowed her head. A tall female dressed in white entered from an adjacent hallway and approached them across the smooth stone floor, seeming to glide more than walk. From high in the tower's interior came a buzzing. Michael turned away from the glare of the Ban's presence and looked up. The lines of the tower spun, filled with golden bees. His thoughts became smooth as he watched the insects. The Ban took his hand and led him behind a marble slab and up a spiral staircase to the second floor. At the end of a hall lined with brilliantly illuminated windows, they came to a wood-paneled room with a floor cut from the single bole of some huge tree. At the center of the floor's concentric graining was a wide, low basin of water. The basin was attended, but Michael could not see by whom or what. The Ban asked him to wash his hands, and when he did so, an incredible perfume filled the room.

 

 

"We are in the presence of a poet," she said, taking his wet hands and leading him into another adjacent room.

 

 

The walls of this room were draped with fine white linen and the floor was covered with woven reed matting. The Ban of Hours held her arms out to him, her hands glowing with warmth and magic. Michael went to her and she folded him to her breasts. "Yes, there has been pain," she said, "and error. It is the way of both our homes. But you know me, do you not?"

 

 

He did, and softly, he began to weep.

 

 

Chapter Thirty-Two

 

 

Hours later, fed and left alone in a comfortable sleeping chamber at the end of the southern wing, Michael removed his book from its pocket and hefted it in one hand, frowning.

 

 

He had met the Ban of Hours - but he did not remember what she looked like. Ulath he remembered clearly enough, and all the other details prior to the meeting. But he recalled neither the ban's appearance nor the sound of her voice. He had an impression of a tall Sidhe female dressed in white, but what sort of dress - long, flowing, pale or diaphonous?

 

 

No matter how hard he tried to recall, his memory was no more specific than that. Probing Nikolai's aura had proven fruitless; such probes were not very good at eliciting information from recent events, and Nikolai had evidently not been in on much of the meeting to begin with.

 

 

Michael's room held a brass bed with a quilted comforter, a bowl of water on a marble stand and several framed paintings of scenes from Earth. It took him some minutes to realize that the paintings were genuine Corots, with one Turner. So the Ban of Hours was a connoisseur of things Earthly - including, it seemed, himself.

 

 

He undressed and washed himself with water from the basin. Again, the rich, heady smell filled the room -

 

 

And like a catalyst, the smell opened his gates of memory sufficiently wide to release one segment.

 

 

The Ban raised her eyes and regarded Michael with a warm smile, dimples forming just beneath her prominent cheekbones. Her eyes were inclined slightly upward, almond-shaped and deep-set, sapphire blue flecked with silver. "You are determined to go to the Isomage, no matter what the cost?"

 

 

Michael nodded.

 

 

"No matter that it makes you the pawn of those you know nothing about?"

 

 

He nodded again, less certain. The Ban sighed and leaned forward across the inlaid vine patterns of a table top. Between them was a bowl of sliced prepared fruits.

 

 

The segment ended. He dried himself with a linen towel and crawled under the soft bedclothes. The sheets were cool at first, gradually warming against his bare skin.

 

 

Tomorrow, he thought. Nikolai would introduce him to Emma - whoever that was - and they would prepare for the trip.

 

 

The Ban had approved the trip. That much he also remembered. As for the horse - Ulath had said it was being well taken care of by Sidhe grooms. It was, she had hinted, in sore need of good currying and having its hooves trimmed.

 

 

"No Sidhe would ever have history in a book," Nikolai said at breakfast. "Written words bind. Long memory is best. The past stays alive then; it can change like any living thing."

 

 

"So the trees remember?"

 

 

Ulath, bringing a bowl of prepared fruits -

 

 

The Ban had told him about Emma Livry. What about her, though?

 

 

- smiled at him and laid the bowl on the table. "The impressed ones remember," she said. "Sidhe such as myself, who have served the Ban. When we have outlived our usefulness in her service, we have ourselves impressed in the wood. It is pleasant, so I'm told, to be released from all the cares of the Realm, and to have only the past to guard, to cherish."

 

 

Sun lay bright in the crystal window of the refectory. All around, Sidhe females in a bewildering variety of clothing and skin colors ate decorously while lying on their stomachs, as Michael had heard the Romans once dined. Nikolai lay next to Michael, peeling a blue apple and nodding. "I have often wondered what the pure life of the mind would be like," he said. "Halls of memory, corridors of thought."

 

 

Ulath lay beside them and rolled on her side to look at Michael directly. Michael felt a flush of embarrassment. He dropped his piece of bread and reached to pick it up. Ulath stopped his hand with her own.

 

 

"The Ban is very impressed," she said. "She wonders about you. You come to us, trained like a Sidhe, riding a Sidhe horse.

 

 

No human has ever done these things in the Realm. The Ban is curious, as are we all." She pointed to the other females in the refectory.

 

 

"I'm most jealous," Nikolai said, eating a candied peach.

 

 

"You are recently from Earth," Ulath continued. "What is it like there?"

 

 

Michael glanced around the room and realized everyone was listening. "Lots of machines now," he said. That hardly seemed enough. "We've been to the moon."

 

 

"I was on the moon once," Ulath said. "Lovely gardens there."

 

 

"Pardon?" Michael wiped fruit juice from his hands on a white linen napkin. The walls of the Ban's room -

 

 

Emma Livry, yet another pawn -

 

 

"That doesn't sound like our moon," he said, recovering quickly. "It's dead, no air, no water."

 

 

"There are gardens for those who see," Ulath said.

 

 

"Ulath has been around," Nikolai confided to Michael. "She knew King Arthur personally."

 

 

Ulath regarded Nikolai with mild disapproval, then returned her attention to Michael. "None of us has been very successful at reading you," she said.

 

 

"Oh?" Michael thought he had been read very thoroughly by Ulath.

 

 

"Not where your motivations and plans are concerned. In Inyas Trai, it is polite to be open. Nikolai is very open."

 

 

"Nothing to hide," Nikolai said. "Unless some of the males are around."

 

 

"There are no males here now," Ulath said. "We are curious about Michael___"

 

 

He didn't feel it was wise to open up completely. He told them he had come to the Realm by accident. He mentioned Arno Waltiri's music, skipping a great deal after that - touching only briefly on the Crane Women - and told them about Lin Piao Tai, without mentioning the book. Ulath listened intently, and when Michael was done, stroked his arm. Her touch was cool and electric, quite different from Eleuth's.

 

 

And from the touch of the Ban of Hours. "No matter that it makes you a pawn of those whose wishes you know nothing about?"

 

 

"Come on," Nikolai said somewhat gruffly, standing and rearranging his city clothes. "Let's go find Emma."

 

 

Away from the Ban's house, beyond the groves of trees they came upon a small stone chateau. The chateau was surrounded by poplars and larches. On one side, a mirror-smooth lake diffused the morning sun with a glazed sheen. Swans crossed the lake like small carnival rides, their expanding wakes troubling the rafts of water lilies.

 

 

The heavy wooden door of the chateau was set into an archway carved with foot-high saints. Michael had never gone to church and didn't recognize them. Nikolai crossed himself before one, set at eye level, and murmured, "St. Peter." He took the heavy iron dragon's head knocker in hand and pounded the door twice. "She is quite charming," he said while they waited.

 

 

The door opened. A small thin face framed by lank black hair poked out and regarded them with sharp, narrow brown eyes. "Nikolai," the face croaked, and the door opened wide.

 

 

It was a woman - of sorts. She was barely four feet tall, thin as a stalk of grass, wearing a black shift with long sleeves. Her skeletal hands were gloved in white. The comers of her mouth seemed turned down by nature, and her high quizzical eyebrows carried a message: I'm easily hurt, don't mess with me, I bite instinctively.

 

 

"Is Emma available?" Nikolai asked.

 

 

"For you, always," the woman said. "But who's this?" She looked at Michael as though he were some garden slug brought in by the cat.

 

 

"An acquaintance," Nikolai said. "From Earth, Marie."

 

 

Marie's face softened ever so slightly. "Recently?"

 

 

Michael nodded.

 

 

"Come with me," she said. "She's upstairs, dancing."

 

 

They followed Marie up the stairs to the second floor. Down a short hallway with powder-blue walls, they found a half-open double door. Marie pushed through. "Emma," she sang out harshly, "we have visitors. Nikolai. and a friend."

 

 

The room was very like Lamia's dance studio on the upper level of the Isomage's house; smaller, however, and filled with sun from a broad skylight.

 

 

Standing to one side, dressed in a calf-length dancing outfit, was a girl not much older than Michael. Her black hair was drawn back and tied into a bun. Her long graceful neck and arms were as expressive as the swans in the lake outside. She descended from her point and rushed to hug Nikolai. "Man cher ami!" she cried. "I am very, very glad to see you!"

 

 

She pulled back a step and twirled him around once, then turned to Michael.

 

 

"Pay no mind to him, he is a heartbreaker," Nikolai said. "I know."

 

 

"He is human!" Emma said, delighted. She held out her hand and Michael took it. It was flushed, warm, delicate as a flower. Slightly paler than the fingers, however, was the back of the hand, where the skin puckered faintly as if from a long-healed burn.

 

 

"From Earth," Marie husked. "Recently."

 

 

"Oh! C'est merveilleux!" She clapped her hands with childlike delight. "Nikolai, you found him and brought him here, so he could speak with us, tell us about home?"

 

 

"Partly," Nikolai said. He confided to Michael, "I would do anything to make Emma happy."

 

 

Marie brought in a small table and they pulled wooden chairs away from the wall and sat. "Marie," Emma said, "bring wine and some of those delightful cakes the Ban gave us."

