The Equinoctial Legends [The Tellings]

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 1

THE EQUINOCTIAL LEGENDS

Joe Dever and John Grant

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 2 CONTENTS The First Campfire: The Eve of Fehmarn VIVEKA'S TELLING or How a Daughter of Noble Family Came to Possess a Scar The Second Campfire: The Autumnal Equinox LONE WOLF'S TELLING or How the Book of the Magnakai Was Lost and Found The Third Campfire: The Eve of Fehmarn BANEDON'S TELLING or How the Gagadoth Met its End The Fourth Campfire: The Autumnal Equinox CARAG'S TELLING or How the Forces of Darkness Came to Have a New Lord Envoi: An End to Campfires

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 3

DEDICATION For Alan Warner – JD For Neil Balford, Erle Barton, Lee Barton, Thornton Bell, Noel Bertram, Leo Brett, Bron Fane, L.P. Kenton, John E. Muller, Peter O'Flinn, Lionel Roberts, René Rolant, Roy Tappen, Robin Tate, Neil Thanet, Pel Torro, Olaf Trent and Karl Zeigfreid – who would have known better – JG

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 4

FOREWORD It may come as something of a surprise to the lay reader to discover that, until no more than a couple of decades ago, the stories of our Sommlending hero Lone Wolf and his stalwart associates were widely regarded among academic historians as of no more than legendary status: it was agreed that there had indeed been such a figure as Lone Wolf, but it was generally assumed that he must have been just some early chieftain whose charisma in life had attracted to him, after his death, myths out of all proportion to his true, minor historical importance. That this attitude should have changed in recent years is, I can say without undue self-aggrandizement, in large part a result of my own researches, sparked off by a fortuitous encounter at the ruins of the Temple Deep near the ancient city of Maaken.1 Those researches, at first greeted with incredulity by my colleagues, are now regarded as "pioneering works", and others have followed in the footsteps of this reluctant "pioneer". The present collection of reconstructions of events in our nation's history is based upon fewer original sources than would normally satisfy me. That the four meetings around the campfire by the Kai Monastery occurred at the four successive equinoxes, as described, is a matter beyond doubt: they are recorded in all three of my primary sources – the sketchy accounts set down at the time by Petra and by Jaan (then only a child), and the later and more detailed memoir penned by Banedon.2 As for the stories themselves, I have to confess to the use of a little more poetic licence in their reconstruction than I would customarily permit myself. Lone Wolf's own telling of the loss of the Book of the Magnakai was incomplete in all three of the sources referred to above, and there were also inconsistencies in detail with several historical facts which I have been able to determine from other and generally more reliable sources, notably the Vassagonian Epic of the Desert. Where such discrepancies occur – and I stress that they affect only trivial details – I have followed the 1

This encounter is described in some detail in the Epilogue to one of my earlier essays in the history of Lone Wolf, published as The Sacrifice of Ruanon. 2 There has recently been some controversy concerning the authenticity of this memoir, but the stated reasons for doubt seem to be born more from sensationalism than from rigorous investigation.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 5 orthodox accounts, reassuring myself somewhat uneasily that Lone Wolf was recounting events to which he himself had not been a witness. At the opposite extreme, Banedon's telling is here reproduced almost verbatim from his own memoir, with the obvious exception of the rendition into modern Sommlending and, as is the custom, the use of the third person rather than the first. Banedon's memoir likewise gave a very full, rich version of Carag's telling – a seeming paradox, given Carag's well attested inarticulacy. It is impossible for us now to determine whether Banedon simply invented the additional details – this would be far from the only instance of his fleshing out an original – or whether, as I like to think, he later had the patience to quiz Carag more thoroughly for a fuller account than the Giak could possibly have given during the course of a single night. Viveka's telling is given at great length in all three of my primary sources, especially that of Jaan, who, we can guess with some confidence, was at the time experiencing something of an adolescent crush. It can certainly be no coincidence that her later career should be so strong an emulation of Viveka's. Further notes on sources and procedures can be found in various issues of The Bulletin of the Sommerlund Folk Archaeological Society, notably in vol 16 nos 7-11, especially in the correspondence columns. Prof S.C. Kaarlen University of Toran

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 6 The First Campfire THE EVE OF FEHMARN Jaan was growing, Viveka noted with approval – growing in both stature and maturity. It didn't seem very long ago that the girl had been the smallest and widest-eyed among the group of Lone Wolf's Kai acolytes who'd welcomed Viveka here to the Monastery, and now she was nearly an adult, her body as trim and strong as Viveka's own. She had come to wake Viveka, who had slept through much of the afternoon, having the previous night been out on sentry duty, patrolling through the surrounding woods on the remote off-chance that any marauding party of Darklands spawn might stray this far into Sommerlund and seek to attack the Monastery. Not that there was all that much to attack, as yet. Despite the unceasing efforts of the score or so young acolytes whom Lone Wolf had drawn here, led for a long time by either Lone Wolf or Qinefer and latterly largely by Petra and by Viveka herself, the site of the ancient Kai edifice was still more ruin than Monastery. There was a larder, of course – some years ago Viveka had insisted that that was the most important part of the whole construction, and should be built before the rest – and now half of one wing had been re-erected, but for the most part the area was merely a litter of stones, a silent testimony to that dreadful Fehmarn when the hordes of the Darklord Zagarna had descended from the sky to tear the place stone from stone and massacre all the Kai Lords there. And there had been many Kai Lords present. It had been a long custom that, each Fehmarn, the Kai should come together from all over the Lastlands to celebrate the start of Spring. The renegade sorcerer Vonotar had told Zagarna of this, and the Darklord had mounted his attack accordingly. The Order of the Kai, and the tradition which had given birth to it, would have been annihilated altogether on that blood-drenched day had not chance taken a single initiate out into the forest in the cold grey hours of the early morning. The youth had survived, although he still bore the mental scars. Sometimes Lone Wolf bitterly loathed himself for having survived ... Viveka thanked Jaan and, as the girl withdrew, threw off her covering of rugs and skins. The cell in which she slept was bare

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 7 except for the bed and a stacked heap of light weapons in one corner. Viveka thought wistfully of the plumbing that she had known in more civilized parts of the world, and ruefully padded off towards the open air and the woods. Returning, she glanced at the reddening sky. Fehmarn was always a tough time for Lone Wolf. All of Sommerlund celebrated the rebirth of Spring in some way or another, but for Lone Wolf it was a period when too many old memories resurfaced. Qinefer had once told her – where was that magnificent woman now? – of nursing Lone Wolf through a long night before Fehmarn, when he had wept like a child, his body quivering and shuddering in her arms. Today was the eve of Fehmarn. Viveka didn't much fancy casting herself in Qinefer's role: she didn't have the same open compassion that the black woman had. Only once had Viveka deliberately treated Lone Wolf as anything other than her younger brother – which was the way she generally thought of him – and it had been a decision which, on the very rare occasions she thought about it, she sometimes regretted. Petra, now ... No. Petra just wouldn't. Or, at least, she might, which could be worse: the experience would probably devastate Lone Wolf. Better not even to think about it. There was a surprise awaiting her. Standing in the middle of what would one day be a dining-hall but what was currently only a rectangle marked out by a single line of stones, was a slender, slightly retiring-looking figure. A young face turned towards her and beamed. "Banedon!" she cried, hopping over the wall and trotting up to him. "You're the very person I've been looking for." "I am?" The slender magician, his long blue robe with its dusting of silver star-shapes still seeming to fit him ill, looked astonished. "Have you been nurturing some secret passion for me all these years, woman?" "Don't be silly," Viveka said. "Oh. Sorry. I mean, I'm just about old enough to be your mother, dammit." Banedon was grinning at her. She was conscious of the fact that, without saying a word, he was managing to fluster her. Hmmm, she thought. You've been doing a bit of growing up since last I saw you, my lad. "Oh, shut up," she muttered, even though he was still silent. "What I was about to say was that this is the eve of Fehmarn, and ..."

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 8 "I know," he interrupted. "That's why I'm here. Because of Fehmarn. And Lone Wolf. I thought he might need us around him tonight." Really quite a lot of growing up. I wouldn't have credited you with having that much insight, Banedon. Aloud she said: "What do you propose?" "I was going to ask you. And Petra. Where is she?" "Oh, somewhere around." Breezily. "We could find her. But you must be tired from your journey." "Not so tired. I set out from Toran several weeks ago and came here the long way round, trying to take in as many hamlets and villages as I could. It's depressing how much the common folk of Sommerlund still need the attentions of me and the others of my Brotherhood. Sometimes I wish that all we magicians together could weave a single enormously complicated spell that would set all in the world to rights, but of course that's impossible. Yet." "You have plans?" she said, laughing. "Big plans, eh?" "No – yes." He changed his mind reluctantly. "The Guildmaster has set myself and a team of others to investigating the further ramifications of the second-level magic that Loi-Kymar taught me. That old man was a genius, you know, but there were still some things that his mind was too ... too confined to be able to perceive. It took the Dessi to open my own mind to those possibilities, and even so they could give me no more than a sort of sketch map of the first few miles along a very long road. There's still a whole continent of possibilities left waiting to be explored. Once we've done that – if indeed the task can be accomplished within my own lifetime – then, yes, just maybe we might be able to talk a bit more sensibly about grand, world-enveloping spells." There was an amiable silence between them for a few seconds. "Let's go find Petra," said Banedon abruptly. They found her chopping wood. Stripped to the waist, she was pouring with sweat. After she'd greeted Banedon with as much of a display of fondness as her natural reserve would permit, she explained that she, too, had been concerned about the fact that it was the eve of Fehmarn. "I'm glad you've come," she said crisply to the magician. "Together with Lone Wolf, we make up a good number: four. The right sort of number to keep the acolytes under control – well, enough under control that they don't do anything silly." "What are you talking about?" said Banedon. "I was thinking that, well, none of us have seen much of Lone Wolf these past few months except at mealtimes, Either he's

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 9 cooped up in his cell trying to interpret Sun Eagle's writings or he's out in the forests taking out all his pent-up aggression on the unfortunate wildlife, pretending that without his periodic bursts of carnage we'd never be able to keep the larder properly stocked. What the boy needs" – and Petra said this seemingly unconscious of the fact that she herself was barely older than Lone Wolf – "is a feast. A party. A binge. He'll curse us for it when he wakes up tomorrow morning, or afternoon, because his head'll feel like there's a full-scale war going on inside it, but he'll be too hungover to get his thoughts together enough to do any of his moping." She wiped the back of her hand across her sweating forehead, leaving a trail of red bark-dust. "It was just an idea," she added. "Yes, but was it a good one?" murmured Viveka. She kicked at one of the logs that Petra had cut. "Don't you think it might be tempting fate a bit? I mean, if the Darklords thought it was a good idea to attack here once at a Fehmarn, mightn't they have the same notion again? We'd be defenceless if we were all stretched out like death warmed up come the morning." Petra smiled. "Nonsense. We have the chance to grab a good educational opportunity, to teach some of the young people under our care an important lesson in their development as warriors." "What?" said Banedon. "The merits of retaining sobriety when all around you are losing theirs?" "No," said Petra. "I was thinking more in terms of making sure that, before you get plastered, there's a magician in the company who can remove all the ill effects for you before you drop off to sleep. Foresight, you see." Banedon burst out laughing. "And all in a good cause," he said a moment later. "Precisely," Petra agreed. Viveka didn't seem so amused. "There's one big obstacle you haven't thought about," she said glumly, looking up towards one of the narrow windows in the completed wing of the Monastery. "How do you propose to persuade Lone Wolf to drag himself away from his damn' book?" # They managed it, though. For the first time in a long while Lone Wolf seemed completely at his ease, roistering with the rest of them as they settled around a ridiculously large campfire. Viveka had constructed a spit and two stakes, and a team of the younger acolytes took it in turns to ensure that the carcase of a stag was kept rotating above the eager flames. Banedon, after a moment's

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 10 internal argument about the morality of what he was doing, created a spell that whisked from the cellars of his Brotherhood's headquarters in Toran a couple of cases of wine and a few bottles of inflammably potent Kaltese liquor. It was a feast to remember, which most of the acolytes wouldn't. As the night wore on, the younger members of the party sloped off to find resting-places wherever they could. Midnight came and went, and eventually only the four older people were left around the waning firelight. Of those four, only Viveka was still respectably sober. All evening she'd been going carefully. Magician or no magician, she'd decided beforehand that it would be wise if one of them kept a steady head – if only to be able to tell Banedon that the time was right for him to engineer his mind-clearing spell. Sober, perhaps, but not gloomy. On the contrary, she felt more elated than she could remember feeling since before she had first come here, since before Lackan had gone ... She didn't know why she'd suddenly thought of Lackan. She expected the memory to conjure up feelings of sorrow, and was surprised when it didn't. At some point during the past few years, without her noticing it, the grief that she'd thought would last forever must finally have died. Lone Wolf was sitting next to her, laughing loudly at some ribaldry Petra had come out with. He threw his arm around Viveka's shoulder, then turned and kissed her carelessly on the mouth. Thoughtfully she poured him another mugful of wine. Some anaesthetic was called for. She wasn't in the mood for clumsy advances. He was watching her face, and she could see that, despite his drunkenness, he'd read her thoughts. He looked momentarily hurt, and then he grinned muzzily. "Don't worry," he said softly. The other two were talking loudly and excitedly, and couldn't hear him. "I can still remember that ... Well, I can still remember, OK?" She smiled, and this time it was she who leaned forward to kiss his cheek, perfectly chastely. "What were you thinking about?" he said. "Oh, just about old things. Past things," she said. "Nothing that matters to me any longer." "Like what?" "Like they don't matter any longer. I just said." "Would they interest the rest of us." He gestured at Banedon and Petra. "It's a nice night to sit out here by the embers

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 11 and listen to a good story. Can you make a story out of your memories of things that `don't matter any longer' and tell it to us?" "I could, I suppose. If I so wished." "Then wish it. For the sake of your old friends. Tell us about" – he waved one arm vaguely in the air, as if he would at some specific topic just as soon as he could remember where he'd left it – "tell us about, I dunno, tell us about how you got the scar on your face. It makes you very lovely, you know," he added hastily. "And, besides, I never really notice it any longer." She giggled at his embarrassment and cocked her head on one side. She knew full well that the scar made her face much more attractive to men. Mysterious. Enough of them had said so, after all. "All right," she said at last. "You asked for it, so I'll tell you the story of how I came to have this trivial line across my cheek. And I'll tell you also of the memories that were going through my head, because they're really a part of the same story." Lone Wolf hushed Banedon and Petra, and without too much effort persuaded them to shut up and listen. And, settling herself comfortably, staring into the heart of the dying fire, Viveka began to speak.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 12 V I V E K A 'S T E L L I N G or How a Daughter of Noble Family Came to Possess a Scar one Karena came bounding across the stubbly grass towards her, his little grey tail erect, the shelly plates between his ears clattering with excitement. Grinning at the animal's enthusiasm, she knelt down, arms open, and felt him pushing his soft, downy forepaws up under her chin in welcome. "You silly idiot," Viveka said, beginning to giggle. "I've only been gone a couple of weeks. You'd think I'd been away a lifetime." She reached under his body and tickled the strip of pale fur that ran down his length between the stout articulated plates that covered the rest of him. She had returned to the encampment alone, unheralded, as always. There had been sentries posted, of course, but she'd slipped by them deftly, hoping to reach Lackan's tent – her tent – unobserved so that she could surprise him. Impossible now, of course: the noise that Karena was making would have roused a camp of complacent Durenese merchants, let alone a tribe of lean, alert Bonemen. Karena was still pushing insistently against the underside of her jaw. Those same velvety paws could, she knew, wreak immediate and considerable destruction when the strong, hooked claws were unsheathed. Reebdans were by no means the largest of the animals of the Cloeasian plains but in the wild they were certainly the most dangerous; even a tamed reebdan, like Karena, could swiftly become a veritable killing machine should it think that anyone was threatening its master. Or mistress. Lackan had given her Karena as a cub. The reebdan had been her favourite among all of the many nuptial gifts her husband had showered upon her. Now that the animal was two years old, just a little short of full-grown, he was hers entirely, more devoted to her than any human being could ever have been. She knew from Lackan that Karena was disconsolate in her absence, drifting aimlessly around the encampment in a futile search or sticking close to Lackan wherever he should go, as if somehow that brought Karena closer to Viveka herself.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 13 "Have you been good while I've been away?" she said stupidly. Reebdan's could understand only the simplest of words, and anyway had no vocal cords with which to respond. "You have? In that case, I've brought a present for you." She reached into the dusty pack at her shoulder and felt around among her clothes and provisions. The tusk was near the top. The rattling of Karena's plates grew even louder as she stood, looking at the smoothly curved cone of steel-hard ivory in her hand. Chuckling at his antics – he had lost one of his midlegs in a long-forgotten squabble with one of the beasts of the Maakenmire, and so was constantly in danger of falling over as he cavorted around her feet – she hefted the tusk a couple of times and then threw it underarm towards the open space between two of the tents. With a sound like frenzied castanets he pelted after it, his short, scaled legs blurring. He overran the prize and somersaulted beyond it, squirming back towards it through the dusty grass as he righted himself. Soon he was tearing at it with his yellow foreclaws. Even the ivory would succumb to the attack in the end, of course, but before then it would give the reebdan days of entertainment. Viveka, hands on her hips, laughed out loud as he played with her gift. "You spoil that creature," said a voice beside her. "He's supposed to be a warrior, not a lapmate." She grinned at Lackan, who clearly thought that she hadn't noticed his approach. Let him retain the illusion. It was a small deception – keeping him unaware of quite how finely her senses were tuned – one of many she practised daily in order to pander to his petty vanities. She supposed that he practised a few in return, but she hadn't yet guessed what they were. Secrets. Love-tokens. "You startled me," she lied. "I'm sorry. I'm glad to see you home safely." "Did you think I'd be in any trouble?" she said, pushing playfully against his broad dark chest. "Were you worried about your little woman?" He chuckled. "I was more worried for Mazrah's sake. Has he got any assassins left in that Guild of his?" She touched her fingers to his lips, as if rebuking him. "I was there on a peaceful mission," she said easily. "I had to kill a few of his people before he'd take me seriously, but after that everything was sweetness and light." "How many's a few?"

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 14 "Half a dozen – maybe more. I wasn't counting. The training of the Assassins' Guild isn't all it's cracked up to be, you know. They were very clumsy. Unsubtle. They wouldn't last very long out here." "And was your errand a profitable one?" He spoke casually, as if the matter were of no particular concern. It was a habit of the Bonemen to which it had taken Viveka some while to become accustomed. Except in crises, the tribesmen hid their emotions under a veneer of disinterest, as if frightened of what any display of emotion might reveal. "I think so. He's agreed to the deal I offered him." "You must be thirsty after your journey," Lackan said. He looked eastwards, back the way she had travelled. The land was almost level for hundreds of yards around their camp: coarse brown-green grass, kept short by the nocturnal herbivores of the plains. "Did you not bring Dellen back with you?" "You have little faith in me," she said, mock-punching his arm. She puckered her mouth and gave a long, piercing whistle. "Look behind you." He turned and gazed towards the easy slopes of the Bone Hills. From behind a scrubby bush Viveka's sand-coloured horse was emerging. "I circled the camp before I left him," she said. "You'll have to speak sternly to the guards." He put his arm around her shoulder, smiling. She took his hand in hers and kissed the pink creases at his knuckles. "I'll do that," he said. "About your mission – let's talk in the shade." A few of the tribesmen and -women glanced at them as Viveka and Lackan strolled towards their tent, exchanging inconsequentialities. She knew that they were all burning with curiosity to learn what she had to report, and that none of them would show the least sign of it. Instead they would carry on with whatever tasks they had been engaged in: preparing a meal – for the Sun was not far above the horizon now – or patching a tent-hide or sharpening a blade. Even the children were seemingly busy with trivial tasks or immersed in obscure games. Half an hour later, Viveka and Lackan were sitting cross-legged on either side of a refectory mat, looking at each other over a miniature landscape of crudely cast bronze goblets and platters heaped with fruits. Under the tanned hide of the tent the light was cool and grey except for a knife-shaped slash of brightness spreading across the rug-covered floor from the part-open entrance flap. Her nostrils pricked by the smoke from small incense cones

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 15 that glowed redly among the food and drink in front of her, Viveka gazed at the deep, liquid eyes of her husband. He was looking half-downwards, feigning interests in which of the fruits he should next select, ignoring the reason why the two of them were there. She smiled at the lines on his face, at the trim beard covering his upper lip and chin and at the broad plane of his forehead. His springy hair was black – startlingly so, so that his skin seemed almost pale by comparison – and his lips full. Now that they had come in out of the sunshine he had thrown a brightly patterned silk shawl over his shoulders; it was the emblem of his autarchy, and the fact that he had chosen to wear it even in front of Viveka was the sole sign he had given that they were to talk of anything other than trivia. In due course. When Lackan deemed that the time was right. Love him as she might, Viveka was fully aware that in affairs concerning the well-being of the Bonemen, Lackan would ignore her opinions and even her existence. The Bonemen, living in their scattered encampments along both sides of the low range known as the Bone Hills, had no use for councillors or wazirs. In the early days after she had come here, Viveka had found it hard to reconcile the words of love that Lackan might speak to her in one moment with his assumption of total supremacy in the next. At the moment he was still her husband. When his questioning moved away from subjects such as the fashions in Kadan and Kuchek his personality would shift imperceptibly and he would become her sovereign – and she no longer his wife but his subject. A servant-girl, dressed only in the knee-length white cotton breeches that was the standard garb, looked in on them to check that they required no further sustenance to be brought. Her shadow, in the late-afternoon sunlight, was a grossly elongated caricature of the human shape. Viveka saw her reflected in the fringes of Lackan's eyes as he suddenly looked up to gaze at his wife; she saw the girl smile fondly and retreat, taking her shadow with her. "So you haven't been cold at nights while I've been away?" said Viveka lightly, smiling. His forehead creased. "A strange question, my love," he murmured. She smoothed her open palm over the air to show that she was merely making small-talk. "Customs are different in the land where I came from," she said. "I had a lot of unlearning to do when I came here."

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 16 "Foreign customs are truly bizarre," he said, not fully understanding her. "My people would say the same of yours – ours," she said. "That is their most bizarre attribute of all," he replied, shrugging the discussion to an end. "Did you bring me a gift back from Kadan?" "I brought you myself." "I already know that. I can see for myself." He looked at her frankly. She brushed some hair away from her cheek. "You brought a gift for Karena, after all. Is it too much to hope that your husband might be loved half as dearly?" "Even had I tried, I would have been unable to find a gift to match my love for you," she said soberly. His face was stern. The possibility suddenly struck her that he might not be merely chaffing her. He had never struck her, despite the fact that it was perfectly within his powers as both husband and autarch to do so. She wondered if this was in large part because she had always taken care to give him no cause. And, if he should raise his hand to her, would she be able to control herself in time not to retaliate? "The gift of yourself is enough," he said simply, still staring at her face. She grew uneasy under his eyes. "I bring also the gift of a successful negotiation with Mazrah, my lord," she said, moving her speech into formal mode, with the additional unmusical clicks that the Bonemen's language demanded of foreigners only on such occasions. It was, of course, impertinent of her to broach the subject of her role as his emissary – that was the autarch's entitlement – but Lackan, even when he was her ruler rather than her husband, generally permitted her to disobey the minor niceties of etiquette in the privacy of their tent. "Yes." He shifted his shoulders, a momentary expression of displeasure touching his face. "Yes, it is time that we talked of that." two She had been only a child when first she'd seen the rearing sandstone walls and red tiled roofs of Kadan, Cloeasia's maritime capital. Her father, Lord Axim of Ryme, had been sent to the Zultanate of Cloeasia by Alin IV of Durenor as part of the regular series of diplomatic missions that the two nations conducted. Peace had reigned between the lands for a long time, yet it had never been an especially easy one, and constant efforts had to be exerted

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 17 by the rulers of both to ensure that it was maintained. Axim had become accustomed to such visits – each lasting only a week or two but draining him as if it had been much longer than that because of the strain of keeping a courteous smile permanently on his lips. It had been whim that had determined him, on this occasion, to bring with him his son Rupretch, aged 16, and, very much as an afterthought, the boy's sister, Viveka, two years younger. She, of course, with the self-centredness of youth, had assumed that Rupretch had been permitted to travel with the party only because her father wanted her to be there. She'd found the city enchanting. It was far smaller than Hammerdal, Durenor's capital, and smaller even than Ryme, her father's city, in which she had been raised. And Kadan was small, too, in a different sense: it was as if all its buildings and streets had been shrunk down to a fraction of their real sizes. Since she, too, had been small then, she'd felt as if the city's builders had considerately arranged things so that they were correctly proportioned for her. On several occasions her father had permitted her to go out and explore the streets, accompanied only by a half-dozen openly watchful soldiers from his guard, and she'd found that poking around among the shops, with their deliriously alien scents and the weird colours of the goods in them, had been like travelling into a world of fantasy, a place separated from reality by an invisible barrier. Ten days later they'd had to drag her back to the ship that would take them home. Her second visit to Kadan, a decade later, came about in quite different circumstances. Her father wasn't with her. There was no one with her. She had come not by sea but by land. She was no longer the daughter of a powerful lord. Although it was obvious from her appearance that she came from Durenor or possibly Sommerlund, she no longer looked to any nation as her homeland. Her clothing was always perfectly spick, yet it was not that of an aristocrat. She was 26 by then. She hadn't been in Ryme for a little over five years. Those five years had hardened her. The sweet aristocratic girl who had learned how to toy with mens' hearts had vanished. It was difficult to believe that she had once danced in the brightly lit halls of Hammerdal, or entertained young nobles by plucking demure melodies from the lute, or sewn staid tapestries for the walls of her room. Now in her eyes there was the look of someone who had seen too much, known too much – enjoyed too much, valued too little.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 18 She had slain more people than she could count since the dreadful night in Ryme when she'd killed her brother. Poor Rupretch. There had been no history of insanity in either his father's or his mother's lineage, and yet madness had grown inside the young man like a cancer. By the time he'd been 18 there was a light in his eyes that remained there even at times when he should have been downcast. He had taken to demanding that the guard set on his private chambers be doubled at nights, and that his door be barred and bolted more securely even than that of the castle's strongroom. Viveka had spoken to her father of her fears that Rupretch was becoming ... peculiar, but Axim had been unable to see any flaw in the behaviour of his heir, and had dismissed her concerns as girlish frets over nothing. Rupretch killed a kitchen-wench when he was 20. He slit the girl's throat at the dead of night and threw her corpse from his window, so that it was found the following morning on the rocks that led down from the castle wall to the waters of the Rymerift. Challenged by Axim himself – for none of the lord's military commanders felt they could tackle someone of so high a station – Rupretch claimed that the girl had been an assassin, sent by a rival princeling to despatch him and so leave Axim without a successor. The tale was obviously poppycock, but their father – to Viveka's incredulity – accepted it as if it were not only plausible but manifestly reasonable. And his warriors had, perforce, gone along with their lord. She began to feel as if she were the only sane person in a castle filled with the mad. Her father was cold to her now whenever she took her worries to him: she seemed to be a stranger in his eyes. Scions of the other houses of Durenor who came to the castle with the intention of wooing her and so gaining an alliance with the powerful House of Ryme no longer saw her beauty; instead they saw only the shield of her isolation, which they interpreted as aloofness. Their words of courtship left unspoken, they departed earlier than they intended. Soon the arrivals were few and far between. Below-stairs she became known as the Ice Maiden. When first she discovered her nickname she was infuriated, but almost immediately she saw that there was a measure of respect in it, too, and so she accepted it. At least she wasn't feared, the way that her brother had come to be. Other servants died at Rupretch's hand. More assassins from rival houses. When he was 22 and Viveka 20, Rupretch went to his father and told him that Viveka was plotting to do away with both himself and Axim so that she, despite her sex, could become the

