Spirit Tower’s two highest rooms. His tattered garments fluttered a little in the winds but he was otherwise motionless. It was a clear day, at least by the standards of Qul-na-Qar: although as always there was no sun visible in the gray sky, the afternoon’s sharp winds had chased away the mists: the slender figure who waited patiently in the chamber’s doorway for Ynnir to speak could see all the rooftops of the vast castle spread out below in a muted rainbow of different shades of black and deep gray, glittering darkly from the morning’s rains.
The one who waited was patient indeed: nearly an hour passed before the blind king at last stirred and turned his head. “Harsar? You should have spoken, old friend.”
“It is peaceful to look out the window.”
“It is.”Ynnir made a gesture, a complex movement of fingers that signified gratitude for small things. “All morning I listened to the anger of the Gathering, all that arguing about the Pact of the Glass, and thought about the time when I would come here, away from it all, and feel the breeze from M’aarenol on my face.” He lifted his fingers and touched them to his eyes once, twice, then a third time, all with the precision of ritual. “I still see what was outside it on the day I lost my sight.”
“It has not changed, Lord.”
“Everything has changed. But, come, you have waited for me patiently, Harsar-so. I do not believe the view alone has brought you here.”
Harsar inclined his hairless head ever so slightly. He was of the Stone Circle People, a small, nimble folk, but was tall for his kind: whenYnnir rose and Harsar stepped forward to help him, his head reached almost to the king’s shoulder. “I have good news, Lord.”
“Tell me.”
“Yasammez and her host have crossed the frontier.” “So quickly?”
“She is very strong, that one. She has been waiting long years for this, preparing.” “Yes, she has.”The king nodded slowly. “And the mantle?”
“She carries it with her, at least for now, but the scholars in the Deep Library think it will not sustain itself if stretched too far. But everywhere she has raided the mantle has spread, reclaiming that which is ours, and even when it will spread no farther, she will go on with fire and talon and blade.” Even patient Harsar could not keep his voice altogether even; a hint of exultation writhed in his words. “And everywhere she goes, the sunlanders will wail behind her, searching for their dead.”
“Yes.”Ynnir stood silent for a long time. “Yes. I thank you for these tidings, Harsar-so.”
“You do not seem as pleased as I would have thought, Lord.” The councillor was startled by his own words and lowered his head. “Ah, ah. Please forgive my discourtesy, Son of the First Stone. I am a fool.”
The king lifted a long-fingered hand, made a gesture that signaled “acceptable confusion.”
“You have nothing to apologize for, friend. I simply have much to consider. Yasammez is a mighty weapon. Now that she has been loosed, all the world will change.” He turned his head toward the window once more. “Do me the favor of excusing me, Harsar-so. It was good of you to come so far to give me this news.” His long face was grave and still; a hovering mote of light like a pale lavender firefly had begun to flicker above his head. “I must think I must… sleep.”
“Forgive me for imposing myself, great Ynnir. Will you permit one more unforgivable imposition? May I offer my company on your journey down to your chambers? The stairs are still damp.”
A tiny smile came to the blind king’s face. “You are kind, but I will sleep here.”
“Here?” There was only one couch in the Cloud-Spirit Tower and it was a place of power, of shaped and directed dreams. A moment later, the man of the Stone Circle People brought his hand to his mouth. “Forgive me, Lord! I do not mean to question you again. I am a fool today, a fool.”
This time Ynnir’s response was a degree or two closer to frost. “Do not distress yourself, Councillor. I will be well.” Harsar bowed and bowed again, backing out of the room so quickly that an observer might have feared the councillor himself was in greater clanger of tumbling down the long, steep stairwell than the blind king, but he spun neatly on his heel at the edge of the steps before starting his descent. Many of the towers of Qul-na-Qar had stairs that yielded quiet music, and of course the infamous steps of the High Place moaned softly, like children in troubled sleep, but the stairway of Cloud-Spirit Tower surrendered no noise except that of a visitor’s tread. Ynnir listened to his councillor’s velvet-soft footfalls grow fainter and fainter until he could no longer hear them above the skirling wind.
Ynnir din’at sen-Qin moved through a door in the wall that separated this highest place in the tower into two rooms. That other chamber, that twinned space, had its own window, facing not across the expanse of the castle and its countless rooftops glinting wet as beach stones but away into the misty south—toward the Shadowline and the great host of Lady Yasammez and the lands of mortals. Like the other room, it was sparsely furnished. That room had a chair: this one had a low bed. The king lay down on it, lavender light glittering above his brow, then folded his arms across his breast and began to dream.
Chert had barely slept at all. The long watches of the night had passed like guests who sensed they were unwelcome and were all the slower to leave because of it.
“What in the name of the Mysteries are you up to?” Opal’s voice was muzzy with sleep. “You’ve been twitching all night.”
He was tempted to tell her it was nothing, but despite their occasional squabbling, Chert was not one of those fellows who felt more comfortable in the company of other men than with his own wife. They had come far together and he knew he needed not only her comfort, but her good wits, too. “I can’t sleep, Opal. I’m worried.”
“What about?” She sat up and pushed at the strands of hair escaping from her nightcap. “And don’t talk so loud—you’ll wake the boy.”
“The boy is part of what worries me.” He got up, padded to the table, and picked up the jar of wine. Funderlings seldom used lamps in their own homes, making do with the dim, dim glow spilling in from the street lanterns, and found it amusing that the big folk couldn’t seem to blunder around aboveground without a blaze of light. He took a cup from the mantel shelf. “Do you want some wine?” he asked his wife.
“Why would I want wine at this hour?” But her voice was definitely as worried as his, now. “Chert, what’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure. Everything, really. The boy, those Rooftoppers, what Chaven said about the Shadowline.” He brought his cup of wine back to bed and slid his feet under the heavy quilt. “It wasn’t simply an accident that child appeared, Opal. That he was brought out of that place and dumped here on the very same day I find that the Shadowline has moved for the first time in years.”
“It’s not the boy’s fault!” she said, her voice rising despite her own injunction to quiet. “He’s done nothing wrong. Next you’re going to say he’s some kind of… spy, or demon, or… or a wizard in disguise!”
“I don’t know what he is. But I know that I’m not going to go another night wondering what’s in that bag around his neck.”
“Chert, you can’t. We have no right… !”
“That’s nonsense, woman, and you know it. This is our house. What if he brought home a poisonous snake —a fireworm or somesuch? Would we have to let him keep it?”
“That’s just silly…”
“Well, it’s at least as silly when there are dangers all around, when the Twilight People may walk right out of the old stories and come knocking at our very doors, to pretend as though this was an ordinary time and ordinary circumstances. We found him, Opal, we didn’t birth him. We don’t know anything about who he is—or even
“He helped one of them. You said so!”
“And he’s carrying something we haven’t looked at that might tell us about his past.” “You don’t know