 

 

She turned to Michael and smiled dazzlingly, then closed her eyes and positively wriggled with delight. "Where are you from?"

 

 

"California."

 

 

"Do I know. California? Yes, I do! In les Etats Unis. I have never been there. It is a desert, and very dry, no?"

 

 

Marie brought cakes, wine and glasses and poured and served all around. The cakes were sweet buckwheat. When Michael had satisfied Emma's curiosity about California, she asked him if he had ever been to France. "No," he said. Her face fell.

 

 

"Is it that you can tell me anything about France, how it is? What year is it!"

 

 

"1985, when I left," Michael said.

 

 

"Left? You left of your own will? Oh. I was taken. Not that I am not grateful." For a moment she looked as if she were about to cry, but she brightened immediately and touched his hand. Nikolai looked at the contact with undisguised jealousy. "So what was Paris like, France, when you left? So many questions!"

 

 

Michael looked to Nikolai for help. "When did. uh. Emma leave?"

 

 

"1863," the hunter replied darkly. "A bad year for her."

 

 

"Very bad," Emma said, but not as if she felt it. "So it has been. more than a hundred and twenty years. I have hardly known the time. They have been good to me, but sometimes I think I am their toy."

 

 

"They love you," Nikolai admonished, then raised his brows and pursed his lips. "As much as they can love, I suppose."

 

 

"I dance for them," Emma said. "Their attitude, it is so funny! They tell me Sidhe can dance with far more control, grace, even spontaneity, than can I, yet that is only to be expected. I dance, they say, with a special magic, because I have no magic! It is all physical, no sorcery, no illusion. Ah, but if I had stayed on Earth-"

 

 

"If you had stayed on Earth," Marie said, "you would be dead."

 

 

"But if that had not happened," Emma went on, undaunted, "Nikolai tells me I would have changed the shape of the dance! I mean, the way everyone thinks of dance, ballet."

 

 

"You are a legend," Nikolai said. "Michael knows nothing of dance, however. He is a poet. So the Ban tells us."

 

 

"Then I will show you dance," Emma said.

 

 

"Your practice is over today," Marie said. "You must not overdo."

 

 

"Marie is so silly sometimes," Emma said, giggling. "She forgets. Here, I cannot overdo! They protect me. Ulath, the Ban. I feel like a. how is it? A flower in a conservatory, kept under glass." She shook her head saucily. "I am so delicate, such a fine little toy. Nikolai doesn't think of me that way, though. He knows dancers are tough."

 

 

"You are the sister I never had," Nikolai said.

 

 

"I am older than he, aren't I?" Emma asked, searching the faces around the table. "He is from Earth after I, so I am older. Yet we look so different in time! This place, don't you agree, Michael, it is very strange.

 

 

"But no matter. If you wish, you will have me dance for you, perhaps when the Ban requests. or anytime."

 

 

Nikolai told her they had to leave soon, and she followed them to the door, looking quite distressed until she blew them a kiss, smiled, and ran back up the stairs. Marie stared at them forlornly and closed the door.

 

 

"How did she get here?" Michael asked. "Like you, like the others?"

 

 

"No. The Sidhe brought her here, perhaps the Ban or Ulath or another, even. She is Emma Livry; haven't you guessed?"

 

 

"I've heard the name___The Ban."

 

 

"Emma Livry, one of the finest dancers of her time - but she never had a chance to be as accomplished as her promise. She was just twenty years of age, a beautiful girl. Her dress caught the flame of a gas jet. She was burned," he screwed up his face, "horribly. I am not sure exactly how it was done, but the Sidhe of Inyas Trai came to her, took her. They healed her and kept her here. She delighted them, so young, so beautiful." He inhaled deeply. "Sometimes even the Sidhe do something worthwhile."

 

 

Emma Livry. The rest of the meeting with the Ban was suddenly clear as could be, and her words:

 

 

"/ venture to guess Nikolai is almost as ignorant of what really happened as you. This dispute over Songs of Power. over the human question. it was raged in all quarters for centuries.'

 

 

"I know about the pleasure dome," Michael said.

 

 

"Good. Then you are not completely unlearned. That was a minor episode, man-child. There have been episodes far more cruel and senseless. Nikolai will no doubt inform you that Emma was a very promising young dancer who met with an unfortunate accident. It was not an accident.

 

 

"Early in her career, she was approached by David Clark-ham. Oh, he had another name at that time-"

 

 

"He's that old?"

 

 

"Even older. Do you know who or what Clarkham is?"

 

 

"Only that he calls himself the homage."

 

 

She smiled again, conveying an entirely different meaning. ''He approached her with plans for a major ballet in which she would have the starring role. She would dance a quite revolutionary solo. And in that solo, Clarkham would incorporate yet another form of the Song of Power. Not as architecture, not as poetry, but as dance. He knew that the Maln had gone to great lengths to discourage the transmission of a Song of Power to the humans, when they realized what humans would be able io do with it - not just drive the remaining Sidhe from Earth, but re-unite the Realm and Earth. First the Maln sabotaged their own early schemes by sending a person from Par lock to Coleridge. When Clarkham came along with his plan to brirg power to himself by realizing a Song, he knew he had to have a great human artist enact the design. Emma Livry was his first choice. The Maln discovered him, however, and before she could dance in his ballet, they. arranged her accident."

 

 

"Why didn't they just kill Clarkham?"

 

 

"He was much too strong."

 

 

"But humans aren't supposed to be capable of working strong magic!"

 

 

"Only now do you question Clarkham's character and abilities?"

 

 

Michael ignored the gently barbed inquiry. "What did they do to her?"

 

 

"She was wearing untreated tarlatan. She wished her costume to be pure white, without the dinge of flame retardants. She was waiting backstage. All the Maln had to do was increase the length of a gas jet when she fluffed her dress. She became a pillar of fire, like a butterfly caught in a candle. She ran across the stage, and the flames ate the wind. Poor butterfly." The Ban lowered her eyes. "For eight months she lingered in agony. She was so dedicated to the idea of art, such a pure individual, that she invited pantomimists to come look at her writhing, the better to understand the reality of pain."

 

 

Michael made a face and shook his head.

 

 

"You are disgusted?"

 

 

"That's very bizarre."

 

 

"Perhaps to someone with incomplete understanding. But a Sidhe understands. There is nothing but the Song, and all things are the Song. Finally, even the Maln relented, and we were allowed to take her away from the pain. We left a changeling in her place, to die for her, and we healed her, on the' condition that she never leave Inyas Trai. She never has. We cherish her. Even Tar ax has been known to visit, to watch her dance, and Tarax hates your kind with a bitter passion."

 

 

The Ban lifted her hands from the table and stood.

 

 

"Does that mean I'm in danger?"

 

 

She said nothing, merely gazed at him, through him, to more important problems beyond. "You are a pawn," she said. "In the midst of great forces involved in age-long struggle. You are better equipped than most, but you are still ignorant, and it is not my place to inform you." She looked at him tenderly. "Though you come to my bosom, and remember me in dreams, and know me for what I have been to your kind in ages past, I have my limitations, too. I cannot protect you beyond the dictates of the geas ofAdonna."

 

 

Nikolai touched Michael on the shoulder. "No lollypoddling," he said. "You look disturbed. Something wrong?"

 

 

Michael shook his head. "No. Not yet."

 

 

Chapter Thirty-Three

 

 

The stepping stone where their pilgrimage would begin lay on the north side of the history grove. No one accompanied Michael and Nikolai as they walked through the grove. Nikolai wore heavy clothes to protect him against the upcoming cold; Michael's clothes were considerably lighter.

 

 

Arborals tending the trees stood in the shadows of their charges, male and female both green and naked. They watched but said nothing as the pair passed. "I rather like them," Nikolai said. "They do their work, bother no one, never complain and stay faithful to the Ban. I could live here among them and be quite happy."

 

 

"Why don't you just stay in the city?" Michael asked.

 

 

"Ah, that's another matter. The city is full of tension. Most of the time the males hide in their woods, or hunt in the hills around the Irall. Then there is peace here. But the males return for their Kaeli, and then the Ban must be vigilant to keep her humans and Breeds from being hunted out and taken away."

 

 

"But Tarax watched Emma Livry dance!"

 

 

"Tarax, friend, does not know about you and me. Emma he may tolerate, so long as his power is matched by the Ban's - but the Ban can do nothing to protect us if we are found."

 

 

"So Emma and Marie receive special treatment - - -How did Marie come here?"

 

 

"She has always been here, tending Emma. I have never asked." Nikolai looked at Michael sternly. "Perhaps you shouldn't, either."

 

 

"Are you upset with me?" Michael asked. The stepping stone was visible through a thin stretch of saplings too young for the history groves.

 

 

Greg Sear

 

 

Nikolai took a deep breath. "No. Envious, perhaps. Worried. You are. high profile. They seem to dote on you, as they have never doted on me."

 

 

"Yet the Ban won't protect me, any more than she'll protect you."

 

 

"I have never spoken with the Ban," Nikolai said. "Not that I recall. And you have. Those who attract the attention of the Sidhe face two possible fates. The first is imprisonment, perhaps degradation. Emma is imprisoned, but not degraded, at least not in any way we understand or that she will ever know. She dances; as she says, she is like a flower in a conservatory. I think she enjoys being the flower, being able to concentrate on dance. I would not enjoy that. The Sidhe tolerate me, enjoy me, but they are not attracted to me."

 

 

"What's the second possible fate?"