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 19 new Lord of Ryme. Even Axim regarded this tale as a delusion, but he began to look oddly at Viveka, and to receive her only when there were others in his presence, as if he wondered if perhaps there might be some scrap of truth in Rupretch's suspicions after all. Then, two days before her twenty-first birthday, Rupretch tried to kill her. She was being dressed for dinner by one of her personal servants when he burst into her chambers, a pair of uneasy-looking soldiers at his back. "Brother – " she began, raising her right eyebrow as she stared at him. The maid scampered away from her side and out of the room. Viveka was suddenly conscious of the fact that her dress was not completely fastened; she pulled the cloth up over her naked shoulder. "You viper! You snake in a woman's scales!" Rupretch hissed. His lips were stretched thin and white, and drops of spittle danced from them as he spoke. "The little high-voiced echoes that speak to me from the walls have told me – hah! – of your treacherous plans!" At this the soldiers with him began to appear even more uncertain than before. One of them looked as if he wished to sheathe his sword and slip back out the open door, but his companion stayed him with a gesture. "What plans are these, Rupretch?" she said tiredly. "Am I going to invite the Darklords to invade Durenor? Or have I spirited up an army from the clouds, so than I can lay siege to Castle Ryme? Do tell me. I find the messages that the walls' echoes convey to me so ambiguous; I envy you the clarity with which they speak to you." "Don't weave your necromantic spells to ensnare me, jackal bitch!" her brother snapped. "I have no necromancy. No magic at all." She spread her hands, as if to show him their emptiness. "I see your invisible sword of air," he spat, "and the dagger you have forged from demons' breath. I know the poisons that you keep in your hidden pharmacopeia, the curses that you have learned to weave from your arcane lexicons. You think that you can deceive us all with your weapons of Evil, that they are hidden from us by your tapestries of Dark magic, and yet I, your brother, have discovered how to see through all your artifices!" "He's raving," she said, looking beyond his twisted face to the two soldiers. She wished that she could feel some pity for her brother, but pity for him had long ago shrivelled in her heart. "If

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 20 you have any fealty to the House of Ryme, then I beg you for my family's sake to take him away somewhere quiet until the physicians can soothe the fever of his mind." The two men shifted from foot to foot and glanced at each other, but for the moment they stood their ground. Rupretch was Axim's heir; Viveka was but Axim's daughter. "I have no magic," she said patiently to her brother, "and I know of no one throughout all Durenor who has. The weapons of malice you see in my empty hands are only dreams born from your own mind. The echoes in the walls of our castle tell you nothing except that ..." "Cease your lies and evasions! You have plotted our downfall with the forces of Darkness! You seek to lay destruction like a blanket over our nation!" "Why?" she said. "Why should I wish to do any such thing?" She saw thoughtfulness come into the face of one of the soldiers, the one who had earlier seemed eager to creep away. The other, too, was beginning to look perplexed. As the daughter of one of the mightiest and richest houses in the nation, Viveka's life lacked little that she might want. She was surely destined for the hand of another nobleman like her father, who would keep her in luxury for the rest of her days. As a woman, she would never be required to assume the heavy burdens of responsibility that a lordship would bring; instead she would be free to flit through her life like a beautiful, brightly coloured butterfly. Even Rupretch was briefly at a loss for words. His tongue seeming too large for his mouth, he tried to start a couple of sentences, but abandoned them before he had fully formed even their first words. "Why?" she repeated, pressing home her advantage. Rupretch's body slipped into a position that was halfway to a crouch. He seemed like a predatory animal about to spring. There was nothing of humanity left in his eyes, now – just a mindless, bestial hatred for her. When finally he succeeded in articulating something it was so quietly that neither she nor his attendants could make out the words. It was as if he had spoken just an empty stream of foul-smelling air. "I cannot hear you," she said coolly, her blue-green eyes fixed on his, searching for some sign of sentience. "Please repeat yourself, brother."

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 21 "Hellcat!" he snarled. "The seeds of Naar need no reason for their Evil! It is evident to all that you are accursèd – infected by the Darkness." "Evident to all?" She gazed agreeably at the two soldiers, both of whom were now looking irresolute. "Where are these witnesses who have become so convinced of my guilt? I cannot see them." Despite herself, she could feel a grin coming to her lips and could think of no way to stop it. Suddenly the whole business seemed so utterly risible. Here were she and the two guardsmen soberly listening to the surreal rantings of a madman, pretending to treat them as if they had any validity whatsoever – and all merely because he was the son of a lord. "Have you told our father of these latest suspicions of yours?" she said. "I seem to recall that he expressed a certain amount of ... ah, disbelief when last you vented your spleen to him in this way." "Your necromancy has befuddled his brains," said Rupretch. "How can he be expected to see clearly through the blindfold of spells you have knotted about his head?" "I told you, I don't know how to cast spells. And I know of no one who does, unless one of those vagabonds from Sommerlund's Brotherhood of the Crystal Star should have strayed within our borders. But even they cannot conjure malignant spells – not with their left-handed magic." He turned to look back over his shoulder at the soldiers' shifty faces. "I told you she would lie," he said. "Lying is the first of all the arts that Naar teaches to his slaves. Her lies are convicting her more finally than ever a mortal man could do." "If that is what you believe," she said, taking a step backwards so that her bottom was against the edge of her dressing-table, "then why not send one of these honest warriors to fetch our father? You will still have one soldier to defend you. I am unarmed, after all: surely you do not think that a weaponless girl could be a threat to yourself and another trained fighter?" "Your necro – " he began. "And if I do indeed have Dark magic at my command," she said, raising her hands to stifle his words, "then all the soldiers in the world will not be enough to protect you, so you might as well have just a singleton as a brace. Is that not so?" The more intelligent of the two warriors was smiling appreciatively. The other was clearly having difficulty following her logic.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 22 "I need not trouble my father," Rupretch barked, stressing the word "my". "You have disinherited me?" she said swiftly, chill in her voice. It was time for her to assume the mantle of the Ice Maiden, to freeze the fire from Rupretch's mind. "Have you chosen to inform my Lord Axim of this?" "Silence, witch!" He dragged the back of his sleeve across his mouth, wiping away the saliva. "I need not trouble my father because I am his son and you – you! – are only his daughter. By the right of my birth I have the authority alone to decide your fate!" "Indeed?" Behind her back she had taken hold of the silvered hand-mirror that had been given to her by some half-hearted suitor as a token of his lukewarm affections. She had never liked the object much: its handle had been wrought in the form of a host of crazily tangled animals and plants, and the edges were sharp. But so too was the point at the end of the handle. "And by the same token," she continued, "our father has the authority to judge you, too, in turn should you act over-rashly in your madness. I do think you'd better summon him – for your own sake." "She's right, you know," said one of the soldiers. To her surprise, it was the less shrewd of the two. "Shall I – ?" "Silence, traitor!" whipped Rupretch. "Have you let the witch ensorcell you?" The man retreated half a pace, looking both frightened and baffled. Rupretch turned back to glare at Viveka again. The strap of her white dress had slipped down from her shoulder again. Pressed against the dressing-table, she looked very vulnerable. "I have pity on you, sister!" The sarcasm hissed in Rupretch's voice. "More accurately, I have pity on whatever scraps of my sister's soul are still left alive inside the Evil that has taken over her form. But your guilt is plain for all to see." Viveka stiffened. She sensed that the crisis she had hoped to avoid was imminent. She clutched the head of the mirror firmly in her fingers, so that it was like a dagger in her hand. Rupretch was drawing a black dirk from his belt. She recognized it. It had come from her father's collection of war trophies that he had picked up over the years during his occasional forays abroad. The serrated edge told her that it was a Giak weapon, cast in the vile forges beneath the Darklords' fortress-city of Helgedad. Her eyes narrowed. This was the first time that it crossed her mind that all the accusations that Rupretch had been hurling at her, and which she had been dismissing as complete nonsense,

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 23 might possibly be at least in part applicable to her brother himself. Could it be feasible that those very forces of Naar he had been denouncing had indeed permeated as far from the Darklands as the supposed safety of Durenor? Had his own soul been taken over by the God of Evil? The thoughts whirled in her mind, and she forced them away. Time enough to think about them later – assuming she survived the next few minutes. For the moment she needed clarity, not clouds of speculation. "You choose to bring a weapon of the Darklords against me?" she said, watching the impact of her words on the soldiers. She was pleased to see that they both looked horrified. There was an indefinable lack of soul in Giak weapons that made even quite insensitive human beings reluctant to handle them. Yet Rupretch was gazing upon his sinister weapon with something that looked alarmingly like reverence. Now his eyes darted back up towards her. "I cannot tell if you are susceptible to mortal blades," he said in a thin tone. "Perhaps your necromancy can turn away honest steel. The only sure way to injure Evil is to attack it with its like." Viveka shivered. There was a certain sort of tenuous logic in what her brother said. She could see from the way that the stupider guard's shoulders moved that that logic had been enough to banish the doubts that had been growing in him. Of the other she could not be sure, either way. She gripped her makeshift dagger even more tightly, wondering if the embellishments around the frame of the mirror were breaking the skin of her hand. "It gives me no joy to pronounce you guilty as ch-charged," said Rupretch very quietly. Impatiently he swallowed, trying to bring his tongue and lips back under his full control before he spoke again: "And even less to state and exact the penalty, which surely cannot be anything other than death!" "Our father has permitted you to slaughter his servants," she said, pushing down her terror, trying to sound as collected as if they were discussing the weather or the price of cloth. "I do not think he will be as agreeable to your crazed excuses should you go to him and tell him that you have served his only daughter likewise?" "Do you sincerely think that he'll care?" said Rupretch, his strangely bright eyes watching her face intently. "Haven't you realized that any love he ever had for Viveka has long since dissipated? Your spells, witch, may have kept him from consciously

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 24 recognizing that Evil has ousted her soul, but underneath he has been aware for years that his daughter is already lost to him." Now there was something colder even than her terror inside her. She remembered afresh the easy fondness that Axim had once displayed for her, and its replacement by aloofness and ... fear. Yes, that was it. Fear. Ever since the first time that Rupretch had laid his ridiculous accusations before Axim, her father's affection had been diluted by fear until now there was little of that old love left. Her father had grown frightened of her. And, whether or not he believed one word of whatever it was that Rupretch might tell him, it was possible that he might be pleased enough to see the source of his fear removed. Which meant his daughter removed. Herself. Never before in her life had the Ice Maiden felt so alone. She tried to laugh it off, but even she could hear the dissonance in the sound. "I speak truth, do I not?" said Rupretch. "You speak insanity!" she replied tartly. "No." Once again they had to strain to hear his almost silent words. "Truth. And you cannot deny it." And then he was in sudden motion, darting forwards across the few yards of faded rug that had been between them, the Giak knife raised high above his shoulder. The more intelligent of the two warriors moved reflexively to try to stop his master – but too late, too late. A fold in the rug caught Rupretch's toe and he staggered, arms flailing the air as he tried to regain his balance. His forward momentum carried him uncontrollably towards her. He slammed against the front of her body, so that his weight arched her spine backwards. The pain made her scream. The pain and the horror. Rupretch had run straight onto the mirror-handle that she had brought up in front of her chest. She had meant only to warn him off, to show him that she was not quite as weaponless as he had imagined, to stall for time until one or other of his attendants gathered the wit to restrain the madman. She had meant to ... Whatever she had meant, the deed was done. There was Rupretch's spittle on her face, his hot breath against her cheek. His eyes were so close in front of her own that her vision of them was out of focus, but even so she could see the complete bewilderment suddenly come to them. Then he opened his mouth as if to give out one last anguished scream, and suddenly the liquid spattering her face wasn't spittle any more.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 25 She shoved his body away from hers in disgust. It collapsed like a marionette whose strings have been cut, its limbs sprawling haphazardly across the worn carpet. She glanced down at it for just a moment, aghast at what she had done. Almost immediately her mind was pervaded by a chilly efficiency. Without thinking, she stilled the pounding of her heart and squeezed all her fears out of her mind. She felt as if some mind far more disciplined than her own had invaded her, taking control of her so that she wouldn't just collapse beside her brother's corpse and give ear-splitting vent to her grief and terror. She looked up and saw that both the soldiers were briefly frozen. The Giak weapon had fallen from Rupretch's nerveless fingers, and in a single movement she stooped and scooped it up. A tiny part of her noticed that she felt none of the revulsion at its cold touch that she might have anticipated; the rest of her regarded it as nothing more than a weapon – a weapon that might just save her life for long enough that she could escape Castle Ryme. There was no thought in her that she might bide here any longer, that the two hapless warriors would bear witness that she spoke truth to her father when she told him that Rupretch had been insane, had attacked her – that she had killed him only through inadvertence. Axim had been infatuated with his only son – must have been, to believe his lame explanations for the crimes he had committed – and Rupretch had indeed been speaking the truth when he had said that for years her father had shown little love for her. Two people had died in this room. One was Rupretch, the ornamented mirror jutting from his chest like some crazy attempt at funereal decoration. The other was Milady Viveka, the daughter of the Lord of Ryme. Whatever happened to Viveka from now on, that flutter-headed aristocratic belle was gone forever. The soldiers were beginning to recover their senses – even had they not been, they were blocking the doorway. But behind her there was the open window, and beneath it a drop of only about twenty feet onto the steeply sloping bank that led up to this aspect of the castle. Of course, the chances of her coming to grief in the darkness – breaking an ankle or even a leg – were high, but they were more palatable than the prospects awaiting her if she chose to stay here. Without allowing herself too much time for thought about the consequences, she strode to the window and straddled the sill. Curse the fact that she'd chosen such an effeminate, impractical dress to wear for dinner that night! She looked back nervously into her empty chamber and saw that the stupider soldier was making

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 26 to pursue her, but that his more intelligent colleague had hold of his sleeve and was keeping him back. Her ally saw her white, frightened face and winked at her. "Get a move on, lassie!" he shouted. "I can't hold him much longer! Get out of here!" "I thank you," she found herself saying formally. The incongruity startled her. She swung her other leg over the sill and, pushing herself out from the wall with the heels of her hands, let herself drop away into the ocean of darkness. three Now, sitting in Lackan's tent, facing the reassuring bulk of her husband's form, she shouldered away the bitter memories. It had been a long time since she'd allowed herself to dwell on that night when she'd severed the last ties with her father. She had still never settled in her own mind the question as to whether or no Rupretch might have been trapped in the spells of some right-handed sorcerer – or even, although the thought made her shudder, indeed touched by something of Naar's soul itself. Perhaps ... Vexed with herself, she stopped the flow of her speculation. Lackan, she could see, had been watching her face carefully all this time – he must have seen the memories chasing each other across her features. She wondered how long it had been since she'd lapsed into her reverie. Only seconds, she thought. Only seconds, she hoped ... Her autarch was not always patient. "Mazrah recognizes our claim to the plains that lie to the west of the main road between Lujar and Vakar, and to all of the Bone Hills," she began. "A small concession," said Lackan drily, "considering that we control these lands already. They are ours by right, as well as in fact." "Yes," she said urgently. "But Mazrah's concession is that he will ensure that the Zultan will henceforth recognize not only the fact but also the right." "What of the villages?" There were only a few villages scattered across the plains, and in the past the Bonemen had from time to time fallen upon them, plundered their grain and their livestock before putting them to the sword and the torch. The Zultan had never shown any inclination to retaliate for the massacres, or to prevent them recurring. Since Lackan had become autarch such raids had stopped, but there was no reason to believe that his successor would be as benign. For years now

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 27 Lackan had been hoping that the Zultan in far-off Kadan would cede the villages into the Bonemen's control, so that in future there would be no need for the bloodshed: the tribesmen would hardly wish to plunder what was already their own. It was typical of the autarch that it had never crossed his mind that the villagers might have any opinions on the matter. "The villages may become ours – but not yet," Viveka said. A frown of disappointment came to Lackan's mouth. "Why the procrastination?" he said. "The Zultan has troubles of his own. There are those in Kadan – and more especially in Kuchek – who would be glad to see an end of his line. Mazrah and his assassins have taken steps" – without faltering in her speech, she drew her finger expressively across her windpipe to demonstrate her point – "to ensure that the rebel elements are never able to become cohesive enough to mount anything like an uprising, but all that could change if they were given a cause to rally round. If the Zultan were seen to be abandoning the villages – no matter how worthless to him they might in fact be – that might suffice to spark off a full-scale revolt. Mazrah would not wish to see that happen?" "Mazrah is so loyal to his Zultan, then?" said Lackan sardonically. "No. Mazrah despises his ruler, as I'm sure you must know, my lord." She sipped some fruit-juice from her goblet. "He regards him as a weak and malleable dodderer – a poltroon. And that is exactly why Mazrah wishes him to remain securely on his throne for as long as he should live." "So that Mazrah may rule Cloeasia through him?" "That is perfectly correct." Chin in hand, Lackan mused for a few moments, his eyes distant. Viveka took the opportunity to eat some of the nuts baked in honey that had been set out in one of the shallow dishes on the refectory rug. "And what of access to the sea?" the autarch said suddenly. "We may use the port at Lujar." "Lujar!" He snorted. "Lujar is hardly a port. It's a collection of broken-down fishing vessels and half a dozen mooring rings!" "He feels that that would be sufficient for our scant needs," said Viveka patiently. "I did not, of course, explain to him that those needs were likely to increase in the coming years." "Of course not. If I had thought you were such a fool as to do that, I'd have sent someone else in your stead." "Who might have been dead by now," said Viveka swiftly, then cut short her impertinence. Lackan knew that she was by far

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 28 the best of the killers in his tribes of killers. What he didn't know – because she kept it concealed from him – was quite how big the gulf was between her skills and those of the others. Mazrah's assassins had been childishly clumsy and lumbering in comparison with herself, but others of the Bonemen might have found them a more serious proposition. Lackan seemed not to have noticed her remark. She offered thanks to the deity whom she felt ought to exist, even though she was convinced none did. "But there is a bay adjacent to the one on which Lujar perches," she added hastily, "which could easily be developed to deal with more substantial craft. Even now it would require only a little work to make it as fit for our purposes as Lujar itself. The cliffs leading down to it are steeper, but not so steep that a stairway could not be cut down them, and the waters close to shore are deeper than they are in Lujar Bay. I proposed to Mazrah that the day might come when Lujar would no longer be sufficient for our requirements, and that we might wish to use this cove. He obviously thought that I was dreaming, for he gave his permission – the Zultan's permission – with a wave of his hand." "You did well," said Lackan, but there was still dissatisfaction in his face. Viveka wondered if he was still itching away about the fact that the villages had not been immediately granted to him. She had expected more of a protest when she had explained Mazrah's wish for delay to him ... "Do you feel that you can trust this man?" he said. "Not in the slightest," she replied with a dismissive movement of her arm. "If he thought it would serve his ends to exterminate his, he would do so without a moment's pause or compunction. It is our task to ensure that he will always perceive that cooperating with him is to his profit." "He has given us what to him must seem a lot," said Lackan. "Surely he must have made some supplications in return." "Yes. Of course. We are to stay completely clear of Kadan and Kuchek." "We are not people of the cities anyway," said Lackan, puzzled. "I can see no reason for any of us ever to wish to go to those places, unless to treat with Mazrah, as you have been doing. What was the reason for his request?" "It was not a request," she said cautiously, "but a condition upon which all else depended." "It seems a pitifully small condition." "He has his reasons, which I shall describe to you, if that is the wish of my lord." Again she thanked her nonexistent deity, this

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 29 time that Lackan had not responded angrily to the fact that Mazrah was demanding rather than requesting their compliance. The autarch was unused to being told what to do. Now he was nodding to her, indicating that she should continue. "The Zultan is no longer a young man," she began. "He may live another decade, perhaps longer, but the end of his life is approaching. His children are weak and disliked by both the palace and the people. The death of the Zultan is certain, therefore, to be marked by strife over the succession. Mazrah believes that, should all of his schemes work out according to their design, he will be able to install his chosen sycophant on the throne. However, those schemes are surrounded by imponderables, to whose number he has no wish to add. It is an essential part of his plans that, during the interregnum, his Assassins' Guild should continue to function unimpeded within the cities. The presence there of numbers of your tribesman, Lackan, would constitute – in Mazrah's eyes – an additional imponderable, in that he respects your people as having the skills and potential to challenge his assassins." "But why should we ever wish to?" said Lackan hotly. "The man is talking –" "He is, my lord, talking good sense, in this instance," said Viveka carefully, picking up a sugared biscuit and beginning to crumble it between her fingers, hoping that the action would defuse Lackan's wrath. The stratagem seemed to succeed, for the autarch eased back from the refectory rug and, although the anger was now clear on his face, he gestured to her that she should proceed. "Mazrah agrees with you," she said, replacing the remains of the biscuit on the plate. "He can see no reason at all why we should wish to interfere with the doings of the city or the clownish gunsels of his Guild, yet at the same time he wishes to eliminate any uncertainty on the matter. Put yourself in his place, my lord. How can he tell that in ten, fifteen, twenty or however many years it might not suit your interests to counter his measures to bring the craven of his choice to the throne? Or even that your objectives, quite unrelated to anything he might be doing, might in some way mess up the operations of his people? It is the uncertainty that concerns him – not any belief that you or your successor might wish to thwart him." Lackan rubbed his knuckles against his forehead. "I thank you, Viveka," he said. "You present his case well. Since I have no wish to send people to Kadan or Kuchek, and

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 30 since I cannot conceive of any reason why any of them might choose to go to such cesspits of their own accord, it is an easy matter for me to give Mazrah my word on this." He paused. "And did the man have any other ... requests?" "None," she said. "His attitude is that the lands you wish to have as yours by right are at best a nuisance to him. He will be glad to have them off his hands, and off his mind." "I am inclined," said the autarch, "to agree to his conditions, but I wish to think on them for a while. On my own except for the speakers in my soul." "I believe that I should go and spend some time with Karena," said Viveka, pulling herself to her feet. "You're sure," said Lackan, looking up at her, "that he has no inkling of what we have discovered on the far side of the Bone Hills?" "He is a clever man," she said, "and more subtle than he seems, but yes, I'm sure that he hasn't the faintest suspicion." She turned to go. She was just parting the tent's leathery flap when her husband called to her. "Viveka! Is there not one thing in all this that puzzles you?" "Many things puzzle me each day, my lord. But I can see no cause for alarm in Mazrah's concessions or conditions." "You say that he is a clever men, and it is clear that he thinks far ahead – far enough to wish to make sure that our people cannot even accidentally upset the schemes he wishes to set in place for decades hence. And yet surely he has failed completely to settle the uncertainty you have spoken of." "In what way, my lord? He is no man of honour, but he recognizes that you are one. He trusts your word – that if you give your promise you will adhere to it, and so will all of the Bonemen." "But he is still leaving the matter partly to chance. If I were him," Lackan mused, "and were as worried as he evidently is, I would act now to obviate all possibility of future trouble. As you say, the plains and mountains are a long way from the cities – they are irrelevant to him. Equally irrelevant to him and to the city-dwellers are the people of those plains and mountains, are they not?" "What are you trying to say?" she said, wrinkling her nose in pretended perplexity. What he was trying to say was dawning swiftly on her. "If I were him," said Lackan tersely, "I'd simply exterminate us. Now."

