The Anvil of the World

Mounting aloft the next day, as a hot wind filled the sails with the scent of forest and plain, no least hint of sea, Smith beheld Rethkast.

It looked like a fist of rock standing in the land, an improbable mountain upthrust alone, towering and strangely streaked with colors. Smith could see no sign of habitation at first, though as he stared he thought he could make out a certain regularity of green along the valley floor below the rock, in long lines. He watched it until a range of hills rose to obscure everything but the rock, and told Willowspear about it when he came down.

“That would be the orchards, and the garden,” said Willowspear, looking pleased.

“What do they grow there?” Smith inquired.

“Healing herbs,” Willowspear replied. “The Lady sends them seeds and cuttings with Her letters, cultivars of Her own creation, whose purpose it has not yet pleased Her to reveal to us. They have kept this garden for thirty years in Her name, in this open land where the air is mild and warm.”

“Thirty years?” Smith was astonished. “We can’t grow anything longer than two years, before the land goes dead.”

“What do you mean, goes dead?”

“Well, you know. The first year your cabbages come up fine, then the second year they’re not so big, and the next year all this chalky stuff comes up out of the ground, and the cabbages are tiny and yellow,” said Smith. “Nothing for it then but to move on. The only place that doesn’t happen is in the grainlands around Troon, because the barley grows itself. We don’t do anything but harvest it.”

“You’ve never heard of crop rotation?”

“What’s crop rotation?”

Willowspear turned and stared at him, saying nothing for a moment. At last he said, “Merciful Mother of All Things, no wonder your people go through the world like locusts!”

“What the hell’s crop rotation? Does it have anything to do with irrigation? Because we know how to do that; our aqueducts will take water anywhere,” said Smith defensively. “We’ve made deserts bloom, you know. Just not for more than two years.”

“But you can’t—” began Willowspear.

He turned and staggered away from the helm, and Smith jumped into place at the wheel. “We know how to steer, too,” he snapped.

Willowspear collapsed on a barrel, holding his head in his hands. “All this time, I thought—”

“That you’re better than us,” said Smith. “I know.”

“No! I’ve been trying to teach your people the Way of the Unwearied Mother. I’ve been teaching them meditation and prayer. What I should have been teaching them all along was simply how to garden,” said Willowspear.

Smith shrugged. “I never thought it was as easy as just saying the Green Saint’s name over and over again, whatever you told me.”

“If you only took the filth you dump into the sea and put it on your fields instead—” Willowspear rose and paced to and fro on the deck in his agitation.

“So I guess interracial orgies aren’t the answer, either?”

“You don’t—there must he love. There must be tolerance, and faith. But—there must be much more, or none of it will do any good! It’s complicated.”

“Well, nothing is simple, son,” Smith told him. “Not one damned thing in this world is simple.”

Willowspear did not reply, staring ahead at the spire of Rethkast.

“It’s just as well you figured this out now, since you’re going to be a father soon,” Smith added. “By the way … was that sorcery the other night, that cold light in the jar?”

“No,” said Willowspear. “It was the powdered bodies of certain insects in a solution of certain salts. Mix them, and the mixture glows. When the powder precipitates out, the glow fades and dies. The Lady’s invention.” He looked oddly at Smith. “But She must purchase the jars from your people. The Yendri have never learned how to make glass.”



As they drew nearer, yet they were driven back; for now the river narrowed between high hills, and the current had greater force. Yet the Kingfisher’s Nest put on all her canvas, and with a fair wind and the steam oars going at full speed they made way at last, and moored in a backwater where a landing pier did indeed welcome them.

“So where’s this back door?” Smith inquired, staring upward at the sheer rock wall.

“We have to climb up and knock,” said Lord Ermenwyr, setting his hat at a rakish angle. “How’s this look? Suitably adventurous? An appropriate ensemble for sweeping a lady off her feet?”

“I guess so. How do we get up there?”

“There’s stairs, concealed with fiendish cleverness,” the lordling replied.

“Here,” said Willowspear, pointing, and after Smith had looked for a moment, he spotted them: rough steps cut out of the rock, angled in such a way as to be nearly invisible in the crazy-swirled colors in the strata. They moved up at a steep angle. There were no handholds, nor any rail that Smith could see.

“Boys, you’ll wait here,” Lord Ermenwyr told his bodyguard. They nodded gloomily and stood to attention on the deck.

“What about this threat we’re rescuing your sister from?” Smith inquired. “Wouldn’t they be useful if we have to fight somebody?”

Lord Ermenwyr checked his reflection in a pocket mirror. “I have to admit, Smith, I may have exaggerated just the tiniest bit about the amount of danger Svnae is in,” he said. “It’s actually more sort of an awfully embarrassing fix, to be honest.”

“I see,” said Willowspear, in tones of ice.

“No, you don’t, and don’t go all peevish on me like that!” said Lord Ermenwyr. “All will be revealed in good time. For now let’s just mind our own little businesses and obey our liege lord, shall we?”

He started up the stairs. After looking at each other a moment, Smith and Willowspear sighed and followed him.

They climbed steadily for several minutes, as the stairs zigzagged first left and then right, but Smith was unable to spot anything resembling a doorway or even a cave mouth.

“Can’t imagine who carved out all these fiendishly concealed stairs,” he grumbled, “unless it was one of us poor benighted Children of the Sun. We’re so clever with little engineering feats like this.”

“Oh, shut up,” said Lord Ermenwyr, gasping for breath. He leaned on the wall at a slightly wide place and motioned them past him. “Go on, damn you. But you’ll wait at the top until I get there! I get to knock on the door.”

“I have had an epiphany, Smith,” said Willowspear, as they ascended.

“Really?” Smith panted.