 

 

"I don't know," Nikolai said. "Perhaps what happened to Clarkham."

 

 

"Is he human?"

 

 

Nikolai lifted an eyebrow. "You seem to know more about him than I do."

 

 

"I don't know everything. He's been alive for a very long time, and he seems to know a lot about magic."

 

 

Nikolai sighed. "Well, for this journey at least, let us travel with light hearts. The Ban has approved, and there is little that will happen on a journey the Ban watches over."

 

 

"Nikolai, do you remember what the Ban looks like?"

 

 

"No." The stepping stone was deserted, merely a dark flat boulder resting on a white gravel circle. Clouds whisked overhead, shading the sun. Wind carried some of the flower-scent fiom the gardens around the Ban's house. "Nobody knows what she really looks like, except perhaps Ulath. It is her weapon against Tarax and the Maln"

 

 

Nikolai Mood on the edge of the stone and reached for Michael'i hand. He pulled gently and Michael accompanied him across the stone's surface. Suddenly, they were surrounded by intense cold.

 

 

Michael was almost instantly blinded by a dazzle of white. He covered his eyes with his hands and felt for the opposite edge of the stepping stone Nikolai took him by the arm and guided him down and into a rock-walled wind-shelter. "Caught me by surprise," Michael said, rubbing his eyes and blinking.

 

 

"Much colder than when I was here last season," Nikolai said. The stepping stone perched on the edge of a broad shelf of rock, looking over high jagged peaks. Snow filled the valleys between the peaks, brilliant and white and as smooth as the surface of a pail of milk. Snowflakes swirled violently in the wind that howled around the stepping stone and made the walls of their shelter rattle and vibrate.

 

 

"How far do we go from here?" Michael asked, hoping to brace his hyloka for the ordeal.

 

 

"A mile or so. We wait for the others. Never travel alone, especially with weather like this. Adonna must have a bad toothache today." He grinned and brushed a seat clear for them on a bench-shaped boulder. The interior of the shelter was dark and powdered with drifted snow. "Will you be warm enough? Ulath seemed to think you wouldn't have any trouble. The Sidhe can come here naked if they wish. Perhaps you could, too?"

 

 

His hyloka was finally taking hold. "I'll be fine," he said. He cut back his temperature when he felt his pants become warm. This was hardly the place to repeat the incident at Helena's apartment.

 

 

Nikolai clasped his gloved hands and stared down at the rugged black stone floor. He sniffed and glanced across at Michael. "What are you most afraid of?" he asked.

 

 

Michael shrugged. "All sorts of things. Why?"

 

 

Nikolai looked out into the snow. "For talk."

 

 

"What about you? What are you afraid of?"

 

 

"I will admit I am afraid of dying here. If I die here, I become nothing. I never go back to Earth. So I am afraid of not being good enough to stay alive. I know I'm afraid, and I live with it. But you. do you know what you're afraid of?"

 

 

Michael thought of the Ban's comforting, warm arms. "There are lots of things that frighten me, like I said."

 

 

"What in particular?"

 

 

"I'm thinking. Don't rush me. Okay." He looked up at the rock ceiling. "I know. I'm afraid of being normal."

 

 

Nikolai grinned broadly. "Thank God. I was worried perhaps you didn't know. Then you would be dangerous. What are you going to do with your fear?"

 

 

"Avoid being normal."

 

 

"And if you succeed?"

 

 

Michael laughed and felt the cold in his stomach dissipate. "Then I'm going to be sorry I have such a hard time getting along with people. With the Sidhe, with women, my friends. whomever."

 

 

Nikolai stood and peered around the edge of the shelter. "They're coming. Be prepared. Almost anybody can show up here."

 

 

"What are the snow faces?"

 

 

"A mystery," Nikolai said, sitting again. "In a place where everything is a mystery to us, we can see something that is mysterious even to the Sidhe. I like that. That's why I come here."

 

 

The first pilgrim to join them in the shelter was wraith-like, tall and deathly thin. Michael noticed bright red hair beneath a white hood, and the pale gray eyes of a pure Sidhe. But the look the pilgrim gave Michael and Nikolai had no menace in it, only deep exhaustion - of both body and mind. Michael probed his aura and saw nothing but darkness, as if even memory had guttered out. The Sidhe nodded cordially to Nikolai and sank to his knees on the rock floor.

 

 

Five others trooped in one by one: three more Sidhe, one human - heavily wrapped in white - and a Breed. The Breed was a young, strong-looking male, tall and with stiff pale blond hair, dressed much like Michael. At first, Michael couldn't tell if the human was man or woman, old or young. It wore two wooden cups over it eyes, with slits to see through - a precaution against snow-blindness. When Michael probed the human's aura, he pulled back as if burnt.

 

 

He had never touched such naked spiritual pain and ugliness. He was left with the impression of foul cancers and leprosy, creeping vermin and monstrous, all-consuming greed.

 

 

The five new pilgrims gathered in the lee of the barricade. The trio of Sidhe removed their outer garments and stood naked in the dark nook, hardly glancing at the others. The exhausted-looking one regarded Michael with deep-sunk eyes, then probed his aura gently. To be polite, Michael allowed him access to certain information - language, vague origins.

 

 

Nikolai had met them before, apparently, and introduced them to Michael. "This is Harka, Tik and Dour." Harka, the tired-looking one, nodded. Tik and Dour might have just entered maturity; they were younger and more robust and they lacked the calm jaded equanimity of the older Sidhe. "The one bundled up, that's Shahpur - last name I've forgotten-"

 

 

"Agajeenian," came a muffled voice through the wrappings. The voice was pleasant, a surprising contrast to what Michael had briefly touched within.

 

 

"And I don't believe we've met before," Nikolai said to the Breed.

 

 

"Bek," the Breed said, lifting his palm. "My first time. When are we off?"

 

 

"When the wind lets up," Shahpur said. His voice seemed more beautiful each time he spoke, very like a Sidhe's. Michael wondered if he had been mistaken in the first probe and tried again. The foulness was indescribable and for a moment he had to struggle to keep from throwing up. The Sidhe stayed away from Shahpur, who said nothing more.

 

 

Nikolai tried to keep up conversation. His efforts died. Soon they all stood or sat behind the barricade with only the whistling roar of the wind and the crack and rumble of distant avalanches.

 

 

Light was fading, making the shelter even darker. Suddenly the wind stopped its bitter assault, leaving only a hollow and fading echo, like the moan of a dying horse. The silence was profound, almost having its own sound as Michael's ears adjusted. Shahpur looked around the edge of the barricade and moved out onto the trail. Bek followed, then Harka, Tik and Dour. Nikolai and Michael left last.

 

 

"Sometimes I think this is a shameful thing for them," Nikolai said, nodding at the figures ahead. "I wonder why they even come. Harka grows worse every year. If he was human, I'd say he was dying, but Sidhe don't get physically sick."

 

 

"He's blank inside," Michael said. "Maybe they have another way of getting sick. What's wrong with Shahpur?"

 

 

"Ah." Nikolai shook his head. "He is cursed. Like me, he wanders the Realm, but the Sidhe caught him once. He escaped, but not before they had their fun with him." The heavily bundled figure turned stiffly around and regarded them for a moment. Nikolai pursed his lips and shut up.

 

 

The path followed the contours of a nearly vertical face of granite. Far below, pinnacles of rock spiked through roiling layers of cloud. Their feet crunched the snow gathered in windblown patches along the path and their breath cast almost tan-gible mists that hung in the air like markers of their passage.

 

 

Tik, Dour and Harka were the first to reach a narrowing of the ledge. They turned with their backs to the abyss and sidled along the face, at one point stepping over a yard-wide gap where the ledge had spoiled away. Shahpur, Michael and Nikolai had a more difficult time spanning the gap, and Nikolai's foot slipped on the opposite side. Michael grabbed hold of his hand and drew him along to a wider portion, where they lay against the face and took several deep breaths.

 

 

"That was not there before," Nikolai said. "The path gets more dangerous every season."

 

 

The ledge widened to a broad, rounded lip, giving them at least the illusion of security. Around a blade of rock that had fallen long ago from some higher spoiling, they saw the object of their journey. Shahpur followed the leading Sidhe and the Breed, and Nikolai pressed ahead of Michael, panting and cursing.

 

 

They all gathered on a broad rock stage before a deep cave-like hollow. "The mountain," Nikolai said. Many miles away, yet as clear as if it stood just yards before them, was Heba Mish. "No one knows how tall it is, not even the Sidhe."

 

 

Far below the rock stage and cave, clouds poured into a deep chasm, leaving behind wisps which slowly unwound and vanished. At the bottom of the chasm, a deep blue-green slope of ice accepted the falling cloud and scattered it into broad rivers of mist, which slid down worn, rounded grooves. Michael felt dizzy, peering over the rim of the stage. He lifted his gaze and followed a sheer flank of delicately poised snow on the mountain. The white mass reached three-quarters of the way to the peak before being sullied by outcrops of black rock.

 

 

"Now we wait," Nikolai said. As if at a signal, the three Sidhe and the Breed moved back into the cave, leaving the humans to listen to the silence.

 

 

"What are we waiting for?" Michael asked.

 

 

"The Snow Faces," Nikolai replied.

 

 

Night came and Michael lay comfortably enough on the chill cave floor. Nikolai slept restlessly beside him. Shahpur sat on his haunches, appearing to be awake. The Sidhe sat with legs crossed, lined up against the opposite wall of the cave.