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 31 "I –" she began, but the autarch was holding up his arm to dismiss her so that he could be alone with his thoughts. This time the dismissal was explicit – and final. four To her surprise she found the tusk abandoned. For a second she had the cold fear that something might have happened to her reebdan – that perhaps, in his enthusiasm, he'd irritated one of the tribesmen of the encampment just that little too much – but then she heard a commotion from somewhere near the centre of the camp. To judge from the high-pitched exhortative yells of children's voices, her pet had been distracted by a rat, which he was now pursuing for the kill. She grinned, and hunkered down on the dusty grass, looking at her hands as the fingers flexed and twined, habitually practising the subtle movements of her lethal craft. The deepening red light of the evening seemed to stain her hands with the memory of bloodshed. She hoped that Karena was having fun. But a part of her also hoped that the rat somehow escaped death. The few rats ever found among the Bonemen – who were a fastidiously tidy people – caused very little nuisance, and possibly did the humans a service by clearing out smaller and more insidious pests. Besides, rats had helped to be where she was today. Well, not rats exactly. Noodnics. Big rats. Sort of. To her astonishment she'd survived the drop from her castle window unscathed, rolling as she landed so that she ended up in a winded bundle of mud-stained white dress and flesh some twenty or thirty yards down-slope from the wall. The sound of her strained gasping was so loud in her ears that she was convinced it must rouse the whole of Ryme. The pain in her belly, where one of her knees must have come up with pile-driving force as she landed, was like a red-hot brick: it was the type of agony that seems set to endure forever. But at last it ebbed. And still there were no sounds of consternation from the black mass of the castle above her. The more intelligent soldier must have succeeded in persuading his fellow that they should exercise some patience before raising the general alarm. Silently she moved her lips in a few words of thanks to him.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 32 As soon as she felt able, she gathered herself to her feet, ripping off extraneous pieces of cloth from her dress and throwing them into the neatly trimmed bushes of her father's gardens. The outside of Castle Ryme was little guarded – Durenor was, overall, at this stage in its history a relatively tranquil kingdom, despite the constant rivalries between its princelings – but nevertheless she might stumble over one of the occasional patrols that drifted through the grounds at night, just in case they found a madman. Well, by all accounts, she was a madwoman – exactly the sort of person that they were supposed to be keeping an eye open for. Well, her current appearance wasn't going to improve her chances of claiming otherwise – the sooner she got some more sensible clothing the better. She looked up once again at the blackness of the castle wall, pocked with bright rectangles where lamps burned. There was no chance of going back in there in search of something to wear. Grimly she turned away and, slipping through the shrubbery, found herself a length of broken branch. Earlier she'd hoped that she'd be in luck and that there were no patrols out; now she was hoping that good fortune would send a patrol her way. Half an hour later there was an unconscious trooper in the undergrowth and Viveka was transformed into a private of the Army of the Lord of Ryme – a rather effeminate-seeming private wearing a uniform a couple of sizes too big for him, and with hair that was unusually long for an army man, but the night was now quite dark, the Moon not yet above the horizon, and she thought that she should pass as a soldier so long as no one chose to examine her more than cursorily. She shrugged her shoulders. There was nothing she could do to improve her appearance any further. The sword at her side felt unbalancing and cumbersome as she loped towards the main gate of the castle's estates. The side gates were little used, but there was a sentry at each of them to scrutinize the few nocturnal travellers who might pass that way. She would be better off making her exit through the busier main gate, where her presence was less likely to be remarked upon. Not long after that, she was leaving the lights of Ryme behind her and cutting across open countryside, keeping a course such that the reassuring sound of the Rymerift's waters was ever off to her left. When the fields ended she soon found herself in untamed forest. Within twenty minutes her limbs seemed to have been bruised all over from collisions and her face was a mass of scratches where it had been lashed by thin branches. The hoot of an owl overhead terrified her, and she stumbled to a halt in a natural clearing, putting her face in her hands and weeping.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 33 The impact of what she had done hit her with devastating force. There was no possibility of any form of reconciliation between herself and her old life, now. The Milady Viveka was dead. As far as she was concerned, her stern old father and the servants of his castle and the courtiers who surrounded him – they were all dead, too. She must learn to convince herself that they had never existed – that she was a new-born person, somehow brought into the world already full-grown. Toppling to her knees, her eyes still buried in her hands, she concentrated on blanking out her past, deliberately forgetting it. The branches of the trees around her, touched with silver by the light of the now-risen Moon, rustled and whispered together as if they were encouraging her efforts. She focused all of her attention on their sound – similar to but somehow much smaller than the more distant noise of the Rymerift's mighty current – and slowly forced all of her consciousness to ebb out of the past and into the present. Viveka lowered herself blindly onto the glade's wiry grass and curled her body up, clasping her knees to her chest, her eyelids tightly shut, the moonlight picking up a single tear that squeezed from the corner of one eye. A blank and dreamless sleep came. When morning woke her she felt as if the inside of her body had been thoroughly cleansed. The outside of her body felt rather different, of course, but it wasn't long before she found a stream and changed that. The Sun was still low in the sky as she made her way along the tracks that animals had cleared among the undergrowth. There was no sign that any human being had ever passed here before her. At one point she was surprised to find that she was singing a silly little folk-song that had been briefly popular among retainers and courtiers alike in Castle Ryme the previous summer. She stopped the song abruptly, angry with herself: surely it was immoral to be feeling such light-hearted gaiety the morning after she had killed her brother? But then she relaxed. Those dreadful events seemed alienated from her now, as if they had happened a long time ago and to somebody else; and that was exactly the way it should be. She picked up the song where she had left off, and then came to a stanza that reminded her why she hadn't, in her previous life, sung it in public. Then she roared with laughter. There was no one to hear her here. And, even had there been, who would raise an eyebrow at the immodesty of a soldier? At the top of her voice, she vigorously recounted the exploits of the

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 34 mercenary, the storgh, the Vassagonian princess, the three bags of Gold Crowns, the itikar, the camel and the packet of smelling salts. It was only as the last notes were dying away among the scandalized trees that her mood sobered. Her clothing had been a sufficient disguise to enable her to escape from Ryme, but out here in the countryside it was a liability: the first guess of anyone who saw her would be that she was a deserter from the army. Worse, on discovering that she was a woman, they might even think that she had stolen the uniform from one of the regular soldiers, perhaps knocking him unconscious in order to do so. In this latter supposition they'd be entirely correct, of course, although perhaps not in quite the simplistic way that they might think. And in either eventuality, before they thought to check back with the military at Ryme, they might choose to string her up as an example. The justice in Durenor, away from the cities, was usually honest, but it was also rough and rapid. She cut inland, away from the Rymerift and deeper into the woodland. Late that afternoon she was rewarded by coming across a remote farmstead, not far from the forest's edge. As she had been hoping all day there might be, there was a string of laundry hung out to dry. There seemed to be no one around: presumably everyone was out working in the fields, adults and children alike. A limping old dog came slowly towards her, but its tail was wagging and its tongue was lolling out in friendly greeting; after she had gingerly scratched behind its ears, it pattered amiably after her, watching with interest as she selected a rust-coloured tunic, jacket and breeches from the line. The clothes seemed to be quite new – most of the others sported patches on top of patches – and she felt a pang of guilt that the misery her theft would cause some poor farmer. Nevertheless, survival was all ... She left her ripped uniform – but not the sword, which she had now come to regard as a sort of talisman – in a shallow grave at the foot of a tall oak tree and, through deepening twilight, put as much distance between herself and the farm as possible before the darkness became complete. Several days later, having hitched a lift on a merchant's caravan to Hammerdal and then walked back out of the city, she was close to the entrance of Tarnalin, the greatest of the three vast tunnels that had been driven through the Hammerdal Mountains thousands of years before, during the Age of the Black Moon. The surviving records of those long-ago times were few and incomplete, and Viveka had rarely paid much attention to the attempts of her tutors to inculcate in her the details of her country's history – the

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 35 bride of a lordling would scarce need scholarship, after all! – but she dimly remembered that the culture that had once dwelt in these parts had developed technologies beyond any that were extant in Northern Magnamund today. Using their great earth-shifting engines, they had punched these three tunnels right through the heart of the Hammerdals in order to link Durenor's capital with the surrounding countryside, a feat of engineering that dwarfed anything that had been undertaken in Durenor before or since. Even the upkeep of Tarnalin strained the technological resources of Durenor today. Lips pursed, she watched the tunnel's entrance from the shelter of a broken-down dyke. The traffic into and out of Tarnalin's maw was steady rather than heavy. There were sentries on either side of the entrance, waving down wagons and carts and horse-riders and giving them a perfunctory inspection before passing them on their way. The examination given to vehicles emerging from the tunnel was far more rigorous, she noted. The reason for the greater care was obvious. The far end of Tarnalin opened out onto the main road leading to the lawless Wildlands; while Durenor depended on the imports and exports travelling along that road and through the tunnel, there was an unhealthy traffic in illegitimate goods brought into the country alongside the more legitimate ones. Addictive potions and herbs, weapons, felons ... It was an impossible hope that they could all be stopped, but the vigilance of the sentries could at least discourage much of the illicit trade. Anything going in the opposite direction was the Wildlands' problem, not Durenor's. She noticed that, among the traffic on the road beneath her, there was no one on foot. This surprised her. Even though the tunnel was many miles long, the poorer people of Durenor were accustomed to walking great distances. It was curious that there was not at least the occasional pedestrian among the flow of wagons and horses. Perhaps it was only happenstance that there were none at the moment. Still, it was unfortunate as far as she was concerned. Although, during her brief stay in Hammerdal, she had heard nothing to suggest that the news from Ryme had yet reached the city – assuming that the citizens of Hammerdal would be remotely interested in what had ocurred in a faraway part of the land – she nevertheless had no desire to make herself obtrusive in any way. A solitary woman, travelling on foot: a sentry would be certain to remember having seen her. Not for the first time, she cursed the fact that fate had favoured her appearance. In the daylight, or in

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 36 the bright torchlight of Tarnalin's interior, any attempt she might make to disguise herself as a boy would be futile. Equally, she had little confidence in her ability to disguise her age: whatever she did to her face, it would still be memorable. She retreated to the trees and cut around through them until she found a place, about a mile away from the tunnel, where they came close to the road. Along this she tracked, still keeping to the trees wherever possible, until she found what she had been seeking: a ford through some minor river. Here, though the water was only a couple of feet deep, the wheeled vehicles and even the horsemen inevitably slowed down. Not long afterwards a solitary wagon came by, laden with baskets of fruit. Under cover of the splashing of the horses' hooves, she pulled herself aboard its rear easily enough, and buried herself among the baskets and the tart citric aromas. As she had hoped, the inspection of the wagon's contents at the entrance to Tarnalin was merely superficial. The sentries exchanged a few cheerful words with the wagon's drivers – an elderly wholesale fruiterer and his son, as far as she could gather – and then the trundling of the wagon's wheels took on a new timbre as they moved into the tunnel itself. The lighting, supplied by torches set along the walls every thirty or forty feet, was adequate but not good. A hundred feet above her the tunnel's roof was obscure. What she hadn't expected was the din: it seemed as if every slightest noise was picked up by the tunnel's walls and channelled in echoes to form a river of confused sounds, the cries of the drivers and the whinnies of the horses mixing in with the rumble of countless wheels. Although she could hear, only a few feet away from her head, the tradesman and his son shouting to each other over the racket, she couldn't make out any of the words, nor even if the exchanges were pleasant or quarrelsome. It was because of the noise that she didn't hear the buzzing of the wasp. The first that she realized of the insect's presence was when she saw it crawling along the skin of a punctured cantaloupe not a foot from her face. Its evil-looking little yellow-and-black body swayed from side to side as it moved forward jerkily, sometimes, with a blur of wings, lifting itself a fraction of an inch away from the sticky surface for a few moments before settling back again, its head bobbing industriously up and down. She could feel her lips drawing back from her teeth as she stared at the insect. Wasps had always terrified her, in the same way that other people were petrified of spiders, or mice, or ...

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 37 The wagon bounced and the baskets of fruit settled into a new configuration. The broken cantaloupe fell a few inches towards her. Bringing the wasp with it. She could hear the buzz of its wings now – in fact, she could hear nothing else. Tarnalin's commotion, which had seemed almost deafening to her only a few minutes before, was now only a faint background susurration at the fringes of her hearing. Her instincts were telling her to put as much distance between herself and the insect as she could, but she found herself totally unable to move, her muscles locked into an abject paralysis. She couldn't even turn her gaze away from the little yellow-and-black shape, blurred now because of its closeness, that filled her vision. And then, with a little extra flurry of whining sound, it was on her nose. She could feel the tickling of its tiny legs, the draught of its wings. She wanted to scream, but the muscles of her jaw kept her mouth clamped shut. Viveka frantically tried to send psychic messages to the wasp, pleading with it that it should leave her alone, conjuring up pictures of waspy paradises that might be found on other wagons, threatening it with slow swatting, using the sort of logical argument that might appeal to an insect mind ... It stung her nose. The pain filled the whole world with clouds of boiling red steam. She was falling helplessly down towards the caldera of an erupting volcano. The walls of Tarnalin had been engulfed by flames, so that all within the tunnel would be incinerated instantly. She was being sucked into the gaping mouth of a fiery dragon ... As the pain and the colours seeped away from her, she herad herself screaming at last. The wasp was dead, a small mess of yellow and black and green and red in her palm. Through the pain of her nose she could feel a coarser throbbing, and inferred that she must have instinctively slapped herself hard in the face to kill the creature. Through streaming eyes she looked at her hand stupidly. Such a very tiny scrap of life to have caused her such agony. The fruit-wagon was slowing and pulling over towards the nearside tunnel wall. It took her a few moments to realize this, and when she did she wasn't surprised. In her pain she must have been making a racket remarkable even by the standards of Tarnalin. Sitting up, she looked around her and saw that she must also have been thrashing her limbs wildly, for the fruit all around her was

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 38 crushed and a trail of apples, pears and other pieces that she didn't recognize littered the tunnel's floor to the rear. "Something's up, lad," she heard the older man's voice say behind her. "Happen we've got a stowaway." "Happen we have, dad," said the other. The wagon stopped; she could have sworn she heard the two of them thinking the situation through. "Have ye got the Bor gun, lad?" said the father after a long pause. "Happen I have, dad." "Then go and hit stowaway on head with it, lad." "Aye, dad." "Hard, lad." "How hard, dad?" "Just hard, lad." Viveka didn't wait to hear any more. Squelching and floundering through the fruit, she half-crawled, half-swam until she was able to haul herself over the wagon's rear. She dropped down into a squat on the smooth stone behind it and then, as a temporary measure, shuffled right beneath it. Looking up ahead, she could see the younger man's booted feet land with an uncoordinated thump on the tunnel floor. Glancing to her right, she saw that there was a jagged opening in the tunnel wall. All she could glimpse through it was darkness, but whatever the darkness held must surely be better than having her skull pulverized by some agricultural heavyweight. Her back scraping against the cart's splintery underside, she moved in an uncomfortable sideways crouch towards the fissure. Luckily the youth was going around the outside of the wagon, so that she was hidden from him by the bulk of the vehicle. She watched his feet come to a halt and then begin to scuff one over the other as he stood up on tiptoe to rummage among the wagon's disordered contents. "Dad!" "Ay, lad." "No one here, dad." "Oh, lad. Are ya sure?" "Ay, I'm sure, dad. Happen they've bu –" She reversed into the opening, still bent double, holding the scabbard of her sword steady in one hand so that it couldn't trip her up. A couple of yards back into the darkness her bottom bumped into a rough stone obstruction and she paused, warily straightening herself up. Through the breach through which she'd just come she could see the side of the wagon and, beyond it, the

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 39 red-faced youth, who was still looking in perplexity among the wrecked fruits. The effect was as if she were looking at a brightly illuminated miniature, executed in perfect detail by a master artist. Oddly, she found herself in near-silence, as if the sides of the shaft in which she was now standing were cutting off not only the light but also the din of Tarnalin. Finally the fruiterer's son gave up. She could see him shrugging his shoulders. A look of resignation crossed his face as he hefted the battered firing-piece in his hand one last time, and then he turned and disappeared from the frame of her vision. Perhaps a couple of minutes later the wagon, too, slowly creaked out of view. Viveka sighed with relief. Until the last trace of the wagon's rear had vanished she hadn't been quite able to believe that the two traders hadn't realized where she'd hidden. She wished that more light would come in from the tunnel so that she could see something of her surroundings. Her nose was telling her that the space she was in wasn't just a recess: there were damp smells of earth and water, and also the bracing smell of an open area. Somewhere there must be a connection with a far greater chamber. Nervously she turned and ran her hands over the face of the wall that had obstructed her retreat into the aperture. She found no gaps in it, but was intrigued to discover that, though their edges were soft and crumbling, it was constructed from regularly shaped rectangular blocks – somehow she'd expected to find unworked rock. For reasons best known to themselves, the original builders of Tarnalin must have decided to give the tunnel a double layer of wall. She worked along to her left, but was stopped by the gritty side of the orifice; the same happened when she explored towards the right. Perplexed, she stood there uncertainly in the gloom, sucking her lower lip. That was when the clawed hand touched her on the shoulder. She screamed, cursed herself for drawing attention to herself, realized that none of the travellers along Tarnalin could have heard her, and screamed again. Above her there was a concerned twittering noise. Her face stretched back from her jaw, she turned her head to look at the thing on her shoulder. In the muted light she could see that it had three long talons wrapping round onto her shoulderblade and a stubbier one digging into the front of the joint, straining the flesh at the top of the swell of her breast. Above the scaly hand was a furred wrist; above the band of hair there was the sleeve of a child's jacket with an ornate metal button at the cuff.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 40 She opened her mouth to scream again, but the hand suddenly vanished. Again there was the twittering from overhead, as well as a much more massive-sounding scuttling noise. She looked up. The light of Tarnalin, seeping reluctantly into the narrow slit, caught the surface of a single, unblinking, perfectly round eye and the metallic glint of thread-fine whiskers. Then the eye disappeared as rapidly as the arm had done. There was yet more scrabbling, and then a heavy body dropped to the floor beside her. Fighting down her panic, she tried her best to make out details of the creature that had joined her, and was reassured to see that it was eyeing her with an exactly similar curiosity. What she saw was a giant rat, perched up on its hindlegs so that it stood to about the height of her breast. It was clothed in a pale-coloured jacket of some sturdy material – a coarse linen or cotton – and a puffed shirt decorated with white silhouettes of grinning pandas. Somehow it had crammed its hindquarters into a pair of belted shorts, although a lune-shaped bulge of stomach showed between the shirt and the pants. Tucked into the belt of the shorts was a bread-knife. Into one of the lapel buttonholes of the jacket the head of a stalk of celery had been clumsily tucked. The hand wrapped around the bone hilt of the bread-knife seemed unnaturally large, and then she realized that it was in fact a forefoot. The creature was making agitated little squeaks at her, as if it were trying to convey some matter of extreme urgency. Deciding that it was friendly – and that, if she were wrong, there wasn't a lot she could do about it anyway – Viveka tried out a few experimental words of Durenese, and then some halting sentences in Sommlending. The rat showed not a spark of recognition of either tongue, but continued to chatter at her, pointing frequently upwards with its free arm. Clearly it was wanting her to follow it, but was waiting until it was sure she had understood the message. In imitation, she pointed upwards, then mimed the actions of climbing. The rat sprang at the wall, its trousered rear protruding comically; she could see that a hole had been torn in the seat of the shorts to accommodate a long, flickering tail that was almost arm-thick at its base. Before she had time to smile at the sight, the rat was busily scrabbling up the face, its taloned hands and feet finding the joints between the stones with practised confidence. With a shrug of resignation, Viveka more slowly – much more slowly – followed it upwards into the darkness. She envied

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 41 the rat its claw-like digits as she stuffed her fingers into cracks that seemed always just a little too small. Soon they were crawling horizontally along a narrow shaft dimly lit by some source of brilliance far ahead of them. Already Viveka felt exhausted, as if someone had just kicked the wind out of her. During the ascent she had torn one of her fingernails in half, and the cutting pain was making her whole forearm ache. Ahead of her the rat, being smaller than she was and better adapted to going on four legs, was able to move much more rapidly than she could; it progressed in a series of fits and starts, dashing ahead of her for ten or fifteen yards at a time and then waiting impatiently until she had caught up, her shoulders and hips aching from frequent collisions with lumpy protrusions along the shaft wall. Soon the light was improving, and she could see the rat as more than just a darker shape in the gloom. Finally they rounded a spine-scraping corner and a blast of bright light momentarily blinded her. When she cautiously reopened her eyes she could see an irregularly shaped opening in which the rat was squatting, examining its forepaws as it peevishly tarried until she should reach it. From beyond the opening she could hear choruses of the same chattering squeaks with which the creature had regaled her at their first encounter. The rat moved over as she came to the opening so that she could come to rest beside it. In a curiously human way it wrapped one of its forearms around her shoulders, as if to comfort her. She was looking out onto a cavern about the size of the Great Hall back at Castle Ryme but much more profusely decorated. All around the walls, beneath a neatly horizontal row of sconces placed every eighteen inches or so at about head-height, there were hung pieces of cloth in a bewildering variety of colours: some were tapestries, the torchlight catching their thread-of-gold detailings, but most were simply randomly selected, ragged-edged sheets, hung one over the other every which way. The overall effect was crazily confusing but at the same time conveyed a sense of comfortable opulence. She looked sideways at the rat that had escorted her here and essayed a smile. It nodded at her. In the centre of the broad space there was a gathering of rats seated on a collection of broken chairs and battered cushions. Seated among them was a middle-aged man. The sight of him was more astonishing than anything else there. He was clad in unclassifiable garments that had been neatly stitched together from hessian sacks. From a string around his neck hung a little silver whistle. His face was bearded but his head bald. He was sitting

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 42 with his shoulders hunched forward so that it was hard to judge what he would look like standing, but Viveka gained the impression that under the hessian he was skeletally thin. He must have caught sight of her arrival at the shaft's mouth out of the corner of his eye, for he abruptly turned to stare directly at her. After a moment's startlement he gave her a grin, and then raised the whistle to his lips. The cacophony ceased before the last echoes of the whistle-blast died away. Now all the rats in the chamber – she guessed that there must be a hundred or more – were staring at her with their bright round eyes. She was suddenly glad of the arm around her shoulders; otherwise, she thought, she would probably have tried to squirm backwards into the obscurity. "Don't be frightened," the man said gently in Sommlending, as if trying to reassure a nervous pet. "My friends won't hurt you." Viveka found herself lost for words. She just stared at him, then let her eyes roam around the forest of rattish faces that were watching her. "Come down here and join us," the man continued. The rat beside her squeezed her shoulder encouragingly. She glanced at it and smiled again, wanly. It twitched its nose in the direction of the cavern's floor. Obediently, she slowly unfolded her body and dropped down into the chamber. All the while the crowd of rats merely observed her, making no movement other than the flicking of their whiskers. Standing erect gave her confidence. It was easier to believe that the rats weren't hostile when she could see for herself how much taller she was than they were. Their heads moved silently, following her, as she picked her way across the floor to the beckoning man. Once she was closer to him she realized that he was a good deal older than she'd thought. He had one of those faces that bears age well, yet the lines around his eyes and the concavities of his cheeks told their own story. His bushy beard had prominent strands of silver interwoven with the black. The hand which he reached out to take her own was almost like that of a skeleton, the thinly stretched triangles of skin at the base of the fingers resembling webbing. He took her hand and raised it to his lips, his keen blue eyes never leaving hers. "My name is Diving Skua," he said softly. She could feel the breeze of the words against her knuckles. "May I welcome you to the court of my good friend Gashgiss."

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 43 He gestured towards a rat that was getting to its feet, so that Viveka now noticed it was considerably taller than its fellows; the tops of its pricked-up ears were on a level with her eyes. The rat was dressed in a much-patched cloak of grey silk. Its fur was of a somewhat darker grey, its eyes yellow-green. It bowed formally in her direction, yet there was a playfulness in the movement, stressed by the way that the tip of its tail flapped and scampered behind it on the cavern's worn stone floor, belying the creature's considerable outward dignity. "We-e-e-lschk-amb," it squeaked with obvious difficulty. "My friend is saying `welcome' to you," Diving Skua translated. He directed a stream of squeals and glottal stops to Gashgiss, and the rat nodded sagely. "You speak their tongue?" Viveka said foolishly. Obviously that was what he'd been doing. What she was really trying to do was express her astonishment that the incomprehensible pipings of these creatures constituted a language. "Yes," said Diving Skua, offering her a sympathetic smile. "Here in their lairs along the walls of Tarnalin the noodnics have, over the past thousands of years, evolved their own culture quite separately from any in the outside world. They're far more advanced than your prejudices might allow you to think – I can think of many human societies who might look on the noodnics' achievements with awe, if they had the sense to do so." "`Noodnics'," she said. "That is the name of these ... people?" She had spoken in Durenese; as before, he responded in Sommlending. "Yes. And you use the word `people' advisedly." "But where did they come from? Why are there none of them outside?" "They've always been here. Their ancestors, long ago, were the rats that pestered the builders of the tunnels through the Hammerdal Mountains. When the workmen departed, they left the rats behind them. And they were wise enough also to leave conduits behind the walls through which the rats could run, knowing that they would help to keep the tunnel cleared of rubbish scattered in it by its human users. What the ancients didn't reckon with was that the rats would change over the millennia, growing and becoming much more intelligent, so that they knew how to enlarge and extend the tunnel system to meet their new requirements. I don't know why this happened. Sometimes I think there must be some chemical in the rocks through which Tarnalin was driven that encourages growth; other times I wonder if the

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 44 truth isn't simply that, outside the tunnels, rats are better able to survive if they are comparatively small and elusive – if this isn't the way that rats would naturally come to be, were it not for the rigours they face in most environments." Although the man was speaking in Sommlending – a language which Viveka knew only from lessons in it given to her by a tutor on whom she had briefly had a crush during her sixteenth year – she found that she was having no difficulty understanding his words. She was experiencing a curious mental sensation, as if her mind were being deliberately opened just a little more widely than usual, so that it could accept things that normally it would have rejected. Suddenly she put two and two together. "Are you from the Brotherhood of the Crystal Star?" she asked forthrightly, referring to Sommerlund's powerful fraternity of magicians. Diving Skua laughed, showing her jagged, uneven teeth. "No," he said, shaking his head in amusement. "No. It is not magic that I am using on you but one of my Kai skills, the technique which my people call Animal Kinship. Through our learning we can become able to communicate at a basic level with the more intelligent mammals, especially those that bear some morphological resemblance to our own kind. In this context, ma'am" – a mock-courteous bow of the head – "you are an intelligent mammal, and one that is morphologically very similar to me indeed. I am thus able to employ my Animal Kinship skills in order to communicate with you in a language with which you are not entirely familiar. It is easier for me than to use my rusty Durenese." "Then you are of the Order of the Kai?" She had heard much of them from that long-ago tutor, who had told her ruefully that in his youth he had once nurtured hopes of being selected by the Kai. Again Diving Skua bowed his head. "That is indeed my privilege." He briefly explained to her that several months before he had been sent to investigate rumours that Vassagonian bandits were planning to plant magical charges along the length of Tarnalin and threaten their detonation unless the King of Durenor gave them half the riches of his treasury. The rumours seemed to have been false: Diving Skua had discovered not a trace of Vassagonian intrigue along those lines. During his explorations of Tarnalin and the two other tunnels he had, however, discovered the subterranean civilization of the noodnics, and had resolved to stay among them for a time, learning their wisdom so that it could

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 45 be added to the great repository of Kai lore stored in the Order's Monastery in Sommerlund, secure in the knowledge that nothing of any importance happened in the tunnels without the noodnics almost immediately determining it. "I have the finest spy network throughout the tunnels that you could possibly imagine," he concluded, "thanks to Gashgiss and his people. I shall be sorrowful to leave them, as I must shortly do." "Why?" Viveka asked. "I mean, why must you leave? Are you not serving a useful function here, in case there are future plans to hold Tarnalin to ransom?" "It is but a month and a half to the Feast of Fehmarn," said Diving Skua cryptically. She asked him to explain himself further, but he declined. "Now you must tell me your own story," he said at last, signalling an end to her interrogation of him with a snap of his fingers. "Bear with me while I translate what you say for the benefit of the others – I'm sure they'll be interested." For the next fifteen minutes or more Viveka spoke, pausing every couple of sentences so that Diving Skua could interpret for the noodnics. She described not just the events of the past few days but also, at Diving Skua's prompting, her reactions to them. She missed out nothing. The process proved easier than she had expected. It was as if the experiences she were recounting had happened to someone else, someone who had now become no more than a distant acquaintance. At the end of her recital she was conscious of the fact that his solemn eyes had never once shifted from her face, even when he had been making the rapid-fire noises of noodnic speech. "Interesting," he said after a long pause. "Very, very interesting." She frowned. His response seemed to her too intense, almost as if he were exaggerating it as a way of signalling that he thought she'd been lying. "What do you mean by that?" she said hotly. "Oh," he replied airily, "the details of your history are petty enough. In Sommerlund there is no shortage of tragic stories, and most of them end up being told to we of the Order of the Kai. No, what are far more interesting to me are some of the details of your tale." He broke off to translate what he'd been saying to an obviously fascinated Gashgiss, then continued: "The way that one of the Rymish soldiers your brother brought with him was induced to swap his allegiances like that. The fact that you survived the drop from the castle window unhurt. The way that you successfully

