over there.”
Jarneyn actually winked. “No problem. It’s Andoray. Heart of the realm ruled by the Old Ones. Aelen Kofer can turn up anywhere in Andoray. And we have. The engines are in place. The spears are ready to go.”
Februaren asked, “What’s going on, Heris?”
“I had a lot of time on my hands while we were waiting for my falcons. I cooked up a way to sap the Windwalker’s strength.”
Iron Eyes chuckled. He approved. Definitely.
Februaren frowned. The girl was up to no good. Again.
Iron Eyes was more amused.
The ascendant seemed equally entertained.
Grimmsson seemed to have taken a vow of silence. He just stood there looking goofy.
Heris asked, “Where’s the Bastard?” Getting no answer, she demanded, “Did anyone bother to let him know we’re ready?”
“He’s hard to reach,” Iron Eyes said. “If you’re a short, wide, hairy person who has difficulty with the language. And Asgrimmur is likely to be attacked on sight.”
“Asgrimmur, if he put his mind to it, could walk into the throne room of the Grail Empire as anybody he wants to be. I smell a steaming hot pile of laziness. Double Great and I shouldn’t be the only ones who do anything.”
Iron Eyes just looked back blandly.
“You got a golden tongue on you, girl,” Februaren said. “Sorry, Iron Eyes. When she’s cranky she has this wicked knack for saying exactly the right thing.”
“I’ve gotten used to it.”
“The Bastard hasn’t been informed?”
“We don’t know. We’ve tried. My sense is, he’s ignoring us.”
“We’ll see about that.” Februaren faced the water. “Take me outside. I’ll snag the asshole by his twisty little piggy tail and drag him back.”
Heris said, “I never cease to be amazed by your confidence, Double Great.”
“You just make sure everything stays set.”
Cloven Februaren was gone. Heris collected Iron Eyes and Grimmsson and plied them with the best dark ale in the Aelen Kofer tavern. “So what do you think? Should we just hang around drinking? Or should we pass the time trying out my method?”
“I’m up for that,” the ascendant said.
Iron Eyes considered Asgrimmur with a veiled expression, then Heris. “My young bucks will be eager. But they’ll need to be called in and briefed. Then they’ll have to go back to our world to make the transit.”
“Or we can just brief them on the way.”
“No. We’ll keep our world to ourselves. You do your sideways trick.”
“More time,” Heris grumbled.
“Everything takes time,” Jarneyn countered. “That’s the curse of being mortal.” He headed for the barge. It still concealed the portal to the Aelen Kofer world.
“So what do we do now?” If she had known there would be more waiting around she would have stayed in Brothe. She could cause a lot more mischief there. And could sleep in a comfortable bed when she was not.
“We can check what they did in the Great Sky Fortress.”
Heris had lost all fear of the rainbow bridge. She walked across like it was solid granite.
For no real reason she detoured to the dead orchard. She had not visited since that one time, before. She stepped through the fallen wall. “Asgrimmur.”
“What?”
“Look at this. Is this what I think?”
A shoot stood six inches tall where she had envisioned a blond goddess planting a golden apple. The shoot was not healthy. It was a pallid greenish yellow.
The ascendant seemed almost breathless. “I think so. But it hasn’t absorbed much magic. It may not survive.”
Heris stared. She thought the shoot was aware of her.
The gods would need their golden apples after their release.
“Asgrimmur, we never considered the apples in our calculations and preparations.”
The ascendant let that simmer briefly, said, “We didn’t, did we?”
“How strong could they be when we release them? How long can they last without the fruit? Because that tree won’t produce apples in a human lifetime.”
“More likely, never.” He turned away, shoulders sagging. He stepped out of the garden, ambled toward the entrance to the keep.
What was his problem?
The ghost of the Walker, disappointed. Beginning to realize that patience was not enough. There would be no restoration. No escape from flesh where he was a passenger without control.
Could he be exorcised? She rather liked today’s Asgrimmur Grimmsson.
Heris followed the brooding ascendant to the hall where the return would happen. It was a jungle of color as jarring as biting into an unsuspected hot pepper. Nowhere else in the Great Sky Fortress was there any color.
The Aelen Kofer had created lamps burning oils charged with sorcery to give the color Heris wanted to paint and chalk her cuing lines and signs so participants would know where to stand and how to move. The colors were on floor, ceiling, and walls. Cords ran hither and yon to keep people from moving in wrong or dangerous directions. Six falcons all directed their snouts at an area of interior wall on which had been painted a square in a harsh red. Large black dots marred the red. Two eighteen-inch-wide trestle tables sat endwise to the wall and lengthwise toward the two heaviest falcons, which had their butts to the light from outside. On the tables were hammers, star chisels, copper tubes with silver linings, blow tubes charged with silver dust, oils and unguents, garlic paste, and anything else Heris, Jarneyn, or the ascendant thought had any chance whatsoever of being useful.
Heris discreetly checked to make sure items suggested by the ascendant lay at the ends of the table farthest from the red paint.
Trust leavened by caution. Always.
The ascendant did not appear to mind. Might not, for that matter, have noticed.
There was more. Much more. The Aelen Kofer had invested a middle-world fortune in silver. There was silver everywhere, in everything, in patterns meant to constrain and direct the Old Ones if they evaded immediate control. Silver would channel them into the mouths of the falcons. Silver would subject them to harsh debilitation before they could escape to their hapless world. Any that did win free would have been drained down to the weight of boogies and sprites. There would be nowhere to go but their dead realm after that.
Before the release started Iron Eyes would seal all the exits from outside. Only those inside the Realm of the Gods would suffer.
A dozen heavy glass bottles in the general shape of flat bottom teardrops sat near the painted wall. Their tops bent at right angles and narrowed to a tube just large enough to fit one of the silver-lined copper tubes. The bottles ranged in size from a gallon to more than a hogshead. They were masterworks of Aelen Kofer glassblowing. The thick glass held hints of sparkle, smoke, and gray and purple. Silver dust had gone into the melt.
Heris hoped to move the Old Ones from one captivity to another, where contracts could be forged before the Old Ones were decanted.
The ascendant asked, “Is there anything more you can ask?” Exasperated because she was such a detail- oriented woman.
His main personalities were all smash and grab and deal with the consequences later sorts.
“I’m sure there must be. I’m counting on the Old Ones to be confused and disoriented long enough for us mortals to get control.” She watched to see how that played.
Too much of this depended on the ascendant.
He had to have control of the Instrumentalities inside him. Then the Bastard had to do whatever a blood descendant had to do.
