Taller than any of them, covered all in armour and helm of black and gold, the mysterious Warrior raised an arm and pointed a metal-clad finger at Tozer. "Hand him that ring."
"The ring is of glass, nothing more. It is of no value…"
D'Averc said. "He mentioned rings. Is the ring, then, what actually transported him here?"
Tozer still hesitated, his face stupid with drink and with anxiety. "I said that it was glass, of no value…"
"By the Runestaff, I command thee!" rumbled the Warrior in a terrible voice.
With a little nervous movement, Elvereza Tozer drew off the ring and flung it onto the flagstones.
D'Averc stooped and caught it up, inspecting it. "It's a crystal," he said, "not glass. A familiar kind of crystal, too…"
"It is of the same substance from which the device that brought you here was carved," the Warrior in Jet and Gold told him. He displayed his own gauntleted hand and there, on the middle finger, reposed an identical ring. "And it possesses the same properties-can transport a man through the dimensions."
"As I thought," Hawkmoon said. "It was no mental discipline that enabled you to come here, but a piece of crystal. Now I'll hang you assuredly! Where did you •get the ring?"
"From the man-from Mygan of Llandar. I swear that is the truth. He has others-can make more!"
Tozer cried. "Do not hang me, I pray you. I will tell you exactly where to find the old man."
"That we shall have to know," Bowgentle said thoughtfully, "for we shall have to get to him before the Dark Empire Lords do. We must have him and his secrets-for our security."
"What? Must we journey to Granbretan?" D'Averc said in some astonishment.
"It would seem necessary," Hawkmoon told him.
Chapter Four
FLANA MIKOSEVAAR
AT THE CONCERT, Flana Mikosevaar, Countess of Kanbery, adjusted her mask of spun gold and glanced absently about her, seeing the rest of the audience only as a mass of gorgeous colours. The orchestra in the center of the ballroom played a wild and complex melody, one of the later works of Granbretan's last great musician, Londen Johne, who had died two centuries earlier.
The Countess's mask was that of an ornate heron, its eyes facetted with a thousand fragments of rare jewels. Her heavy gown was of luminous brocade that changed its many colours as the light varied. She was Asrovak Mikosevaar's widow, he who had died under Dorian Hawkmoon's blade at the first Battle of the Kamarg. The Muskovian renegade, who had formed the Vulture Legion to fight on the European mainland and whose slogan had been Death to Life, was not mourned by Flana of Kanbery and she bore no grudge against his killer. He had been her twelfth husband, after all, and the fierce insanity of the bloodlover had served her pleasure long enough before he had set off to make war on the Kamarg. Since then she had had several lovers and her memory of Asrovak Mikosevaar was as cloudy as all her other memories of men, for Flana was an inturned creature who barely distinguished between one person and another.
It was her habit, on the whole, to have husbands and lovers destroyed when they became inconvenient to her. An instinct, rather than any intellectual consideration, stopped her from murdering the more powerful ones. This was not to say that she was incapable of love, for she could love passionately, doting entirely on the object of her love, but she could not sustain the emotion for long. Hatred was unknown to her, as was loyalty. She was for the most part a neutral animal, reminding some of a cat and others of a spider-though in her grace and beauty she was more reminiscent of the former. And there were many who bore her hatred, who planned vengeance against her for a husband stolen or a brother poisoned, who would have taken that vengeance had she not been the Countess of Kanbery and cousin to the King-Emperor Huon, that immortal monarch who dwelt eternally in his womblike Throne Globe in the huge throne room of his palace.
She was the center of other attentions, also, since she was the only surviving kin of the monarch, and certain elements at court considered that with Huon destroyed she could be made Queen-Empress and serve their interests.
Unaware of any plots concerning her, Flana of Kanbery would have been unperturbed had she been told of them, for she had not the faintest curiosity about the affairs of any one of her species, sought only to satisfy her own obscure desires, to ease the strange, melancholy longing in her soul which she could not define.
Many had wondered about her, sought her favors with the sole object of unmasking her to see what they could learn in her face, but her face, fair-skinned, beautiful, the cheeks slightly flushed always, the eyes large and golden, held a look remote and mysterious, hiding far more than could any golden mask.
The music ceased, the audience moved, and the colours became alive as the fabrics swirled and masks turned, nodded, gestured. The delicate masks of the ladies could be seen gathering around the warlike helms of those recently returned captains of Granbretan's great armies. The Countess rose but did not move towards them. Vaguely she recognised some of the helms -particularly that of Meliadus of the Wolf Order, who had been her husband five years earlier and who had divorced her (an action she had hardly noticed).
There, too, was Shenegar Trott, lounging on heaped cushions, served by naked mainland slavegirls, his silver mask a parody of a human face. And she saw the mask of the Duke of Lakasdeh, Pra Flenn, barely eighteen and with ten great cities fallen to him, his helm a grinning dragon head. The others she thought she knew, and she understood that they were all the mightiest warlords, back to celebrate their victories, to divide up the conquered territories between them, to receive the congratulations of their Emperor. They laughed considerably, stood proudly as the ladies flattered them, all but her ex-husband Meliadus, who appeared to avoid them and conferred instead with his brother-inlaw Taragorm, Master of the Palace of Time, and the serpent-masked Baron Kalan of Vitall, Grand Constable of the Order of the Snake and chief scientist to the King-Emperor. Behind her mask, Flana frowned, remembering distantly that Meliadus normally avoided Taragorm…
Chapter Five
TARAGORM
"AND HOW HAVE you fared, Brother Taragorm?" asked Meliadus with forced cordiality.
The man who had married his sister replied shortly:
"Well." He wondered why Meliadus should approach him thus when it was common knowledge that Meliadus was profoundly jealous of Taragorm's having won his sister's affections. The huge mask lifted a little superciliously. It was constructed of a monstrous clock of gilded and enameled brass, with numerals of inlaid mother-of-pearl and hands of filigree'd silver, the box in which hung its pendulum extending to the upper part of Taragorm's broad chest. The box was of some transparent material, like glass of a bluish tint, and through it could be seen the golden pendulum swinging back and forth. The whole clock was balanced by means of a complex mechanism so as to adjust to Taragorm's every movement. It struck the hour, half-hour and quarter-hour and at midday and midnight chimed the first eight bars of Sheneven's Temporal Antipathies,
"And how," continued Meliadus in this same unusually ingratiating manner, "do the clocks of your palace fare? All the ticks ticking and the tocks tocking, mmm?"
It took Taragorm a moment to understand that his brother-in-law was, in fact, attempting to joke. He made no reply.
Meliadus cleared bis throat.
Kalan of the serpent mask said: "I hear you are experimenting with some machine capable of travelling through time, Lord Taragorm. As it happens, I, too, have been experimenting-with an engine…"
"I wished to ask you, brother, about your experiments," Meliadus said to Taragorm. "How far advanced are they?"