“There is a parable the Lady tells. I will translate it for you. The trevani Luvendashyll is traveling through the forest, he comes to a village, he sees a woman lamenting. ‘How can I help you?’ he asks her, ‘What is wrong?’ and she says, he thinks she says, ‘Oh, kind sir, I need wisdom!’

“He says, ‘My child, you must travel a long road to find wisdom, for it is not easy to get. You must struggle, and suffer, and speak to all you meet and study their ways, learn what is in their hearts; and even then you will only have begun to find wisdom,’ and the woman says back, ‘No, no, that can’t be right! Can’t you give me wisdom?’

“And Luvendashyll says, ‘I have a little wisdom, my child, but it cannot be given so easily. You would have to become my disciple, and give all you owned to those who are less fortunate than you are, and travel with me to the ends of the earth, and hear me disputing with other trevanion; and perhaps in twenty years I could give you a little wisdom. Or it may be that the wisdom of other trevanion would seem better, and you might leave me and apprentice yourself to them for a score of years, in order that they might give you wisdom.’

“And the woman is angry, she says, ‘That’s ridiculous! Why should I have to do all that to get a little wisdom?’ So Luvendashyll is offended, and he says, ‘Impatient woman! You do not know what I had to go through for the wisdom I possess. I studied with my master from my earliest childhood, for his wisdom. I spent many days lying in a dark place listening to the Seven Stories of Jish, repeating them for my master until I knew them by heart, to obtain his wisdom. I fasted and prayed and stood on one leg in the bitter cold of winter, that I might be worthy of his wisdom. I walked on cinders and scored my back with a knotted thong, and yet in the end I was granted a little wisdom only, for my master did not like to part with his great wisdom.’

“And the woman says, ‘Look, all I want is wisdom, because the one I have has a hole in it and my acorns keep falling out!’ “

“Huh?” said Smith.

“The trevani Luvendashyll has misunderstood the woman,” Willowspear explained. “It’s a funny story in Yendri, because he thinks she has asked him for wisdom, trev’nanori, when all along she asked only for a new basket, ‘tren atnori’e.”

“Oh,” said Smith.

“And your confusion adds a further dimension to the parable, because you don’t speak Yendri in the first place,” said Willowspear, taking great strides upward in his enthusiasm. “And for the first time, I see the hidden meaning in it!”

“I never thought it was all that funny,” said Lord Ermenwyr sullenly, struggling along behind them. “I mean, so the trevani is deaf, so what? Or maybe the woman is missing a few teeth.”

“The point is that the woman needed a simple thing,” said Willowspear, “but the trevani did not comprehend simplicity, and so he wasted her time—” He scrambled up on a wide flat landing, and turned back to pull Smith after him, “wasted her time with advice, when what he ought to have done was simply taken reeds and made her a basket! And I, Smith, will make baskets for your people. Figuratively speaking.”

He pulled Lord Ermenwyr up as well, and turned to gesture triumphantly at the shoulder of the mountain they had just reached. “When we go up there, Smith, we will look out upon the Garden of Rethkast, and I will show you your future.”

“All right,” said Smith. He plodded after Willowspear flat-footed, envying the younger man his energy.

“The door is this way,” Lord Ermenwyr shouted after them, pointing to a cave.

“One moment, my lord,” Willowspear promised. He scrambled up to the crest. “Now, Smith behold the—”

Smith climbed up beside him and stood, gazing down at the wide valley below the mountain. He frowned. Regular lines of green, stretching to the near horizon…

“Those are tents,” he pointed out.

“But that was—” began Willowspear, and his eyes widened in horror as he saw the piled mounds of cut trees far below, that which had been the bowers of Rethkast, fast yellowing.

Smith was distracted by a slight sting in his foot. He shifted his weight in annoyance, thinking to kick the wasp away. How had he been stung through his boot? He looked down and saw the tuft of green feathers sticking in his foot, and father down the mountain the Yendri who had shot him, clinging to a precarious handhold. There were others below him, like a line of ants scaling a wall.

He had a rock in his hand before he knew what he was doing, and had hurled it down into the Yendri’s glaring face. There was some sort of horrific and spectacular chain reaction then, but he didn’t have time to notice it much, because yanking the dart out of his boot took all his concentration. Then Willowspear pulled him away from the edge, and they were staggering back the way they’d come. Lord Ermenwyr was at his elbow suddenly, dragging him into the cave.

There was a dark passage running into the heart of the mountain, but not far, because they came at once to a sealed door. Lord Ermenwyr was pounding on it, yammering curses or prayers. Smith could hear Willowspear weeping behind him.

There was a calm voice in Smith’s head saying: Some of the poison may have stayed in the leather of your boot, and after all you survived a much stronger dose, once before, and there is always the possibility you’ve built up some immunity. On the other hand…

But he was still conscious. He was still on his feet, though events had begun to take on a certain dreamlike quality. For example: When the door opened at last, he beheld the biggest woman he’d ever seen in his life.

She looked like a slightly disheveled goddess, beautiful in a heroic kind of way, gorgeously robed in purple and scarlet. A bracelet like a golden serpent coiled up one graceful biceps. Smith thought she ought to be standing on a pedestal in a temple courtyard, with a cornucopia of fruit under her arm…

“Did you bring him?” she inquired.

An instinct Smith hadn’t used in years took over, and he found himself turning and running back the way he’d come, without quite knowing why. At least, he was trying to run. In actuality he got about three steps before collapsing into Willowspear’s arms, and the last thing he saw was the young man’s tear-streaked face.



Smith was walking along a road. It was winter, somewhere high among mountains, and the hoarfrost on the road and the snow on the peaks above him were eerily green as turquoise, because it was early morning and a lot of light was streaking in under the clouds. There were mists rising. There were shifting vapors and fogs.

He was following his father. He could see the figure Walking ahead, appearing and reappearing as the mist obscured him. He only glimpsed the wide-brimmed hat, the sweep of cloak; but clearly and without interruption he heard the regular ring of the iron-shod staff on stone.

