“Those two would not have left the Demesne without the Dagger. Dedrina-Lucir would not have left. Not voluntarily.”
“So, they were abducted. You will receive Game declaration from some Gamesman soon enough, offering them for ransom. Perhaps from Mendost of Stoneflight, whom you so much detest. Perhaps from some other you have offended. Whatever. One would think you had no experience of such things.” He turned away, disgusted.
“Somehow,” said Porvius, eyeing the greenery around him with a suspicious glare, “I think not.” He ventured toward the fiery place only to be driven back as I had been by the choking smoke. “We will have to spray this again when the fire burns itself out ...”
“Why?” the Pursuivant asked in irritation. “Why this obsession with Chimmerdong, Bloster? I know the people of Daggerhawk have called themselves the Keepers of Chimmerdong, but why? It seems a futile, useless task.”
“A bargain made when the world was young, Cholore. The Demesne, the power we have held—all given us in exchange for guarding Chimmerdong and keeping it inside the circle. This was an end much desired by the Magicians.”
“Your Demesne has been close to the Magicians?”
“Close! Who can say close? Who knows what Magicians think or want? They send messages by their traders, we send messages in return. Who knows if the traders tell them what we have really said, or tell us what the Magicians really desire?”
“And it is they who want that girl Jinian killed? The Magicians have some reason to want her dead?”
“The Magicians? I doubt they know she exists. No. That order came from others. The ones who gave us the Dagger. Them. You know. From up north.” These words were in such a portentously gloomy tone, they caught my attention even through the lethargy. Porvius Bloster was stroking the dream crystal which hung on his chest.
“Them? Dream Miner? Storm Grower? What brought you into their indenture, Bloster? I did not know you were addicted to the Miner’s wares. I thought you smarter than that.”
I was surprised to see the Pursuivant pale as he spoke, this Gamesman who had seemed beyond any feeling.
“What they want, they find ways to get. And they grow stronger as time passes.” Porvius snarled as he turned toward the road once more. “They know more than any Seer, see deeper than any Demon. The future, the past, all are one to them, and they move us like pieces on a gameboard. If they have decided on this girl’s ruin or death, it is for reasons they consider sufficient. Better her ruin than mine, and better you not speak of them at all.”
Porvius, like his sister, should have talked less. If he had come and gone silently, I would not have had energy to oppose him. I could barely find intention enough to feed myself. This talk of mysterious persons in the north who would give casual orders about my life or death, however, was an irritation. Though I felt strangely little curiosity about it, anger was raised in me again. Only a little anger, but enough to make me vengeful. That night bunwit and I slipped into the fortress and set fire to the storehouse where the sprayer things and the cans of gray stuff were kept. Just as the forest burned, so that storehouse burned, with a mighty, hot malevolence that kept all at Daggerhawk busy for some days.
When the fire was out at last, the place was beyond habitation. It was filthy with smoke, stinking of greasy ash, and where one set bare skin, blisters erupted that refused to heal. Tree rat and I watched from the treetop as they left the Demesne, wagon and cart, horse and fustigar, going north. Much later I realized I should have paid attention to that direction. At the time, it meant nothing.
At the head of the procession rode Porvius Bloster, head down and chin dragging, a lean, reptilian woman at his side. When all of them had gone, I went to the place, wrapping my boots with leaves and vines, careful to touch nothing. The false dagger was stuck through some papers into the top of the great table. Evidently they had tried its powers, for there was a pawn in the corner, wounded slightly on the arm, then stabbed through the heart. Perhaps, with Dedrina’s mother in the north, Dedrina herself gone, and two other of the Basilisks missing, Bloster had attempted some ceremony of allegiance to himself. If he had, his demonstration of the dagger’s power had failed. Now it served only to pin a document to the table.
I looked at it without curiosity, a thing of swirling black letters upon parchment, the letters leaping out at me in fragmented phrases. My own name. “The girl called Jinian is ...”
“Daughter of ...”
“Must be eliminated ...” The form of the letters themselves brought an uncontrollable terror. I shuddered, fleeing the place. Good sense did not prevail until much later, but when I returned to the place, the papers were gone, removed by what? Or whom? No living thing could have walked unscathed amid that ash unless protected as I was. It had been no bird or small beast collecting paper for a nest, of that I was certain.
By this time, the fire had burned a swath of considerable width. One could walk from the edge of the forest outward, through the circle the gray had made to the fields once more. Moved by an unconsidered habit of tidiness, I swept at the ashes with a broom of dried grass. One pale stone appeared, then two. Then another, then a line. I wished for creatures with broomy tails. Neither tree rat nor bunwit had any. While wishing, I kept on sweeping. A road was there, under the ash, not whole, broken in places, but not badly. I moved stones,