 

 

Michael couldn't sleep. He kept trying to probe Harka. The wraith-like Sidhe's aura was virtually empty of any memory, as if he had been created just moments before, with no ancestry and no past. Michael wondered if certain Sidhe chose to wipe their lives away. There was a way it could be done with the discipline, boiling memory off with a kind of focused hyloka..

 

 

Nikolai grumbled and opened his eyes. "Waiting is miserable," he said. "Especially here."

 

 

"How do you know the right time to come?"

 

 

"I have my contacts. Word gets passed along. Arborals whisper, or I listen to Amorphals in their deep cavern homes. Or another wanderer, like Bek or myself or Shahpur, hears about it and the pilgrims begin their journeys. Then we gather. I've always used the stepping stone from Inyas Trai. Others hike and climb. Some never say how they arrive; they just do. Not always, not every season. sometimes not for years.

 

 

"I've heard the sign first appear* in a pool in the Irall. The pool is very deep, with ice at the bottom, and the Sidhe watchers know, when it turns black as night, that the season is coming. They pass the word in secret. Adonna might not approve of Sidhe regarding a genuine mystery." He rearranged his legs and closed his eyes again. "In the morning, perhaps, when the wind rises again."

 

 

Michael lay in a state between sleep and waking, much like the state he had been in on his second night in the Realm, while perched on the rock waiting for the warmth of dawn.

 

 

Orange light slowly filled the cave, accompanied by a low, deep hissing. Michael stood, stretching his cramped legs. Nikolai did likewise, complaining bitterly.

 

 

The sun was rising beyond Heba Mish, reflecting from the westerward mountains and casting a dull purple backlight on the snow slope. Clouds in the east became bathed in flame, green and orange and lavender. Several shafts of light broke through the clouds and dashed themselves against the unseen side of Heba Mish, creating an aurora-like edge of yellow around the peak.

 

 

High above, the pearly ribbon broke down into its separate arcs and faded. Snow had fallen in the darkness and lay glittering outside the cave.

 

 

Nikolai and Michael walked onto the rock stage. The clouds pouring into the chasm had been depleted. Now there was just a hollow invisible rush of air. Cracks had formed in the ice and occasional deep bass rumbles and explosions rose to their ears as the cracks broadened and the ice calved.

 

 

"Here it comes," said Shahpur behind them. Far off, the hiss increased in volume until it was discernible as a combined wailing and roaring. Icy breezes slapped at them and rushed through the cave with a ghastly jug-blowing hoot. The Sidhe and the Breed came out onto the stage, their hair pinned back by the rising wind. The hooting became continuous.

 

 

With sudden violence, the wind drove them back and threatened to blow them from the stage. Michael felt himself flung down, then lifted until his feet were inches above the rock. He hung suspended for a seeming eternity as Nikolai and the others clawed for purchase, lying spread-eagled on the stage. Then the balance of pressures shifted and he fell back. The roar was now a painful scream; wind rushed down the gap between the mountains, pouring into the chasm and leaping over to begin its climb up the white, snow-covered flank of Heba Mish.

 

 

The flank's delicate balance was upset. With barely heard reports, it began to disintegrate. Mile-wide sheets sloughed off and descended like ragged paper on a cushion of air. The sheets broke up and the wind snatched at their fragments, powdering them, grabbing and lofting great billows of snow.

 

 

Amoeboid, the billows obscured the side of the mountain, then the rock outcrops, and finally shot above the peak.

 

 

It seemed like hours before the snow reached its zenith. Again the wind stopped. For breathless minutes the billows hung in a curtain above Heba Mish; then they descended.

 

 

"Now," Nikolai said.

 

 

Michael squinted, trying not to lose any detail. The curtain broke up in residual pockets of unstable air. The pockets sculpted the falling snow, slicing away this extremity and that, forcing the cloud to push outward here and slide inward there. A shape slowly emerged from the turmoil.

 

 

"Number one," Nikolai said. The features abruptly clarified. It was a man's face, young-looking, lightly bearded. Michael didn't recognize it. The face spread over Heba Mish, miles wide, and then decayed. The clouds continued their descent until more features formed. Very indistinct at first, then crystal sharp, came the second face - a Spryggla, Michael was certain, because of its resemblance to Lin Piao Tai. The next face Was so familiar he sucked in cold air and almost disrupted his hyloka. Familiar - but who was it? Narrow nosed, strong and youthful, sharply chiseled.

 

 

"Two and three," Nikolai said. "Now it will fall, make one more, and all will be finished."

 

 

Michael stared at the face, trying to recall where he had seen it before. "I know him," he muttered. "I know who that is!"

 

 

But his memory balked. The fourth face formed, that of a stern and impressive Sidhe, eyes haunted. Michael didn't care. He was so close, and the memory seemed so important he wanted to strike himself, pull his hair - anything to force the answer.

 

 

And it came.

 

 

The third face was not quite identifiable because of its youth - the man had been old when last they met.

 

 

It was Arno Waltiri, now falling into random drifts down the ravaged flank of Heba Mish and into the ice chasm miles below.

 

 

Chapter Thirty-four

 

 

The Sidhe were the first to leave, walking back along the same path but climbing a few yards up to another ledge to avoid the stepping stone. They were not returning to Inyas Trai; they had other destinations which could be reached only by hiking out of the mountains. Shahpur remained on the stone stage, his covered face unreadable, his mind as horribly repellent as before. Only the Breed, Bek, elected to return with Nikolai and Michael to Inyas Trai. "I've never been there before," he said. "And I've run from Sidhe coursers long enough. The city sounds like a haven, for the time being at least."

 

 

Nikolai didn't encourage him, but the Breed had made up his mind. Where humans were welcome, surely Breeds would not be despised.

 

 

The ledge was even more treacherous after the passage of the winds. Snow had fallen from the sides of their mountain and compacted to slippery ice under their feet Michael was very tired and glad to see the stepping stone.

 

 

He felt as if he had lived a dozen lifetimes, and left something unresolved in each one. He was a many-formed ghost caught between at least two realities, neither of them quite solid an-i convincing. Who had Arno Waltiri been, that his face should be carved in clouds of snow in the Realm of the Sidhe?

 

 

Perhaps Clarkham was not the goal of his travels after all, not the one to return him to Earth or help the humans in the Realm. But Waltiri was dead. or rather, Michael had been informed of his death. In the "real" existence of Earth, such a message - such information - was certain. Nobody in Michael's experience had ever been so cruel as to lie about the death of a friend, and he had no reason to suspect Golda.

 

 

Perhaps she hadn't known, either. Or perhaps he had deceived them all.

 

 

Perhaps he hadn't even been human.

 

 

Michael's thoughts were deeply mired as he stepped up oa the stone. Nikolai and Bek followed, Bek with hands trembling, as afraid of the Sidhe as Michael would have been, once.

 

 

And should have been, now. In the instant between stones, he heard voices engaged in conversation. Whether the hearing had been arranged as warning, he was never to know. The voices discussed his status in Inyas Trai, his position with the Ban of Hours, the status of humans in the Realm - and mention was made of the Council of Eleu and of the Maln.

 

 

He emerged in warm sunlight. Neither Nikolai nor Bek stood beside him on the stone. Ulath and four male Sidhe in pearly gray waited on the gravel surrounding the stone. Ulath's expression was tense, grim. He could feel her aura pulsing angrily, sense her restrained power.

 

 

The male Sidhe were coursers from the Irall. He gathered that much before they became aware of his abilities and sealed their memories.

 

 

"I remind you," Ulath said, "that he is protected by the Ban of Hours."

 

 

The shortest courser stepped forward and held his hand out to help Michael down from the stone. Michael hesitated, then took the hand, realizing he would exhibit his fear otherwise. He didn't know what he would do next. He doubted he could successfully cast a shadow with so little preparation, and so many Sidhe on alert.

 

 

"I am Gwinat," said the Sidhe who had offered his hand, "I am your intercept. You are in possession of a horse of the Irall."

 

 

"It was given to me," Michael said.

 

 

"That is irrelevant. No one, especially a human, can be in possession of a horse from the stables of Adonna's temple."

 

 

"It was the horse of Alyons," Ulath said, glancing between Gwinat and Michael. "You are well aware of that."

 

 

"And for stealing that horse, Alyons was sent to the Blasted Plain. That was his punishment. We could not reclaim the horse - he put his imprint on it and it would have been of no use to the temple. Sidhe law does not recognize the return of stolen property, anyway - certainly not horses."

 

 

Ulath touched Michael on the cheek. "Alyons' shadow took revenge on you," she said. "After Alyons' death, the horse had to be returned to the Irall, or left to die."

 

 

"He gave it to me," Michael said hollowly. Then, suddenly crafty, "And I've come to return it."

 

 

Gwinat smiled in appreciation, then shook his head. "You were his enemy, and you killed him, no?"

 

 

"I didn't want to be his enemy. I didn't kill him."

 

 

"Come." The coursers drew up around him, cutting off any hope of escape. Ulath withdrew her hand and backed away. He probed her fleetingly and found regret but no deep sorrow. "The Irall does not approve of the Ban's policy toward humans," Gwinat informed her.

 

 

"The Irall has no power over the Ban. She was appointed by Adonna. What does Adonna say?"

 

 

Gwinat smiled snakishly and bowed his head. "We will remove this one. That is the law."

 

 

Michael

 

 

What? Who is it?

 

 

Go with them

 

 

He looked at Ulath but she hadn't sent any messages, and it hadn't felt like the Ban - or Death's Radio. Who, then?

 

 

He walked between the coursers, onto the stepping stone which led to the streets below, then through the streets to where their horses - and Alyons' - waited. A small number of Sidhe females watched as the coursers allowed Michael to mount the sky-blue horse, mounted their own, and rode with him through the northern gates of Inyas Trai. Gwinat turned to look back through the gates, still smiling.