He tried to call out, to get his father to turn and stop. Somehow, the striding figure never heard him. Smith ran, slipping on the patches of black ice, determined to catch his father, to ask him why he’d never….never…

He was lost in a cloud. The gloom enveloped him, and all he could see was a sullen red glow—

He was holding a staff. It rang, struck sparks from the rock as he swung it. He could not stop, he could not even slow down, for he was following True Fire though he could not see her, and she would not wait for him.

You bear my name.

I do? No, I don’t, it’s an alias. How could you be my father? I never knew my father. My aunt always said he might have been a sailor. This is a dream.

You walk in my footsteps.

You don’t leave footsteps! You never leave a trace. Not one shred of proof. Damn you anyway for never being there.

You kill like a passing shadow, just as I had to kill.

Never liked it. Never wanted to. Never had a choice, though.

Neither did I.

Things got out of hand.

Things got out of control.

I just wanted a quiet life. Why can’t people be good to one another?

Why didn’t they learn? I should have made them better.

Whose fault is it, then?

You bear my fault.

Like hell I will.

Try to put it down.

Smith attempted to fling the staff away, because somehow it had become the fault, but it wouldn’t leave his hand. Instead it shrank, drew into his arm, became part of him.

I don’t want this responsibility.

It’s your inheritance. And now, my son … you’re armed.

He tried to run away, but his feet were frostbitten. The right one, especially. He slipped, skidded forward and crashed into a painful darkness that echoed with voices…



“I didn’t know you were really in danger!” Lord Ermenwyr was saying.

“Neither did I, until I looked out the window and there they were,” a woman was saying in a bemused kind of way. She had an alto voice, a red velvet voice. “Things became rather horrible after that; but until then, I was enjoying myself with the puzzle.”

“How the Nine Hells did they know you were here?” Lord Ermenwyr demanded, panic in his voice. “How did they know it was here?”

The woman’s shrug was audible.

“Spies, I suppose.”

“Well, what are we going to do?”

“Hold them off as long as we can.”

“Hold them off? You, me, and a handful of monks hold off an army?” Lord Ermenwyr’s voice rose to a scream. “They’re fanatics who’ll stop at nothing to see my head on a pike! Yours too!”

“It’s not as though we can’t defend ourselves. We’re demons, remember?” The woman’s voice grew bleak. “The Adamant Wall ought to keep them out for another week. And if the poor man dies, they won’t even be able to get what they’ve come for. Is he likely to die, Willowspear?”

“Probably not, my lady.” Willowspear was speaking very close at hand, speaking in a voice flat with shock. “He’s responding to the antidote.”

“That’s something, anyway.” Lord Ermenwyr seemed to have got up. Smith could hear his pacing footsteps. “As long as we’re here, let’s have a look at this spell of yours.”

“It’s a terribly old Portal Lock,” said the woman, and she seemed to be rising too, her voice was suddenly coming from a long way up. “That was why I thought of you at once. You were always so much cleverer at that kind of composition.”

Their voices were moving away now; with their echoing footsteps. Smith could hear Lord Ermenwyr saying, “Ah, but you were always better at research,” and the woman was saying something in a tone of chagrin when the echoes and distance made it impossible to hear more.

Silence, a crackle of fire, breathing; several people breathing. A hesitant male voice; “Brother Willowspear?”

“Who is that?”

“Greenbriar. I made the Black Mountain pilgrimage five years ago. You brought us bedding in the guest bowers.”

“I remember.” Willowspear’s voice still sounded unnatural. “She was teaching Fever Infusions that season.”

“Will She come to us, at the end? When we are killed?”

“You must trust Her children’s word that we will withstand the siege,” Willowspear replied, but he sounded unconvinced himself.

“I don’t know how I can face Her,” the other man said, with tears in his voice. “We failed Her trust. They came like a grass fire, they wouldn’t even talk to us, they just laid waste to everything! Brother Bellflower tried to save the orchard. He stood before the palings and shouted at them. They shot him with darts, then they marched over his body and cut the trees down. Thirty years of work killed in an hour…”

“It’s an illusion,” said another voice, too calmly. “She will bring the garden back. She can do such things. They have no real power over us.”

“They are madmen,” said a third voice. “You can see it in their eyes.”

“One can forgive the Children of the Sun, but these people…”

“We must forgive them too.”

“It was our fault. How could we keep the secret from Her own daughter?”

“Pray!” Willowspear’s voice cracked. “Be silent and pray. She must hear us.”

They were silent.

Smith was regaining the feeling in his limbs. Surreptitiously, he experimented with moving his fingers. He squinted between his eyelids, but could make out nothing but a blur of firelight and shadow.

He was moving his left hand outward, a fraction of an inch at a time, groping for anything that might serve as a weapon, when he heard the echoing voices returning.

“…right about that. I wouldn’t reach in there for an all-expenses-paid week in the best Pleasure Club in Salesh.”

“This was probably a bad idea,” said the woman, sighing.

“Well, I’m sure our poor Smith would prefer you should get hold of it than the Orphans,” said Lord Ermenwyr briskly. “We can make much better use of it.”

“I only wanted to study it!”

“My most beloved sister, it’s Power. You don’t study Power. You wield it. I mean, it pays to study it first, but nobody ever stops there.”

“I would have,” said the woman resentfully. “You really don’t understand the virtue of objective research, do you? Even Mother isn’t objective.”

“Mother especially,” said Lord Ermenwyr. His voice drew close to Smith. There was a pause. “Poor old bastard, he’s in a bad way, isn’t he? I suppose you can’t use him if he’s unconscious, either? If all you need is his hand—”

Instinct took over again in Smith, and if it had been able to make his body obey, it would have propelled him out of the room with one tigerlike spring. Unfortunately, his legs were in no mood to take orders from anyone, and he merely launched himself off whatever he was lying on before dropping heavily on his face on the floor.