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 46 stalked a platoon of your father's sentries and knock one of them cold without the others detecting your presence. Even the friendliness that lame farm dog showed you – I have never yet met the farm dog that wouldn't gladly take the throat out of a stranger who approached its home when its master was away. Oh, I could make a longer list than this, but surely that's enough to make you realize that you've been inordinately lucky for a hitherto spoilt little darling of the aristocracy – too lucky for luck alone to have been involved, if you grasp my meaning." It was the first time that she'd thought about it. Over the preceding few days she'd merely done what she'd done, never pausing to look over her sequence of actions as a whole. However, now that he'd drawn her attention to the matter, she could see that indeed she had been fortunate – unnaturally fortunate. Perhaps, Viveka thought as the last sounds of his latest burst of noodnic died away, there is a deity watching over me after all. She tried to say something of this to him, but he interrupted her with a wave of his hand. "Yes," he said impatiently, "there are indeed Gods, whether you believe in them or not. But there is no need to think that one of them has chosen to bless you with His or Her favour over the past days. Rather, I suspect that one of them – my own God, Kai, the Lord of the Sun – bestowed on you some of his gifts while you were still in the womb." She stared at him wordlessly, wondering what in all Magnamund he was talking about. "It is a pity," he continued, ignoring her grimace, "that you were not born in Sommerlund. Had you been so, then, whatever the status of your birth, your talents would assuredly have come to the attention of the members of my Order." "`Talents'?" "Oh, yes, most certainly so. It needs no great feat of deduction on my part to know from the account that you have just given me that you were born with the abilities of the Kai latent within you." Viveka thought regretfully of the tutor who had been born with no such birthright, and who had yet so earnestly desired to have been. But she herself ...? Was Diving Skua telling her that, so soon after having sundered the bonds of her old family, she was about to be welcomed into a new one – the Order of the Kai? He was reading the lines of her face. Smiling sadly, he said: "No, I fear that that is not the case. Even though you are still youthful, you are nevertheless too old ever to be able to translate

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 47 your latent aptitudes into properly developed Kai skills. For that it would have been necessary for you to have been located in early childhood and tutored for a decade or more in the wisdom of my Order. With puberty the mind loses its earlier flexibility and becomes more rigid in its underlying thought-systems. Whatever instruction we might try to give an unprepared adult mind would be only information; it would be unable to affect the deeper levels of the mind, making them receptive to the further wisdoms that our Order has preserved." "But children are –" she began. "Exactly," he interrupted. "You were going to say that children are credulous. That they're easily led. That they'll believe all manner of impossible things before breakfast each and every day. That they're gullible. That their knowledge of reality is necessarily so limited that their understanding can be waylaid into all sorts of ridiculous false beliefs. "But that's exactly the sort of mind that we require as our raw material! Even the mind of someone as childish as you are yourself – forgive me, I mean no insult – has already adapted itself to a particularly narrow and rigid portrayal of its surrounding reality. In order to do so, it has blinded itself to all the more subtle forms of reality – to all the lateral nuances of existence. Once that process has occurred, it can never be reversed. Yet it is within those subtler modes of reality that the root of Kai wisdom lies. Now do you see why it is that your latent Kai abilities must remain forever that – latent?" "Yes," she mumbled. "Yes, I do see." She felt as if she had been offered the world only to have it snatched away from her before she could reach out her hands to accept it. "Yes," she repeated. "However," he said mollifyingly, gazing at her sympathetically, "although I cannot hope to develop your abilities in any way – indeed, it would be almost sacrilegious for me even to contemplate such an attempt – I may at least help you polish them a little during the next few weeks." "The next few weeks?" she stuttered. "But I hadn't –" "Nonsense," he said dismissively. "You are in no hurry to be anywhere else, are you? Indeed, there could be no place better for you, right now, than here, hidden away from any who might be sent out in search of you. My friend Gashgiss and his people are always hospitable to strangers, and will gladly share their scavengings with you – theirs is not a luxurious life, but conversely it is by no means uncomfortable. Stay with us, my dear; you will

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 48 learn not only from me but also from the noodnics, who are wiser than they seem." The decision seemed to her a very easy one to make – later she would wonder if perhaps Diving Skua's mental skills had not had a hand in making it so easy. The next few weeks were probably the happiest of her entire life. Diving Skua proved to be a brilliant teacher – of the type that seems never to be teaching anything, but instead simply guiding his pupils in what they already know how to do. She discovered that she had a natural aptitude for weapons skills; it was a natural progression to extend these until her hands, likewise, became valuable weapons. She had always known how to make herself unobtrusive; Diving Skua showed her how he himself could practise this art to such a degree of sophistication that he became in effect invisible – because somehow no one else ever chanced to look in his direction. She soon discovered that she could understand, at least in a rudimentary fashion, the meaning of the noodnics' speech – to say that she learnt their language would be inaccurate, for it was more as if the meanings of their words, rather than the words themselves, had been locked up in an unused room inside her mind, so that all she did was open the door of that room. (She discovered, too, that in some instances noodnic laughter was more expressive of mirth than human laughter could be. It was almost silent, and involved no movement of the facial muscles. For the rest of her life she would be able to laugh at people without their realizing that she was being anything other than entirely solemn.) She found how she could at will make people (or in this case noodnics) like her or dislike her – so that the Ice Maiden would never exist again unless she, Viveka, wished that it should be so. She discovered the indicative signs that differentiated false hunches from true ones. Inevitably, she believed that she fell passionately in love with Diving Skua, despite the disparity in their ages. Equally inevitably, he pretended to notice nothing of her quickened breath, her girlish embarrassments, her too-close proximities to him, her sudden flushes, the melting softness in her eyes ... Until, unexpectedly, she found that he had guided her into learning the difference between passion and infatuation. Of all the gifts that he gave her, this was possibly the greatest. From the noodnics she discovered conjuring tricks – and not simply physical ones. Among the noodnics pocket-picking was practised as an artform rather than with any thought of material gain – indeed, the noodnics had no real comprehension of

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 49 individual possessions, for everything was shared among them. Soon, under the willing instruction of Gashgiss, she could make her hands seem to be in one place when in fact they were somewhere entirely different, so that she could make small objects appear and disappear in and from the most bizarre places all over her own clothing or someone else's; even Diving Skua was driven to admire her dexterity in this sphere. However, the more important conjuring tricks that the noodnics taught her were spiritual, and she suspected that, as with pocket-picking, she was in this area too a better student than Diving Skua could ever be. What she learnt from her friends was how to operate her mind on several different levels at once, and how she could consciously divert those streams of thought in various ways so that they intermingled in exactly the fashion that she wished them to. This, she found, gave her a very considerable command over her own emotions, so that it became almost reflexive for her to banish unhelpful conditions – such as depression or fatalism – and to substitute for them constructive ones. The weeks seemed to pass very quickly. At last Diving Skua sensed that it was time for him to leave, that the Feast of Fehmarn was but a fortnight away. He began to explain this to her and then stopped, grinning, when he saw that just the first few words of his explanation had been sufficient: the rest of it she had deduced without any need for it to be spelled out for her. It seemed to her fitting that she should leave at the same time as he did. Making their tiny, well-nigh inaudible sounds of sorrow/love/celebration, the noodnics prepared bundles of provisions for them. Contributions to these came from all quarters, and were more generous than necessarily practical; Diving Skua muttered to Viveka that she should display equal delight over each of the gifts – once they were clear of Tarnalin they could simply dump those of the items that were useless to them. As Viveka had expected, the noodnics mounted no farewell ceremony: she understood enough of their culture by now to know that such demonstrations were alien to it, and that the seeming casualness with which the noodnics said their goodbyes in fact represented a great compliment paid to herself and Diving Skua – it signified acceptance of the two humans as noodnics in all but physical form. Gashgiss came with them a part of the way to the tunnel's main shaft but then seemed to lose interest in them and drifted away; again, this was a compliment, an exhibition of his

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 50 respect for them as fellow-noodnics who would require no guidance through the maze of fissures. Strolling easily along Tarnalin together, the two of them attracted a few interested glances from riders and wagon-drivers, but no one seemed to think that the sight of pedestrians in the tunnel was especially remarkable. It was night when they emerged into the open. Viveka had forgotten how sweet fresh air could smell. She breathed it deeply, appreciatively. "Where have you decided to go next?" asked Diving Skua, as if the matter were of no significance to him. He had picked up more of the noodnic ways than perhaps he realized. "Myself, I'm heading first for Port Bax. There I'll be able to take ship for Holmgard. Would you wish to accompany me that far? – I would welcome your friendship on the journey." He turned to regard her quizzically. She had learned to control her face so that it no longer betrayed her thoughts to him. "I feel as if ... I feel as if for a time I should be alone," she said with some difficulty. "I value you more greatly than any person I have ever known – even including my father – and yet I wish to leave your company. I cannot understand quite why that should be." "I can," he said. "You've become a different person even from the fugitive you were when first I met you. It's natural that you should wish a period of solitude during which you can consolidate all that you have acquired over these past weeks. So let me repeat my question to you: where have you decided to go next?" "I know so little of the world," she admitted. "It's hard for me to make a decision on the basis of so little knowledge." "Then may I, as your friend, advise you?" "Surely." "If you keep to this road you will eventually reach the Wildlands. Then you may cut down the coast to Kadan –" "I have no wish to go to Cloeasia," she said abruptly. "I've been there before. I find the nation and its people congenial enough, but I desire to travel to places that are unknown to me. Perhaps I may explore the Wildlands before I venture further afield." "It is a dangerous place to be," he observed. "I know that." She smiled suddenly. "That's what attracts me to it." "And they have quaint views there concerning women. They may ... mistreat you."

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 51 "They may try," she said drily. "Such attitudes were not unknown in my father's court. Those who underestimated women rendered themselves very vulnerable. My brother was one." He acknowledged her statement with a grave nod. "Then," he said, "before we go our separate ways, there is one further thing that I must do. Be assured that it will cause you no pain." He took her shoulders and looked deeply into her eyes. She thought that perhaps he intended to kiss her – she readied her lips for what would have been by no means an unwelcome contact – but instead he simply continued to gaze at her until his face seemed to fill all of the night sky. Ten minutes later she was walking along the side of the road, enjoying the cold brilliances of the star-studded sky and the refreshing coolness of the air in her throat. It had been pleasant, she mused, spending a few weeks hidden among the noodnics, and learning from them so many manipulative and mental skills. They had been excellent companions – not once while with them had she craved for contact with another human being like herself – but still she was glad to be on her own once more. Curiously, she found that she couldn't remember the particular details of her sojourn among them with any real clarity, but every time she tried to think about this more analytically her mind seemed to shy away from the topic. She heard footfalls far behind her – her senses were much sharper than she could recall them having been before – and recognized from the stealth of the sounds that the person making them was a thief who intended to attack her and rob her. Viveka grinned in the starlight. She had no possessions worth the taking. Then she frowned. The thief wouldn't believe that until he had killed her and searched her body painstakingly from top to toe. She waited until he crept close enough to her and then with casual efficiency dispatched him with a single blow to the throat. Feeling no guilt, she removed the thin leather pouch from his belt, hearing the dull clanking of heavy coins within as she stowed it away in a pocket. It wasn't until the following morning that she discovered that there was another and much larger pouch tucked into the bundle of provisions that the noodnics had given to her. Where could it have come from? She thought about the problem for a few moments, but then her mind glided easily off in another direction.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 52 five She stooped and picked up a stone, hoping that Karena would soon tire of his game with the rat and come to play with her. Without really thinking about it, she caused the stone to disappear and reappear a few times as she opened and closed her fist. Sometimes she could do this so quickly that even her own mind was momentarily convinced that she must indeed be employing some form of magic rather than mere sleight-of-hand. The noodnics had taught her many things, many new ways of thinking that were not shared by most of the rest of humanity – she often wondered if it had been the casualness of his demeanour, so like that of the noodnics when she had left them, that had first drawn her to Lackan and had then convinced her that a life here among the Bonemen might bring her the kind of spiritual peace she sought. And, on top of everything, the noodnics had trained her to do conjuring tricks like the one she was now practising. Conjuring tricks. She had learned the lethal potential of conjuring tricks not long after she had entered the Wildlands. Her stay in Ragadorn, the coastal city that served as capital of that largely untamed nation, had been brief but bloody; even the vilest cut-throats of the port had soon learned to avoid the mysterious stranger who had come among them. Her prowess had attracted the attention of a group of Casiornian mercenaries who had been lodging in the city, and their leader had in due course approached her with the suggestion that she might join them for a trek across the central wastes of the Wildlands and then briefly across the Sommlending province of Ruanon to their own country where, he swore to her, there was employment a-plenty. Resolving to part company with the brutal troop as soon as they had reached somewhere that might interest her, she had agreed to the proposal; in the result, she had ended up serving with them in a few minor skirmishes before a prosperous merchant had singled her out and asked her to perform a discrete killing on his behalf. Without ever having made a conscious decision to do so, she had drifted into the trade of professional assassin, making a good living in various of the central lands of Northern Magnamund. Conjuring tricks, indeed ... Sometimes her profession had brought her as far north as Durenor, and once, in Hammerdal, she had caught a distant glimpse of her father. There had been not the slightest temptation to approach him, but she had wondered what she would have felt

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 53 had he been the target of her current commission. Not much, she had concluded, rather wistfully. And then finally fate had brought her for a second time to Kadan. She had stayed only a few days in the city before setting out to fulfil the contract that had been given to her by a Vassagonian trader who wished to "negotiate" a cheaper price for the mildly relaxing new herb that he had been importing from Cloeasia. In her first and only breach of professionalism, she had become the lover and in due course the spouse of the tribal leader whom she had been sent to kill. Of all the people she had ever met, she considered herself to have been the least likely to have found her destiny living as a tribal spouse in one of the remote encampments of the Bonemen. Had anyone ever asked her to predict her own future, she might have responded, if gloomy in her cups, that it was improbable that a professional assassin would enjoy a very long future; more optimistically, she might have envisaged a splendid middle age in some romantic palace, surrounded by jewels and coloured lights, her hands kissed and her bed warmed by platoons of handsome courtly sycophants. But never in her wildest dreams would she have anticipated the empty plains and the unassuming hills of the Bone range, and her love for an untamed tribesman. Untamed Lackan might be, but he also had wisdom and what was, in its own harsh way, the most ethical code that she had ever encountered. The tone of the cries from Karena's audience had changed from encouragement to triumph, and she guessed that the little animal must finally have caught his prey. Sure enough, a few moments later he trotted on his five remaining legs around the corner of a tent and came towards her, his tail upright, the broken, bloodied body of a plains rat in his claws. A couple of yards short of her he stopped and deposited his burden, then began methodically to rend it apart with his foreclaws and devour it. She grinned at him, then turned to look out across the plain to where the shades of night were gathering on the horizon. Behind her the Sun had been blocked from view by the hills, but there was still enough of its light in the sky that she could see for miles. Castle Ryme seemed more than just a world away. "Viveka!" Lackan's voice. She turned and saw him coming towards her. He did not return her smile as he approached. As he put his hands on her shoulders she could see that his eyes were grim.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 54 "Viveka," he said, getting immediately to the point, "I have consulted with the speakers in my soul, and I have heeded their advice. This man Mazrah is not to be trusted, and it was foolish of me to believe that he ever could be. If we enter into any form of contract with him, I am now convinced that we will suffer from it. He has made too few requests – demands – of us for me to credit that he is not hiding some dark secret agenda, some scheme which he will follow assiduously, regardless of the harm that it might do my people." "But you cannot know this! Surely it would be better to –" "Viveka, Viveka," he said softly, shaking his head. Now he was her husband rather than her lord. "Better by far that we live with the truce of recognized hostility than in the pretence of friendship; better that we be perpetually alert in our peace rather than that we relax, confident in the goodwill of our ally, until the day when that ally stabs us in the back." "If this is what you believe," she snapped, "why in the name of your fathers did you send me on my pootling little errand in the first place? Was it just to keep the little wife occupied, to make her feel that she was doing something worthwhile when in fact she was wasting her time on ...?" She ran out of words. Her fury was so icy that she could look on herself almost dispassionately, seeing the clenched fists, the narrow eyes, the trembling muscles, the sudden outburst of clammy sweat on her brow. She saw also the way that her right hand was reflexively straying towards a position just above her knee, so that she could swoop, pluck the dagger from her boot and transfix her husband all in a single movement. With an effort of will she forced the hand away. "I needed to be sure," Lackan was saying. "I was uncertain. It could have been that I had misjudged the man. Had you come back here with a hard bargain I might readily have accepted his integrity, but this? He gives us all that we want. He requests only trifling concessions in return. Hah! He is a smooth city-man trying to pull the hides over the eyes of the unsophisticated tribesman." "Is that the only reason for your change of heart?" she hissed. "Or is it not perhaps that, on reflection, you conceive that my success as your ambassador in negotiating with Mazrah might somehow belittle you in the eyes of your stupid tribesmen?" "My tribesmen are not stupid," Lackan responded, visibly controlling his own wrath now. That anyone should speak to him like this was almost unheard-of; that a mere woman should presume so much was intolerable. Yet he had promised that he would try to adapt to some of Viveka's bizarre outlander ways, and

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 55 so he stayed his hand. "They may be uneducated in the conventions of the city folk, but they are not stupid." "They have you as their leader," Viveka pointed out with clumsy irony. "And so have you." He spoke the words with heavy deliberation, so that they were like blows. A moment ago I was in the throes of adolescent love for this man, she thought in the ice of her fury, and now my hate has become so great that I would gladly see him die. If I don't get out of his confounded, smug, overweening presence for a while I'm going to ... "I was a fool to make the mistake of coming here," she said very quietly. "I was guided by my lust. Let me take my possessions and go." It was an empty threat. She knew that, somewhere deep down under her rage, there was still a smouldering love for him. She'd return in due course, once her anger had died. But he wasn't to know that. She hoped. "It is not permitted for a wife to desert her husband," Lackan said stiffly. "Still less the wife of myself. You shall stay here, woman, until I give you my permission to leave." "Let me take my possessions and go," she repeated. "I'm not going to beg you, however much your vanity would enjoy that." "You have no possessions. All that you use belongs equally to every Boneman here." "Then simply let me go – without the primitive tat you've been permitting me to use." "No." "Stop me." "I –" He stepped forwards, arms raised to seize her and shake some sense into her, but she was no longer there. Instead, she was behind him, her arms wrapped firmly around his neck, the thumb of her free hand digging painfully into his naked spine, one of her legs between his, throwing him off-balance, so that she could twist him to the ground with ease. "Be wary, Lackan," she whispered in his ear. She released him, and he turned. "Go then, strumpet!" he roared. The few tribesmen who had been daring to watch the argument retreated rapidly into their tents. "Get your foul harlotry out of my sight!" "I thank you for your permission, husband," she said with cool sarcasm, head downcast in a parody of the obedient wife. Have I gone too far? she was thinking under her impassive exterior. Will he

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 56 accept me when I return to him, as I know that I will? Or will I truly be an outcast from his heart forever? It's a risk I must take. If I stay here any longer I can't be answerable for his safety. The temptation, just then, to jab more firmly with my thumb, to break him ... "Go!" She didn't look at him again until she was well out of the encampment and a couple of hundred feet up the nearest slope of the Bone Hills. He was still standing in the midst of the cluster of tents, alone, watching her retreat. The others of his tribe were nowhere to be seen – even the children, usually so spontaneously underfoot whatever their elders might be doing. Without thinking, she raised her arm in an automatic half-wave, and was surprised when he reciprocated. He'll accept me when I come back, she thought. I think. She reached down and scratched Karena between the ears. The faithful reebdan clattered his plates appreciatively and continued scrambling along beside her as she climbed further into the Bone Hills. six The Bone Hills are modest eminences, and she reached the nearest crest at about midnight. The full Moon was high in the sky above her, its light blotting out most of the stars. Untwinkling, a red planet eyed her sternly from near to the horizon. Insubstantial wisps of cloud were like silver feathers floating beneath the arch of the heavens. Ahead of her she could see only a pool of darkness, unrelieved even by the moonlight. Beyond the limits of her vision, she knew, lay the territory known as the Maakenmire, taking its name from the great swamp that covered much of its area. To the outside world the Maakenmire was a mysterious, almost unknown land about which legends abounded. Only the Bonemen of western Cloeasia, spilling over the Bone Hills, had come to know anything of the inhabitants of the Maakenmire, and even their knowledge had until recently been scanty. However, Lackan, typically more adventurous than his predecessors, had a decade before launched an initiative to establish relations with the denizens of the great swamp, and had discovered that the half-reptilian folk who lived there, despite their monstrous demeanour – with their pallid but leather-tough skins and their pronounced spinal ridges, they seemed more reptilian than human – were in fact peace-loving. They were also well adapted to harvesting from the cloying mud of

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 57 the swamp various herbs, some of which, Lackan had early discovered, although they had only a mildly soporific effect on the natives themselves, had important medicinal applications in the outside world, and others of which conjured up pretty visions in people's minds and were therefore already much in demand among the wealthy of several nations. Lackan had swiftly built up a strictly clandestine set of trade links between his people and various none-too-scrupulous merchants for the export of these herbs; few of the drugs' eventual consumers had even the remotest idea of where the herbs originated. In particular, the Zultan of Cloeasia and the people of his nation's more developed coastal regions were kept in ignorance of the trade. Lackan's motives in maintaining this state of affairs were partly philanthropic, but only partly. He was anxious that, should the zultan ever discover what was going on, he would immediately send an army into the Maakenmire, murdering the region's inhabitants in order to lay hands directly on the sources of such wealth. More important, though, was Lackan's concern for the welfare of his own people: in the longer term, he saw the humble Bonemen attaining sufficient economic strength that they could rise up against their Cloeasian masters and claim the western plains as their own nation. But that would be several generations hence. For the moment, it was a time of cautious expansion and consolidation of the trade routes. Viveka could see the silver clouds of her breath in front of her. She shivered, wrapping her arms around her shoulders for warmth. She wished that she had been more warmly clad when she'd left the encampment. She cursed the fact that her anger had driven her all the way to the crest of this part of the Bone Range; lower down on the slopes she'd certainly have been able to find shrubs and bushes with which to protect herself from the piercing night winds as she slept, but around her up here there were only small, sparsely scattered clumps of frail-looking scrub. She turned and looked back towards the plains, thinking longingly of the warm tent she shared with Lackan. Had shared. Would maybe share again. It was important to her that she get the tenses of her thoughts right. The fires of the encampment were like distant embers in the night, and she imagined their warmth. But then she stiffened. This was all wrong. The Bonemen always doused their campfires at night. They had long ago discarded their tradition that the spirits of the evil

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 58 dead, who walked freely during the night hours, were attracted to burning hearths, but the custom of killing the fires each evening had outlived the superstition. No Boneman strayed far from his own tent at night unless it were absolutely essential that he do so; the fact that Viveka was quite unperturbed by the darkness had been one of the subsidiary reasons why Lackan had sent her to Kadan. But, if those weren't campfires, then what in the world could they be? Suddenly she sucked in her breath in horror. The Bonemen's detestation of the night was well known throughout the mainstream of Cloeasian culture – it was one more justification for taunting the "primitiveness" of the tribesmen. And it must certainly be well known to Mazrah. She recalled Lackan's words: "But he is still leaving the matter partly to chance. If I were him, and were as worried as he evidently is, I would act now to obviate all possibility of future trouble. As you say, the plains and mountains are a long way from the cities – they are irrelevant to him. Equally irrelevant to him and to the city-dwellers are the people of those plains and mountains, are they not? If I were him I'd simply exterminate us. Now." Her husband, wily campaigner that he was, had read Mazrah's mind correctly. But even Lackan hadn't guessed how swiftly the assassins' leader might act upon such an impulse. She must have been followed all the way from Kadan – she who prided herself so much on her awareness of everything that was going on around her! – and followed not merely by one or two skulking spies but by a score or more of warriors. How could they have hidden themselves? Had they used magic? Or had they simply used her own cocky over-confidence as a cloak behind which they could shield themselves? Once they'd established exactly where she'd headed they must have lain low in whatever place of concealment they could – probably, like herself, they'd looped round to approach the encampment from the shelter of the Bone Hills. Then all they'd had to do was to wait until night was well set in – and strike while the Bonemen slumbered. Those weren't campfires burning in the night: they were tents. And among them were people. Her people. Beginning to run down the slope, caring nothing now for the risk of broken ankles, Karena clacking along excitedly beside her, Viveka cursed herself bitterly. It was her fault that this had happened. If she hadn't been so cocksure about her own

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 59 cleverness, her own infallibility, she'd have kept a better watch during her journey, and must surely have detected her followers somewhere in the middle of the plains. Then she could have led them a merry dance until finally their patience ran out. But no: she'd taken no more than the standard precautions, like any bungling amateur, and Lackan and his tribesmen – and women, and children – were paying the price for her conceit. A rock took her foot, and she flew threw the air to land sprawling across the squirming body of the reebdan. One of the animal's foreclaws raked across the left-hand side of her face, slicing open the flesh from just below the earlobe all the way down to her chin, but she noticed nothing; instead, screaming an angry protest at the silent skies, she scrambled to her feet and stumbled on downhill. But it was hopeless. She'd taken four hours to reach the crest; even by daylight, at top speed, it could have taken her no less than half that time to return. In the moonlight, necessarily wary of unseen obstacles, it must surely take her longer than that. By the time she'd reach the encampment, all would be over: the tribesmen would be dead, and the perpetrators of the massacre long gone. She was slow to accept this, her continuous stream of expletives insulating her from the harsh reality. Finally, however, as she ran out of curses, the truth penetrated her, and eventually she threw herself down on the ground beside a sturdy bush, its leaves metallic in the moonlight, and gave herself up to uncontrollable weeping. Karena, plates rapping against each other disconsolately, recognized her grief and nuzzled up to her, trying to comfort her. She pushed the reebdan away with an oath, and he retreated a few yards to settle himself down to watch and guard his mistress. For three hours or longer she was lost to the world entirely, her body racked by sobs as she explored the bleak lands of her grief. She kept seeing the faces of those she loved – not just Lackan but a number of the other tribesmen and -women – interpenetrating with those of the people she'd known in her earlier life, when she'd been the well protected daughter of a great lord: Axim himself was there, of course, and so was Rupretch. And there was another face, one that she didn't recognize, a bald man with a beard ... All of them were impossibly distorted into exaggerations of sorrow; all of them were staring at her with woeful eyes. Had they been accusatory, had they been raging at her, she would have found their attentions less tormenting. At last, with the Moon halfway to the horizon, there were no more tears left in her.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 60 Karena, sensing her return to reality, stirred himself and came rattling across the hillside to her, and this time she didn't reject his affection, instead clutching his bony body to her own. Her thoughts were now of revenge. Her immediate desire was to find Mazrah as quickly as possible and to end his life as painfully as possible, but she curbed it. The man was clever enough to have sifted through the wreckage of the encampment to check that all were indeed dead; he must certainly have discovered that her corpse wasn't among the rest. His spies might have observed her leaving the encampment – but no: had they done so Mazrah would have sent some of his people in pursuit of her. Even now it must be a mystery as to where this strange Durenese woman might have gone, and he'd probably commanded his men to search the debris a second time, more thoroughly, until he'd been satisfied that she had indeed escaped the massacre. She drew pleasure from the thought that Mazrah would have been terrified when he realized the truth. In Kadan she'd provided him with ample evidence of her skills; he would know that the moment could not forever be postponed until she came to exact her cruel vengeance. But not yet. "We'll let him wait," she confided vindictively to Karena. "Wherever I go in the world, I'll send him messages to let him know that I still remember him, and that one day, one day ... The anticipation will be a crueller punishment for him than any physical torture could be. In the cold night hours he'll wake – in the demon hours when the dawn nears – and he'll recall the way that his torches destroyed a humble encampment. He'll see their lights in the darkness, and he'll hear the screams of the children being murdered. He'll relive the hours when he incurred my hatred." She ran her fingers up the soft avenue of fur on the reebdan's underside. "And most of all," she said, her voice no more than a whisper, "he'll remember the most recent of the epistles he's received from me, and the promises I've made to him in it. In a way, he and I will have forged a contract between us. "And I can always be trusted to keep my side of a contract. Can't I?" The reebdan shook his plates in agreement. For the first time Viveka was aware of the agony of her face. She raised her hand to her cheek and felt the wetness of blood. When she lowered it again she saw, in the moonlight, what seemed to be a black stain – a stain of death – spreading across her fingers.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 61 "Yes," she breathed, almost cheerfully, "can't I? Can't I just?" It would soon be dawn.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 62