 

 

"I don't see what even a human would find of value in there," he said softly. "The Spryggla took their revenge on us when they built it, just as Alyons took his revenge on you, eh?"

 

 

Michael looked straight ahead, down a wide stone road that passed straight as a shadow through an avenue of black stone pillars, and beyond, to the gates of the temple of Adonna.

 

 

They were taking him to the Irall.

 

 

Chapter Thirty-Five

 

 

The Irall loomed, its black central tower smooth and round and featureless, tapering to an anonymous needle point. Around its base were irregular clusters of smaller towers, all inclined toward the center. The towers rose from a smooth dome of silky gray rock.

 

 

Gwinat and the coursers led Michael down the dark stone road, between pillars as shiny as polished metal yet as black as night, with gleams buried in their depths like eyes, enjoying his discomfort, his fear.

 

 

Nothing the Crane Women had taught him could possibly have prepared him for this.

 

 

The entrance was surprisingly small, just wide enough for three horses abreast, and perhaps two heads taller than the coursers riding on either side of Michael. The walls of the tunnel were cupped like the walls of a glacial cave, and the floor was littered with what looked like dried flowers. The air smelled sweet and dusty, not unpleasant, yet not quite pleasant. Suggestive, haunting, like the smell of old roses cupped in hands hidden far beneath the sun petals falling one by one scented, black in always-dark.

 

 

The message came through stronger than he had ever felt it before, just as the light from the tunnel's entrance was cut off by a bend in the path. The coursers pushed on, having no need for the light. Michael, trying to listen for the voice again, heard Gwinat dimly: "We're to take you to the Testament."

 

 

As Michael's eyes adjusted, he saw the tunnel had broadened and was filled with a faint greenish glow. Ahead, on walkways to either side, two long lines of figures shuffled in single file, eyes staring forward. They were Breeds, and each carried a green ceramic basin filled with black liquid. Michael tried to examine each face as they passed, looking for Lirg, but there were far too many and he wasn't sure he could remember what Lirg looked like anyway.

 

 

The tunnel opened onto an immense smoky chamber, its ceiling lost in darkness. The walls on either side were pocked with holes thirty to forty feet in diameter, their lower edges stained by a continuous rusty dripping. The horses splashed in an inches-deep layer of silty liquid rippling across the floor. Alyons' horse - or rather. Adonna's - twitched its ears and withers uneasily.

 

 

The next chamber was like the inside of a cartoon beehive, circular horizontal ribs stacked layer upon layer to form a dome. In the middle of the chamber was a depressed amphitheater with yard-high steps leading down to a rusty pool of water. All Michael could smell now was stale water.

 

 

The coursers escorted him around the amphitheater and led him down a side hallway. They passed a line of marching Sidhe, dressed only in gray kilts.

 

 

All of Adonna's attendants were male, apparently; the Irall was a male sanctuary.

 

 

"What is the Testament?" Michael asked.

 

 

Gwinat turned to him. "The trial chamber of Adonna's judges. The meeting place of the Maln." He did not need to probe Michael's aura to speak English.

 

 

"I thought that was in the mountains," Michael said. Gwinat smiled at the absurdity of trying to correct human misperceptions.

 

 

"I mean, that's where you train priests." Michael remained quiet for a few minutes, then said, "It's obvious I'm guilty, under your law. Why should you try me? Isn't the Maln all-powerful? Or is my ignorance some excuse?"

 

 

"Your guilt is an excuse," Gwinat said.

 

 

Michael had to think harder Shan he had ever thought before. There had to be some way out of the situation, some supreme effort or cleverness the Crane Women had instilled that he had temporarily forgotten.

 

 

Ahead, an electric blue glow suffused through the tunnel like a fog. The horses took them through wreaths of bluish mist. The mist curled with sentient gestures, curious, cold.

 

 

The air cleared and Michael saw they were advancing across some tremendous open space, the interior of the dome itself; all the other chambers had been contained in the walls of the Irall. Long minutes passed before he sighted a stone table on the otherwise bare floor, and in tall stone seats surrounding the table, four Sidhe in black robes, facing inward.

 

 

The coursers led Michael in a circle around the table. The four Sidhe in black watched him closely. The floor crawled with dim patches of blue mist, shot through with transitory lines of green and black.

 

 

"Tra gahn," said one of the four, rising and pushing back the stone chair with a grating rumble. He looked into Michael's eyes and made a gesture to Gwinat. Gwinat took Michael's arm and pulled him from the horse, setting him on the ground with a wrenching pain in his shoulder.

 

 

As he turned, he saw that a stone amphitheater now surrounded the table. On the risers stood a crowd of plumed, dazzle-robed Sidhe males. They all stared at Michael and picked at him with a silent chorus of sharp-edged probes, seeking a way through his defenses.

 

 

"Do you recognize me?" asked the Sidhe standing at the table. Michael turned, and nodded. "Who am I?"

 

 

"You are Tarax."

 

 

"And you know your crime?"

 

 

Michael nodded again, knowing it was useless to argue.

 

 

Tarax removed his black robe, revealing a blood-red cloak. He then pulled back the cloak, unveiling not another layer of clothing, nor his body, but a forest of leaves, as if his head were supported not by flesh and blood but by a tree. Birds flew from the leaves high into the darkness, their wings beating steadily. The wingbeats faded.

 

 

Gwinat leaned over him. "Tarax says you are quite guilty," he said, "And that you are the one they want. Even had you been innocent, we would have the authority to take you from the Ban now. Adonna wants you."

 

 

Chapter Thirty-Six

 

 

They led him away from the table. The risers vanished as quickly as they had appeared, and the beautifully dressed Sidhe with them.

 

 

"We are going below," Gwinat said. Michael detected a hint of pity in the Sidhe's voice.

 

 

The center of the dome of the Irall was occupied by a pit perhaps fifty yards across at its rim. Concentric steps descended to a narrower opening of ten or twelve yards. Gwinat urged his horse down the steps, pushing Michael ahead. The coursers followed. A cold breeze blew up from the center. "Mount," Gwinat said, extending his hand. Michael took hold and was lifted onto Gwinat's horse, sitting before the Sidhe.

 

 

Michael's eyes widened as Gwinat booted the animal's flanks. It tossed its head, reared and kicked off into nothingness. The coursers leaped after.

 

 

He closed his eyes momentarily. His stomach twisted and his eyelids fluttered involuntarily, then opened. He blinked against the wind. They plunged down the hole into darkness. Gwinat kept a tight grip with one arm on Michael's waist. To each side, the coursers' beasts stretched out in silvery, elongated poses of leaping, tails twisting and waving behind, manes unfurled and gleaming like fire, lips drawn back from gnashing teeth. They seemed to pull at the air ahead with their teeth, legs straining for solid ground and finding none.

 

 

The darkness was broken only by hanging swatches of luminous green moss on the smooth-bored stone walls. Michael turned to look at Gwinat. The Sidhe's teeth were bared; he seemed to be grinning, grimacing and preparing to scream all at once.

 

 

Michael shielded his eyes with his hands. The dry wind stung. The stone walls gave way after several minutes to ice as clear and deep as flawless blue glass.

 

 

Far ahead - below - a tiny dot of dim rainbow-colored light appeared, then rushed toward them. Michael prepared for destruction. He felt the horse's muscles relax beneath him. He leaned close to its neck and clasped its mane with what must have been a painful grip, but the animal didn't protest. The walls of the hole vanished; they had fallen for at least a quarter of an hour and now glided over a maelstrom of cloudy, turbid light.

 

 

They were now beneath the bottom of the Realm, beyond all solidity, into darkness and terrifying creation. The horses navigated through an upside-down forest of ice stalactites with bases hundreds of yards thick. Below, small brilliant globes of indefinite size flitted over the maelstrom.

 

 

Michael silently prayed; not that he would have been heard above the rush of wind which filled the void, pasting his hair to his head and threatening to tear him from Gwinat's grip. "Lord," he mouthed, "I thank you for all I have lived, all I have seen. I am sorry I never acknowledged You, and I hope this is not all for nothing - - -If I die now, I know I have done nothing worthwhile, and have brought pain and death-" He thought of Eleuth's spinning, fading shadow in the Between, and then of the Ban of Hours' accepting, forgiving arms. "I know I am nothing in the face of this, and that this is nothing before You." He was repudiating all his weak attempts at disbelief, and all of his young materialist philosophies. And he was doing it clumsily, with inelegant words and far too many repetitions of the word "nothing." He was half-crazy with fear, and yet he realized he was editing his own prayers, his own supplications. He was worried about style in the face of extinction.

 

 

Gwinat tightened his hold as Michael began to tremble, then shake. With some surprise, the Sidhe realized that the boy was laughing. Tears blew back from the human's face and struck Gwinat's, streaming across his cheeks. For a moment, the Sidhe felt it might be best to simply drop the human into the maelstrom and be done with him. There was something weird and dangerous in this laughter and weeping, something he could not fathom. But he held on and the boy became calm after a time.

 

 

The horses pitched downward, away from the ice pillars. Michael was through praying. He was filled with a wordless, profound silence. Only one thought crossed his mind as they dropped away from the Realm's underside: This must have been the way the Sidhe crossed between the stars. Taking their own wind with them in the emptiness of space, traveling in hordes of millions, so many they would have seemed like a comet's tail from far away, glittering like pearly motes against the stacked razor's-edge blackness.