There was a stunned silence before Lord Ermenwyr asked, “What was that? Premature rigor mortis?”

Smith felt Willowspear beside him at once, turning him, lifting him back on the cot in a sitting position. They were inside a cavern whose walls were lined with racks of bound codices. There were hundreds of volumes. He saw the light of a fire, and Lord Ermenwyr and the stately lady standing before it, staring at him. There were robed Yendri in the near background, seated in attitudes of meditation, but even they had opened their eyes and were staring at him.

He glared back at them.

“You lied to me,” he told Lord Ermenwyr, in a voice thick with effort and rage.

The lordling looked uncomfortable, but he lit his smoking tube with a nonchalant fireball, and said, “No, I didn’t. I just wasn’t aware I was telling the truth. Here’s my sister, see? Svnae, meet Smith. Smith, you are privileged to behold the Ruby Incomparable, Lady Svnae. And she is in mortal danger. It was uncanny precognition, gentlemen.”

“You lied to us both,” said Willowspear quietly. “You brought Smith here for some purpose. My lord, I will not see him harmed.”

The lady looked chagrined. She came and knelt beside Smith, and he was acutely aware of her perfume, her purple-and-scarlet draperies, her bosom, which was on a scale with the rest of her and which could only be adequately described in words usually reserved for epic poetry…

“It’s all right,” she said kindly, as though she were speaking to an animal. “Nobody’s going to harm you, Child of the Sun. But I need you to perform a service for me.”

Smith labored for breath, fighting an urge to nod his acceptance. He believed her without question. For all that she was dressed like the sort of wicked queen who poisons the old king, turns her stepchildren into piglets, and exits with all the palace silver in her chariot drawn by flying dragons, there was something wholesome about Lady Svnae.

“Tell me—” Smith demanded. Lord Ermenwyr flipped up his coattails and squatted down beside his sister, looking like an evil gnome by comparison, perhaps one the wicked queen might keep on the dashboard of her chariot as a bad luck mascot.

“There’s something hidden in this rock, Smith—” he began.

“It’s the Key of Unmaking, isn’t it?” Willowspear stated.

“Yes, actually,” replied Lady Svnae. “Good guess! Or did Mother tell you about it?”

“Erm … I’ve been trying to explain this to them a bit at a time,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “Giving them hints. Well, Smith, what can I say? The damned thing’s worth a lot right now. I want it.”

“I want it,” said his sister firmly.

“But we can’t get it. It’s sealed in the rock, and only one of your people can reach in there and get it. That’s why you’re here, Smith.”

“You’re asking him to betray his people,” said Willowspear. “My mother’s people. My wife’s people.”

“Don’t be an idiot!” said Lord Ermenwyr sharply. “The thing’s not safe here any longer, don’t you understand? The Steadfast Orphans are waiting their chance out there and if they get their hands on it, they will use it, Smith.”

“All I want to do is learn how it works,” pleaded Svnae. “If I knew that, I might discover a way to disarm it.”

“Well, let’s not be too hasty about that—”

“It’s not real,” said Smith at last.

The lordling sat back on his heels. “You don’t think so? Come have a look, then.” He stood and made a brusque summoning gesture to the monks. “Bring him.”

Greenbriar came forward and, between them, he and Willowspear got Smith to his feet and supported him. They followed the lord and lady down a corridor cut in the rock, lit only by the firelight behind them and a faint flickering red light far ahead.

“You people didn’t make this place,” said Smith.

“We found it,” said Greenbriar wretchedly. “We came to here to make a garden. The earth was warm, there was plenty of water … but in the caves we found the piled bones of Children of the Sun. Terrible things happened here, long ago. And in the deepest place, we found the thing.

“We told Her about it. She gave us wise counsel. We buried the bones, we made this place beautiful to give their souls peace. We labored as She bid us do. And then, Her daughter came and asked to see the thing… and we thought no harm…”

“There wouldn’t have been any harm if the Steadfast Orphans hadn’t shown up,” said Lady Svnae, her voice echoing back to them.

“You really ought to do something about your household security,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “I’ll interrogate your servants, if you like.”

“As though I’d let you anywhere near my chambermaids!”

“Well, how do you think the Orphans knew where it was?”

“They probably sat down and read the Book of Fire, the same way I did. There are perfectly blatant clues in the text, especially if you happen to find one of the copies that was transcribed by Ironbrick of Karkateen. But there are only three copies known to exist…”

Smith tuned out their bickering and concentrated on making his legs work. Unbidden he heard a voice years dead: that of the old blind man who used to sit on the quay and recite Scripture, holding out his begging bowl, and Smith had been no more pious than any other child, but the sound of it never failed to make him shiver, all the same …the dead on the plain of Baltu were not mourned, a hundred thousand skulls turned their faces to Heaven, a hundred thousand crows flew away sated, in Kast the flies swarmed, and their children inherited flesh…

…on the Anvil of the World, Forged his fell Unmaking Key, Deep in the bones he hid it there, Till Doomsday should dredge it up. Frostfire guards what Witchlight hides…

“It isn’t real,” he muttered to himself.

“Here we are,” said Lady Svnae, as though they had come to a particularly interesting shop window.

Smith raised his head and flinched, averted his eyes. Frostfire. Witchlight. Doomsday…

All he had really glimpsed was an impression of a spinning circle, the same eerie color as the snow in his dream, and sparks flying within it as though they were being struck from iron. But the image wouldn’t fade behind his eyes. It grew more vivid, and to his horror he felt a solid form heavy against his palm, the weight of the iron staff.

He opened his eyes, stared. It wasn’t there, but he could still feel it.

“It’s only a little recess in the wall,” said Lady Svnae soothingly. “The lights and things are just illusions, you see? All you have to do is reach in your hand and take it.”