The Second Campfire THE AUTUMNAL EQUINOX The birds were loudly celebrating the unseasonably warm weather as Petra's horse clip-clopped along the track leading the last few miles through the forest to the Kai Monastery. She'd been in Holmgard the past few weeks at the request of King Ulnar, who had asked her to assist in the planning of new defences for the eastern border of the Southlund Marches: incursions of gangs of bandits from the Wildlands had over the past twelve months risen from a minor to a major nuisance, and the king was anxious to seize the opportunity of this otherwise comparatively peaceful time to devote some energy and finance to countering them. Petra had found the experience of working on the project somewhat frustrating – not because of anything inherently wrong with the work itself but because she'd been constantly aware that Ulnar would have preferred Lone Wolf or Viveka to have been there in her stead. But Lone Wolf had made it clear that any distraction from his studies of the Book of the Magnakai would be detrimental to Sommerlund's long-term interests and Viveka had been in Durenor on business of her own, and so, perforce, Ulnar had had to make do with Petra. Not an easy situation. On the plus side, though, there had been the fact that Captain Remir D'Val of the King's Guard Regiment had also been at Holmgard. She yawned. She urged her horse to move a little faster, impatient to be home. Viveka would have returned by now, and possibly Banedon would have arrived as well. On the morning of Fehmarn, half a year ago, the three of them and Lone Wolf had blearily agreed that such convivial meetings should become regular – both to mark the passage of the equinoxes and to symbolize the reaffirmation of their loyalties to each other. She'd been right about Banedon. As she came around a corner the familiar blue-robed figure stepped out of the trees and raised a hand to her in greeting. She reined in her horse and let it walk up to him. He looked secretly pleased with himself. She put her hand on his head affectionately.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 63 "Want to hop up behind?" she said. "Take the weight off your feet for the last stretch?" He smiled and glanced downwards. Now that she looked more carefully she could see that he was hovering half an inch above the ground. "Besides," he added, "I have a fri ..." There was sudden movement in the undergrowth and Petra's hand leapt automatically to the hilt of her sword. Her military training taking over, she grabbed Banedon by the back of the shoulder and swivelled her horse around so that she was between him and the source of the disturbance. "It's all ..." he began weakly. "A Giak!" she hissed as a small, ugly head appeared out of the bushes. The skin was greenish-grey; the open mouth revealed an irregular line of broken but nevertheless fiendishly sharp yellow fangs. The spawn had an axe in its hand – a raised axe ... She brought her sword up as her horse whinnied and struggled beneath her. "Easy, easy," said Banedon. "I was trying to tell you, he's a ..." Petra gave vent to a savage yell. "What ... matter ... the ... is?" said the Giak. Petra froze. The Giaks had a simple, incomprehensible tongue of their own, but it was unheard-of for one of them to be able to speak Sommlending words. Unless ... Banedon, still smiling, was watching her face. "Carag," he confirmed. "Lone Wolf's friend. Our friend as well." And Petra remembered. This was the Giak whom Vonotar had enslaved using a mixture of his own willpower and a generous dose of magic. The temporary effect had endured only in part. Carag had been left with a reasonable modicum of intelligence; moreover, the loathing for all matters Sommlending that had been instilled into him – as into all Giaks – had dissolved. Now he was a complete misfit in two worlds, but had almost accidentally allied himself with Lone Wolf. Carag it was who had helped bring his erstwhile master, Vonotar, to justice; Carag, too, who had done so much to save Lone Wolf's life during that prolonged and never properly explained absence of the Kai warrior a couple of years back. "I was trying to tell you," Banedon repeated, "that I'd brought a friend of ours with me to our celebrations tonight. It's a surprise for Lone Wolf – a pleasant surprise."

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 64 "I ... not ... kill ... her?" said Carag, looking as disappointed as only a Giak can. "Not ... even a ... bit?" "No," said Banedon to him firmly. "Petra is one of us. I told you about her. Come here and shake her hand." Conquering her natural revulsion, Petra leaned down and briefly accepted the Giak's rough little hand in her own. Close up, the face didn't look any better and the smell was decidedly worse. "How did you find him?" she asked Banedon a short while later. The three of them were strolling along the road – at least, she and Carag were strolling while Banedon floated easily alongside them. "With the help of my Guildmaster," said Banedon. "There aren't many creatures with minds in the Darklands: most of them are just encapsulations of Naar's own emptiness. Only the Drakkarim, and their thoughts are easy enough to distinguish. On a psychic level, Carag's mind – what little there is of it – stands out like a sore thumb in the Darklands. We set up a permanent ... look-out, you could call it ... along the Durncrags, and as soon as we detected that Carag was in the vicinity we planted an imperative in his subconscious that he should cross over into Sommerlund. The rest was easy." "But why should your Brotherhood go to such trouble?" "Because I wanted it to, and the Guildmaster enjoyed the idea of surprising Lone Wolf as much as I did. Besides, as I say, it really was very little trouble." Petra glanced at him. She always found it difficult to reconcile Banedon's unassuming appearance with the fact that he had become a significant magician and an important figure in the undefined hierarchy of the Brotherhood of the Crystal Star. She turned and whistled to her horse, which had stopped to examine an interesting tuft of wayside grass. Carag was beside it, likewise looking at the grass. The Giak's clawed hand was resting easily on the horse's neck. It seemed that her animal shared none of her own instinctive distaste for the spawn. Maybe The Joker's Choice is a better judge of character than I am, she thought. Assuming that Giaks – even intelligent ones – can actually have characters, that is. She sighed, and continued to walk alongside Banedon. "I've been attached to the Monastery all this time," she said ruefully, "and still there are things that happen that challenge the assumptions I had before. Friendly Giaks – what next?" Much later that evening the five of them were sitting around a fire that the acolytes had built in the lee of one of the Monastery's partly rebuilt walls. Darkness had brought with it a chilly breeze, but the wall's shelter and the cheerful flames were

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 65 more than enough to keep them warm; the wine they were drinking merely added an extra blanket. "A story," said Viveka with a laugh. "At Fehmarn I went to all the trouble of telling you ungrateful lot a story. This time it's the turn of one of you people to entertain me. The question is: are any of you prepared to sacrifice yourselves, the way I did?" The rest looked at each other dubiously. Petra yawned theatrically to show that she was out of the running. Carag looked confused, and Banedon began to explain to him swiftly what a story was. Only Lone Wolf seemed interested in taking up Viveka's challenge. "A story from the Book of the Magnakai, perhaps?" she prompted. "The Book of the Magnakai is no ordinary book, I've been discovering," said Lone Wolf warily, glancing at the others to see if they might be interested in hearing of his studies. "I'm finding it incredibly difficult to decipher it – the writing's very faded, the language and the penmanship are antiquated, and I have the impression that Sun Eagle was more of a warrior than a scribe – but I'm beginning to get the hang of it. And one of the things that I've discovered is that the book itself is ... well, self-perpetuating." They looked puzzled, so he hurried to explain. "The book didn't stop being written just because Sun Eagle was no longer alive to write it," he said. "Quite a number of pages of it have been written since then – all in Sun Eagle's own spidery hand. It's as if his soul,or perhaps it's the book itself, wanted to carry on keeping a record of matters directly pertaining to the book. I mean, for example, I found right at the end of it a couple of pages telling of how I slew Haakon in the Tomb of the Majhan and brought the book back here. Finding the account and being able to interpret it – because I knew so much of it already, if you see what I mean – has been invaluable in helping me decrypt some of the rest, some of the earlier parts." "It looks as if we're in for a sombre evening," said Viveka drily. "No," said Lone Wolf, raising his hand to hush her. "Not necessarily. The book itself isn't like that. In some places it reads like a rattling good yarn. What I was proposing to tell you is of that kind – besides being the solution to a mystery that haunted the Kai for centuries." "What ... `decrypt' ... mean ... does?" asked Carag. The others ignored him. "You promise this is going to be good?" said Viveka. "Not just some dryasdust philosophical debate?"

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 66 "Don't be so determinedly empty-headed," Lone Wolf reproved her mildly, a smile taking the sting out of his words. "But, actually, no: it's not like that at all. It's a story that started long ago, 'way back in MS4434 to be precise ..." Their four heads leaned forward to listen, and behind them the acolytes stilled their chatter. "It was a dark and stormy night," Lone Wolf began, "and ..."

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 67

L O N E W O L F 'S T E L L I N G or How the Book of the Magnakai Was Lost and Found one It was a dark and stormy night, and the wind was biting deep into Bourjali's bones. He wrapped his cloak even more tightly around him, but it didn't seem to make any difference. The rain was plunging groundwards in great wind-driven sheets. The trees were tossing their branches as if tormented by an unseen hand. The track leading up to the Monastery doorway was a river, and the torches that usually illuminated the building's battlements at night had long since given up the unequal struggle. The sky was a ponderous mass of faintly opalescent cloud. It was winter in Sommerlund, and Sommerlund was letting its inhabitants know about it in no uncertain terms. Bourjali had read in books about teeth chattering, but he'd never really known what the expression meant. He did now. Trouble was, he was bored with their conversation. He thought of how in Vassagonia at the moment the weather would be balmy and fresh, a relief after the long heat of summer. He envisaged himself strolling down one of the main streets in Barrakeesh, stopping at a tavern or enjoying the sights of the Saadi-tas-Ouda, perhaps with one of his wives on his arm. Not the seventeenth wife, though. Definitely not the seventeenth and last of them. She had a beauty as fair as a desert dune's and eyes that set a man to dreaming, and he'd hardly been able to do anything else except think of wedlock since first he'd seen her. Too late, too late did he discover her compulsive extravagance. If it hadn't been for the gold bath she'd insisted on buying he wouldn't have been so short of funds that he had little choice but to accept the Zakhan Halarsa's commission to come here to Sommerlund ... If it hadn't been for her and her bath, he wouldn't be here now in the freezing rain and the corrosive wind. He resolved to divorce her as soon as he got home to Vassagonia. Assuming he did. The Sommlending could be cruel to spies sent among them.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 68 Liharat had been gone a long time. Bourjali's companion was a lithe little man and, so he had said, a practised assassin. He'd willingly volunteered to cope with the guards that the Kai must surely have set at the entrance to their Monastery, even on a lousy night like this. Just as Bourjali was beginning to get seriously worried that their plan might have collapsed before it had properly got under way, Liharat slipped quietly through the bushes to stand by his side. "All done?" said Bourjali. He had to speak quite loudly to make sure he was heard above the racket of the elements. "All done," Liharat confirmed. "How many?" "None." "None! Surely there must have been guards!" "I meant, none left." "Oh." "There were three, but I done 'em." "I see." Bourjali preferred not to think about it. He'd never done anything like this before, and nothing could have astonished him more than when the Sharnazim, the Zakhan's dreaded secret police, had casually informed him that he'd been selected to carry out a mission for the glory of the fatherland. He was a respectable – well, fairly respectable – merchant, not a spy. "Knocked 'em off. Slit their gizzards with a double back-handed ..." "I'm sure you dealt with them perfectly competently," said Bourjali primly. Enough was enough. "You ain't much like the Bourjali I used to work with," said Liharat sullenly. "He was a good guy, he was – liked to hear all the details of me craft. Wonder what ever happened to him?" "I wouldn't know," said Bourjali, leaping to a sudden unwelcome conclusion. But there was no time to think any further about it. The Kai surely must relieve their guards periodically: the assassination wouldn't go unnoticed forever. In the rain and the darkness it had been impossible for the two Vassagonians to get any clear idea of the duty roster without risking being observed. The quicker the two spies were in and out of the Monastery, the better their chances of escaping alive. Bourjali followed Liharat's racing form to the doorway. The little man looked left and right, his dagger in his hand, and then pushed the door ajar just enough so that he could slip through. Breathless, Bourjali followed him.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 69 "Here!" hissed Liharat, dragging him into a dark niche just beside the doorway. "Get yourself stuck into this." Bourjali felt a roughly stitched cape being thrust into his hands. The cape's fur collar was sticky with something, and abruptly he realized what it was. "We can't wander around the Monastery dressed in these!" he whispered urgently. "The Kai spend half their time covered in bloodstains," said Liharat. "It's a martial Order, you know. If anyone gets too curious about it, just tell 'em you're a messy eater, or something. But, unless we're very unlucky, we shouldn't meet anyone this late at night. And, if we do, we can deal with 'em, can't we? Now hurry!" A minute later the two spies were slipping from shadow to shadow along one of the main internal corridors of the Monastery. Both of them were in capes of brown, which did a little to lessen the effect of the bloodstains – especially since there were few torches along the walls. As Liharat had anticipated, most of the few Kai that were in the Monastery at this time of year were safely asleep in their cells. Bourjali was only roughly aware of what they were to do next. It had all seemed so easy back in Barrakeesh ("Simply appropriate the Book of the Magnakai from the library," the Sharnaz officer who'd briefed them had said. "It's in a concealed strongbox behind a stone lectern whose face is carved into the shape of a hawk."), but now a few of the questions that Bourjali hadn't dared ask then were coming back to the forefront of his mind. For an urgent start, whereabouts in the Monastery was its library? They could hardly expect the Kai to have put up convenient little notices, like the ones to guide visitors in Barrakeesh's Temple of Knowledge. Besides, he didn't read Sommlending, and he suspected that Liharat, for all his swaggering airs of weary experience, didn't either. And Bourjali didn't much fancy simply opening every door until they found the right one ... "Along here!" whispered Liharat, beckoning him to follow down a narrower passageway that branched off the main one. Here there were no torches at all, so they had to grope their way through the faint light that leaked into the corridor behind them. "Are you sure this is the right way?" said Bourjali softly. "'Course I'm sure. We're trained to be sure about things like this. Least, I am. This has got to be the way to libraries or studies or something. If there were sleeping quarters along here they'd

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 70 keep the lights lit. And if it were the kitchens you'd still be able to feel some of the warmth from dinner or smell the cooking smells. Have you forgotten everything you learnt at Quadi Sushumai?3" Bourjali wished that his namesake were here in his place, that the Sharnazim hadn't made the appalling mistake they obviously had. He could have tried taking the blasted bath back to the merchant who'd sold it to his seventeenth (and, it had to be admitted, most beautiful and occasionally most passionate) wife and begged him to take it back. And then he remembered the cold light that came into his seventeenth (and most deliciously unpredictable) wife's eyes whenever she was thwarted, and he realized that the whole scenario had a dreadful inevitability about it. "Yes. I mean no. I was just testing to see that we were both of one mind," he mumbled feebly. "We are," said Liharat bitterly. "And it's mine." The first room they checked was obviously an armourer's workroom. All around the walls there were rails and shelves holding all manner of edged weapons and bows. Bourjali wanted to pause and have a look at these, but Liharat was eager to push ahead to the other rooms. The next was indeed the library. Bourjali looked at his slight companion with grudging respect. The room was quite a lot smaller than he'd imagined it would be, but there was no mistaking its function. A single torch burnt in a sconce above the door. Most of the wall space was taken up by scrolls on shelves – bound books were still very rare in Sommerlund outside the capital. Over in one corner was, just as the Sharnaz had told them, a heavy-looking lectern whose front aspect had been carved to represent a hawk in the act of pouncing on its prey. They stood huddled beside the lectern, their breathing seeming deafeningly loud. The library was totally enclosed, and the thick walls of the Monastery effectively cut out all the sounds of the storm outside. "Can't see any signs of a strongbox," said Liharat, licking his lips and running his eyes over the dimly lit wall. They'd both been expecting that there would be a picture or something hung there to disguise the safe, but the stone surface was bare. "The Sharnazim's intelligence has been accurate so far," said Bourjali thoughtfully. "I'd be surprised if they'd got this last bit wrong." The infamous Vassagonian College of Espionage in Barrakeesh. 3

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 71 "Dunno," said Liharat. "There was this time in ..." "Quiet," said Bourjali, and was immediately surprised at the confidence with which he'd spoken the word. "I'm thinking." Liharat looked at him, startled. He almost started to speak, but bit the words back. At first Bourjali was convinced that the wall itself must hide something. His eyes sought betraying hair-line cracks – perhaps one of the stones was merely a façade which would swing aside neatly if some sensitive area were touched. But he could see nothing of the sort, and when he ran his probing hands over the cold surface the wall seemed no more than it purported to be. Kneeling down and testily asking Liharat to step out of the light, he performed the same sort of investigation on the floor at the wall's foot. Still nothing. He squinted up at the ceiling, but it, too, appeared to be innocent. Settling back on his haunches he sucked air through his teeth and let all sorts of improbable possibilities pass through his mind. Suddenly he glanced suspiciously at the heavy lectern. "It's in a concealed strongbox behind a stone lectern whose face is carved into the shape of a hawk," the Sharnaz who'd briefed them had said. Ambiguities could crop up when Sommlending was translated into Vassagonian. What the Sharnazim had translated from their intelligence sources as "behind" could well have meant "in the rear of". Bourjali conveyed as much to Liharat and the two Vassagonians spent a couple of minutes exploring minutely the upright of the lectern. A couple of futile minutes. So far as they could ascertain without the use of a sledgehammer, the lectern was as solid as the wall. "I'm beginning to think that something much more significant was distorted in translation," he muttered to himself. He ran through other possible areas of misinterpretation and finally settled on the expression "concealed strongbox". Vassagonian was a very literal language, as befitted a people whose ancestors had been desert camel-herders. The Sommlending had brought with them during their immigration from their northern homelands a language that was often coloured with the exotic, marking the rituals and primitive magic that they had practised in the icy wastes of a then-young world. Sometimes these Sommlending expressions lost a lot when rendered into Vassagonian. "It's something magical," he said morosely. "What is?" said Liharat. "The `concealed strongbox' the Sharnaz was talking about. It's nothing physical – it's not a metal or stone casket or anything

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 72 like that." He explained briefly his speculations concerning the differences between the two languages. "I think we're looking for something that is bound up in magic so that it's hidden from our sight." Liharat looked bewildered. "But the Kai have no magic to speak of," he said, "just charms for curing warts and stuff like that. Primitive junk." Bourjali shrugged. "They have abilities to tap their own minds in ways that the rest of us can't. For all we know, there might be one of them here in this room right now, watching us. It wouldn't be that he was invisible to us, just that he was affecting our minds so that we'd never look at him. They could have done the same thing to this Magnakai book." Liharat let his gaze scour the dark corners of the room anxiously. The only way to make sure that a lurking Kai wasn't stopping them from looking at him was to make sure they looked in every possible direction. "I didn't really think there was one of them watching us," said Bourjali mildly. "It was just a ... just a figure of speech. We'd have been dead by now if a Kai had seen us enter here." "This isn't helping us find the book," said Liharat, swift to shuffle the burden of responsibility off onto someone else's shoulders. Bourjali, too, had been letting his eyes roam. Idly he stepped up to the lectern and looked at the book spread out on it. A glance at the pages showed that it was a manual on ballista-manufacture. Not really thinking about what he was doing, he turned over to the next page and whistled softly. "Take a look at this!" he breathed. "Pretties?" said Liharat, appearing at his shoulder. "No, you idiot. Read that!" The little man's face wrinkled up with disappointment. "I, er, can't read them Sommlending scratchings," he said. "Don't you understand? This must be it!" cried Bourjali softly. "The `magic' the Kai used to conceal it was the simplest magic of all! They put it somewhere that in the ordinary way we'd never think of looking for it. It was hidden in its own webs of obviousness!" "How can you be so sure this actually is the Book of the Magnakai?" said Liharat suspiciously. "You can't read Sommlending either." Bourjali savoured the moment. It was good to turn the tables. "'Course I'm sure," he quoted. "We're trained to be sure

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 73 about things like this. Least, I am. Have you forgotten everything you learnt at Quadi Sushumai?" He smiled. Liharat scowled. "Don't speak to me in that patronizing tone of smirk," he muttered. Bourjali picked up the large book carefully and closed it. The pages were discoloured yellow, as if they had been stained by weak jala. The binding had been done in beaten and tooled gold – even if this proved to be the wrong book, and he was by no means as certain as to its identity as he'd claimed to Liharat, the binding alone would be worth a good few crowns in the market at Barrakeesh ... But then he pressed the book to his chest preparatory to stowing it away beneath his own cloak. He felt the book's soul-stuff reacting to the proximity of his heart. The effect was immensely subtle – not the psychic blast that one might have expected from a soul-imbued object. There was the gentlest of pushings in his mind, just enough to let him know that the book would prefer to be replaced on the lectern and left alone. It was the signal he needed to substantiate his suspicions. This was indeed the treasured Book of the Magnakai. The Zakhan Halarsa would reward them both well ... All they had to do now was get out of both the Monastery and Sommerlund alive. "Time to get going," said Liharat, as if reading his thoughts. The book safely tucked away, Bourjali followed his lithe companion to the library door. Putting his finger to his lips as an unnecessary warning, Liharat sneaked a glance around its edge. He nodded confirmation that the coast was clear, and then darted out into the corridor's gloom. "Who goes there?" came a thunderous voice in Sommlending. "Naar!" swore Bourjali under his breath. He retreated into the library, hoping that he hadn't been spotted. Through the gap of the almost-closed door he could see that the light in the passage was becoming brighter. The Kai who'd spotted them must be carrying a torch as he advanced. Liharat was caught in the light, looking like a startled nocturnal animal. Bourjali fumbled for his own sword, heart sinking, knowing that he was incompetent in its use at the best of times, worse than that when terrified out of his wits. "Who are you, little man?" said the booming voice. Liharat had surreptitiously drawn his evilly curved dagger and was holding it close to his belly, concealed by the folds of his bloodstained garment. "We are Kai like yourself," he said suavely.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 74 Hidden from him, Bourjali winced: the Vassagonian accent was painfully obvious. "`We'? There's more than one of you?" "Myself and my inner essence," Liharat improvised. "Each one of us is really two, as Sun Eagle taught ..." "I believe you not! You are covered in blood! Innocent blood, I'll wager! I repeat, little man, in the name of Ishir who are you?" "Don't you recognize me?" A wheedling note had entered Liharat's voice. "Come closer and see the face of a friend." Bourjali heard a scraping noise that told him that the Kai was fitting his torch into one of the wall-sconces. Then the unseen warrior began to shout. "Barking Fox! Cloud Owl! Come here and see what I've found!" The time to strike was now, before the reinforcements had a chance to arrive. Bourjali never even saw Liharat tense to leap forward: one minute the assassin was at the centre of his vision, the next he'd disappeared. There were the sounds of scuffling. Reckless now of safety – all seemed already lost – Bourjali threw open the library door and sprang out into the corridor, lugging his sword ponderously from his belt, cursing as its guard caught in his supernumary cape, finally getting it into the "ready" position. He gasped when he saw the size of Liharat's adversary. The Kai warrior was truly huge. So was his sword, and that was where the Vassagonian's advantage lay. The Sommlending's weapon was too large for efficient use in the confined space of the corridor. Liharat was darting backwards and forwards inside the reach of the Kai's swing, inflicting with his lightning-swift dagger wounds that were individually trivial but which were already, collectively, weakening the vastly bigger man. Even so, it could be only a matter of time before Liharat made some blunder and paid for it with his life. Bourjali stood dumbstruck, feeling utterly use in the face of all this violence. Over the grunt and yelps of the two fighting men he could hear, far in the distance, the sound of running footsteps. Even if Liharat succeeded in killing the big man, their escape route must surely by now already be closed off. He looked around him desperately. Behind him, where the passageway came to a dead end, there was a small, glazed window set about five feet up in the wall. Small it might be, but it was just large enough to take the body of a man – especially a man fleeing for his life. Dropping his sword, Bourjali hauled out the Book of the Magnakai from under his clothing. He took a couple of running

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 75 paces forwards towards the window and then hurled the bulky tome with all his force straight at the glass. There was a crash. Shards flew. The book vanished into the murk beyond the window. Turning, Bourjali scooped up his sword from where it had fallen and, eyes bulging with desperation, ran towards the struggling men with the blade held out in front of him. It was a matter of chance which one of them he skewered. But chance was on his side. He felt a horrible rending sensation through the hilt of the sword as its blade plunged through the neck of the giant Kai. The warrior gave a throttled scream and blood surged from his mouth as he began to crumple. "Good work!" panted Liharat. "Come on! Quick!" At the window Liharat stooped down and formed a saddle with his hands. Trying not to think about the lances of glass still standing out like fangs around the edges of the windowframe, Bourjali put his foot in the saddle and launched himself head-first at the black rectangle. Fire raked his scalp and his sides but he was through, landing in a sprawl in the mud outside. He felt the hard shape of the book under him, and instinctively began to stuff it under his cape. Moments later Liharat was landing on top of him, piledriving the breath from his body. There was a lot of shouting from the window. The Kai warrior's summoned reinforcements had arrived on the scene only a split second too late. "Arrows!" yelled Liharat as he lugged Bourjali to his feet. "Gotta get out of the light. 'Way into the forest. Run!" Bourjali's legs felt like rubber, but he obediently staggered in the smaller man's wake through the wind and the needles of rain. The realization that he, Bourjali, had actually just slaughtered a fellow human being chose this moment to punch him in the gut, and he almost fell. Somehow he stayed upright long enough to make it to the shelter of the trees, where he tripped over a root and fell full-length. The whole Monastery was awake now. Even though it had been only at best a fifth full, there were now lights in most of the windows – clearly a squad of the Kai must be swiftly searching each room in case some of the invaders were still inside. As Bourjali forced himself up to his knees the main doorway was thrown open and a blaze of light pierced the darkness. Liharat was tugging insistently at his sleeve. "Make tracks!" he was yelling over the crescendo of the thrashing trees. "Far 'way's we can. Come on!"

