than one; that is all you deserve, despite the loveliness you possess. Amend your ways, and then a champion will come forward to share the tasks of creation with his lady.'
'I was faithful to you from the first day to the last,' Nimbia said softly. 'It was your jealousies and no more, Lothal, that churned in your heart. You saw evil where there was none. Nothing I could have done would have convinced you otherwise.' Nimbia threw up her hands. 'And we could not create, so long as your own inner being was so troubled.'
'If you were not queen, I would not let such assertions go unchallenged,' Lothal shot back. 'You try to use the power of your station to gain what even your beauty cannot grasp.'
'Challenge whatever you will.' Nimbia shook her head and pulled the edges of her cape in tightened fists, with knuckles showing white. 'I give you leave as I have given you leave each time before. Try to find any proof that I was ever other than loving. You cannot, because none was ever there. Come, Lothal, I would forget the pain and accept you even now, if it would spark the creation that would save our underbill.'
Nimbia looked at Lothal expectantly but his jaw was firmly set. He would speak no more.
Nimbia sighed. 'We waste the time of all those that have assembled here,' she said finally. 'And there is little time that is left.' She waved her arm at the banquet rooms beyond. 'Feast, my people. Make merry while you can. Prydwin's pipers will come for us all soon enough.'
The mournful melody of the pipers abruptly stopped. There was a moment's pause and then they began again, this time with the lively air that Astron had first heard when he arrived. Tentatively, two of the younger females began to dance. With a sudden enthusiasm, three of the pages mimicked their steps. Nimbia began clapping her hands. A smile reappeared on her face. In what seemed like an instant, the mood transformed into the gaiety it had been before.
'I do not understand.' Phoebe raised her voice above the music. 'What has happened to her? The moods of the woman on the throne change faster than the purest quicksilver.'
'My previous sojourns were brief,' Astron said. 'I witnessed the ring of djinns for the first time just as you did.'
'The mysteries of the realm can wait for later,' Kestrel said. 'More important is the reason why we came. If this Nimbia thinks we are her savior, then ask her for a boon before she forgets. What does she know of the things we seek?'
Astron hesitated. Nimbia had saved him from the sentrymen of Prydwin-far more so than he had her. And the passions shown by the fey evidently were quite similar to those of men. He would like to have listened quietly for much longer.
'Excuse me, Queen Nimbia,' he said, 'but I have a request-knowledge in exchange for the small service we have performed in your behalf. If perhaps you know the location of harebell pollen or how to gain audience with a sage among you who knows the riddle of the ultimate precept…'
Nimbia stopped in mid-clap. She turned and regarded Astron for a moment with an amused smile. Then she broke into a gale of laughter, clasping her sides and poking her elbows at whomever was the closest.
'Yes, harebell pollen,' she said. 'That is all it would take. Who needs the logical precision of the male to temper the leaps of intuition if harebell pollen could be tossed through the ring? Even Prydwin's greatest triumphs- the realm of the chronoids, the realm of the reticulates-both could be challenged in a single judging. Yes, harebell pollen indeed.'
Nimbia tried to say more but she clasped her sides again, unable to speak. Astron looked from side to side for explanation, but saw only other mirthful faces. His nose wrinkled. He turned back to face Kestrel with a shrug.
Nimbia suddenly stopped laughing. She tapped Astron on the shoulder. He saw that her face was completely sober.
'It is the way of the fey,' she explained. 'We cannot sip life in only half measures, but must drink deeply from the cup of emotions. It is no less than the first dictum-reality must mirror passion. How else can we create with a vividness that will live of its own volition?'
Astron started to reply but Nimbia shook her head. 'For now, no more words,' she said. 'Do not disturb the joyousness of the feast. I owe my people no less.' She reached out and gently touched his arm. 'Even though you are no more than a demon, I wish that you would abide with me for a while. Abide with me, since your saving of a queen might not yet be complete.'
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ASTRON blew out all the candles except for the one on the far end of the oaken table. The remaining light was feeble, but he had had more than enough time to get familiar with the placing of even the tiniest obstacles in the small circular room. Fifteen marks Kestrel had gouged into the doorframe, one for each arising from his sleep. For the entire duration, Astron had been confined to the one room.
Despite the urgency, he had achieved no new progress toward his goal. The growing frustration made his stem-brain continuously active. A feeling of constant uneasiness ached just below his consciousness. He could not still the rumbling, no matter how hard he tried. With each passing tick of time, the chances of the survival of his prince and hence his own shrunk all the more. Something had to be done soon, no matter how interesting the other distractions.
They were not prisoners exactly, but Nimbia's sentrymen made clear with the force of their thoughts that wandering around underhill was highly discouraged. After the queen had dismissed them, they had not seen her again. Apparently Astron and his companions were left to their own devices until she saw fit to call them back to her presence.
Astron directed his concentration at what he had constructed. The idle time had not been a total waste, since there was much he had learned. The oaken table with the candle was straight on three sides, while the fourth was curved to meet the contour of the stone wall to which it was pressed. Square cells would have been much more efficient, Astron knew. Using stone instead of wood certainly must stress the mechanism that raised and lowered the hilltop, but he gathered that such practicalities were not the concern of the fey.
Next to the candle, hung from a cantilevered scaffolding made of twigs and branches, was a watersack from one of the large vines that grew aboveground. Astron had carefully pierced and drained the bladder and then refilled it with lamp oil obtained from another resinous herb. With bits of copper wire hooked into the surrounding leaves, the spherical globe was elongated and flattened, distorting it into a thin vertical disk.
At the other end of the table, the book of thaumaturgy that Astron had obtained from the archimage stood upright in a scaffolding similar to the first. The candle flame flickered through the orb of oil and cast a diffuse glow of light on the upright parchment, illustrating an image quite similar to the one Astron had constructed on the bench.
Astron studied the illustration for a moment more and then the arcane symbols written beneath it. The abstractions had been difficult to grasp at first, but the examples had helped a great deal. He turned to the bag of oil and moved it to a mark he had calculated before, roughly midway between the candle and book.
The diffuse halo of light on the parchment coalesced into a much sharper dot. Astron grunted in satisfaction. He cupped his hand in front of his lens so that only its very center received the candleglow and watched the focus on the book decrease to a single point of whiteness.
Astron moved the position of the book toward the candle and then adjusted the lens to regain the proper focus. He measured the distances from page to oilbag and oilbag to candle and checked the results with the predictions of the formula. After a half-dozen trials, he blew out the remaining light and sat in the darkness, contemplating what he had learned.
The ones who call themselves masters in the realm of men treated knowledge in strange ways, he thought. The basic principles of bending rays of light had no intrinsic connection to thaumaturgy or any other of the crafts known to mortals. But because these laws were used by practitioners of the magical arts, they were shrouded in secret like the rest. One went to a thaumaturge for telescopes or heating lenses, even though a glassblower could construct what was needed just as well without any recourse to the art, if he knew a few simple formulas. Unlike