“He’s not an idiot,” said Willowspear.

“Uh-oh; temperature’s dropping in here,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “Come on, Smith.” He looked at Smith, followed Smith’s stare down his arm, saw the fingers clenched around a bar of air. “What is it?”

“I—my arm’s moving by itself,” said Smith.

“It is?” Lord Ermenwyr went pale. The arm and hand were turning, as though to direct the invisible bar like a weapon…

Lady Svnae reached into her bosom and pulled forth what looked like a monocle of purple glass. She peered through it at Smith for a moment.

“He’s got a Cintoresk’s Corona,” she announced in a calm voice, and lunged forward and caught Smith in her arms. The next thing he knew he was being dragged backward up the tunnel at high speed, gazing back at Lord Ermenwyr, who was running along behind, knees up and elbows pumping. It was suddenly much warmer.

They emerged into the firelit cavern again, and Willowspear and Greenbriar came panting after them. The other monks, who had now given up any attempt to meditate, watched them fearfully.

“What happened?” Willowspear asked.

“We all came very close to getting killed,” said Lord Ermenwyr, wheezing as he collapsed on the cot.

“Get off of there,” said Lady Svnae, shoving him as she set Smith down. She took out the monocle once more and examined him closely through it. “Tell me, Child of the Sun, are you experiencing any unusual symptoms not related to the poison? Perhaps voices in your head?”

“No,” said Smith dully. He watched as she raised his left arm cautiously, palpitated along it as far as the hand. “It felt as though I was holding something cold. An iron bar.”

“You think he was being possessed?” Lord Ermenwyr asked his sister, looking speculative. “Because of proximity to the Key?”

“I think I need to study the Book of Fire again,” said Lady Svnae. “I think I might have missed something crucial.”

“Well, this is a fine time to figure it out,” said Lord Ermenwyr pettishly, groping for his smoking tube.

“Better now than thirty seconds later, when we all might have been blasted with balefire,” she retorted. “Child of the Sun—”

“Smith,” he said.

“Interesting choice of an alias. Well, Smith, have you had any strange dreams recently? Any kind of psychic or spiritual conversation with your ancestors?”

Smith was unwilling to talk about his dream, but she looked earnestly into his eyes. Her own were wide, dark and lovely. Unwilling, he found himself saying: “I might have. But it didn’t make any sense.”

“No, I don’t suppose it would,” she said, and patted his cheek. “That’s all right. You just lie down here and rest, now, Smith. And if you feel the least bit odd, especially in that hand, please tell us. Will you do that, Smith dear?”

“All right,” he said, too dizzy to be annoyed by her tone of voice. He sank back on the cot and closed his eyes.

He heard the rustle of her gown as she went somewhere else, and the faint thump and crackle as someone added wood to the fire. He heard Lord Ermenwyr settle down, muttering to himself, and a noise suggestive of a boot flask being uncorked and drunk from…

Sound went away, and he was flying over a plain, and he knew so many terrible things.

There below him was the city of Troon. Burning in the air above it was the formula for its destruction: a certain smut introduced into the barley, four ounces of a certain poison poured into its central well, one letter containing a certain phrase sent anonymously to its duke, one brick pried loose from the foundation of a certain house. These things accomplished, Troon would fall. And then…

Here was Konen Feyy-in-the-Trees. One water conduit casually vandalized and one firebrand tossed into a certain tree, hung with moss, would begin the sequence of events that would kill the city. And its survivors might flee, but not to Troon, and then…

Here was Mount Flame City, seething, pulsing, so overripe with clan war that all it would take would be one precisely worded insult painted on a certain wall, and all four of its ruling houses would lie in ashes. And so would the great central marketplace of Mount Flame, and so would all the little houses who depended on it.

Here was Karkateen: a brick thrown through a window. A suggestion made to a shopkeeper. A rumor spread. A sewer grating removed. These things accomplished, in a certain order and at a certain moment, and Karkateen would be gone, and with it its great library, and with the library all the answers to certain desperate questions that would soon be asked in Troon, in Konen Feyy, in Mount Flame. Deliantiba and Blackrock were already in the throes; they’d need only the slightest push to complete their own work. And Salesh…

But wasn’t it grand, to have secret knowledge of such terrible things?

His arm hurt.

But wasn’t it a finer destiny than he had ever supposed he was intended for, high and lonely though it might be? Being the Chosen Instrument of the Gods? His arm hurt but he was flying high, beside a sharp version of himself that was cool and clever as he had always wanted to be, an elegant stranger made of diamond and chrome, the Killer, sneering down from a great distance at the insects crawling below. Stupid bastards. Wasteful. Quarrelsome. Banal. Ignorant and proud of it. And every year more screaming brats born to swell their numbers, and every year more urban blight on the land to house them all. Better if the whole shithouse went up in flames. Everyone said so. His arm hurt.

“Heavens, what’ve you done to your arm?” Mrs. Smith was peering at it.

“It really hurts,” he told her, obscurely proud. “It’s turned into blue steel. Isn’t it fine and lonely?”

“You ought to run that under the cold tap, dear,” she advised.

“No!” he said. “Because then it’d rust. It’s better to burn than to rust. Everybody says so.”

She just laughed sadly, shaking her head.



Smith sat up, gasping, drenched with cold sweat, and saw Lord Ermenwyr scrambling to his feet. The monks were hastening out of the chamber. Someone, somewhere, was shouting.

“What’s happening?” Smith asked.

“The Steadfast Orphans have called for a parley,” said Lord Ermenwyr.

“What are we going to do?”

“Nothing,” the lordling replied. “They don’t want to talk to us. I think we’d best eavesdrop, though, don’t you? Just in case the holy brothers allow themselves to be persuaded, and we have to make a hasty escape?”