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 76 Shortly afterwards there were only the wind and the rain and the shouts of wrath and dismay from within the Kai Monastery. two It seemed that they didn't stop running until they reached Casiorn. Even here they didn't feel safe, for Casiorn is largely a desolate land save for its capital, also called Casiorn, a populous and wealthy city established as a city-state by powerful merchants centuries ago. The rest of the nation is populated only by nomads and by the inhabitants of small settlements founded over the years by groups of refugees fleeing persecution in their own lands. The Sommlending would think nothing of sending a detachment or two of their warriors over the border into this mainly empty land, secure in the knowledge that the rulers of the city-state of Casiorn would care little about such temporary incursions. And the two Vassagonians were under no illusion that the Kai were far behind them. In their precipitate flight with the Book of the Magnakai they'd had little time to spare on covering their tracks. Once, making a forced stop on the outskirts of ruined Maaken to pick up supplies, they'd overheard a tavern conversation which told of how patrols of the Kai were spreading swiftly throughout the province of Ruanon in the search for two fugitive Vassagonians. Even though the locals seemed to accept their claims to be journeying Cloeasians, Bourjali and Liharat were away from the ruined city within the hour. Now Bourjali pulled himself high in the saddle of a stolen horse and looked glumly out across a seemingly endless landscape of half-hearted woodlands and scrubby plain. A searing wind swept across the largely flat terrain. Although there was none of the drenching rain of Sommerlund's winter, Bourjali felt even colder than he had on that vile night, only about ten days ago, when he and Liharat had captured the Book of the Magnakai. He shivered. Not even the thought of his seventeenth (and most youthfully effervescent) wife could warm him. Liharat, whose turn it was to ride the mule – they'd stolen both animals from the stable of a remote farm, and had had to be content with whatever was there – came up beside him. "Not long 'til we're home now," the assassin said cheerfully. "Hop over the border, get as far as Teph or Chahdan, pick up with a caravan and in a few weeks it's `Wozzer, Halarsa, here's yer tome' and we're a couple of rich men."

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 77 "I don't think it's going to be that simple," said Bourjali warily. "Wodjer mean?" "Can you really see the Zakhan Halarsa letting us live, now that we know what we know?" "That's not what you were saying earlier, my jolly fat buckaroo." Clearly Liharat thought he was joking. "It's not what I was thinking earlier, either," said Bourjali, ignoring the insult. "But all the while we've been coming south the conviction's been growing in me that, if we go back to Barrakeesh with the book, we're doomed." "Why?" "Well, ask yourself exactly what it is that Halarsa wants the book for." "He likes reading?" Liharat flinched when he saw the expression on Bourjali's face. "Only having a bit of a jest," he added hurriedly. "No, Halarsa wants the book because the Darklords want it – otherwise it wouldn't be of any use to him at all. I've been looking at it from time to time over the past few days and, even though I still can't make head nor tail of the writing, I can feel enough of the book's soul-stuff through my fingers to know that it contains mysteries. It doesn't take a genius to recognize that those mysteries must be very fundamental to the school of wisdom that underpins the Order of the Kai. Without the book, the existing Kai will be able to transmit their mysteries on to their successors orally, but, if anything should happen to their Order as a whole, then the wisdom would be lost forever. That must be why the Darklords want the book so much – in order to destroy it so that, if they succeed in exterminating the Kai, they know that Kai wisdom will never be able to resurface. That's why the book is so important to the Kai and to the Darklords." "So a pretty valuable book it is," said Liharat, obviously only half-convinced, "an' not just for the gold binding. Halarsa'll give us a lot for it, then, eh?" "All the more reason for him not to give us anything," said Bourjali smoothly. "But I don't think money will even enter his head. It seems pretty obvious that he's going to try to do some kind of a deal with the Darklords. If news of that got out to the people – other than his very closest Sharnazim – there'd be rioting in the streets in an instant. He'd probably be able to crush the uprising easily enough, but he couldn't guarantee that. Halarsa wouldn't be the first zakhan to lose his life in a rebellion. Do you think he'd

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 78 want to take the risk that one of us might say something rash in an unguarded moment? Do you really?" Liharat was looking grey. "No chance," he said. "Now's you've put it so lucid, like. Snuff us out like mayflies, he will." Bourjali drummed with his fingers on his horse's neck. "The big trouble facing us, my friend, is to try to find someone who wouldn't `snuff us out', as you put it so graphically." "True. Can't see the Kai 'xactly welcoming us back with open arms – not seeing as how we cut off a few of them in their prime. We could always, er, think of settling down somewhere around here. Nice couple of Casiorn wenches and we start new families." Liharat looked around him bleakly at the fruitless, windswept landscape. "On second thoughts ..." "I've had a crazy idea," confessed Bourjali after a while. The horse and the mule were trotting along what seemed once to have been a trail. The two men had not been enjoying the silence between them. "You're not going to like it one little bit." "I haven't had any ideas at all," said Liharat. "I don't like that one little bit either. You can't tell me anything worse than nothing at all. Or can you?" "Maybe I can. Look, the ones who really want this book a lot – apart from the Kai, of course – are the Darklords. Yes?" "Too right. But Helgedad's a bit off the beaten track, you know." Barjouli frowned at the gibe. If given a choice of companion in such straits, Liharat would have come somewhere very close to the bottom of the list. Probably just below the Archlord Zagarna. Near the top – in fact, on a pinnacle all of her very own and despite her incurable extravagance – would come his seventeenth (and most lusciously succulent, with a sway as she walked that would charm an itikar out of the skies) wife, but he was trying not to think too much about her: even if his idiotic plan were to succeed, the chances were that he'd never see her again. Or the sway as she walked. "They're also the ones who're least likely to want to `snuff us out'. I mean, they're pretty keen on snuffing people out in general, but they'd be hardly likely to bother picking on us especially." "How do you make that out?" "Well, the forces of Evil are pretty convinced that sooner or later they're going to have the snuffing out of everyone, anyway. If we put enough distance between them and us before we actually let them have the book itself, I can't see them thinking it's worth their while to pursue us."

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 79 "And how do you think we could organize that?" said Liharat gloomily. "We hide the Book of the Magnakai somewhere. Somewhere very secure indeed. Only then do we approach some puppet of the Darklords with our deal. Once they've given us as many goodies as we can carry ..." "Carry on a mile-long train of camels," Liharat corrected. "As much as we can get away with, anyway. Stop interrupting. Once we've got the loot we vanish. We promise that we'll send them a message somehow. Only once we're safely lodged in our place of seclusion do we tell them where they can find the book. "You were right," Liharat said after a time. "That idea's utterly crazy. Suicidal. It hasn't got a hope of coming off. We'd be dead meat, almost certain." "I thought you'd probably say that," Bourjali responded. "You're quite right." "On the other hand," said Liharat, "it's far and away the best plan we've got. I'll go with it, mate. Only thing is, where do you plan hiding this here oh-so-valuable little tomette that the Darklords – or even Halarsa's men – wouldn't find it?" "I did think of hiding it somewhere around here," said Bourjali, still surprised at Liharat's acceptance of the scheme. "This dump's certainly remote enough. The trouble is that it's too featureless: we've got no guarantee that we ourselves would be able of finding it again later. No" – he paused to watch rain-clouds forming on the horizon – "I've had another lunatic idea about where we could hide it." "Where?" "The Tomb of the Majhan." "What?" "The Tomb of the Majhan, I said." "But that's impossible! Raggin' impossible, innit?" Liharat fell silent for a moment and then, more quietly, repeated: "Innit?" "It's not quite as ..." "I mean," Liharat erupted again, so that his mule stopped briefly in its tracks, "I mean, no one knows where the blasted place is, for starters!" "Not `nobody'. Very few people. There's the zakhan himself, and certainly one or two of his most senior Sharnazim, because he wouldn't want to run the risk of the secret dying with him." "Can't see the zakhan telling us. `Sorry you don't want to lemme have the book, lads, but here's the address of the Tomb of

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 80 the Majhan anyway.' A bit out of character, wouldn't you say? And as for the Sharnazim ... hah!" "I didn't say they were the only people who knew. You really ought to be a little more careful about listening more precisely to what people say. Have you ... have you forgotten everything you learnt at Espionage College?" "Stop rubbing it in, fatface." "No, there are some others who've learnt the secret. You can't keep much from the desert travellers indefinitely, you know. And some of them see fit to pass information on to their masters. To merchants. To people like me." Liharat looked dumbfounded. Bourjali enjoyed watching the little man's face. "All right," said the assassin defiantly. "All right, if you're so zorking know-all, tell me where it is then!" "Certainly. The ancient site of the Tomb of the Majhan," Bourjali said with pompous precision, "lies about one hundred and fifteen miles west of the port of Bir Rabalou and the same distance south of the oasis of Bal-loftan. The three places form a right-angled triangle, with the Tomb of the Majhan at the right angle. If we had a map of Vassagonia here I could pinpoint the place for you." "Oh. You really know this, do you?" "I really do." "Well ..." said Liharat. "Well, it's better than nothing, I suppose. Just." three Three months later the two Vassagonians were in Ghatan, approaching the gloomy city of Torgar, built by the Drakkarim a millennium and a half ago when they'd overrun the country. Torgar had originally been designed to be less a city than a vast torture chamber for the barbaric destruction of the native Ghatanese. Within a few decades, however, there had been no Ghatanese left to torture, and so the Drakkarim themselves had taken to using most of the collection of grim, forbidding edifices as dwelling-places. But not the dungeons. The Drakkarim still had enemies a-plenty for them to wish to retain the dungeons for their original purpose. This was a city of faintly heard screaming. Surrounded by its black wall, hundreds of feet high, Torgar had become one of the mightiest fortress-cities in all Magnamund

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 81 outside the Darklands. And then, in the year MS3150, when the Drakkarim had allied themselves with the forces of Naar, Torgar had come directly under the control of the Darklords. Giaks and Vordaks could be seen mixing in the streets with the Drakkarim, and very occasionally a Xaghash or even a Darklord would put in an appearance. The Vassagonians were silent as their camels picked their way reluctantly along the spruce stone road towards this dread place. The whole nation of Ghatan seemed to embody evil – wherever you were, there seemed to be malicious eyes on you – but, now that Bourjali and Liharat were so close to Torgar they felt as if they could have plucked evil from the air and kneaded it between their hands. Time had wrought changes on the two spies. Bourjali had lost much of his flab, and his new trim appearance might well have gained him the approval of his seventeenth (exuberantly wildcattish and still nightly yearned-for) wife. There were new lines on Liharat's face – lines that seemed to bespeak wisdom but were in fact simply a product of the way he'd aged rapidly during these past three arduous months. Their journey across Vassagonia's great desert, the Dry Main, had been by no means an easy one, especially the last hundred or so miles, when they had been travelling on their own, none of the camel-drovers who'd been their companions thus far being willing to venture any closer to the Tomb of the Majhan. They'd spent weeks digging their way down into the sacred tomb itself. Each time they thought they'd tunnelled far enough they'd decided that, after all, it might be as well to make sure ... Finally they'd come to a great hall that had been saved from the desert sands by its sealed doorways, through which they'd managed to gain ingress only with the greatest of difficulty. There they'd found arrays of sarcophagi on whose lids were depictions of the Majhan. This was the heart of the whole complex – the Tomb of the Majhan itself. It had been a holy place, and even Liharat's customary stream of sacrilegious babble had dried up during the time they'd spent there laying the book to rest in a secret place. The thought of the precise identity of that secret place still troubled them both, although they never spoke about it. They'd been levering up one of the stone slabs of the tomb's floor in order to dig a hollow underneath it when a wave of sleepiness had washed over them. When they'd awoken some while later – they had no way of knowing how long they'd slept – they'd found the book gone. After an hour's frantic searching they'd noticed that, set perfectly into one of the walls, there was now a rectangular hatch.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 82 Moulded into the stone of the hatch, beneath a carving of a seven-headed dragon spitting fire, there had been the imprint of a human hand. Reluctant to put their hands anywhere near that ominous-looking shape, they'd attacked the hair-thin line in the wall that demarked the edges of the hatch – but to no avail. Only as a last resort had Bourjali impetuously put his hand in the carved impression. For a moment the stone of the hatch had hazed so that, through it, they'd been able to make out the shape of the Book of the Magnakai set on a low lectern. They'd left it there – they'd had no choice. Whatever incomprehensible spirit might lurk in the Tomb of the Majhan had clearly decided to create a more secure hiding-place for the book than any mortal could. Besides, as Liharat had glibly pointed out a hundred times or more since they'd left the tomb far behind them, getting the Book of the Magnakai out of its resting-place wasn't their problem: what was the purpose of the Darklords employing Nadziranim if not to solve little conundra like this? But the whole experience, even in memory, still made their flesh creep. Almost as much as did the sight of the ruthless towers of Torgar stabbing up into the overcast sky. It was impossible to look at the fortress-city's almost obscenely ugly lines and not think of anguish. "You're sure this is going to work, are you?" said Liharat as if the question were a fresh one. "No," Bourjali replied, as always. His voice betrayed weariness mixed in with the stress. "Ever since I first proposed this scheme I've been telling you how horrendously unlikely it is that it'll work. But it's the best chance we have of coming out of this alive and with some loot to show for our troubles. Right?" "Yeah," said Liharat. "Yeah ..." Soon they were on the bank of a greasy moat looking across the water at Torgar's main gate, about a hundred yards away. A bridge joined the mainland to the island on which the city had been built. Part of the bridge, about halfway across, had been hinged so that it could function as a drawbridge in case the city were attacked: the hinges looked as if they hadn't been used in a very long time. The bridge bore a very occasional traffic of Drakkarim, mostly soldiers clad in the traditional black armour and wearing red capes; their helmets were almost architecturally embellished with spikes and blades and were painted in expressions of demonic malignity. Neither of the two Vassagonians had seen a Drakkar close up before, and they watched the warriors with a sick

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 83 enthrallment until they realized that they were rapidly becoming a focus of attention. Moments later they were scant inches from death. Without their having realized it, a group of half a dozen Drakkarim had crept up behind them. The first that Bourjali knew of it was when he heard a chink of metal on metal, turned his head, and found himself looking at a spear-point. He yelled. Liharat, a split second later, also yelled. "Silence, strangers," said one of the Drakkarim in Vassagonian, but in an almost incomprehensibly thick accent. His voice was hoarse and effortful, as if it resented having to speak. "Before we take you off for our sport, tell us why you have been so insane as to come here." "We are friends of yours," said Bourjali, wishing he'd been able to keep the quaver out of his voice. "`Friends'!" mocked the Drakkar cumbersomely. "Friendship is a human characteristic, and is fit only for animals such as humans. A Drakkar is proud to have no friends. Do not insult us, scum!" Bourjali tried again. "We have something that your master wishes. We come to trade with him." "There is nothing that a human could offer a Drakkar. The only gift that you can give us is the sound of your screams." "I didn't say we bore gifts." "We do not trade with animals. Seize them! First we shall make the fat, gabby one a little thinner and less talkative." "Once he discovers that we are dead, your master will subject you to a fate far worse than any you could dream up for us," said Bourjali, deliberately raising one eyebrow, desperately keeping his voice calm. He was a merchant and thus accustomed to horse-trading: he was on his own territory, so to speak. Yet never before had he been attempting to strike a bargain in such dire circumstances. "Big talk!" sneered the Drakkar, but he beckoned to his men to stay themselves. "What might you creatures have that could possibly be of interest to the Warlord Korkas, the ruler of all that he surveys?" "That is something that we shall tell only to him," said Bourjali quietly. "Do remember that it is in your interests to let us do so. Afterwards, of course, if our proposed bargain bores him, we'll still be there for you to enact your bestial practices on." The Drakkar was thinking. It was evident that this was not an activity in which he frequently engaged. Bourjali imagined that he could hear the gears creaking. But, if the pseudo-man were only

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 84 capable of working it out, he was being presented with a no-lose proposition. The worst that could happen was that Korkas might be displeased at having his time wasted. On the other hand, if he simply had the prisoners tortured to death, the consequences of his indulgence in that brief pleasure might be devastating. Play safe, dammit! Play safe! the Vassagonian merchant thought urgently in the Drakkar's direction while maintaining a placid exterior. A salesman's exterior. Whether or not it was the burst of thought that tipped the balance would forever be a moot point, but the Drakkar slowly nodded. "You shall have your wish, aliens," he croaked. "You shall see the mighty Korkas – if he agrees to see you, which he may not. Then, once he has trifled with you, you shall be ours to enjoy." The ring of Drakkarim lowered their spears, but only part-way. "Follow!" snapped their leader. The bridge to Torgar's gateway shook under the impact of their horses' hooves. A detached part of Bourjali's mind noted professionally that it was old – centuries old – and that, if the Drakkarim did not soon think to shore it up or replace it, it would begin to disintegrate. Inside the gate there was a courtyard with looming compounds placed haphazardly around it. Down side-streets he caught a glimpse of further angular buildings. Paintings of death's heads adorned walls everywhere. Here and there banners in dark blood-colours hung lifelessly from flag-poles. The streets were less crowded than one might have expected in a similar area of a human settlement, but nevertheless there were scores of Drakkarim in view, plodding in their mechanistic, mindless way from one door to another. Once he saw a Giak. There was some element missing from the scene, and it took Bourjali an embarrassingly long time to identify what it was: there were no children. He had no certain idea if the lifecycle of a Drakkar was similar to that of a human, but assumed it must be. So where were their young? They had negotiated a number of broad streets and were coming to a halt before the most imposing building they had yet seen. Bourjali leaned back in the saddle and looked upwards. The stark walls seemed to stretch too far upwards for common sense to accept. The whole front of the building was covered by a vast stylized painting in white of a grinning skull. The leer of its fleshless jaws seemed to be shouting a message of hate at the sky – and yet there was despair mixed in with the hatred. Bourjali wondered if this was a deliberate effect – if the Drakkarim even knew that it was

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 85 there. Briefly he found himself pitying these creatures: the trouble with all philosophies based on hatred was that they were so universally dismal – so pathetic. Such thoughts evaporated as he was roughly manhandled from his horse. He and Liharat were half-led, half-dragged up a flight of shallow stairs to a door decorated with that ubiquitous symbol of the grinning skull. Grim sentries looked at their captor briefly and then moved to open the door. Then the party was inside a huge and dusky entrance hall. Again there were limp banners, this time hanging from poles in neat lines along the length of the hall. What light there was came from a dozen braziers scattered hither and thither across the floor. Bourjali noticed sickly that some of the braziers contained implements of torment; he trusted that they were there for symbolic purposes only, but nevertheless they were an unpleasant reminder of what lay in store for Liharat and himself should their stratagem fail. Worse was to follow. They were led down a broad corridor on whose walls were low, crudely executed friezes showing in graphic detail Drakkarim methods of disposing of their victims. Bourjali's stomach, already rebellious, began to churn in a regular, rhythmic and threatening fashion. Finally they were before another massive, guarded door. Along the walls on each side of it were rows of large meat-hooks from which hung disembowelled human corpses, punctured through their necks by the hooks. The sight was revolting; the stench far worse. The Drakkarim guards watched impassively as the two Vassagonians vomited. Eyes streaming, Bourjali managed with a surge of self-discipline to pull himself erect and face his captors as if nothing had happened. "We are ready to meet with the Warlord Korkas," he said gravely, conscious of the fact that his breath and his garments now stank. "I shall beg of the warlord whether or not he wishes to waste his time with you before we take you to the `playrooms' beneath," said the leader of the party that had captured them. He gave a grating laugh, as if he knew already what Korkas's verdict would be. Strong arms encircled Bourjali and Liharat, holding them rigidly in place as the Drakkarim leader was ushered by the sentries through the great door. He seemed to be gone a very long time; Bourjali couldn't work out whether the delay was a good or a bad

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 86 sign. Finally the soldier reappeared, and the Vassagonians could tell by the dejected slant of his shoulders that Korkas had agreed to grant them an audience. The chamber into which they were pushed was, presumably by design, reminiscent of nothing other than a monster's maw. Walls, floor and ceiling were done in a corrupted pink. All of the surfaces were rounded: there were no sharp edges or corners anywhere. To complete the illusion, the floor and ceiling were embellished along three sides with rows of jagged off-white sculptures, like stalactites and stalagmites; Bourjali suddenly realized, with a flush of returned nausea, that the figures had been constructed from smashed fragments of human bones. At the back of the room, where one might have expected the monster's uvula to hang, was painted yet another of the Drakkarim death's heads. The only furniture was a throne of pink marble placed in the precise centre of the floor. On the throne sat a Drakkar who seemed to have been built to a different scale from that of his fellows: he was at least fifty per cent bigger in all his dimensions. His helmet was a monstrosity of elaborated curlicues and spikes; its face had been decorated in exquisite detail to resemble that of a storgh with its jaws wide and its serried fangs eager for the rending kill. The Drakkar's body-armour was black, with studs and bolts protruding from it in all sorts of implausible places; Bourjali could only guess at the functions of these. "So these are the Vassagonian trash," said Korkas in a barking voice. "Aye, your warlordship," responded their attendant. "And what piffling matter is it that they disturb my peace with?" "We ..." Bourjali began. He was silenced by a glare from the escort. "I repeat," said Korkas, "what piffling matter is it that they wish to disturb my peace with?" "They refuse to declare it except in your presence, your warlordship." "Then why didn't you let the plump creature speak when it tried to?" said the Warlord impatiently. "Am I surrounded everywhere by limpwits?" "We will state our business only when we are alone with you," said Bourjali hurriedly, before Korkas's rising wrath towards his officer could obscure the main point. "They are not armed?" said the Warlord to his junior in Drakkarim, a harsh tongue of which, like so many others of the

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 87 world's languages, Bourjali had mastered a smattering during his dealings with foreigners. "They are not." Bourjali didn't let his surprise show. No effort had been made to search them. He knew for a fact that Liharat had all kinds of clever little lethal gadgets concealed about his person. And there a dagger hung quite openly from his own belt. Then he realized what the Drakkarim had been talking about. They were unconcerned with any physical weapons that the puny humans might be bearing. The question – and its answer – had been concerned with magical and/or mental weapons. He and Liharat must have been subjected to some sort of mental probe since they'd entered Torgar. It was slightly unnerving to have to accept that they hadn't noticed it happening. "Then grant them their wish," said Korkas. The officer retreated, walking backwards, bowing his head formally at every second pace. It took him a little while, but at last the door was closed behind him. Korkas seemed to be listening for a moment to make sure that the Drakkar had really gone. At last he relaxed. "Thank Naar that oaf's finally shoved off," he said. Liharat's mouth dropped open in astonishment. Bourjali felt weak. Korkas laughed throatily. "Now that we are alone," he said, "I can ease some of the formal trappings of my might, can I not? After all, you're only mortals, and your lives are unlikely to be extended beyond the week's end. I have no need to impress you with my martial pomposity." Bourjali felt a chill start at the back of his neck and swiftly spread over him. A brute he could deal with: this clumsy, attemptedly cozy charm was far more terrifying. This Drakkar might be the soul of compassion as he ushered them to their loathsome fate. He quelled his terrors as best he could, covering his fear by bowing low. "We believe that you will wish us to live far longer than that, your warlordship, once you have heard what we have to say to you." "We shall see." The words dripped scepticism. Bourjali explained as succinctly – and as openly – as he could how the Zakhan Halarsa had sent them to steal the Book of the Magnakai and of their decision, once the theft had been effected, that they could get a better deal by trading directly with the Darklords. Since, for obvious reasons, there could be no

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 88 question of them going into the Darklands to Helgedad or Mozgôar or any of the other strongholds of the Darklords to negotiate there, they had naturally come here to Torgar to speak to the Darklords' most powerful representative outside the Darklands. And now, perhaps, if Korkas would merely be so good as to confirm that he was indeed empowered to act in such matters on behalf of his masters, they could advance to a discussion of terms? "You speak rapidly, fat one," said Korkas at the end of this recital, "and you ask me to proceed at your own swift pace. Let me first consider whether or not my masters would at all be interested in this Kai scribbling you claim to have found." The words were contemptuous, but Bourjali could read in the lines of the Drakkar's posture that in fact his concern was intense. "I think they are," he said quietly. "As I have explained to you, there can be no other reason why the Zakhan Halarsa would have wished us to seize it. Otherwise it would be no more than a useless souvenir to him. Worse than that: a dangerous souvenir. He is perhaps not the wisest of zakhans ever to have graced the Vassagonian throne, but even he is far-sighted enough to realize that, without the collaboration of the Darklords, he would have no choice but to maintain some sort of truce with the Sommlending for the foreseeable future. Were it to be discovered that he possessed the Kai's book the Sommlending would almost certainly invade the nation to recover it, and from any such open contest the Sommlending would surely emerge the victors." "You hold your fellow countrymen in low esteem," observed the Drakkar drily. "We are no longer in any position to regard them as our countrymen," Bourjali retorted. "Liharat and I don't have a nationality any more." "Yes," said Korkas thoughtfully. "Yes, I can see that. Well, imagine for the moment that the Darklords did indeed have some slight passing interest in this object you seem to think is so important ... Under what sort of terms would you be prepared to sell it to them?" "We could not let them have it for pennies, your warlordship," said Bourjali, back on his home ground again. "The price would need to be according to the piece's merit – which is great." "So you say, so you say. Perhaps you could let me see it?" Bourjali laughed out loud – another art in which he had learnt his skill in the marketplaces of Barrakeesh and elsewhere. "You do not take us for fools, your warlordship?" he said.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 89 "As a matter of fact, I do," said Korkas meditatively, "because all humans are fools. But that is not germane to our discussion." Bourjali was thrilled. This was what he really liked: the cut and thrust of bargaining. The contest was always the best – and the fairest – when both parties were frank about their mutual contempt yet acknowledged that, at least for the duration, they must compete on even terms. "You will understand that the feeling is mutual," he said, smiling. Liharat looked at him as if wondering about his sanity, but Korkas merely laughed. "You're brave, for an animal, fat one," he said. "You know that I could command your destruction more easily than flicking my fingers, and yet you speak boldly. You will lead your torturers a merry dance. So. You have the Book of the Magnakai and you wish to sell it to my masters, the Darklords, and yet you have brought with you no proof that your claim is true – no proof, indeed, that the Book of the Magnakai itself is worth more than the life of a mayfly. And you sincerely expect me to treat with you?" "Yes indeed. Even were the Book of the Magnakai worthless in itself, it is still of major importance to your masters – as you well know – simply in terms of the reverence which the Kai have for it. Its loss must already be causing them great despair; the knowledge of its destruction would surely strike their Order a mortal blow." Korkas leaned his head forwards in concurrence. "All right, I accept your point. You have hidden this scripture somewhere, no doubt. You believe that in so doing you have guaranteed your own safety. But tell me this: if your hiding-place is so secure, why should my masters have need of the Book of the Magnakai at all? If we cannot find it, surely the same is true for the Kai. All that we need do is destroy you and your taciturn companion and claim to the world that we have done likewise for the book. The Kai will never have any proof of our lie – that the book in fact still exists. So far as they're concerned, the book would indeed have been destroyed, just as we claimed." Bourjali felt the chill return to his spine. He had only half thought through his stratagem should Korkas put forward this line of argument. "The Kai would know that the book was still in existence," he said with more confidence than he felt. "They would know that they had not felt the sensation of loss they would have experienced were its light to have been extinguished. It is more than just a book, as I'm sure you must realize: it is permeated with

