blazed hotter and hotter,the cold in the room was finally dispelled. Amazingly, the little hut was free of draughts and kept the heat in quite efficiently, so they were soon peeling off layer after layer of clothing until they were all in their thinnest shirts. The Koian woman took some coaxing from Ambassador Canyon and Horse before she would remove even a scarf in front of them, and she looked terrified at one point, but finally she agreed and took off the thickest leathers and coat.
‘Tomorrow we will reach an impassable tract,’ Daneel told them. ‘The magicians will need to cater for us there.’
‘How will we do that?’ Master Celios asked.
‘By getting us across,’ Daneel said, affronted at the question.
‘It will not be a problem,’ Balten stated confidently. ‘Whatever the obstacle we meet, we will overcome it.’
‘I like your enthusiasm,’ Daneel said. ‘I like your tobacco better, but your enthusiasm is not so bad, either. Speaking of tobacco?’ and he looked at Balten eagerly,promptingthe Circle magiciantopull the last scraps of his Fiskian best from his pocket. The men were all soon smoking from his shared pipe, filling the hut with their pungent smoke.
‘Master Celios,’ Samuel said a little later, slipping in beside the oldSeer. The others wereoccupied withthe cooking and the smells of their dinner were finally starting to overcome the dreadful Fiskian odour that had saturated the air. ‘I want to ask you about our friend, Sir Ferse.’
‘Ah, so you know our little secret then, do you?’ the man said, looking somewhat calmer than usual.
‘I do. He is the Emperor of Turia, somehow reborn into the body of another.’
‘No one knows but you and me. He made me swear never to reveal the truth and I will not…and neither should you.’ And he tapped Samuel roughlyon the chest with the tip of his bony finger.
‘Of course, but I need to know…
The old Master nodded smugly, looking very pleased with himself. ‘I cannot rightly say. My visions were strong and insistent at that time. I followed them, almost bereft of my senses, gathering ointments and spells and lotions.’
‘Black magic?’ Samuel asked hesitantly.
‘Hells bells, no!’ Celios declared with disgust at the mention. ‘The ointments were to prepare and preserve the new body. I had to keep the host alive but immobile while I readied everything. Poor Sir Ferse. He didn’t suffer, but I don’t think he would have found the experience comfortable at all. The spells I used were nothing special, just some simple magics to calm his mind and keep him comfortable. I can’t say I did anything particularly special. I think it was all the little things together that lured the Emperor’s spirit at just the right time. Oh, and I had to surround the host with personal effects and clippings from the Emperor-his hair, some nail clippings, flecks of skin. I had no idea if it would work, or even if it did work-for when the spells had endedandI finally unbound Sir Ferse,he awoke ranting and furious. He ran off to call the guards and I cowered in my room-but he didn’t return for several days. He seemed confused and irrational at that point, and so I explained to him what had happened. As the weeks passed, more and more of the Emperor’s characteristics became apparent andthose ofSir Ferse receded.’
‘But can you do it again? Can anyone be reborn like that?’
‘Oh, no! I sincerely doubt it. I feel something very special about the Emperor, something unusual in his spirit. I have never felt it in anyone else. You are special, too, Samuel, or should I say
‘You have had a vision?’
‘Not about this, no, but I don’t need visions to dictate my feelings.’
‘Do you believe that the Koian woman was also reborn?’
‘She is an enigma, like you, Samuel. But I doubt it. I think rather the Koians are a primitive people, steeped in superstitions. Sensing she was different from the common folk, they picked her out from the crowds, but she is merely a girl, made savage by a life of absurd practices and isolation.’
‘Yes. She is strange, stubborn and bad-tempered. I don’t know how they put up with her.’
‘Good. Good,’ he said, musing. ‘I would like you to find out even more about her.’
‘Do you think there may be something she is hiding?’
‘I doubt she knows anything useful at all, the poor dumb creature.’
‘She said she could hear the voices of her people.’
‘More likely she has been driven to paranoia. Still, I would like you to learn what you can. Speak to her more. Try to break through to her.’
‘Very well,’ Samuel said, and he crept off to lie by the wall, hoping to sleep as deeply as he could before the next gruelling day.
The precipice was a long,jagged scar in the snow that dropped down into the rocky depths, where a tempestuous river frothed and surged, full of ice. It was thirty paces wide at least andspannedthe narrow valley entirely, leaving no alternative than to cross it or begin climbing the sheer,black stone faces on either side.
‘How do you usually cross this way?’ Ambassador Canyon asked.
‘No one crosses in this season and no one has had any reason to for many years-not since the pass at Ghant was opened up,’ Daneel replied. ‘There was once a narrow bridge, but it had already fallen into disrepair before I was born. I am guessing it now lies down there.’ And he pointed down the treacherous gap.
‘If you haven’t ever been this way, how do you know where we are going?’ Sir Ferse asked.
‘The old folk described the way to me. We have good memories for such things.’
‘So how will we pass?’ Eric asked.
‘I will leave that up to you. Whatever you decide, you must be quick,’ Daneel told them. ‘We cannot stand idle in this weather and we have far to go before nightfall. If we are caught out in a storm, it may be our last mistake.’ He had lost all his merriment and seemed to be eyeing the blustering winds with concern.
Samuel looked at Eric expectantly.
‘Why look at me?’ Eric asked indignantly.
‘My power is difficult to control. I can’t do anything.’
‘What good is a magic that you can’t control?’
‘Hush!’ Samuel declared, for the last thing he wanted was for everyone to know his weakness, but Eric scowled back at him darkly.
The group was quiet, sensing thefrictionbetween the two of them.
A burst of magic then caused Samuel to turn about, just as a thunderous crack sounded from the mountain walls above, and the rest of the group in turn looked around. Balten had cast a spell up against the cliff face and it was clawing into the rock with ferocious vigour. The stone cracked and boomed as his spell laboured, echoing all through the valley.
‘Is that safe?’ Sir Ferse asked, as pebbles and fragments came bouncing down not far from their feet, but everyone was too fixated on the heights to answer.
Balten kept one hand held up, fine-tuning his spell with delicate gestures of his fingers, locked in fine concentration as he read and adjusted his magic. With one last sudden bang, a slab of black rock peeled itself from the cliff face. Several of the onlookers gasped.It looked for a moment like the great mass of stone was falling, but Balten was in control all the while. Only a few pebbles and slivers of stone came bouncing down the rock face, while the slab hovered in the air, carried by magic. He lowered the stone, which was as thick as he was tall, and slowly laid it gently across the precipice. When he was done, the solid length of rock spanned the gap comfortably, with sufficient length to spare at each end. The whole party could have walked across abreast, but the stone did look smooth and slippery, so Samuel thought just sneaking across the middle one at a time would be a much more sensible alternative.
Balten skipped up onto the makeshift bridge and walked across quite leisurely. He hopped off at the other side and waited with his arms folded as well as he could in his bulky leather coat.
The others look to each other for assurance and it was Eric who crossed next. One by one, they went over.