“Can we do that?” Smith got to his feet and swayed. The room spun gently for a moment, and he found Willowspear beside him, keeping him upright.

“He should rest,” Willowspear told his lord, who shook his head grimly.

“Not alone. He needs someone to keep an eye on him, don’t you, Smith? We’re not going far. I found a nice little spy hole while you were asleep. This way, if you please.”

They set off down another of the winding corridors in the rock. Smith walked without much help, and was mildly surprised that his foot wasn’t giving him trouble. He had a feeling that if he took his boot off, he’d never get it back on; but who knew how much longer he’d live, anyway? His arm, however, was still throbbing.

They rounded a bend, and he was temporarily dazzled by what seemed a blaze of illumination at the end of the passage. As they approached, it resolved into wan afternoon light, coming through a barred and partially shuttered opening in the rock. Closer still and he saw that pigeons had nested in here for generations, and the last few feet of the passage were chalky with ancient guano, littered with feathers and bits of old nest.

“Phew.” Lord Ermenwyr drew out his smoking tube and lit it. “Nasty, eh?”

He stuck the tube between his teeth, clasped his hands together under his coattails, and stood scowling down through the bars. Smith and Willowspear edged closer, treading with care, and looked down too.

They saw the ranks of green tents, and the assembled Yendri standing in tight formation before them, tall unsmiling figures each in an identical baldric, each one bearing a simple cane tube. A shimmer in the air, a faint haze only, betrayed the presence of the Adamant Wall that kept them from coming closer; now and again a hapless bird or insect struck it, bouncing away stunned or dead. Close to the Wall stood the Yendri leader, cloaked in green sewn with white stars, and he was addressing someone unseen, speaking at great length.

“I can’t understand him,” said Smith.

“He’s speaking Old Yendri,” Lord Ermenwyr explained. “Nobody’s used it in years. It’s an affectation. They speak it to show how pure they are.”

“Pure!” Willowspear glared down at them. “After what they’ve done?”

“What’s he saying?” Smith asked.

“Oh, about what you’d expect,” Lord Ermenwyr replied, puffing smoke. “Hand over the abominations, that we may cleanse the world of them and so bring the Suffering-Deluded-Ensorcelled Daughter so much closer to sanity and blah blah blah. I think he’s just warming up to his main demand, though.”

Someone else was speaking now: Greenbriar, out of sight directly below them. He sounded angry, accusatory.

“Good for him,” Lord Ermenwyr remarked. “He’s telling them off properly. Asking the Grand Master how he dares to wear the Star-Cloak. And … now he’s just said he can’t drop the Adamant Wall. And … ha! He just said something that doesn’t really translate, but the closest equivalent would be, ‘Go home and simulate mating with a peach.’”

There was a crunch of twigs. Svnae came up behind them, bending low and holding the train of her gown up out of the debris. She had slung a bow and a quiver of arrows over one shoulder.

“I’d never have thought he’d use that kind of language,” she said in mild surprise, peering over Lord Ermenwyr’s shoulder at the scene below. “However would a monk learn about the Seventeenth Shameful Ecstasy of—” She noticed Smith and broke off, blushing.

The cloaked man spoke again, quietly, with implacable calm. Before he had finished, Greenbriar shouted at him in indignation. It was the closest Smith had ever heard to a Yendri being shrill.

“What’s going on now?” he asked.

Lord Ermenwyr snorted smoke. “He says it’s all our fault,” he replied. “That we made the destruction of the garden inevitable by taking refuge here. They are not responsible. And Greenbriar just called him—well, you’d have to be a Yendri to appreciate the full force of the obscenity, but he just called him a Warrior.”

“Well, isn’t he?” Smith inquired.

“Yes, but ordinarily they hire mercenaries from your people,” Lord Ermenwyr explained. “They don’t like getting their own hands dirty. This is some kind of elite force, I suppose.”

“You know what this reminds me of?” said Svnae in a faraway voice. “Watching the grown-ups through the stair railings when we were supposed to be in bed.”

“Staying awake to see whether Daddy’d drink enough to discover the eyeball I’d hidden in the bottom of the decanter,” Ermenwyr agreed fondly. Then his smile faded. The man in the cloak was speaking again. He spoke for a long while, and the lordling listened in silence. So did Willowspear and Svnae.

“What is it?” Smith asked at last.

“He’s calling on them to put aside their differences and rise against a common enemy,” Lord Ermenwyr replied at last, not looking at Smith. “He means your people, Smith. He’s talking about Hlinjerith of the Misty Branches now. He says it’ll be profaned if they don’t act. And he … I thought so. He knows the Key of Unmaking is here. He says he’ll spare them if they’ll deliver up the Key to him. Now we know why he didn’t bring mercenaries from your race, Smith.”

Greenbriar had been making some kind of reply.

“And he’s telling him no, of course,” Lord Ermenwyr went on. He fell silent as the voices went on down below. He turned to regard Smith with a cold thoughtful stare. Lady Svnae turned too, and though there was a certain pity in her gaze, it too was terribly thoughtful.

“What’re they saying now?” Smith stammered.

Willowspear cleared his throat. “Er … the Grand Master of the Orphans is saying that the brothers have been deceived. He just told them that all the high-yield cultivars and medicinal herbs they’ve been growing here have been intended to help the Children of the Sun, not the Yendri. He said Mother betrayed them.”

“Why would your mother want to help us?” asked Smith.

“She has her reasons,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “Now… he’s saying there have been signs and portents that the Star-Cloaked Man is returning to this world. He will be the … hm … the Balancer. He will bring harmony. They are confident he will come in wrath to take by her hair the disobedient—” He stopped, aghast.

“What?” Smith asked.

“Just something really nasty about Mother,” said Lord Ermenwyr briskly, though he had gone very pale. “And I’ll have to kill him. Perhaps not today, though. Sister mine, I have a getaway boat and six big bodyguards watching it for me. Are you positive there aren’t any other hidden back doors to this place?”