 

 

Ahead, drifting over the Maelstrom, was an oval object like an elongated bean. The bean-shape clarified into a cylinder about twice as long as it was wide. Spinning slowly on its long axis; it appeared to have been lathed from a solid piece of brass. The cylinder pointed down toward the maelstrom, irregular blotches of verdigris rolling along with its outer surface.

 

 

They approached the top. The flat expanse loomed like a wall, pierced by an irregular gaping entrance at its center. Michael wasn't able to get an impression of its size until the very last, just as they entered the hole.

 

 

The cylinder was perhaps a mile in diameter.

 

 

For a moment there was confusion. One of the coursers got ahead of Michael and Gwinat. His animal's hoof twitched a few feet from Michael's face, then swung back and caught Michael on the side of the head. He was knocked from Gwinat's arm and fell away, seeing nothing but warm, mellow red, dimming rapidly to deep brown___

 

 

Michael's awareness returned in stages. First he smelled dust, acrid and irritating. He sneezed. Then came the pain. His forehead felt on fire. His eyes were open, but he couldn't see until the darkness irised and revealed another, even more profound black. He was in chains.

 

 

His wrists and ankles were shackled to a brass bar with a ring on each end. Chains extended from the rings to another bar a few yards away. Shackled to that bar was a skeleton, clothes and dried skin floating in tatters on its translucent yellow bones.

 

 

He was weightless. All around was the ineffable presence of something huge, moving. Within a feeble gray illumination Michael could see nothing but chains, bars and more bodies.

 

 

He was floating in a graveyard. He shut his eyes and probed outward to the limit of his range. Only uncertain murmurs came back to him. The impressions were strong enough to convince him that he was at the center of the brass cylinder, and that the cylinder was an outpost of the Maln - an extension of the IraJl.

 

 

Michael probed again, and suddenly withdrew cringing as a voice blasted him. He threw up his shields, but they were not strong enough to mask the power, and the hatred.

 

 

"For your crimes, antros, for all the creatures that have died that you might eat their flesh; for all that have loved you and been betrayed, for all the so very human things you have done. Together we face a mystery, antros."

 

 

It was the voice of Tarax. The Sidhe emerged from the darkness, standing on a brass platform.

 

 

"Who are you?" Tarax asked, white hair floating in a nimbus around his head.

 

 

"I am a poet," Michael said, feeling none of the hesitance or awkwardness he would have once experienced on naming his occupation, his obsession.

 

 

"That means nothing to me. Who are you, that you should be protected, that I am prevented from killing you." Now even Adonna requests you. Frankly, I am puzzled. Who are you?"

 

 

"What does Adonna want?" Michael's throat was dry from inhaling the acrid dust.

 

 

"I do not know. I have served Adonna for a long, long age, and kept his secrets, and admired his creation-"

 

 

"His?"

 

 

"You are his now. I do not need to be discreet with you. In fact, I have only one function to perform, and since time means nothing to Adonna, I do not need to be hasty. I know these things about you: that you are an evil; that your worst crime is not the theft of a horse. It is being human. and helping the one who calls himself Isomage. You would bring a Song of Power to him, would you not?"

 

 

Michael felt the pressure of the book against his hip. Tarax's platform drew closer and the high priest of the Maln reached out with long fingers to touch the chains bonding him to the other bodies. "This is my only task, to release you and send you down the axis to the Mist. For all these," he gestured at the hundreds, thousands of corpses, "I have done the honors, and come back a short time later to find them here, returned by Adonna, who took from them what he needed. Most have been Sidhe. Few humans have earned such a demise."

 

 

Tarax's robe suddenly came to life. Gray stripes rose from the black fabric, writhing and forming knotwork designs. He touched Michael's chained feet and shoved him slowly, steadily away from the floating graveyard. "Michael Perrin," Tarax announced loudly. "Antros."

 

 

An exit opened in the opposite end of the cylinder. Michael looked ahead and saw the rainbow light of the maelstrom. Behind, the graveyard receded into a lattice of brown points, and then was enveloped in obscurity.

 

 

He closed his eyes and swallowed hard.

 

 

When he opened them again, he drifted through the hole and saw the flat cylinder wall rushing around him, rotating endlessly, brass and verdigris illuminated by the flickering light of what Tarax called the Mist.

 

 

There was activity below. Something rose toward him from the Mist. Darkness sparkled. A pseudopod of night, full of potential, extended and enveloped him. Forms flashed all around, passing in a parade of metamorphosis; faces, bodies, less pleasant shapes. Michael moaned and tried to stop seeing, but couldn't

 

 

There is no magic but what is allowed in our heads.

 

 

"No!" He recognized the tone, the intention.

 

 

Universes may co-exist in the same wave-train, operating as the harmonics of a complex of frequencies. Analogous to the groove in a phonograph record, which is easily distinguished into horns and strings by the practised ear - horns one universe, strings another. We may exist in all universes, but 'hear' only one because of our limitations, the valve of our desires, our practical, physical needs. All is vibration, with nothing vibrating across no distance whatsoever. All is music. A universe, a world, is just one long difficult song. The difference between worlds is the difference between songs. All Sidhe know this when they do magic.

 

 

Michael had been struggling, but now he was limp, horrified, waiting. He had not anticipated this. He knew the voice very well - had been searching for it recently, hoping for answers, help.

 

 

The book was withdrawn from him, and with it, memory of the poem Lin Piao Tai had sought, the first half of the Song of Power the Spryggla had thought the Isomage needed. His only secret, his last defense, was now gone.

 

 

"You're Death's Radio," Michael said.

 

 

/ am the Realm. My body is the Realm, and my mind is the Realm.

 

 

"Why have you helped me, if you hate me?"

 

 

I do not hate. The Creation is flawed. Holding it together has become very tiresome. And there is not as much time as once seemed possible.... not an eternity.

 

 

The voice became less hollow. At the same time, Michael's focus sharpened and he saw the darkness and the clouds of chaos eddy inward, flashing green and yellow and blue, becoming rosy, giving off halos of brilliant red.

 

 

Before him, standing on the cut-stone field high in the mountains first revealed to him by Bin, was an extraordinary figure. He was a Sidhe, certainly, but like no other Sidhe Michael had seen. Despite the lack of wrinkles, the full redness of the hair, the apparent strength of bare arms and legs, the figure looked old and weary. His eyes were black as the void and without whites, and his teeth were stone gray.

 

 

He wore a short kilt and a loose tabard tied with a length of golden rope. The kilt was decorated around the hem with branches and leaves in gold thread. Michael glanced down but could not see his own body; he was simply a pair of eyes, at least for now.

 

 

"So you recognize me?"

 

 

Yes.

 

 

The Sidhe came forward. "I went to some trouble to disguise myself. Still, you've been very perceptive. It wasn't my voice you recognized, was it?"

 

 

No.

 

 

"My delivery. Even a god can't disguise his inmost self, I suppose.

 

 

How long have you been. a god?

 

 

"Not long, actually. Twenty, thirty thousand Earth years. But quite long enough. Do you know what I am?"

 

 

A Sidhe.

 

 

"Yes, and a very old Sidhe, too. Not of this younger generation. All the Sidhe alive today - with very few exceptions - have forgotten me. All they know is Adonna. They forget Tonn, who led them back to Earth, who opposed his own daughter and the Council of Eleu. I was the leader of the Council of Delf. Do you know who Tonn was, boy?"

 

 

The Sidhe mage.

 

 

"Good memory. There were four mages, boy, remember them?"

 

 

Tonn, Daedal.

 

 

"Manus and Aum. Others, less powerful, the mages of the lesser kinds. All are animals on your Earth now, not strong enough to re-evolve, or content with their lot. Only humans struggled back, hated us so much. Now so few of your fellows remember why they struggled back. Perhaps only one. the Serpent Mage. I imagine he remembers, oh, yes!"

 

 

Michael didn't respond.

 

 

"You won't remember this exchange, either. Not for a while. Wouldn't do the great majority of the Sidhe any good to know that Adonna was once one of them. A mage is impressive, but a god must be infinitely more impressive. Aloof. I know my people, how to chastise them and keep them in line. But life in my Realm is just not enough. I've labored long and hard to keep the Realm going, to reconcile all its inconsistencies. all the poor judgments of my own creation. And I've sacrificed, too. Whatever personal life I may once have had. the respect of my offspring. and my own wife."

 

 

Michael remembered the skull-snail on the Blasted Plain.

 

 

"Yes, yes," Tonn said, coming even closer, until he seemed right next to Michael. "The time has come for a change. Perhaps the Council of Eleu was right, Perhaps Elme was right. It is time for the Sidhe to return to the Earth. Ah, if only poor Tarax could hear me now! He'd lose the very foundation of his life. He'd melt with shame. You, a pitiful human child, must carry the burden - not a powerful and faithful Sidhe. But then, Tarax is remarkably ignorant. All my people are ignorant, except perhaps the Ban of Hours."

 

 

Michael conjured back an image of tall figures around his bed on Earth, discussing him. You? he asked.

 

 

"No, indeed," Tonn said, pulling up a block from the stone field with the palm of his hand and sitting on it. "Not even the Maln, or the Council of Delf. The Council of Eleu chose you, I and they would be very distressed to know I concur. But before any of our plans can be carried out, some obstacles must be cleared away. Some old greeds. We do not precisely agree, but each of us has a use for you."

 

 

Then I have no will of my own?

 

 

"You have all the will you'll ever need. And you won't need this." He held up the black book. It faded from his hand. "Nor will you need Death's Radio. Time now for forgetting."

