'I don't understand,' said Silverdun.
Jedron pointed east, toward the City Emerald. 'All those pretty Fae over there, all those civilized Fae, live in a giant cocoon spun of the silk of ignorance.'
It was the most poetic Jedron had ever been, and Silverdun said so.
'Go to hell, Silverdun. I'm being serious. It is a grand thing to believe oneself safe. All of the great things of civilization are crafted by those who are free from danger. Their error-the one we are employed to hide from them, and rightly so-is their belief that they can uphold civilization by acting civilized. The reason the Shadows have existed for so long, despite the public hue and cry about their rumored existence, is that those in positions of power are continuously reminded of that error when it kicks them in the face.'
'If you're so apathetic about honor and propriety and civilization,' Silverdun spat, 'then why bother protecting it at all? Why risk your life to protect something for which you seem to have little use?'
'Because if I don't, who else will? We are beset on all sides by ignorance and savagery, Silverdun. The bestial Gnomics to the south. Mab's legions of blind, devoted `citizens' who might as well be slaves. Or worse, really ... at least a good slave owner values the life of his investment. I may not have much use for the finer things in life, but I loathe the alternative.
'And,' he said, smiling wickedly, 'I love my job.'
A week later, Jedron had Silverdun in his office, studying maps. Most were maps of Faerie: city maps, diagrams of the movement patterns of Unseelie cities, topographical maps. Others were of Mag Mell, the world of ten thou sand islands; Annwn, its vast lands almost unpopulated except for the one great city called Blood of Arawn; the Nymaen world, mostly water, mapped to an astonishing precision. Jedron, of course, expected him to memorize every detail of every map and quizzed him throughout the evening, hurling paperweights and books at him if he answered incorrectly. He seemed in an especially surly temper tonight. Even Ilian seemed unsettled, which Silverdun couldn't remember ever having noticed before.
Finally Jedron bid him put the maps away. He poured them brandy from the decanter and they shared a silent drink. When Silverdun finished, Ilian appeared from the shadows and escorted him to his bedroom.
In his room, Silverdun began to feel strange. He knew this feeling. At university, he'd taken a class on poisons. He'd dropped out of it after a week, and never gotten credit for it. The reason he'd dropped it was that he'd accidentally ingested a potion called iglithbi. Not a poison, exactly-it was created for recreational purposes-but in a large enough dose easily lethal. Odorless and tasteless, favored by careful thieves and rapists. If he'd been stupid enough to accidentally sip it, he'd be stupid enough to accidentally kill himself.
And now there was no question about it: He'd been drugged with iglithbi. The effect was unmistakable. But how large a dose?
Silverdun's faculties began to abandon him. He thought wildly for the composition of iglithbi, its organic ingredients and reitic bindings. And there in his mind, amazingly, was the formula; one of the few things he'd actually retained from his university days. He reached out with his Gift of Elements, searching for the binding called Elesh-elen-tereth. It was easy to locate using only the Gift, and easy to unbind. He found it, could sense its particular color of re flowing through him. He reached out and pushed it with his Gift, changing Elesh-elen-tereth into water and spiritus sylvestre.
Unfortunately, a good deal of the potion had already found its way into Silverdun's mind. He was still awake-that was something-but unsteady. The room seemed to breathe around him, the walls quavering.
Was Ilian truly a traitor? Had he done this? Or was this another of Jedron's mean-spirited tests? Jedron had drunk from the same bottle of brandy, true. But it was easily possible that Jedron possessed Elements as well.
Silverdun wanted badly to lie down and sleep. His bed, or what was left of it, suddenly seemed like the most appealing place in all Faerie.
But he wouldn't allow himself the pleasure. Jedron's demonstration on the Splintered Driftwood had affected him more deeply than he'd thought. If Than had spiked the brandy, and if Jedron didn't possess Elements, then Jedron could be dying in bed at this very moment, and Than doing whatever treachery he had planned.
But still-the bed.
Silverdun heard a scream outside the window. Or thought he did. Time and space seemed to plummet in random orbits. Silverdun stumbled to the window and looked out. All was a blur. Down below there were flickering lights, waving in the night. Torches. Fireflies. Witchlight. Embers.
He ran toward the door and missed, hitting the wall instead. He corrected and stole out of his bedroom into the passage. A few minutes later, he stood at the main gate, peering out into the overcast, empty night. He wasn't quite sure how he had navigated the stairs down to the floor level of the castle. He knew he'd done it, but couldn't remember how.
The scream again. Silverdun plunged into the darkness. Out through the main courtyard, down toward the rocks. A set of steps Silverdun hadn't seen before. He took them down, down, toward the water's edge. At the bottom of the steps was an expanse of stone, a circle of torches, a pit. Fire. A man tied to a table, screaming. He looked up at Silverdun. A stranger. His face, filled with fear, burned itself into Silverdun's mind. Out of the ring of fire another