“We could make one,” Svnae replied.

“I’ve got a remarkable rock-melting spell.”

“An explosion might be quicker.”

“Just what I was about to say.”

“We can’t just leave!” said Willowspear. “What about the brothers? What about the Key of Unmaking?”

“The brothers will be fine as long as the Adamant Wall holds, and as for the Key—Smith, old man, I’m sorry, but your race will have to take their chances. I make it a point never to try to pinch anything that belongs to a god, especially when he’s paying attention.”

“If it’s too dangerous for us to take the Key out of there, it will be even more dangerous for the Orphans to try,” said Lady Svnae. “Cheer up! Perhaps nothing very bad will happen after all.”

“Other than a race war?” Smith demanded.

“Well, er—” Lady Svnae was searching very hard for a response both reassuring and noncommittal when there was a shout from beyond the window.

They all turned to look. The shout had been a summoning.

From the back ranks of the Yendri came a very young man, striding confidently to the front. He halted before the Grand Master and made deep obeisance. The man put his hands on the boy’s head in a gesture of blessing. Then he turned and addressed Greenbriar.

They listened at the window in silence. Suddenly, Lady Svnae put her hands to her face in horror. Lord Ermenwyr’s smoking tube fell out of his mouth.

“That tears it,” he said. “Willowspear, Smith, we’re going now. I hope the monks have the sense to run.”

“Why?” Smith peered out at the boy, who was standing proudly beside the man in the cloak.

“They’re going to take out the Adamant Wall,” Lord Ermenwyr replied over his shoulder, for he had already grabbed his sister by the arm and was pulling her down the passageway with him. “Come on!”

Willowspear seemed to have taken root where he stood, so Smith caught his arm and began to stagger after the lordling and his sister. “Let’s go, son.”

Willowspear turned his face away and ran. “Innocent blood,” he said. “Willingly offered. The boy will let them behead him, and his blood will break the Wall.”

Smith could think of nothing to say in reply. He concentrated on following Lady Svnae, just close enough to avoid stepping on the train of her gown. He congratulated himself on the fact that he was able to run so well, all things considered. Thinking about that, and watching where he put his feet, kept him from dwelling on the fact that his hand was cold as ice and turning blue.

Down and around they went, through long echoing darkness pierced now and again by the light of a distant barred window. The air was a roar of echoes. Something was echoing louder than their footsteps. Something was loud as surf on a lee shore—

The train of Lady Svnae’s gown stopped moving.

Smith cannoned into her. She felt like a warm and beautifully upholstered wall. He staggered backward and collided with Willowspear, who cried, “What is it?”

It was a moment before anyone answered him, but the silence was amply filled by the thunder of their beating hearts and the other sound, the louder sound. Smith, who had been a mercenary, knew what it was. He felt a sharper pain in his hand and, looking down, saw that he had pulled a stone from the wall. He hefted it, getting the balance, knowing exactly where it should be fractured to make an edged weapon.

“The battle cry sounds familiar,” said Lady Svnae.

“Nine Hells,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “It’s Daddy.”

Lady Svnae turned on her heel decisively. “This way,” she said, and they followed her up yet another tunnel, one with quite a lot of daylight at the end. It was bright because it opened out on a gallery of stone, lower in the face of the rock than their previous vantage point but still well above the floor of the valley. It had clearly been cut from the rock for persons wishing to enjoy a spectacular view. The view now was indeed spectacular, if not exactly enjoyable.

The Adamant Wall was still in place. The order of the previous vista had been destroyed, the neat green ranks broken up by a chaos of black and silver that was streaming over the hill to the south. An army, liveried and fearsome, had arrived.

It was like no battle Smith had ever seen. More horrible, if possible, because many of the Yendri stood straight and let themselves be cut down by the invading force, but it appeared that they did so to enable their comrades to advance on their targets without interference.

They made for three targets.

One ran with the demon-army in its black plate and silver mail, and he was a white stag of branching antlers, silver-collared. He bounded, feather-light, across the tips of their spears. He dropped like a bolt of lightning on the Yendri. Where he struck his hooves slashed, his antlers raked. Yet the Yendri fought one another to get at him, though they fell bleeding at his feet and were trampled. He dodged the green darts and danced on the bodies of the slain, belling his frenzy, exulting.

One had come alone over the hill to the north, a solitary figure. He wore no armor, he carried no blade. He had only a long staff, but in his long hand at the end of his long arm it cleared a wide space around him as he came, and where the steel-shod end of the staff connected, his opponents fell and did not rise again. Smith could hear the skulls cracking from where he stood; still the Yendri came scrambling over the dead to reach that lone fighter, ignored the armored host that hacked them to pieces as they advanced.

All these died willingly, that they might get close enough to strike a blow, even in vain; but more aimed themselves at the one who stood on the southern hill, overlooking the brief contest.

The man wore black. He watched impassively as the banner guard kept off his enemies. He bore two long blades in a double scabbard on his back, and not till the end, when the Grand Master himself fought close, did he draw steel over his shoulder.

He said one word, and his guards parted to let the man through. The Yendri vaulted forward, pipe to his lips, sending his poisoned dart flying. One blade cut the dart out of the air; its backstroke cut the pipe from his hands. Then he disappeared under a tackle pile of guards, as he screamed at the dark man.

And then it was over, and the field was silent.

Willowspear left the gallery. They heard him being quietly sick in the corridor.

Nobody said anything.

There came a wind off the field. It brought the groans of the wounded, though only the armored fighters; none of the Yendri were left alive to cry for help, save their leader. The survivors were stepping carefully across the devastation. Near the Adamant Wall lay the boy who would have been sacrificed. He had died fighting, his blood spilt to no purpose, his holy destiny unfulfilled. Was his death cleaner?

