the gentleman to tell me about it.'
Kestrel pulled his lips together in a grim line. He looked at Phoebe's attractiveness in the fancy dress. Despite the fatigue, he felt a great longing. Without the immediate rush, it would be easy to say the words that would result in another conquest of a master of the arts.
But the well-spun phrases would not come, not even ones that set the foundation for later. Phoebe's apparent trust was too overwhelming. How could he deceive her as he had done to all the others when what she wanted had so little value?
'The past cannot be changed,' Kestrel said, 'no matter how much one might wish it. If you were embarrassed, would you really want to know?'
'No, I would not,' Phoebe said after a moment. 'Not if it caused me to lock all that I am behind a barrier through which no one else can see.'
'What do you mean?' Kestrel asked.
'You know full well,' Phoebe said. 'For the length of this headlong flight, I have been chattering away, telling you everything about myself that came to mind. Perhaps it took my thoughts from what would happen if we are caught, but I have said much nonetheless.'
'I did not wish it otherwise,' Kestrel said. 'If you suspect that I was bored but just being polite, put your mind at ease. I enjoy your company.'
'And so about the wizard you can now recite volumes,' Phoebe continued. 'About the woodcutter, what can be said other than that he indeed did at one time chop some trees?'
Kestrel slumped over the reins, wishing the entry hut all the closer. Mixed with everything else, he felt an onrush of discomfort. It was not enough that he refrain from further deception. Phoebe wanted more. She was asking no less than that he reveal things that long ago he had vowed never to share again.
'I can be only one of many possibilities,' he said while continuing to look straight ahead. 'Why me and not some other? One more suited to your station.'
Phoebe tightened her grip on Kestrel's arm and pulled herself closer to him. 'It gets to be lonely in the cabin of a wizard,' she said. 'Lonelier than you might otherwise believe. And at first, I admit my thoughts were for a brief interlude. You appeared far better than most that I had seen in the past year.
'But there was something else,' she said. 'Something I saw behind the eyes of one who professed to be a simple woodcutter.'
'Do not probe too deeply,' Kestrel said. 'You might not like what you will find.'
'No, my first impression has been confirmed.' Phoebe reached up and turned Kestrel's face to hers. 'I saw the excitement when you explained to me how we would cross the border. I witnessed the swordsman rushing to defend when he was outnumbered two to one. There is perhaps more to Kestrel the woodcutter than he dares admit even to himself.'
'Does not the ritual prescribe that the male pursues and the female demurs?' Astron poked his head out from under the wagon's canopy. 'Or does the fact that the woman is the one that wears the logo of a wizard alter that? It is no wonder there is so much anguish and confusion in the matter. The variations are too many for one to keep track of them all.'
Phoebe pulled back her arms, like a child caught in the fruit larder. She frowned at Astron as she dropped her hands to her lap. Kestrel felt a wave of relief and then a twinge of annoyance. He could work out his feelings without any help from the demon.
He darted a glance at Phoebe. No, perhaps it was best that Astron had come forward. What he would have said if he were forced to answer at this moment he did not know. A silence descended on the three. For the rest of the distance to the entry hut no one spoke.
When they arrived, Kestrel glanced over his shoulder and then back to Astron. The demon shook his head, indicating that he detected nothing. Kestrel vaulted from the wagon and into the hut. Soon all three stood facing an ancient page, bald-pated with splotchy skin, sitting behind a high desk. His folded hands rested on a huge appointment book bound in gilded leather.
Kestrel returned the page's stare and glanced quickly about the small room, trying to seize on the story that would get them immediately to the archimage.
'Elezar,' Astron said before anyone else could speak. 'I have a message from Prince Elezar for the archimage that should be heard at once.'
The page looked at Astron through half-closed eyes. He leafed through the pages to the very front of the book and scanned a list of names. 'Elezar,' the page repeated, 'Elezar.' Suddenly he stopped and his eyes opened wide. 'Ah, exactly what is the-the nature of this prince?'
'He is a demon,' Astron said. 'A mighty ruler of over a hundred djinns.'
The attitude of the page immediately shifted from bored indifference to obsequious concern. He climbed from his high stool and motioned the trio to follow.
'It is the foremost of the archimage's instructions,' he said. 'Certain visitors are to receive priority over the others who come asking no more than a boon. But above all else, master Atodar has written that he is to be interrupted on any news of Elezar the demon in the realm of men. Quickly, follow me.'
In a moment's time, they were across the courtyard to the house of stone and ushered into a large library, brimming with scrolls and books of crackling parchment. A ladder was propped on each of the four walls to reach shelves that stood beyond the grasp of the tallest man. Three round tables were also covered with piles of paper. On a fourth stood a bubbling retort and convoluted paths of glass tubing. A model of a crane and small blocks occupied the fifth, next to a clump of bar magnets and needles of steel. Next to it, the light of a single candle worked its way through tiny slits and a series of lenses that alternately expanded and contracted its radiance.
Kestrel noticed Astron's membranes flick down when he saw all of the books. After the page left to find the archimage, the demon stood motionless for a long while. Then slowly, with a delicate reverence, he approached the closest table, reached out and touched the gilt letters that spelled 'Practical Thaumaturgy' on the volume on top. Suddenly oblivious to the reason they had come, the demon gently opened the cover and stared at the pen- strokes on the first page.
A doorway deeper into the interior of the cottage clicked softly. Kestrel turned to see who entered. His face stiffened in surprise.
'We are manipulants of the skyskirr,' said the first of four thin beings who filed into the library. 'We understand the astonishment that shows on your face. Many of the strange happenings of your realm affect us in a similar way. Be at peace. All that comes to pass is guided by the great right hand.'
Kestrel shook his head. Astron looked almost human. The imps that had been captured in the bottle were no more than gross copies of a normally shaped child. But these four were distinctly alien, unlike anyone else he had ever seen. They were tall and slender, impossibly thin for a man. Large, puffy lips protruded from faces of bony gray planes. Primitive jewelry hung from ears and noses. Each wore a simple loincloth coiled about his hips.
'You too are djinns from Astron's realm?' Kestrel asked. He backed into one of the ladders and pulled Phoebe protectively to his side.
'No, we are skyskirr,' the first repeated. 'On our lithons we sail through the 'hedron's sky. The wind whistles with our passage. With graceful arabesques, we circle the larger stones and from them scavenge what the great right hand provides.
'Our realm is self-contained, as distinct from that of the demons as you judge yours to be. We must use the might of a djinn and the intermediary of the flame to travel from our universe to here.'
Kestrel ran his hand over his mouth. Not from the realm of demons but elsewhere beyond the flame, he thought. He glanced quickly at Astron. Yes, other realms, just as the demon had said.
'Besides those of men and demons there is a third?' Phoebe asked. 'I have heard whispers of such a thing and of metalaws behind those that we know so well.'
'Indeed, it is true,' the first skyskirr said. 'For us the laws of magic are different; we, in fact, change them all the time. Our visit here and now is to see if your thaumaturgy is a craft that will be useful besides the ones we already know.'
'Of course, there are consequences in any such venture,' the third suddenly said. 'Perhaps it was the intent of the great right hand that such knowledge we were not meant to possess.' The skyskirr pounded a shovel he was carrying against the floor and then touched the blade to the chest of the fourth, who slumped almost hidden behind the other three.