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 90 its own magic, and can speak in its own subtle ways to the minds of the Kai. The world would not believe your lie unless the Kai did: the forces of Evil have used too many lies before for the world to believe a new one unless it be corroborated by other people." "So you say," remarked Korkas, "and perhaps you are to be believed, although I doubt it. Nevertheless, we must take precautions, mustn't we, just in case you have spoken the truth. We must find out where it is that you have concealed the Book of the Magnakai." "That is our intention," said Bourjali, pleased that the discussion seemed to be going his way. "It is that information that we propose to give you in exchange for treasures that you and I shall now agree." "Oh, come, come, my fine fat fellow," said Korkas. "No doubt you have dreamt up some foolishly complicated and longwinded scheme to safeguard your own skins so that you can be secure with your haul in some remote part of Magnamund before finally giving us the location of the Kai's scripture. No, no, there's no need for such a tedious, roundabout way of doing things. Can you, yourself, think of any reason why we shouldn't just torture the information out of you right here and now?" "Our lips are sealed," said Bourjali. "No torture will extract the knowledge you desire." For the first time since they'd entered the mouth-like chamber Liharat spoke. "You can speak for your own lips!" he yelled at Bourjali. "I'm not going to let these ..." "Yes you are," said the merchant firmly, looking the assassin straight in the eye, trying to dominate him by sheer force of will. "I shall say nothing under duress, and you will do likewise." In lower tones he added: "Can't you see, that's the one weapon left in our armoury? Our silence." Liharat ignored him. "Have mercy on us, your warlordship!" he shrieked, running forwards and throwing himself prostrate on the pink floor in front of the throne. "Have mercy on me!" "Silence!" bellowed Bourjali. "You craven cretin! If you tell him where the book lies he'll have you tortured to death anyway! Your life matters nothing to him, but his soldiers want you for their pastimes! You have nothing to gain by your cowardice!" "He speaks truth," said Korkas to Liharat unexpectedly. "There really is no point in your confessing the location to me. Our torments can be no direr nor inventive than they already are. But it will give your torturers greater satisfaction if they know that you

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 91 are resisting them. And it will give yourselves greater pleasure, too, for as long as you can maintain in your own minds the illusion that you are playing a game that you still have a chance of winning. I would pay attention to your plump companion, little man. If he were not a human, he might almost gain my admiration." The advice, coming from such an unanticipated quarter, shocked Liharat into silence. Bourjali could see the assassin's face reform itself, erasing the contortions of his terror. Their chances looked almost infinitely slender, but they'd known that long before they'd ever ventured into Ghatan. And, besides, there was still just the remotest of hopes ... Korkas clapped his armoured hands together and the door opened behind the two Vassagonians. The officer who had brought them here entered, and Korkas spat a few orders to him in Drakkarim. Bourjali could understand only some of the words, but was able to understand that the warlord was indeed giving precise instructions as to the information he wished to garner from their torture. He stressed that the Vassagonians must not be allowed to slip into the merciful arms of death until that intelligence was gained – otherwise the tormenters would suffer a fate every bit as terrible as that which they had just imposed. Bourjali had the impression that the officer was smiling behind his grim mask. Liharat's horror had taken him beyond speech. Bourjali very much hoped that it had been sufficient to drive the assassin into insanity. If he babbled out all sorts of crazy misinformation the Drakkarim would be unable to tell whether or not they'd discovered the truth. As for himself ... He, Bourjali, was a merchant of the Barrakeesh marketplace, and had undergone discomforts before in the pursuit of a particularly appealing bargain. Never a discomfort quite as great as being tortured by the greatest experts in the world, of course, but even so he was certain that he could keep his peace until such time as his tormenters were forced to give up. They were taken from Korkas's chamber – Liharat dragged, Bourjali walking with dignity – along a passage to a grid in the floor. Through this they were dropped down a long shaft to land in a heap in a place where the only light was the red heat of coals. Bourjali felt his right ankle break as he landed, but he made no sound. The Drakkarim soldiers who had captured them came down by a more conventional route to the dungeon, eager to enjoy the sport. The two Vassagonians were swept up in brutal arms and chained spreadeagled to the wall, their clothing stripped from

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 92 them. In the almost-darkness there was nothing they could see except the branding irons and the glint of cruel red light on the creased surfaces of Drakkarim helmets ... four The Book of the Magnakai records many deaths. Liharat was indeed insane before the torturers first advanced upon him with their brands and their knives: he told the Drakkarim nothing before he died. Bourjali screamed louder than had any mortal that the torturers could recall, but his merchant's determination not to be bested in any deal was like steel in him, and he refused to divulge the Book of the Magnakai's whereabouts: his last coherent statement before his soul fled into oblivion was that, for all her waywardnesses, he still loved his seventeenth (and decidedly most pantherlike and seductive) wife beyond all measure and certainly beyond numbers one to sixteen inclusive. Korkas, on hearing that the Vassagonians had thwarted him, was as good as his word: the torturers were subjected to the same anguish as their erstwhile victims – perhaps worse for, being Drakkarim rather than human, it took them longer to die. The soldiers who had brought the Vassagonians into Torgar suffered a similar fate, on the basis that, had they simply consigned the humans to torture as soon as they saw them, the same end-result would have been achieved without half as much bother. The Archlord Zagarna, once word had reached him in Kaag of the fiasco at Torgar, flew into a fury and fed five thousand Giaks to his Kraan and Zlanbeast. Then he flew to Helgedad and summoned Korkas to join him there. When the warlord could find no satisfactory reason why he hadn't simply given the two Vassagonians whatever piffling riches they desired and sought vengeance – if he could still be bothered to – later, once the Book of the Magnakai had been recovered from concealment, was sentenced by a raging Zagarna to a cruel and unusual death: he was lowered slowly, inch by inch, feet-first, into the lava lake surrounding Helgedad. Drakkarim rarely show signs of their agonies, but Korkas's screams seemed to echo everywhere in the city-fortress throughout the days that it took him to die. Zagarna then had all of those who knew of what had occurred slaughtered in various miserable ways. The Archlord had no wish that the other Darklords should hear of this debacle and use it as yet another lever with which to attempt to oust him from the throne of the Darklands.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 93 But all of this cruelty changed one thing not at all: the Book of the Magnakai was still lost to both the Darklords and the Kai. The decades passed. And the decades became centuries. Zagarna retained the Archlordship for almost all of the time, and under his rather ramshackle leadership the forces of Evil were unable to prevail against Sommerlund, which was defended by the still thriving Order of the Kai. But on the eve of the feat of Fehmarn in the year MS5050 all that changed when, aided by the treacherous sorcerer Vonotar, Zagarana's forces were able to attack and destroy the Kai Monastery and exterminate all of the Kai themselves except one. Zagarna's triumph, of course, was short-lived. The solitary surviving Kai, Lone Wolf, armed with the Sword of the Sun, slew the Archlord, and for a time there was chaos in the Darklands. Until finally a successor to Zagarna was chosen as Archlord of the Darklands and chief representative on Magnamund of the God of Evil, Naar. This was Haakon. When he came to the throne he put to rights many of the follies that had been perpetrated during the long reign of Zagarna and tried to restore a better order to the forces of Naar. He was by no means a brilliant administrator, but during the ages that he had been coveting the throne he had been learning from Zagarna's errors, omissions and excesses. One of the things that he had learnt was the value of listening – something that Zagarna had done only when circumstances forced him to. And through listening to those around him Haakon discovered, among many other things, that there was an oral tradition among the Drakkarim concerning the loss to the world of the Book of the Magnakai. Haakon was shrewd enough to realize that the final destruction of this totem – for as such he regarded it – might indeed, as the long-dead Zakhan Halarsa had conceived, so demoralize the people of Sommerlund and its allies that they would at last succumb to the continual assaults made upon them by the forces of Evil. Intelligent enough to be able to concede on occasion that there were others far more intelligent than himself, Haakon set some of his Nadziranim to analyzing and collating the different versions of the Drakkarim legend. Soon the right-handed magicians were able to tell him with virtual certainty that the secret of the location of the stolen Book of the Magnakai had been lost to the world in a torture chamber beneath Torgar in the early Spring of the year MS4435. Haakon mused on this information for almost a year, and then asked his Nadziranim a single question.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 94 There reply was yes, it could indeed be done. And so, surrounded by a flock of Kraan and a swarm of his insubstantial sorcerers, Haakon came to Torgar in person to set in train a desperate plan ... five Bourjali's consciousness – dormant during the unnoticed centuries since it had been diffused throughout the fabric of the plane that is neither being nor not-being, the plane where those souls go that have been vilely sinned against and yet are themselves steeped in sin – felt a tug. His reaction was not instantaneous. The sensation rippled slowly away from its epicentre across the vast extent of his being, and only when it had reached the edges – which were, of course, coincident with the epicentre – did the fullness of him start to respond. With total lack of interest. But the tug came again. And again. And again and again until he could no longer ignore its insistence. Whatever it was that he had left behind on the mundane plane – and his being no longer held even the haziest of memories of what that might have been – was requesting that he return, at least temporarily. His mind worked slowly and in convoluted patterns, but eventually it reached the conclusion that he should continue to disregard the summons. But still whatever it was that was responsible for the series of tugging sensations persevered, until something akin to irritation began to spread through his widely spread essence: had he been able to remember having thought in human terms, he'd have likened it to an itch which would not be felt strongly enough in itself to register on one's consciousness were it not for the fact that it persisted ... and persisted. A new ripple began to spread through his widespread being, this time rushing from the extremities towards the source of the disturbance, which now became like a sort of spiritual vortex, concentrating the essence of Bourjaliness until ... Pop! He was in one of the torture chambers beneath Torgar – he recognized the scenario at once. He sent out a few inquisitive feathers of empathy and confirmed that it was indeed the one in which he and his poor, mad, drooling companion Liharat had been slowly and painfully driven out of worldly existence. For the

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 95 briefest of moments he wondered if he had somehow, magically, been returned to his physical body – he certainly felt as if he were in human form – but a glance at where one of his hands should have been told him both that he had no flesh and that he was not seeing through any physical eyes. Again he sent out investigative feelers. They told him that there were other entities within the torture chamber. First of all there was the remnant of Liharat, still gibbering miserably after all these centuries. But there were ... different beings as well, beings whose soulness was so bizarrely unlike his own that he could have no conception as to what manner of beings they might be. He twisted his mind in a transdimensional direction so that he could appreciate these entities as if they were visible to his non-eyes, and at once he felt a cold bubble of horror working its way up inside him. He barely saw the gruesome faces of the chattering Giaks or the jagged beaks of the couple of Kraan that were watching the empty space that was coagulating into something more than mere emptiness – the thickening pattern of existence that represented himself. Instead his non-vision was filled with the repulsive physical representation of the Nadziranim. He had never seen one of the rapidly moving right-handed magicians during his mortal life, but he'd been told enough about them to know that they were generally seen as flickers of shimmering light – and then usually only out of the corners of one's eyes. In the quasi-vision that he'd created he saw them instead as moulds of the way that they would have looked had they been more firmly chained to the physical plane of existence. Shocked, he lost his quasi-vision for a few moments. When it finally did return, it did so cautiously and at a much reduced sensitivity. Even so, the Nadziranim looked terrifying. Their many-coloured faces were caricatures of greed, wrath, lasciviousness, desire, pride – all of the devouring sins. Fat lips rolled back to reveal large, broken teeth and darting, wet, sausage-like tongues; weighty skull-ridges loomed over solitary gluttonous eyes that bulged and flared; their noses were wide-nostrilled smears of flesh. Their hair jutted upright from their paper-thin scalps in patches, as if handfuls of it had been torn out. Their limbless bodies, even in the pseudo-solidity in which Bourjali was seeing the Nadziranim, were coiling wraiths except for exaggerated hermaphroditic sexual organs. The ugliness was not the aspect of the Nadziranim that appalled: it was their hunger, their hunger for souls.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 96 Yet there was no way that Bourjali could retreat from the mundane plane into which he had been so inexorably lugged, no way that he could retreat to the timeless, emotionless, tranquil limbo. Liharat's psychic scream was almost deafening. Clearly the shard of the little assassin had just, like Bourjali, seen the Nadziranim for what they really were. "Well done, my Nadziranim," said a voice. "I believed you only in part when you told me that these poxes could be raised from the dead." Not raised from the dead, came a whisper of thought. Bourjali realized that he was "hearing" one of the Nadziranim. They are but stuzor-zutaagon, preserved a while from the finality of death and their welcome into your arms because of their maltreatment at the hands of your servant, Korkas. Bourjali became aware that there was another presence, hitherto unnoticed, in the dungeon. He could detect that this presence was focused on a physical body, but the features of that body were of no interest to him: it was little more than a directed manikin, an assemblage of flesh and superficial motivations. At its core was the soul to whom the Nadziran had been "speaking" directly. That soul was composed of a bleak nothingness, a hideously cold, malevolent emptiness. Now Bourjali felt pure, unalloyed terror. The nothingness was the soul of Naar. The Dark God was present, spiritually naked, in the chamber. There could be no clearer indication that Bourjali and Liharat were doomed. None could gaze directly upon the soul of the Dark God and escape. From here on the surviving scraps of the two Vassagonians were Naar's creatures. And the only entity in the chamber that didn't know that Naar was there was the manikin containing the Dark God's soul. Had Bourjali had scope for the emotion, he would have laughed at the irony of it. He heard the manikin's voice again. "Then ask them what we wish to know." All shall be done at your bidding, master. But one of the stuzor-zutaagon is worthless to us. His consciousness is no more than a jumble – Korkas's instruments must have done their work too well. What will you have us do with him? The voice made no answer. Instead, Bourjali seemed to hear a slow, terrifying sucking noise. The knowledge of Liharat's presence slowly faded from Bourjali's awareness: the sensation was like the onset of hush after a prolonged period of cacophony.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 97 Bourjali tried to think of some suitable farewell for the last remnants of the soul that had once been his companion, long ago, in the poorly remembered existence which the two of them had shared during the time that they had inhabited physical bodies. "The one who is still with us – he will tell us what he knows?" The puppet at whose core lay Naarness seemed restless. He was pacing up and down, one massively gloved fist against the other. Some of the lesser entities – the Giaks and the Kraan – were obviously apprehensive about the walker's irritability. Even Naar himself does not know if this plan is going to be a success, thought Bourjali. In this context the Nadziranim are more powerful than He is Himself, for they are not barred by a contract with Ishir from directly influencing the balance between Good and Evil in this world, and Naar does not like the fact that He is having to rely on beings other than Himself. He is like a general rendered impotent by circumstances during a battle and having to rely on his subordinates to pursue the struggle without him: he knows that they are as competent as he is himself and that all should go well, yet he distrusts them simply because they are not him. Again there was the slithering sensation of a Nadziranim mind talking within Bourjali's own. He will tell us all he knows, oh master. He has no power left with which he can defy us. There was a stirring inside Bourjali's fluttering consciousness. In the dream-like past, when he had walked Magnamund clad in flesh, he had been a merchant. At the end of his corporeal existence he had suffered immense anguish and finally had bidden life adieu without surrendering his advantage, because that was what his mercantile instincts had told him to do. There was still a vestige of the same steel left in him. The Nadziranim should not be so confident. Besides, the Nadziran's voice was continuing, we have a tool to lever the truth from him. Bourjali grinned inwardly, being unable to grin in any other way. We have raised not only the stuzor-zutaagon of the two scoundrels who stole the Book of the Magnakai. There is a third whom we would now wish to draw into your presence, master. "A third? What sort of foolery is this?" Be patient, master, even though patience is not a quality that you have seen fit to adopt as your own. Soon all shall be manifest to you. "I trust so, or your existence shall be your forfeit! Proceed." The manikin reached out an arm and plucked a Giak's head from the shoulders. Ichor – which Bourjali saw as a cloud of drifting mist – sprayed across the dungeon's dusty floor. The manikin raised the head to its lips and sucked greedily at its

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 98 contents. The remaining Giaks and the Kraan relaxed: the Darklord was concentrating on feeding, and for a while at least was less likely to take his impatience out on them. Bourjali saw that the Nadziranim were already industriously hauling another entity from the plane in which he had until so recently himself been. Lines of different coloured light seemed to converge from all corners of the dungeon to a single point, where, like threads of cotton, they began to weave themselves together. At first the tapestry that they were forming seemed to be an abstract, a few unrelated patches of colour, but then Bourjali recognized the spiritual projection of a human hand pressed lightly against the smooth, youthful skin of a slender human hip. As if encouraged by the fact that their efforts to date had produced something identifiable, the threads of chimerical colour began to intertwine with ever great vigour and speed. Now Bourjali could sense an expanse of flat, muscular belly, then curves of flesh ... Curves that were familiar to him. Curves that had filled his hands and then later his dreams when he had pursued a mortal existence. Curves which had during his more recent, timeless continuance on occasion displayed themselves within the otherwise featureless expanse of his contemplation. His seventeenth (and most eternally precious) wife! The Nadziranim had drawn her back from whichever spiritual plane she'd gone after the end of her mortal life. Now he saw those well loved dimples appear as she smiled the oft-kissed smile. Her hands were opening themselves up to him, modesty forgotten, as she knelt down to pose herself on or close to the dungeon floor. She was begging him for something. His seventeenth (and, through her adorable childishness, most rejuvenating) wife, who during her corporeal existence had never asked him for anything to satisfy her most outrageous whims, merely demanded, as had been her right – this woman was now down on her knees, imploring him to do something for her. But what? Surely, wherever she now dwelt, she had no use for fineries or frivolities, for the decorative trinkets that had been so important to her before? And then he realized. The Nadziranim were putting her in his power as a means of putting him into theirs. If he obeyed their wishes his seventeenth (and most audaciously coy) wife would be returned to wherever it was that she'd been drawn from. If not ... If not, Naar would absorb her, just as the Dark God had absorbed the babbling fragments of poor Liharat. She would be consigned to the ultimate death, that from which there could be no return in

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 99 any form – the death which expunged memories of the dead from the last of the living. And her dissolution into Naar's empty soul need not be a slow affair. If the Nadziranim wished, they could prolong the process so that it continued, with painstaking slowness, throughout all the time there was left in the universe. Bourjali was sure that they were perfectly capable of doing just that, and would do so unless he gave her what she sought from him. There was no way that he could resist her entreaties. The hard-bargaining merchant inside him had always been aware of one of the fundamental rules of all trading: once you realize that circumstances are such that no deal advantageous deal is any longer possible, there is no sense in pretending otherwise – just cut your losses, extricate yourself with as little damage as possible, and go off and try to recoup your misfortunes elsewhere. But still he didn't know what it was that the Nadziranim – and, behind them, Naar – wanted of him. Although he could be pretty certain, he needed to hear the truth of it from them – in the same way that, spiritually weak though he was, they could not read the knowledge from his soul without first being invited to do so. One of the woman's hands abruptly began to vaporize, small puffs of it spilling away from the rest of her aimlessly before suddenly being whisked away in the direction of the echoing nothingness that was Naar. Bourjali saw those dainty, beloved fingers fade and vanish, and the slender wrist whose angular elegance he had so often admired. He saw her wide-eyed face looking down, distraught, at her loss; her cheeks, which had so often dimpled lovingly for him in the half-light of his home, were now drawn into harshly stressed lines of horror as she saw her loss. The dissolution of her soul was beginning. The Nadziranim were proceeding to despatch her piecemeal into the icy void of Naar. Tell us, said the cloying voice of one of the Nadziranim in his mind. Tell us before the spiritual anguish that we're causing the soul of your seventeenth (and least trustworthy, most unfaithful) wife becomes too great for her beingness to tolerate – before we reduce her to the painful, self-destroying chaos that was Liharat's fate. Tell you what? I can tell you nothing until you state clearly to me what it is you wish to know! Tell us where you and your stupid fellow conspirator hid the Book of the Magnakai – the penny-dreadful to which the Sommlending warriors so great a deal of honour. And, in return?

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 100 In return we shall return your seventeenth (and most strumpetish, avaricious, disloyal) wife to the plane from which we have brought her. And which plane is that? We cannot describe it to you. But be assured that the deepest and darkest of all the hells is a paradise by comparison with the existence she would find in Naar's embrace. And you will spare her this if I but tell you the location of the Book of the Magnakai? We do not promise. But, if you fail to comply with our request, her fate is certain ... The merchant in him realized that there was still a way that something could be salvaged from this deal, after all – some scrap of his own pride, at least. Then we have no bargain, he responded. Not unless you give me your promise that she shall be saved from Naar. Her representation's other hand dissipated. Her mouth was gaping in an unheard scream. Bourjali steeled himself. The pleasures of tormenting her soul will be bitter ones if you fail to persuade me to yield to your demands, he insisted. Grant me your promise, and I shall give the information gladly to you before equally gladly going to my own doom. There was a long pause. He was reassured to observe that, at least, no further damage was being done to the spiritual manifestation of his seventeenth (and undoubtedly most virtuous, despite all her coquetry) wife. Clearly the Nadziranim must be discussing among themselves what to do about his obduracy. We agree to your request, said the small, sinister voice at last. Only tell us what it is that we need to know and the soul of the whore shall be spared the worst of fates. In Vassagonia, in the midst of the desert that they call the Dry Main, Bourjali blurted out, there is a place called the Tomb of the Majhan, where are buried the most revered of the ancestors of my people – of the people to whom I used to belong when I was of this world. It is a holy spot to those of Vassagonia, and yet Liharat and I had the courage to defile it with the Sommlending totem. We have some knowledge of this place, said the Nadziranim, yet we do not know where it is, or even if it is more than a symbol – an imaginary place created by the minds of mortals. Then look into my soul and read the truth of what I tell you. We are grateful to you for your invitation. There was deep sarcasm in the formal expression of gratitude. Bourjali felt as if there were a hurricane whistling right through him, the debris that the wind carried scouring every internal surface of his soul. The knowledge that the Nadziranim

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 101 sought ("The ancient site of the Tomb of the Majhan," Bourjali had said with pompous precision, "lies about one hundred and fifteen miles west of the port of Bir Rabalou and the same distance south of the oasis of Bal-loftan. The three places form a right-angled triangle, with the Tomb of the Majhan at the right angle. If we had a map of Vassagonia here I could pinpoint the place for you.") was snatched up and digested almost at once, yet that didn't stop the hurricane of the Nadziranim's right-handed soulstuff continuing to buffet through the rest of him, seizing any aspect of his essence that might be of interest to them. The wrenching, ripping gale seemed to howl inside him for half eternity. And then at last it was gone. Bourjali's being, exhausted, seemed to lie quivering and without volition. Master, the mercenary stuzor-zutaagon has submitted to our will and given us the information that you sought. The Kai scribbling is at the Tomb of the Majhan in Vassagonia. He has told us the precise location of that piffling mortal shrine. We have read the core of his being, and know that he has told us true. Shall we now deliver him into your embrace? Yes. Do so. You have done well, my creatures. Now Naar was not troubling to speak through the medium of the Darklord's voice. Give the soul of the Vassagonian merchant to me, so that I may devour it. And give me the woman's as well. Master, we promised ... Silence! Promises are devices contrived to keep weaklings weak! How can he revenge himself upon you for having broken the trust he placed in you? He cannot – and so your promise is void. Bourjali's soul began to scream, but Naar ignored the psychic blast. GIVE HER TO ME! boomed the Dark God. We cannot, master, said the speaker for the Nadziranim with just the trace of a snigger in its mental voice, for she is already yours. Aghast, Bourjali let his sensors redirect themselves towards the temporarily forgotten spiritual manifestation of his seventeenth (and most deliriously lustful) wife. The first thing that he noticed about her was that she was whole again – that her hands had been returned to her as if they had never been vaporized. The second thing that he noticed about her was the leering grin of malicious triumph on her face – she was mocking him! And the third thing that he noticed about her was that her astral body – until now a faithful replica of the one that she had inhabited during her mundane life – was changing. Its firm young flesh and generous, confident curves were ebbing until they became a wraithlike tail depending from her grossly distorted head; her luxuriant hair had

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 102 become a thin mess of tangled wire. Her breasts and her loins, by contrast, had become emphatically corpulent. With a scouring laugh she darted to become one among the other Nadziranim who swarmed around the interior of the gloomy dungeon. And then Bourjali was drawn unresisting into the empty vacuum of Naar's embrace, where the laughter of his seventeenth (and most accursed) wife would echo just beyond the limits of his hearing for all the rest of eternity.