 

 

The stone field's blackness intensified and smeared up to take in the sky and clouds, to sweep around Tonn and obscure him.

 

 

Once, poets were magicians. Poets were strong, stronger than warriors or kings - stronger than old hapless gods. And they will be strong once again.

 

 

The cloud of creation was back in its place. The receding blackness sparkled and churned.

 

 

Chapter Thirty-Seven

 

 

Michael walked and whistled tunelessly, caught himself whistling and stopped abruptly. He looked around warily, his armhairs tingling. Then he frowned and sat down, wondering why he was still alive. He had been in the Irall.

 

 

He felt for the book. It was gone. He looked around frantically, pushing aside the grass to see if he had dropped it. Everything in his memory was jumbled.

 

 

The broad river flowed nearby, noisy as it rushed slick and turbulent over boulders. A few hundred yards beyond the river was one wall of a canyon, and much closer - overshadowing - the opposite wall. Both were gray stone streaked with rusty red, jagged and scarred as if the river's gouging had been neither gentle nor discreet. Each wall rose at least five hundred feet and stretched for as far as Michael could see. Trees clustered in fives and tens along the banks, leaves swaying in a /cool, persistent breeze - a canyoned river of air to complement the river of water.

 

 

"What happened?" he asked, taking a step one way, then back, then another. He remembered meeting Death's Radio, a tall fellow in a kilt and tabard. but who had that been? He remembered being told certain things, but he couldn't recall what the things were.

 

 

Tarax he remembered quite clearly, and he shivered.

 

 

"Michael! Michael!"

 

 

Two figures clambered down a rugged trail in the canyon face nearby.

 

 

"Nikolai!" he shouted. His difficulties were temporarily driven out by joy. "You didn't make it back to the city!"

 

 

"And you did?" Nikolai and Bek ran across the river sand, skirting patches of grass. Michael and Nikolai embraced and Michael was surprised and embarrassed at how good Nikolai's warm, strong body felt in his arms. Bek stood to one side, smiling faintly at the reunion.

 

 

"I was captured," Michael said.

 

 

"We were filtered out, then. by the Ban," Nikolai said. They laughed and embraced again. "We were sent here. And so were you. By the Ban? Did she rescue you?"

 

 

Michael explained as much as he remembered, which wasn't very helpful. He described the interior of the Irall, the ride below the Realm, and the cylinder above the Mist. "After that. I think I was dreaming."

 

 

"Here? Most unlikely," Nikolai said. "Whatever it was, it must have been real."

 

 

"My book was taken away. I've forgotten some things." His face fell. Thinking of the book automatically sent his mind back to "Kubla Khan." He couldn't remember past the first few lines.

 

 

"But you survived! No one has ever come out of the Irall alive - no human, anyway."

 

 

"And no Breed," Bek said, running his hand through his silky blond hair. "Nikolai told me you were special. Now I believe him! A special antros."

 

 

Michael was ready to be offended by the word used so often as a curse, but he probed Bek deftly and found no animosity. Bek returned the probe and met Michael's instant shield. The Breed smiled broadly and shook his head in appreciation and wonder.

 

 

By evening, they had gathered dried sticks and grass for a fire. They ate from Nikolai's foraging of the day before - some fruit and roots - and rested, saying very little. Nikolai cast proprietary glances at Michael now and then.

 

 

The fire became smoke and ashes and a few crackling embers. Bek and Nikolai slept. Michael felt as if he had slept an age and might never sleep again. He sat with his arms wrapped around his knees and looked at the drifting smoke, wondering how he could feel so good when he had lost the final thing of importance to him, when he had no future and no foreseeable prospects. When he was still in the Realm.

 

 

He was alive. That was enough. So often he had resigned himself to death - or worse. He thought of the weightless graveyard and the acrid dust.

 

 

Even if Clarkham turned out to be useless to him - and vice versa - even if he was a pawn -

 

 

He heard a rustling in the grass. What he saw, beyond the sandy oval where Nikolai and Bek slept, made his back go rigid.

 

 

Bin stood in the grass, dressed in a black robe with red shoulders and arms. He stared fixedly at Michael and held out his hand, beckoning.

 

 

Michael stood and brushed sand from his travel-stained pants. He followed Bin away from the camp until they were out of earshot, their conversation covered by the river's tumult.

 

 

"Is this some sort of crossroad?" Michael asked, his voice almost failing him. He cleared his throat.

 

 

"No crossroad. I've brought something that may still be of use to you. It is yours, by law. You have survived your punishment, and it has been imprinted." He gestured to a copse of trees. There, visible in the light of the pearly band, was the blue horse. It nickered and walked forward. Michael reached out to it hesitantly. It nuzzled his palm.

 

 

"I've gone through a lot because of this horse," Michael said. "This isn't another trick?"

 

 

Biri shook his head. "Tarax was furious not to find you back in the cylinder, dead. He released the horse, but not in the same place he was commanded to release you."

 

 

"What are you doing here?"

 

 

"Fulfilling Adonna's ruling."

 

 

"And.?"

 

 

Biri looked down at the ground. "Because of Adonna, I have no horse. Because of Tarax, I have no faith in Adonna or the Irall. All my training has been for nothing. My people are dying. We are withering inside. I blame Adonna." The look he gave Michael was almost pleading. "I went to the Ban of Hours. She and her attendants are the only ones who seem to know something has gone wrong in the Realm."

 

 

"The Council of Eleu," Michael said.

 

 

"Yes. What do you know of them?"

 

 

"Not a great deal."

 

 

"Would you like to know more, as much as I know?"

 

 

Michael nodded. If Clarkham was an unreliable savior, then the Council of Eleu might be able to help.

 

 

"Ride with me, then. or rather, since I have no horse, allow me to ride with you. While your companions sleep."

 

 

"Where to?"

 

 

"Not so very long ago, I would have thought it an accursed place and shunned it. Now I am much less certain. It is not far, if we ride."

 

 

Michael looked back at the camp and the sleeping shapes of Nikolai and Bek. He knew Nikolai was asleep, but Bek.

 

 

"Why shouldn't they go with us?"

 

 

"The human has never undergone discipline. He would not survive. The Breed." Bin shrugged. "It would not matter to him. He is without a people, a loner. He does not care that he is a Breed, otherwise it might have some importance to him."

 

 

Michael considered briefly. "Lead on."

 

 

The blue horse allowed both of them to mount, this time, unlike with Gwinat, Michael riding behind and Biri in front. "I was in the Irall," Michael said.

 

 

"Yes."

 

 

"Did you see me?"

 

 

"Yes."

 

 

"Why didn't you help?"

 

 

"No one interferes with Tarax. Besides, you were going to Adonna. Even initiates know the futility of trying to cross Adonna."

 

 

Michael urged the horse forward. Then, fully aware of the consequences, he gave the Sidhe animal a chance to run. and to fly. "Tell us where to go," he told Biri as the horse's body blurred and silvered under them.

 

 

"South," he said.

 

 

Chapter Thirty-Eight

 

 

For a time the horse followed the river and canyon. Michael couldn't tell if they were flying or running, or even precisely where they were. Everything was disarrayed. With a twist of his head the world became a different place, filled with streamers of light and rushing clouds.

 

 

"Abana," Biri shouted. "Tell the horse abana."

 

 

Michael repeated the word, and what was left of the Realm dissolved. The night became twilight, the streamers and clouds oriented to form a gray-blue heaven. Below, city lights moved across the grassland like water flowing on a wrinkled cloth. "It looks like Earth!" Michael shouted. The wind tasted electric on his tongue.

 

 

"It is one of many Earths," Biri said. "The Earths between your world and the Realm. Where the horses go when they aband."

 

 

The city lights coalesced into streets and buildings, tilting and swaying far below. Everything was greenish, a very memorable tint indeed - the tint of the Between where Lamia's sister stood guard. "How many Earths are there?"

 

 

"Far more than can be counted," Biri said.

 

 

"And the horse crosses over?"

 

 

"We are only visiting. We are not actually there unless we fall off. The horse grazes the surface, skips along the Earths surrounding the Realm."

 

 

The city lights vanished and everything became mixed and indistinct again. To Michael's hand, reaching around Biri and grasping, the horse's mane felt like cold fire. The horse turned to look back at them. Its eye was cold and deadly blue, like a ball of ice lit from within. Its lips drew back and its teeth were as sharp and long as a tiger's. Between the Realm and the Earth - or Earths - it was a very different beast indeed, a true nightmare.

 

 

"We're getting near," Bin said.

 

 

The horse shivered and the swirl became less intense. He could feel the horse's muscles tighten beneath his legs, preparing to run instead of aband.

 

 

The Realm returned. The horse galloped over a rocky field studded with tiny trees. The night air returned, cold and dry. The sky was filled with sharp white stars.

 

 

Michael brought the horse to a stop. "How far did we travel?"

 

 

"Too far to walk," Bin said, sliding off the horse to the left. "We cannot ride the horse into the protected circle."

 

 

Michael dismounted and they walked across the field, stones driving hard into Michael's soft-shod feet. Ahead, vaguely outlined in starglow, was a dirt and stone mound, very much like the barrows Michael had seen in history books.

 

 

"We have those on Earth," he said.

 

 

On one side of the mound was a arch stone blocked by a circular slab half-buried in the ground. Biri reached to the left of the slab and withdrew a round boulder about six inches across. As if the boulder were clay, he scooped a hollow in it and shifted it from hand to hand. With one finger he planted a fierce white glow in the hollow. "A lantern," he said.

 

 

On the right-hand edge of the slab was a series of notches. He placed the fingers of one hand into certain grooves, then touched others in different sequences. The slab sunk into the ground with a grumble.

