'Never,' said Hercуl. 'Remember that he was once mine as well. But I have outgrown him, Niriviel. Oh, not in skill at arms-that I hope will never be tested. My heart has outgrown him, outgrown the cage in which Ott prefers all hearts to dwell. The cage he cannot live without: I mean love of Arqual.'
'That is no cage!' shrieked the bird suddenly, flapping his wings. 'Arqual is the hope of all people! It brings safety, riches, order, peace! It is our mother and father! Arqual is the glory of this world!'
'But Arqual is not the world,' said Ramachni. 'Alifros is vast, and many of her people love their homelands as deeply as you do yours.'
'One day they will all be Arqualis,' said the falcon. 'And you traitors. You shall go to Licherog and break stones.'
'When I watched you from the gardens of the Lorg,' said Thasha, approaching, 'I used to think you were the freest soul in Alifros. But I was wrong. I don't think you know what freedom is.'
'Remove this strap from my leg and I will show you what freedom is.'
'That is what I hope for,' said Ramachni.
He put his teeth to the leather strap, and in four bites chewed it through. Hercуl, meanwhile, raised a window. Instantly the bird leaped to the windowsill. He leaned forward, wings lifting-
— and drew back. His sharp eyes darted here and there in amazement.
'You release me! Why?'
'Because we do not enslave,' said Ramachni. 'And you should ponder the form of slavery to which you are accustomed. Those bonds only you can break.'
The bird fidgeted on the sill, one eye trained on Ramachni. 'You're a mage,' he said at last, 'but not so very wise.'
Thus speaking he dropped from the window, shrieked once and was gone.
'A child,' said Ramachni, his voice heavy with sorrow. 'I would hazard that he was Ott's creature long before his waking, and took the spymaster's faith and cause as his own from the first hour. A terrifying process, waking: some do not survive it with their minds intact. Others need a God or cause or enemy to anchor them, for above all they fear choice, that great abyss.'
'Ramachni,' said Hercуl. 'There is an abyss before you as well.'
'I haven't forgotten that,' laughed the mage. 'Trust me, I feel it in every hair.'
'Feel what?' asked Thasha.
'The need for a healing-sleep of my own,' said Ramachni. 'My fight with Arunis occurred in more realms than those visible to the eye. The match was close, and it has cost me. My time here is almost spent.'
'Spent?' cried Neeps. 'What are you talking about? You can't go anywhere! We need you here!'
'If I do not go while I have the strength to walk away, Mr. Undrabust, I shall still depart-by burning out like a candle.'
'But this is a disaster!' said Neeps. 'Arunis isn't defeated yet, and Ott's still out there somewhere, and Thasha's getting married tomorrow! And what about Pazel? If he says the wrong word at the wrong time, maybe he'll blow Simja to the moon!'
'When will you come back, Ramachni?' asked Pazel.
'Not for a long time.'
The news hung like a raincloud over the room. At last Neeps broke the silence.
'We're sunk.'
'Undrabust!' said Eberzam Isiq. 'In the navy you'd be flogged for throwing that word around! Here, what's that on your wrist?'
Neeps looked startled. Then he held out his arm. On his wrist was a small red scar. 'Look close, it's the strangest thing,' he said. 'A bit of iron from the Red Wolf struck me, while it was still hot as Pitfire. But it's not just any burn. It's wolf-shaped!'
So it was: a perfect, unmistakable wolf, scarred deep into his wrist.
'And matters are stranger than you know,' said Hercуl. With that he lifted a corner of his shirt. Burned into the flesh just below his rib cage was the dark outline of a wolf. 'They are identical. And see, a forepaw raised, exactly like the Red Wolf.'
'Anyone else?' said Neeps. 'I say-Pazel!'
He was holding out his left hand; the others crowded round. The burn on his palm was deeper than the other two. It had blistered, and bled a little at the edges. 'It's a wolf all right,' he said. 'And it's as hard as leather. But I have no idea what it means.'
'It means you are in the grip of a spell,' said Ramachni. 'But not an evil one, I think.'
'Well that's just blary perfect,' said Pazel. He wanted no more to do with spells, evil or benign. Then he looked at Thasha, and saw dejection on her face.
'You weren't burned by the iron, were you?'
Thasha shook her head. 'Got lucky, I'm happy to say.'
She sounded anything but happy. Pazel didn't know what to say, or what to think. He caught Neeps' eye; his friend looked as troubled as Pazel felt.
'Anyway,' Thasha said with a forced smile, 'I'll always have this.'
She held up the hand she had mutilated years ago, with the rose stem at the Lorg. The others stopped what they were doing and looked at it. Or rather stared. Presently Thasha turned her palm over and looked herself.
The scar was transformed. Nothing had changed on the back of her hand, where she had stabbed herself. But the mark on her palm had become a wolf-the wolf, unmistakably the same.
'What's happening?' whispered Thasha. 'Ramachni, did you…?'
'I have not interfered. Nor would I presume to do so, without great cause, when a spell has been laid down with such care.'
'Laid down by whom?' asked Pazel.
'A spirit dwelled in the Red Wolf,' said Ramachni. 'You heard the howl when its shape succumbed to fire. But whose spirit? I cannot tell you, but you would do well to find out.'
Thasha was still looking at her scar, old and new at once. 'I think I know,' she said at last. 'I think her name was Erithusmй.'
Ramachni looked at her curiously: not quite surprised, but very intrigued. 'Erithusmй,' he said. 'The greatest mage to draw breath since the time of the Worldstorm. How did that notion come to you, child?'
'I don't know. The Mother Prohibitor told me part of her story, and I've been searching the Polylex for the rest ever since. Impossible book! I still haven't found a word about her. But I'm sure she's part of this, Ramachni. As sure as if she'd walked up and told me herself.'
Hercуl lifted Thasha's hand and looked thoughtfully at the altered scar. 'I do not know what the thirteenth edition has to say about Erithusmй,' he said, 'but I can tell you what I know of her. We Tholjassans live alongside the Mzithrin; we know their legends better than most. And as part of my training for the Secret Fist I took an interest in the lore of the Pentarchy. Her seers of old knew what Arunis forgot: that the Nilstone is no one's tool for long. And since it cannot be destroyed, the world must be protected from it by every possible means.
'We know that Erithusmй tried to force it upon Eplendrus the Glacier-Worm, the beast at the heart of the Tzular Mountains in the uttermost north. And we know she failed: the stone drove Eplendrus mad, so that he thrashed himself to death among the bones of his ancestors. And we know that the wizardess repented then, and came back for the Nilstone, and bore it south instead of north, into the boundless Nelluroq. Once again she tried to put it out of reach. And once again she failed.
'She made a last attempt to hide the stone. No tales reveal how, or where; this was the great secret of her life. We know now, of course: she bound it in a dragon's-egg shot, and then within the Red Wolf. The old tales always held that its redness came from the blood of a living being. Thasha is right, I believe: that blood was Erithusmй's own. And I think now that she hoped not merely to hide the Nilstone, but to ensure that anyone who tried to use it again would have a fight on their hands.'
'A fight with us,' said Pazel.
'As it happens,' said Hercуl with a nod. 'For a thousand years the spirit in the Wolf kept the Nilstone safe. It inspired the Mzithrin Kings to build a citadel about it, a forbidden place of silence and forgetting. But not everyone forgot. The Shaggat laid siege to that citadel and bore the Wolf away. And perhaps it was the guardian spirit that lured his ship to its doom on the Haunted Coast, and coaxed the sea-murths to find a new hiding place for the
