"Truth includes the fact that you turned tail quickly enough when the Raiders charged. I thought you had spells of illusion, spells of fear."
"Spells of illusion and fear only guarantee a battle if the enemy isn't ready for them, Lord. The Raiders have followed us since we came onto the ice..."
Longer than that, old man.
"And they quite clearly have a shaman of their own." He fussed at the gold-mesh straps that held the crystalline Device to his hand, and the Icefalcon, close to him for the first time, saw that the edges of the thing had worn the flesh into oozing blisters on wrist and fingers and also, he now saw, beneath the jewelled collar that was evidently part of the ensemble.
He must be sleeping in it.
Yet there was no sign of padding, no sign that he had put a bandage or wrap of any sort between his skin and the enchanted metal and stone.
"Without the power of civilized magic, you understand, they were no match for me..."
"But they were strong enough to frighten you?"
"There was no point in continuing."
"Hear me, Bektis, Servant of Illusion." Vair raised his head from his counting, and his voice was level, chill as iron left outside to freeze.
"And hear me well. I saved you from the wrath of the Bishop Govannin for one purpose and one purpose only, that you assist me in retaking my rights to the lands of the South. You proved useless against that bitch Yori-Ezrikos in open battle, even with that precious bauble of yours."
Bektis clutched his jeweled hand to his breast, irrational fury blanching his face. "I would scarcely say that saving you, and twelve hundred of your men, from being slain by your wife was 'useless,' my Lord. Nor the knowledge I've given you about the weapons and Devices that may still exist, hidden in Dare's Keep.
And this bauble, as you call it, is the Hand of Harilomne, greatest of the..."
"I don't care if it's the second-best festival hat of God's Mother. Your Harilomne, for all his talk of studying the Devices of the Times Before, may have been as great a faker as yourself. I'm a patient man, Bektis. You will help me in this matter now, or you will find that my forbearance runs thin. Do you understand?"
"You do not understand..." Bektis was still clutching at the Hand of Harilonme, trembling with rage. Then he seemed to recollect himself and lowered his eyes. "I understand, my Lord."
"Good." Vair returned to sorting the needles, white-gloved fingers arranging them by crystal, iron, gold.
"Now you inform me a new band of Raiders is moving up from the south. So we have little time. As soon as it grows light you will cast your illusions, make the Raiders outside the tunnel believe there is something-a stray mammoth, perhaps, or something else edible-that they must seek a good distance away. Near a crevasse, if possible, where we can gather up their bodies from the bottom. I need men, Bektis."
He pushed the last of the needles in its place, with obsessive neatness, and raised his eyes again. "Four more of the Hastroaals have died and two of the Ugals gone mad."
"My Lord, I warned you about mixing the flesh of the source with other things."
"And despite your warnings I have eighty men where I would only have had a score. To accomplish the taking of Dare's Keep I will need as many again, and again. Have the Raiders gathered up the bodies of the slain?"
Bektis inclined his head. "They lie in a crevasse in the ice, not far from the tunnel mouth. Not deep." He still toyed with the Hand, stroking the smooth facets of the jewels, as if for reassurance.
"Good. And they'll certainly be fresh. You're to go with Prinyippos and his party when they fetch them and retrieve any fragments of the karnach that you can find."
"My Lord..."
"At dawn, Bektis." Vair started for the door. "That's what? Two chimes of the clock from now?"
Bektis inclined his head again, not looking happy. "Two chimes it is, my Lord. But..."
Vair turned like a panther, a sudden swirling movement that startled even the Icefalcon, his left hand jerking free the curved sword at his waist. His draw was slow, the Icefalcon noted-it was hard to bring the hooks to bear to steady the scabbard-but there was trained and deadly speed as he dropped to fighting stance, "What was that?"
Bektis had fluttered back, startled, out of the way, and only shook his head. "What was what, Lord?" His voice squeaked with panic.
Slowly Vair straightened and walked back to the table where he had been arranging the needles.
In their midst lay a woman's comb, black horn set with three garnets. There was nothing in the least odd about it-Vair sheathed his sword awkwardly to pick it up-except that it had not been there before.
Demons fed on the magic buried deep in the walls of the Keep. Knockings and murmurings filled the darkness. Climbing the stairs that Tir had climbed in his dreams, traversing passageways knee-deep in dead black brittle vines that made not a sound under his shadowy feet, the Icefalcon heard them.
Lights flickered among the choking plugs of lichen and fungus, glistened on the beards of icicles that depended from cracked ceilings and broken fountains. In the Aisle, or in those chambers where the clones stacked weapons and food, small objects would sometimes rise up and fling themselves against the walls.
One man ran shrieking into the corridor, striking at something no one else could see as the marks of teeth appeared in his cheeks and hands.
The Icefalcon moved on. The chambers that had been clear in Tir's dream, behind the triple archway and the rose windows on the Aisle's northeastern wall, were an impassable bolus of mutant groundnut and squashes through which he slipped like water.
Vair will make me lead him there, Tir had said. But why?
The hall of the crystal pillars was dead to magic and clear of the encroachment of vegetation. So was the round vestibule with its tiny doors-from whom did they expect an attack this deep in the center of the Keep?
The Dark Ones could change size at will. Another chamber close by, spherical and small, a round lens of heavy crystal in one wall that showed the hall of the pillars-the Icefalcon looked but could see no Rune of Silence worked into its doors or walls.
Something that by its leaves had once been a bean plant had filled most of one wall with clinging runners and the floor with a mulch of stinking decay.
A guardroom?
The clock chimed dimly in the distance. Warily, the Icefalcon passed through the vestibule's door, and despite the pain that grew steadily in him, the ache and coldness that more and more threatened to swamp his concentration, he felt also the tenseness of danger, the sense of something waiting for him in the dark.
Waiting, he thought, for a long time.
But even the eyes of shadow that could see demons saw nothing amiss. Bare black walls, bare black floor. From the door he had a clear view through all the archways to the end of the succession of ever shrinking rooms, and all were bare to the walls. To the best of his recollection it had been so in Tir's dream.
Or had he, the Icefalcon, shadow-walker and interloper, seen only part of the child's dreaming memory?
Had there been something in that final chamber, hidden behind the two men whose shadows lurched across the walls?
Or did he dream, too, now?
He walked the length of the great chamber, passed between the crystal pilasters, crossed the smaller room behind. A sound made him turn, but there was nothing. Only the blank ebon walls.
More slowly he walked on, and from somewhere he heard the thread of someone whistling-a phrase of music, then silence.
A smaller room, crystal pillars, a chamber smaller yet. Beyond another arch another chamber, dark and tiny and anonymous; another arch. The cold in the core of his mind was almost overwhelming, icy panic and growing darkness, and a sense that he trod where he should not tread.
Go back.
Go back or die.
Was it his ancestors who spoke to him? Black Hummingbird, who had first slept on the slopes of Haunted Mountain, to hold the shell and the iron flower that let him hear the voices of the Stars?