They reached the west coast. Flach held the token Bane had brought them, and Neysa strode into the sea. She had never been here before, and would not be very much disappointed if the charm did not work, so that they could not proceed farther. After all, this was not the neutral territory of the Red Demesnes; this was the enemy Translucent Demesnes. Also, this was where Fleta was, and Neysa wasn’t speaking to her filly. The encounter was bound to be awkward.
But the charm worked perfectly. The water closed over their heads, and seemed almost like air; they could breathe nor mally. Neysa picked her way through the seaweed and shells, and found a path. She followed this on down, and it broad ened, becoming a satisfactory trail from which obstacles had been cleared. This gave her the chance to look around as she progressed.
It was impressive. Fish swam nearby, seeming from this vantage to be flying without wings. Seaweed sprouted pro fusely, reaching for the surface, forming brushlike patches. They passed a coral reef, where the growths were intricate and flowerlike, the blooms opening and closing in the slight current.
A big fish approached, swimming with beautiful ease.
Neysa recognized its type by the fin on the back: a shark! She honked warning and readied her horn, uncertain how well she could do in this strange environment. But the fish shied away from the path; evidently it was not allowed to molest legitimate travelers.
The terrain changed, becoming somehow archaic. The veg etation and swimming forms in this region were strange. Neysa made a mild honk of surprise.
“Oh, sure,” Flach said nonchalantly. “It’s the Ordovician period, three or four hundred million years ago, I forget which, with some neat creatures. See, there be a trilobite—and there be a giant nautiloid! The one with the shell like a ‘corn’s horn!”
Neysa saw the trilobite. Its shell was indeed like a unicorn’s horn, and she liked it better for that. The shell made its tentacled forepart seem less alien.
They came to a rise in the strange realm. “This be the isle!” Flach exclaimed joyfully. He slid off her back and charged ahead, plunging through a kind of curtain in the wa-ter. Neysa followed, and found herself indeed on an isle—a dry region within a giant bubble under the sea. Flach flung herself into the arms of a young woman. That would be Fleta, his dam, Neysa’s filly; Neysa had not seen her in eight years, and really did not care to look now. Instead she gazed around the rest of the isle.
Another young woman stood there. She was in a tan cloak, and her hair and eyes were tan. Tania, sister of the new Tan Adept. What was she doing here?
Tania did not wait to be introduced. “I like thee no better than thou likest me, old mare,” she snapped. “Look not down thy nose at me, lest thou see what pleases thee not.” Neysa felt the old heat rising. She was not about to take any sneer from this arrogant woman! She brought down her horn.
“Nay, Granddam!” Flach called, spotting this developing quarrel. “Condemn her not; she let me escape!”
What? Neysa assumed woman form. “She tried to capture thee!” she said.
“But they think I tried not hard enough,” Tania said. “So I be on duty here, to see that Fleta escapes not.”
“But I be not prisoner!” Fleta protested. “And Neysa, my dam—hast come at last to make amend?”
Neysa turned away from her.
“Thou hypocrite!” Tania screamed at her, her sinister eyes seeming to glow. “Comest all the way here to slight thy foal again?”
That did it. Neysa turned slowly to face Tania.
“Nay!” Flach cried. “This be an isle o’ peace! No fighting!”
“It be beyond such caution,” Neysa said grimly.
“Then make it words only!” he said. “No Eye, no horn!” Neysa was not pleased with this notion, and Tania seemed better satisfied. But the child was insistent. “An there be bloodshed here. Translucent will come, and we know not what will happen then! Let me make a spell o’ containment, that thy words spread not beyond thyselves, and ye two settle thus.”
There was something about his urgency, which bordered on desperation, that made Neysa pause. The boy was bright, and talented, and had some secret she had to fathorn. That caused her to go along with his foolish wish. “No horn,” she agreed.
“No Eye,” Tania agreed, as grudgingly.
Flach singsonged something. Another cloud formed, but this one had no face. It expanded to take in Tania and herself, a bubble within the larger bubble of the isle. Neysa wasted no time in pressing the attack. Words were not her preferred medium, but she could use them when she had to. “Thou, who didst think to capture Flach, and now be here to keep his dam here, dost accuse me o’ hypocrisy? Thou, who didst spend four years pursuing him—and Bane?”
Tania gestured wildly, as if reacting in fury. But her words were oddly quiet. “Aye, mare. Listen to me now, for we have but little time, and there be danger. I sought the child that my side might gain the balance o’ power. I sought Bane that I might bind him more firmly to our side, an he think to drift. But I lost the ploy; he loves me not, yet I love him.”
“Thou—?” Neysa began, amazed.
“When I knew we had cornered the lad at last, and it came upon me to intercept him, I tried to let him go. I looked him in the eye, and knew him though he was cleverly masked as female. I stunned the figure made up to be male, thinking it were reasonable to fall for this ruse, that none could blame me. I let Flach go. But the Adepts saw through the ruse, both his and mine, and now I be confined here, nominally a guard. Canst believe that, mare?”
This was so completely different from her expectation that Neysa could hardly speak. “Why shouldst thou—?”
“Let him go?” Tania smiled ruefully. “Because it were the only way I could continue to be with Bane, an the search went on. I am descended to that level, I would be with him on any pretext, though I know he will ne’er love me.”
Neysa gazed at her unbelievingly. Why should this woman make such a demeaning confession?
Tania held out her hand. “Touch me with thy horn, and verify.”
Neysa bowed her forehead, touching the horn-button to the hand. The touch was true; the woman was speaking truth. “Now believe this too,” Tania continued, drawing back and waggling her finger as if making a savage point. “There be a geis o’ silence on Flach, imposed by Purple. Translucent liked it not, but came so close to losing the lad that Purple gained leverage and imposed this. Flach dare not commune with Nepe in the other frame, lest his dam and her alien mother be killed. In this way our side gains power and thy side does not.”
“The geis!” Neysa exclaimed.
“Now have I told thee. Now have I truly betrayed my side. An thou wishest to see me die, thou has but to tell o’ this, mare.”
“But why? Why dost thou do this thing?”
“When I came to love Bane, I came also to assume some o’ his values, strange though they be. Now I be friend to Fleta. I would not see her die, or Agape in Proton. Or kept prisoner till my side wins, and then needed not more, and die anyway.”
“But an that happened, thou wouldst have clear access to Bane!”
“Aye. But now I would take him not that way. This be the measure o’ my fall.”
“But—“
“Enough, mare; the spell dissipates. Now it be in thy hands. Fleta knows not.”
Indeed, the little bubble was fading out; their privacy of vituperation was gone. Tania turned away as if smoldering;