 

 

"Now we enter," he said.

 

 

The stone lantern showed a dank, root-lined tunnel stretching about ten yards into the mound. The floor was cut stone. The air smelled musty and chill. Biri led the way.

 

 

In the center of the mound was a chamber about thirty feet in diameter. The chamber's stone walls shone with damp. Silvery-white beard-like fungus hung from the wet surfaces.

 

 

Surmounting a stone bier in the middle were two transparent quartz coffins placed within a few inches of each other. In each was a skeleton. Biri stood on one side of the bier and Michael walked slowly around to the other, peering through the crystal sides.

 

 

"Do you know who they are?" Biri asked, his voice soft in the echoing chamber.

 

 

"I don't think so," Michael said. The bones in the left-hand coffin resembled translucent ivory and were draped in a diaphanous white gown; in the right-hand coffin, the skeleton was opaque and brown with age and wore nothing but dust and rags. In one hand it clutched a polished wood staff with a bronze head.

 

 

Michael completed his circuit and stood beside Bin. "Most of my people reviled her," Biri said, touching the quartz with the tips of his fingers. "When we returned from the stars, we were too weak to destroy your kind. Some Sidhe, including the Mage, revealed themselves to humans as gods and tried to hinder their development, but your kind was not always reverent. They grew and matured and found their own skills anyway. Your kind even used the lies and dreams the false gods revealed, like a flower uses manure.

 

 

"She thought we should live in peace with you, but at first, her ministers refused to carry out her plans. She was queen; she had guided us home, and she was a powerful sorceress; they couldn't fight her openly. But she began to wander the Earth, trying to find a solution. In time her ministers were able to convince most of the Sidhe that the queen was mad, that she had succumbed to the stresses of the journey, that - as often happened then - her powers had broken her mind.

 

 

"So she gathered together her own followers, and formed the Council of Eleu. While other Sidhe tried to control humans, the Council spread knowledge among them. While the mage, Tonn, spent centuries portraying your gods Yahweh and Baal, and others, the queen opposed him, and tried to encourage humans to develop their own finest qualities. Tonn was stronger.

 

 

"And, finally, the queen declared she had fallen in love with a human. She rejected the cold and heartless union with her own males." Biri's face betrayed no irony, or even awareness of self-criticism. "Sometimes, even now, her followers believe she truly was mad at that time, but she did indeed love the man, and when he died, as mortals will, she placed his body here. Then, for a thousand years, the Council of Eleu worked with the queen to raise humanity to a level where other Sidhe might be able to accept them as equals. But her enthusiasm had died with her husband; in time, the queen herself died, and was placed beside the one she loved, instead of in a tomb of honor or in a tree where she might pass on her wisdom.

 

 

"Tonn founded the Black Order to oppose her wishes, and put Tarax in command. The Black order, the Maln, fought every action of the council of Eleu. To this day they oppose each other, and the Council of Eleu must work in secret."

 

 

"This is Elme and Aske," Michael said. Biri nodded.

 

 

"Adonna is a corrupt god," he continued, "growing more and more senile with time. I cannot serve him. I must serve those who oppose him, and oppose the Maln."

 

 

"You want to help humans?"

 

 

"It seems I must, doesn't it?" Bin smiled grimly.

 

 

"The Crane Women are Elme's daughters?"

 

 

"Elme and Aske had forty children, the first Breeds. Twenty of their offspring married humans, and had children by them___"

 

 

"How long ago?"

 

 

"As far back as nine thousand years on Earth, and as recently as eighty years. Those with less than an eighth Sidhe heritage revert to mortals again, but can still work some magic. Their children spread around the Earth, and many of them lived for thousands of years, surviving many generations of descendants.

 

 

"Long, long ago, Elme held court in a beautiful garden, surrounded by high stone walls. She sought the advice of the Serpent Mage, the last of the original humans."

 

 

Michael's eyes narrowed.

 

 

"Do you know of it?" Biri asked, regarding him curiously.

 

 

Michael stared at the skeleton in the radiant gown and didn't know how to react. Finally, his eyes welled up, as if all his life he had heard just parts of a wonderful and sad story, and now it had been completed for him.

 

 

Chapter Thirty-Nine

 

 

They returned the way they had come. Michael hardly noticed the pyrotechnics; he held on to Bin and the horse and turned his thoughts inward.

 

 

He had learned things no history class on Earth could ever have taught him. He suspected there were far more things of which he had heard only partial truths, or no truth at all.

 

 

The horse stopped on the ledgetop overlooking the camp and pawed the ground with its hoof. Its fangs were no longer apparent and its eye was gentle. Michael swung down from the horse and looked up at Bin.

 

 

"I don't trust you," Michael said. Bin returned his gaze with expression unchanged. "Oh, I think you've told me the truth about Aske and Elme, and what you know of Sidhe history. You'd have no reason to lie to me about that. Perhaps you know I've heard a lot of the story from others. But I don't necessarily believe you've abandoned Adonna."

 

 

Bin smiled ironically. "You'll entertain the thought, however?"

 

 

"I'll consider it as a possibility," Michael offered. "But everything is going too smoothly. Everybody wants me to go to the Isomage. Only the Ban of Hours told me I was a pawn, caught between two forces - the Council of Eleu, and the Maln. I trust her, I think."

 

 

"She is a worthy female," Bin said, nodding his respect.

 

 

"I think it's time I acted on my own," Michael said. "I want to return to the Pact Lands."

 

 

"They no longer exist," Bin said. "Your people and the Breeds have been moved, put in new communities."

 

 

"Camps, you mean," Michael said. "Take me to one of the camps."

 

 

"They are closely guarded. Tarax wants no more like you to come to the notice of the Council of Eleu."

 

 

"You and I together, we can-"

 

 

"I have forsaken Adonna," Biri said, shaking his head firmly, "but I will not fight my own kind."

 

 

"Yet you want to serve the Council. You can do that by helping humans."

 

 

Biri said nothing.

 

 

"I'm not sure that going to the Isomage isn't what the Maln would have me do. They released me from the Irall, and that makes me suspicious."

 

 

"What would the Council have you do?"

 

 

"I don't know."

 

 

"Who has opposed you most?"

 

 

"Human-hating Sidhe."

 

 

"The Maln."

 

 

"I just don't know." Michael said, confused again.

 

 

"It seems obvious," Biri said.

 

 

"Then why didn't Tarax kill me when he had the chance? I'm not very strong. Any Sidhe could have killed me. You could, right now, just by raising a finger."

 

 

"Perhaps you are not as weak as you think."

 

 

"Oh, no?" Michael laughed. "You just hollowed out a boulder and lit a fire in it. It's all I can do to keep myself warm."

 

 

Biri dismounted and squatted on the ledge to peer into the canyon. His red-shouldered robe made him look disembodied in the starlight, as if his bust floated on a gray platform over the canyon. "You call yourself a poet," Biri said. "The Sidhe have long regarded poets with respect."

 

 

"I am sixteen, maybe seventeen years old by now," Michael said. "In my lifetime, I've written maybe five halfway decent poems, probably less. In the Realm I've hardly had time to write any. And when I've tried, I've heard somebody else's voice in my head giving me suggestions, or just creating things for me. I'm more a pawn than a poet, believe me."

 

 

"So what do you intend to do?"

 

 

"Maybe sit right here, travel with Nikolai and Bek. See what I'm really capable of before I make any decisions." He paused, then said under his breath, "From what I've learned, I can't see Clarkham being any help. I'm not even sure he's human, or really cares about humans."

 

 

Biri nodded. "If you are a pawn, do you think the forces using you will allow you to remain aloof?"

 

 

That stumped Michael. He sat beside the Sidhe and dangled his legs over the canyon. "At least they won't have me behaving like a silly puppet."

 

 

"If you are being used, either by Tarax or the Council, you face very powerful adversaries if you defy them."

 

 

"So what do you suggest I do?"

 

 

"Not much, perhaps. Advance in your discipline. Finish your training."

 

 

"The Crane Women are gone," Michael said. "I don't expect them to pop up around here anytime soon."

 

 

"I can train you," Biri said. He held his hand out in the direction of the camp. "Tonight, while they sleep. Then you can decide." His smile in the dark was radiant, feral. Michael's back prickled.

 

 

"And if I decide against the Council?"

 

 

"My allegiances haven't solidified," Biri said. "Perhaps you can guide me."

 

 

Michael thought for a moment. "Won't Tarax come after you, try to take you back?"

 

 

"Why? I am useless to him, useless to Adonna. I am just another disaffected Sidhe. They won't waste their time on vengeance. Only miserable Sidhe like Alyons engage in such silliness."

 

 

Michael stepped over to the horse. "So teach me."

 

 

"Beginning now," Biri said, getting to his feet.

 

 

Chapter Forty

 

 

It might have been the longest night in the history of the Realm. To Michael, it stretched on forever. and it was not pleasant. Bin walked with him away from the canyon until they stood in the middle of a broad belt of sand and small boulders.

 

 

"First, you must realize you are alone," he began. "For a Sidhe initiate, his aloneness is confirmed by the murder of his horse; there can be no closer relationship and no greater shock than being required to kill his most treasured companion."

 

 

"Do I have to kill the horse?" Michael asked, suddenly queasy.

 

 

"No. Your feeling toward the animal is shallow, uncertain. You were not raised with it. The Mafoc Mar did not pick it out for you from the fields when you were young; you did not grow to youthful maturity with the horse by your side. You must find something else."

 

 

"Maybe another shadow-self?"