The man in black was giving orders, in a low voice, and stretchers were being made and his guard were moving out to collect the living. But they kept well away from the white stag, which was still bounding and trampling like a mad thing, tossing the dead on its antlers. It clattered all the way to the Adamant Wall, and collided with it; danced back, snorted its rage, and stamped.

The solitary figure with the staff had been making his way to the Wall also. He came to it and extended his hand cautiously, stopping just short of the surface. Ignoring the stag, he looked up at the gallery.

He had a long plain face, austere and dignified. He looked more like a high priest than a warrior, and his eyes were sad.

“Svnae,” he called.

The stag noticed him. It threw its head up in surprise, rearing on its hind legs. They lengthened, the antlers shrank and vanished, its whole body altered; and Lord Eyrdway strode along the perimeter of the Wall.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“Mother sent me,” said the other. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m being Daddy’s herald.”

“I didn’t hear you offering terms.” The other gestured at the mounded dead.

“I didn’t bother. But the fight’s over, so you can turn right around and go back home.”

“Are you at all concerned with how our sister fares?”

“You’ll observe that neither one of them has deigned to notice me,” Lord Ermenwyr remarked to Smith.

“She’s fine,” said Lord Eyrdway. He turned, waved at Svnae, turned back and went on, “I know what you’re really here for, you know. You won’t get it. Not if Daddy wants it.”

The plain man looked up at the gallery again. “Svnae, let me through. I must speak with you.”

“Who’s that?” Smith inquired.

“That’s our brother Demaledon. Demaledon is good and kind and wise and brave and clean and reverent,” muttered Lord Ermenwyr. “The only reason he isn’t a bloody monk is because he kills people once in a while. But only bad people, you may be sure.”

“You can damned well speak to me from out there!” Lady Svnae shouted, clenching her fists. “This is none of Mother’s business!”

“Yes, Svnae, it is,” said Lord Demaledon. “Mother knows why you’re here. You should have come to her for counsel first.”

“My entire life has been one long session of Mother giving me counsel,” Lady Svnae replied sullenly, “and Mother knowing exactly what I’m doing and why, and Mother always being right, and Svnae being wrong.”

“Hey, look, isn’t that, what’s his name, Smith?” said Lord Eyrdway. “The Child of the Sun? Hello, Smith!”

Lord Demaledon looked up and spotted Smith. He murmured something in a horrified tone of voice.

“Thank you for asking, I’m miraculously unharmed!” Lord Ermenwyr screamed.

Lord Eyrdway grinned at him and pulled out the corners of his mouth with two fingers, stretching his grimace a good yard wide before letting it snap back.

“Did you hear a fly buzzing, Demmy? I didn’t. But you may as well collect Svnae and her baggage and escort her home, because Daddy is taking over here. He wants the Key of Unmaking.”

“Well, he can’t have it,” Lady Svnae said, looking arch. “Not even Daddy knows everything.”

“Stop it, both of you! Svnae, why is the Child of the Sun here?” Lord Demaledon asked.

Lady Svnae flushed deeply and dropped her gaze.

“I had him brought,” she admitted. “I, er, didn’t have quite all my facts straight at the time, and I didn’t realize how dangerous it was. But we stopped—”

“Oh, who cares? Look, Smith, I’m sorry about this, but you have to admit your people have needed thinning out lately,” said Lord Eyrdway. “And Daddy has nothing against Children of the Sun personally. But if anyone’s going to own an ancient weapon of fabulous destructive power, it ought to be Daddy. So drop the damned Wall!”

“Shut up, you idiot! You don’t understand!” cried Lord Demaledon. “Svnae, when did you stop?”

“Well—” Lady Svnae bit her lower lip.

“You know, Smith, I think it’s time we got the hell out of here,” said Lord Ermenwyr sotto voce. He glanced over his shoulder at the battlefield, then did a double take. “Uh-oh. Too late.”

The man in black was walking to the Adamant Wall, unhurried. He looked up at the gallery. His gaze was blank and mild as a sleepy tiger’s. When he spoke, his voice was very deep.

“Daughter, come down,” said the Master of the Mountain.

He towered over his sons. Given all that Smith had heard of him over the years, he had expected someone about whom dark rainbows of energy crackled, a walking shadow of dread, faceless. All Smith saw, however, was a very large man with a black beard, who folded his arms as he waited for Lady Svnae’s reply.

“Daddy, I really can’t let you in here,” said Lady Svnae.

He extended one gauntleted hand in a negligent gesture, and the Adamant Wall melted into a curtain of steam that blew away.

“Then you come down to me,” he said. “And bring the man Smith.”

Moving deliberately, Svnae took her bow and nocked an arrow. Smith gaped at it, for it was not the kind of sporting gear one would expect a lady to use. The arrow was tipped for armor-piercing.

“Daddy, go away,” she said, and in an undertone added, “Ermenwyr, get out. Take Smith and get away down the river as fast as you can.”

“I can’t blow the hole in the damned wall by myself!” hissed her brother.

The Master of the Mountain did not smile, but something glinted in his black eyes.

“Child, you are your mother’s daughter,” he said.

Svnae gritted her teeth. “That was just exactly the wrong thing to say.”

She fired. Lord Ermenwyr shouted and grabbed her arm belatedly, but the Master of the Mountain smiled. He put up his hand and caught the arrow an inch from his throat. In his hand it became a black-red rose.

“And you are also my daughter,” he said, sounding pleased. Svnae reached for another arrow, but found her quiver full of roses. Glaring, she took the bow and hurled it at him as hard as she could.

“Damn you!”

“Stop this nonsense and come down,” said the Master of the Mountain. “Your mother is going to have a great deal to say to you about this.”

Lord Ermenwyr groaned, and Lady Svnae went pale.

“We’d better do as he says now,” she said.