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The Third Campfire THE EVE OF FEHMARN The flames were crackling noisily, but the gathering itself was somehow failing to catch light. Viveka, who could normally be relied upon to melt the stiffness of any social assembly with her quick wit, was unusually subdued, so that it was obvious that the few jokes she told were the product of a conscious effort rather than natural good humour. Petra was clearly concerned for her friend and was also having difficulty accepting Carag's presence among them, even though she had seemed to have succeeded in adapting to it half a year earlier, when the two had met for the first time. Carag himself, of course, had never exactly been the life and soul of any party; earlier he had demonstrated to the wondering acolytes how he could hold his limbs for protracted periods in the heart of the flames without ill effect, but their amazement had finally evaporated. Lone Wolf was positively dour, as he so often was these days: his studies of the Book of the Magnakai were clearly daily exhausting him, while at the same time he was yearning for the outdoor life of adventure to which he was better suited. Banedon, watching them all, knew why even he himself – despite being aware of the reason for the others' mutedness – was unable to stir up much energy in order to cheer the company. He was sharing the general lassitude because of what Petra had shot down with her bow and arrow that afternoon. A Kraan. It was sometimes too easy to forget that Sommerlund was a nation still at war. Little overt aggression had emanated from the Darklands these past couple of years or so, and so it was a natural tendency to enjoy the peace and eventually delude oneself into half-believing that it would endure forever. Of course, all the people at the Kai Monastery were intellectually aware of the fact that the apparent tranquillity of the times was a mere illusion, but at an emotional level they as much as any other Sommlending wished that it were otherwise. Every now and then there would be some reminder that the nightmare was very far from over. Even though such reminders might in themselves be trivial – the two Kraan that had overflown the Monastery during the afternoon had clearly had no intention of

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 104 attacking, but had just been spying – they were enough to make the stoutest and most optimistic of hearts leaden. Petra had shown no triumph in her kill: the target had been too easy for that. Instead she had summoned a pair of acolytes and told them to burn the fallen, crumpled form and had then, head hanging low, miserably shambled off to her quarters for a few hours. Meanwhile, like the stink of the charring Kraan-flesh, the news of what had happened had spread through the small community, bringing with it an unhappy quietness. Now Banedon inwardly berated himself. As a magician of the Brotherhood of the Crystal Star he was supposed to be in better command of his emotions – or, at least, of his reactions to them – than the general run of his compatriots. The acolytes were beginning to drift away from the campfire disappointedly, leaving the glum gathering behind. It was really his fault that they were doing so. He reached out with his mind and captured a few of their sullen thoughts. ... never used to be so grumpy in the old days ... ... d'you think he's decided that he fancies Petra but that she's told him to get lost? Or maybe he'd just always been a sourpuss and we've never really noticed it before ... ... and then she snapped at me – really viciously. Oh, I know, Viveka's got a sharp tongue on her any day of the week, but this was different. I mean, this time she really meant it when she said she didn't give a zork if I went off into the forest and never came back again ... ... the Giak's the biggest bundle of laughs of the lot of them this time. Which, bearing in mind that he isn't a bundle of laughs at all ... ... wonder if the Giak's got a story to tell ... Banedon pulled himself upright with a start. Now there was a dismal prospect – Carag telling a story! It'd doubtless be some dull and nauseating account of mindless slaughter and the satisfaction of bestial appetites. Either it would send everyone to sleep or it'd turn their stomachs and give them bad dreams for months to come. And, knowing the Giak as well as he had come to, Banedon was all too aware that, if asked, nothing would stop Carag from eagerly pitching into an extended narrative. It was true, too, that the previous two equinoctial gatherings they'd held had been marked by the telling of a story. First their had been Viveka's account, perhaps more self-revealing than she'd realized, of the scars that had been inflicted not only on her face but also, much more importantly on her soul. Then there had been Lone Wolf's rendition, based on his discoveries in the Book of the Magnakai, of a tale which Banedon privately believed – although he would never be so discourteous as to say so – was

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 105 probably no more than a legend. It was reasonable that the acolytes should expect another telling – their unvoiced disappointment that none of the adults had so far obliged was perfectly justifiable. But not Carag. No, definitely anyone but Carag. Which left himself and Petra. He glanced across at Petra and saw that she was self-consciously concentrating far too hard on the task of cutting a further slice from the haunch of the boar that one of the acolytes had shot the previous day. She couldn't have been giving a clearer indication that she was here, this equinox, to be entertained rather than to entertain. In other words, it was up to himself, Banedon. With a heavy heart he resigned himself to the chore. Now, what adventure of his might be suitable? Ah, yes. He knew the one. Lone Wolf had heard it before, of course, but Lone Wolf would probably stay equally glum tonight no matter what story was told. To the rest it would be something fresh ... There would be no use being too obvious about this. If he simply announced with a falsely cheery smirk that he'd got a real corker of a yarn to tell them he'd just get a ring of bored faces in response. No, better to try to direct the conversation in such a way that it would work its way subtly towards the right topic. Then, with an air of perfect naturalness, he could be led into the telling of his tale. Yes, that was the way to do it. "Lone Wolf," he said casually, "you've never really told us what it's like to fly among the clouds astride an itikar." "Why don't you tell us the story of how you came to be given the Sky Rider, Banedon?" said Lone Wolf, taking another mouthful of roast meat. "It'd be better than nothing."

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 106

B A N E D O N 'S T E L L I N G or How the Gagadoth Met its End one "I wager my ship herself (Ishir bless her and all who in her sail) and her entire crew, much as I love every last one of the darlings, that I shall win this hand!" shouted the dwarf, thumping the sticky table between them. Banedon focused with difficulty on the small, walnut-wrinkled fist and swallowed hard. He hadn't meant to get involved in this gambling session at all, but Quan and his crew – five other bearded Borian dwarfs like himself – had been insistent that he join them for a few goblets of the lethal local perry, and a few goblets had become a few goblets more, and at some point when Banedon had been outside being sick in the alley that ran behind the tavern it had been agreed that he was going to play a hand or two of splitsl with Quan. Mind you, at the moment life was full of a lot of things that Banedon hadn't meant to do. He hadn't really meant to come here to Fio Fadali, for a start. That had been Jenara's idea – or, at least, sort of. The two of them had been vegetating in Barrakeesh, waiting for an attack that seemed never to come, and finally she'd lost patience with his bored sulks and made up a mission for him. Go to the Magiocracy of Dessi, she'd said, and find out if there are aspects of their ancient magic that we of the Brotherhood of the Crystal Star can appropriate to add to our own left-handed system. So off he'd gone, caravan-trekking down through the Dry Main until he'd reached here, Fio Fadali, a pleasant enough little town on the bank of the River Khorda, which separated Vassagonia from Dessi. Here Banedon was waiting for a few days for the next ferry that he could take across the river. Quan and his gregarious crew, spotting a Sommlending who was far from home and therefore by definition lonely (or so they assumed), had adopted him as an honorary dwarf in their carousals around the town. He didn't mind. He liked the dwarfs.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 107 Quan was the captain of a scruffy little tramp ship that most often plied its trade along the Tentarias, calling in at the smaller ports along the coasts of Caron, Chaman, Bautar, Valerion and Dessi, exchanging a cargo of skins here for a chest of precious metals there, or maybe a consignment of ore for a payload of salts and spices; Banedon guessed that on occasion the freight that Quan's ship bore was of a rather less licit nature than any of these, but he knew better than to ask questions. It would have seemed churlish to make such enquiries of someone who had become a boon drinking companion. Quan had brought his ship this far north and so far up the estuary of the Khorda purely because a rival captain had wagered him a string of camels that he wouldn't be able to. No Borian dwarf could ever resist a bet. They were inventive, sociable, hard-working, witty and generous, but they all shared a single vice: a passion for gambling. Until this evening, Banedon had managed to stay out of it. It was all the perry's fault, he told himself as he stared at Quan's tight little fist. The first goblet of the stuff had tasted like cask-aged vomit, and Banedon had managed to swallow it only because courtesy dictated that he should do so. The second had tasted ... well, interesting. The however-many goblets of the stuff he'd since downed were like nectar. And the perry was potent: there could be no mistake about that. Too potent. Somewhere in Banedon's mind there was locked away the secret of how to knit a spell that would sober him, but at the moment he looked for it in vain. Which was why, when he'd returned from the alley to find the dwarfs setting themselves up for a Grand Splitsl Marathon (as they'd described it enthusiastically to him) he'd been unable to resist. Splitsl. A simple but highly addictive game that has brought the downfall of many a noble house. There are seventeen numbered cards, of which eight are dealt face-down to each partner; the seventeenth, also face-down, is placed between them. Each player takes it in turns to turn up one of his or her cards, but before doing so wagers as to whether or not it is going to be the 17. The amount of the stake is added to the pool in the centre until one of the players strikes lucky. Should it prove that in fact it is the card in the middle that is the 17, the players fight over the accumulated kitty. So far Banedon had been lucky – lucky enough that he was glad the Borians were not suspicious folk. He had been winning fair and square, too inebriated to be able to draw on magical

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 108 assistance – even had he been so dishonest, which he probably would have been – but always the 17 had appeared among the dealt-out cards. He was miserably aware that sooner or later, by the law of averages, there must come a hand in which the 17 would be the card in the centre – and that would mean that he'd have to fight Quan. A prospect he didn't fancy. He was taller and heavier than the dwarf, true, but Quan was a wiry little person and by far the more experienced fighter. There wouldn't be enough left of Banedon to be worth sweeping up. And now Quan had bet his entire ship and its crew on the outcome of what must surely be the final hand of the evening. How could Banedon respond? He couldn't think of anything he owned that could match that bet? He wished that Jenara were here – her cool mind would be able to suggest something. If only Jenara were ... Now there was an idea. "And I, in return, I ... I wager the intimate fla ... favours of a vein-burstingly lissome, raven-haired, poutingly sumptuous friend of mine!" As soon as he'd uttered the words he wondered what servant of Naar had prompted him to do so. If Jenara ever heard about this he'd be dead meat. Mince, to be precise. Then his heart stopped as a new and even greater dread seized him: what if he lost? He couldn't lose. That was all there was to it. Desperation cleared his head – not very quickly and not very well, but at least it was doing it. Reluctantly his unconscious began to yield up some dribs and drabs of remembered magic. Nothing too terribly germane to begin with – he had no pressing need to eat a mango neatly, for example – but at least they were a sign of progress. The entire tavern had grown still. There wasn't an unbated breath in the house. "I wager the Kingdom of Sommerlund on my next card!" cried Banedon with quavering defiance. "You sure you can do that?" Quan said, radiating suspicion. "Am I not King Ulnar's eldest son?" said Banedon gravely. The dwarf muttered dubiously. Banedon closed his eyes and prayed.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 109 Weaving his few still-functioning ganglia4 together untidily, Banedon managed to cobble together a spell to alter the number on the face of the card to "17". He turned the card up. Two of the crew, the brothers Lirkin and Mirkin, restrained Quan, whose bulging eyes had become the same colour as his fiery beard. "I believe I'm your new skipper," Banedon said with as much dignity as he could muster. Then he slid ungracefully beneath the table. two The following morning, head throbbing, Banedon tried to give the ship back to the dwarfs, but Quan refused to hear anything of it. The vessel had been won fair and square, he insisted: it would be a smear on the honour of all Borian dwarfs everywhere were he to accept it back. Banedon couldn't bring himself to confess that there had been a certain amount of dubiety about the fairness and squareness of the bet, and so found himself an unwilling ship-owner. And a crew-owner. The dwarfs seemed delighted at the prospect of working for a new master, and Banedon himself realized that they would be incredibly useful to him as porters and

Copy-editor: I understand from Caroline Thomas that you don't believe that ganglia can be used in thinking processes. That is the very point of the joke: most of Banedon's central nervous system isn't functioning right now, so that he's having to resort to the ganglia. I think it's quite a funny joke, but then I've got the same low level of humour as, say, kids doing biology at school. If you really want to be picky, though, I would refer you to (for example) the Oxford Concise Medical Dictionary; there you will find that, in particular, the basal ganglia (situated in the cerebrum) "are involved with the regulation of voluntary movements at a subconscious level". Which is and I assure you that it's purely serendipitously! pretty spot on. 4

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 110 if necessary guards during his further journey south through largely uncharted Dessi. But what could he do with the ship? The first thing he could do with it was use it to ferry them all across the River Khorda. On the far side they found a Bisiltanian merchant who was seeking a vessel; Banedon let the man have the best bargain of his life. With the proceeds of the sale he bought a string of camels, and he and his party set off across the hilly barren land. For many days they followed a road that was distinguishable from the scrubby terrain to either side of it only by the piles of camel dung littering it. Eventually the hills became mountains, and somewhere in the middle of the mountains the road became better defined and more heavily used. They were about one week past the mountains when, one day, they were accosted by a solitary horseman. "Ho there! What brings you lot along this here Great Masourn Trail?" "Greetings," Banedon responded blandly. "We are journeyers bound for Elzian." He gripped his camel's knobby spine with his knees so that he had his hands free to extend them to the stranger. After they had slapped palms, the horseman ran shrewd eyes over the rest of the party. He seemed little to favour what he saw. "Dwarfs, eh?" he said at last. " Borians. Bunch o' thieves, the lot of 'em." Tappen overheard the description and instantly relayed the stranger's words to the others. Within seconds there were six dwarfish swords raised threateningly. "I find my companions most trustworthy," said Banedon quickly, trying to defuse the situation. "Not frightened o' a few dwarfs," said the rider. "Eaten better men than 'em for breakfast, I have. The Gagadoth'll do just that, you mark my words. Have 'em for breakfast 'n' spend the rest o' the day pickin' the gristly bits out o' its teeth. Not that're'll be too much gristly bits on lardiguts like these pasty-faces." Lirkin and Mirkin had jumped down from the camel they shared and were trying to wrestle from its saddle-back a long metal tube which Banedon had inferred earlier was some kind of weapon. "Leave that where it is!" he snapped. They looked up at him owlishly. "But we been insulted, Guv," said Mirkin. "We gotta get a blood revenge."

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 111 "A blood revenge," his brother agreed. "Gotta spill his blood all over tha road, Guv. Slit his gizzard, us has to. So's he won' ever do't again, Guv." "I order you!" "Borian honour will be belittled for the rest of eternity," Mirkin assured him. "Insulted, Borian honour will be," his brother enlarged. "For the rest of eternity, Guv. Dragged through the mud, it'll be. Us'll never be able to look ourself in the eyes again, Guv." "Orders!" shouted Banedon. After a few more minutes' argument he had the dwarfs settled down again. He turned to look at the horseman, anger in his eyes. "What in the name of all that's unholy did you want to do that for?" he growled. "For a fig I'd have let them do what they were threatening." "I was just checking to make sure that they really were Borians," said the stranger suavely. "Of course they are! Whatever else did you think they might be?" "Illusions," said the stranger. "Phantasms. Chimeras. There're a lot of them about in Dessi these days." "Well, there doesn't seem to be much of anybody else around," said Banedon peevishly. "We've seen a few Vassagonian caravans since we left the mountains, but on one else until you came along. Are all the country-folk in hiding, or something?" "Some of them are, some of them aren't," said the stranger cryptically. Banedon paused expectantly for a few moments. When he finally realized that the stranger wasn't planning to expand on his earlier terse comment he added: "Besides, who d'you think would be responsible for sending out the phantasms you were talking about?" "Anyone in this blasted nation," said the horseman, spitting. "Listen to my advice, boy, and take yourself and your runtish rogues back out of Dessi. I thought I could stand living here, but I can't – so that's why I'm getting out while I've still got some sanity left to preserve. The mages don't mean any harm, of course, but there's been times I've sat in my lonely hovel, watching the flames blaze up even though there's no fire in the hearth, and I've thought to myself, I've thought: `Pintel, you'd be better off an the Gagadoth got ya.' That's the thinkings I've had, of a night. Not a lot, but they're all my own."

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 112 Banedon smiled patronizingly. "I think I can safely say that I'm more than competent to cope with other people's stray magical spells, even if they do seem to have got a little out of hand," he said. "You mark my words," said Pintel, "because you'll be eating your own ones by the time you're done." "Tell me," said Banedon, brow creasing, "just what exactly is this Gagadoth you've mentioned?" "Ah, yus, the Gagadoth," Pintel replied, contemplatively sucking in air between his toothless gums. For half a minute he said nothing more. Just as Banedon was coming to the conclusion that yet again Pintel was deciding to abandon a conversation in mid-ocean, as it were, the man spoke again. "The Gagadoth be something that you don't want to meet of a dark night," he explained, "but, then again, perhaps you do: least that ways you don't have the palpitating horror of seeing what it is as is eating you. Sucks your brains out, it does. Very slowly, so as you can feel 'em go." "Sounds fun," Quan chipped in. Pintel turned to stare at the dwarf grimly. "You be a bit cocksure about that, young feller. Maybe you think you're safe just because you don't have no brains. But you be assured that the Gagadoth'll find somethin' else just as much to its taste to be a sucking-out of." Banedon, pale, asked: "But what sort of a creature is this ... this monster?" "It be a agarashi of horrible demeanour," said Pintel. "The tales do tell that once upon a time it be having been the very steed of Agarash the Damned, may his soul forever remain that way. When that the Elder Magi did destroy that accursed one, the Gagadoth did get overlooked, they being a careless lot. Off it went and it hid in the mighty crack that splits the fair land of Dessi all the way from Gologo on the coast for more'n two hundred miles to the southwest – the Chasm of Gorgoron it be called by the mapmakers." Pintel paused again, his bleak eyes ranging the horizon. "Go on," prompted Banedon gently. "There in the Chasm of Gorgoron it did abide for centuries and millennia, keeping itself out of sight. But all the time it was hidded down there, it was a-changing. It was a-tapping into the stray magics of the Elder Magi, it was, and it was drawing on 'em for its own fell uses. And them fell uses was that it was makin' itself impervious to those very magics, as you might expect. And, once

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 113 the great and mighty monster knew that the Old Kingdom magics of the Elder Magi couldn't any longer harm it, it came up out of the very ground itself and threatened to rampage across all the broad land of Dessi, it did, only it didn't, because it didn't know that the Elder Magi had kept alive the ancient magics of the Vakeros, they had, and that did for the Gagadoth. Didn't kill it, mind you, because it retreated back down into the Chasm of Gorgoron for a bit longer, it did, until it had learned how to armour itself against the magics of the Vakeros as well, it did. And that it did not a long time ago, maybe fifteen years, if'n you want to be approximately accurate." "The Vakeros?" said Quan. "The Vakeros," Pintel agreed. Quan looked puzzled. "I think he was trying to ask you who the Vakeros were ... Are?" "Still are, the Vakeros, though who knows how much longer they'll be, now as the Gagadoth's got itself a taste for 'em. They be the people what used to live here in this fair land of Dessi before the Elder Magi came along. They had a High Ritual Battle Magic, as they did call it, what was pretty primitive by the high standards of the Elder Magi, it was, but the Elder Magi kept it alive in a sort of fatherly way, they did, like you might not want to throw away the things your kiddies've made, even though now they're grown up and've made better." Banedon doubted the latter part of this rambling explanation. It was one of the axioms of magical practice that older forms were never thrown away. Every functioning system of magic had something to offer. Older methods were absorbed into the mainstream of more recent, more powerful techniques. The left-handed magic in whose use Banedon himself had been trained was in large part derivative from the less sophisticated system the Lastlanders had inherited from the Elder Magi. He had come here to investigate that system afresh; now he found that he could hardly wait for the opportunity to get to grips also with the Vakeros' High Ritual Battle Magic, of which he had heard nothing before. What treasures might lie therein? "Soon as the Gagadoth knew it was safe from the Vakeran mages as well, then up it did rise once more from the Chasm of Gorgoron, I was saying," continued Pintel, "and began to lay waste the land again, suckin' out brains like there was no tomorrow, it was. And there ain't nothing that the Elder Magi nor even the Vakeros can be a doing to stop it now, there isn't. Maybe it'll be a destroying everyone in all of Dessi afore going on and doing

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 114 Vassagonia and Kakush and Valerion and even the Lastlands as well, it might. Who knows? Who knows, indeed." He shook his head sadly. "We could kill this hairy great brute, Guv," said Quan. "Then we'd all be heroes and marry wood-nymphs and things." Banedon turned and gazed sternly at the bearded grin. "You shouldn't joke about death," he said. "Sorry, Guv. Apologies, an' all." "Apologies accepted. Now" – returning his attention to Pintel – "are you sure that this isn't just some kind of travellers' tale? Something to frighten the children into going to their beds? There really is a monster, this Gagadoth, like you said?" "I'm as sure as sure can be that there is," said Pintel sombrely, "an' there's many a child don't no longer have a bed to go to, now that the Gagadoth's been. You mark my words, I said, I did, and I'll say it again: you mark my words." "I ... see," said Banedon. He wondered if Jenara had had any inkling of the Gagadoth before sending him off down here on what she'd rather too earnestly assured him would be a peaceful and educative excursion. He was beginning to feel less guilty about the wager he'd made back in the tavern in Fio Fadali. "But," said Pintel, putting spur to horse at last, "here's a few more words that you should be a-marking. The phantasms is worse." With that and a cloud of grit from his horse's hooves he was on his way, leaving the little party staring after him. "Cheery fellow, Guv," said Tappen. "Laugh a minute, eh?" But Banedon didn't respond. He was deep in thought. He was sorely tempted to follow Pintel's example – to turn the camels round and go back the way they had come. But, if he did that, then he'd be throwing away all the wondrous mysteries he might find among the magics of the Elder Magi at Elzian. No, better to carry on. Wordlessly, he kicked the sides of his camel and continued along the Great Masourn Trail. After a brief hesitation, the dwarfs followed. three Elzian is a city that bears its antiquity on its sleeve. It stands on a rocky island in the middle of a circular artificial lake constructed magically by the Elder Magi thousands of years ago when first they came to Dessi. From somewhere deep within the world fresh water

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 115 bubbles up copiously to feed the lake, whose narrow band is like a moat around the city; from the lake two rivers lead to the distant sea. Elzian itself contains perhaps two thousand souls, yet in its tired, cobwebbed way it seems far grander than many a greater city. Although its turreted buildings are not individually large, it is as if the mental eye saw not only their size in the here and now but also their vast extent in the time dimension. Birds swoop and flutter among the turrets, yet they make no racket; and the turrets bear no flags except that on the city's tallest building, the Tower of Truth. Here, limp on a high mast, hangs a white banner bearing on it in dark green a device comprising a pair of clasped hands. This is the symbol of the Magi Regnanti – the High Council of Elder Wizards – who convoke here. As his little convoy clattered across one of the narrow bridges over the lake and into the city, Banedon looked around him with awe. Here there was no hustle and bustle, as in the other cities he'd known. Instead, the streets seemed almost empty. Here and there he would see solitary individuals moving on foot: there were no horses, no wagons, no children playing. And, although it was not long after the noon hour, the light in the streets seemed muted, as if twilight were not far away. It was impossible for him not to compare the Tower of Truth with his own Brotherhood's huge and impressive guild building in Toran. The council mansion of the Elder Magi would have been dwarfed by the pyramidal edifice that housed the Brotherhood of the Crystal Star yet, like the other buildings of Elzian, somehow it seemed much larger. Already he felt as if he had stepped into history; now, pulling up his camel before the Tower of Truth, he for the first time in his life gained a real sensation of the true vastness of that history. The dwarfs must have sensed something of the same, because for once their eager, scratchy voices were still. Looking at the tall grey building, Banedon felt as if he could hear it sigh. No one came down the long flight of broad steps to meet them. At the top of the steps was a surprisingly small doorway. In Sommerlund the entrance would inevitably have been guarded by armed sentries, but here there were none. The Elder Magi had no need to guard against their own kind, and their calm world-magic offered them sufficient protection against strangers. The building seemed to be offering them a welcome. Banedon dropped down beside his camel and looked around him for a tethering ring. There was none. Cautiously, he essayed a simple left-handed spell to persuade the creature to stay

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 116 where it was, and was surprised when he felt the tickling sensation that indicated to him that the spell had worked. Somehow he'd expected the ancient magic of the Elder Magi to have muffled all other magics in its presence. He told the dwarfs to await him and, shrugging his shoulders nervously, climbed up the steps towards the doorway. There was a boy waiting for him just inside the entrance. "I come in quest of ..." "We know why you're here. Come with me," said the boy, touching his hand to Banedon's companionably. "Rimoah, the Speaker of the High Council of Elder Wizards, seeks words with you." Obediently Banedon followed the boy along windowless yet softly glowing corridors. Soon he was being ushered informally into a small stone cell. In the centre of the cell was a crude wooden table constructed from unplaned planks. There were two chairs, on one of which the boy seated Banedon. Then the boy cheerfully departed, leaving Banedon alone in the cell. Moments later the figure of an age-withered man materialized in the other chair. His thin shoulders were hunched over, so that he seemed tiny. His face was no more than a taut sheet of skin stretched over a craggy skull. A tangle of long, thin grey hair framed his white features; his beard straggled like snow down his pinched chest. His hands, resting on his bony knees, were like a bird's feet. Only his eyes, glowing greenly, betrayed vigour. Although the two were physically dissimilar, Banedon was reminded of the Guildmaster of the Brotherhood of the Crystal Star. The two men shared the same quality of presence. "We've been expecting you," said a frail voice that seemed to be speaking from the distant past. "We have been expecting you, Banedon." Banedon bowed his head in respect. He was unsurprised that the Elder Magi should know of him. Their magic must have detected him and his party from the moment that they first set foot in Dessi. "Then you know why I have come here," he said. "We know the bones of it," said Rimoah, "but not the flesh." So Banedon told him of the events of the past few years in the Lastlands, of the growing activities of the Darklords as they sought to bring about the final triumph of Naar, of the massacre of the Kai and of the struggles of Lone Wolf to resist the various onslaughts launched against the Lastlanders, of the treachery of

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 117 Vonotar, of the conquest of the spirit of Vashna at the Temple Deep, of the creation and then the destruction by Qinefer of the Birthplace, and of the discovery by Lone Wolf of the long-lost Book of the Magnakai. And, interspersed with all these stories, Banedon unwittingly told the ancient mage quite a lot about himself, too. At last Rimoah spoke. "You have told me many things we did not know," he said, "and the news that you bear is grave. Yet still you have made no mention of the reason why you have come here." "But you know ..." "As I said to you, we know the bones but not the flesh. We know that you have come to explore our own traditional magic and, now that you have discovered its existence, of the High Ritual Battle Magic of the Vakeros as well. You believe that you can draw strengths from both of those that will help your own left-handed artistries in the psychic struggle against the threat of the Darklords. All of that is logical enough, and simple for us to comprehend. Yet what we cannot yet know is your real reason for making such a request of us – the truth of your heart." "I lay my heart bare before you." "Do you mean that?" A sharp glance from those perceptive green eyes. "Certainly I do. I'm surprised that you haven't yet sent your minds into my own in order to establish my integrity. I'd have expected you to have done that before you permitted me to set foot in Elzian, let alone here in the Tower of Truth itself." "That would have been discourteous," said the old man mildly. "We are of an older race than yours, Banedon, and a less suspicious one." Banedon felt chastened. "Besides," Rimoah added with a smile, "there is no harm that you could do in here, not to me nor to any of us." Banedon looked expressively at the fragile form in front of him and then down at his own youthful hands. "Surely," said the old man coaxingly, his smile broadening, "you, as a member of the Brotherhood of the Crystal Star, should know better than anyone of the power of illusion, that what you see often bears little resemblance to the reality." And now Banedon himself smiled. Through the old man's slight body he could see the outline of the chair and, beyond it, the bare stone wall of the cell. Only the bright eyes still seemed physically present.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 118 "I'm young," he said apologetically, "and I am of a young race." Rimoah inclined his head. "Those are not qualities to be ashamed of," he said. "We of the Elder Magi often long for them, even though we know that it is too late now for our race to recapture the vigour of youth." "But the boy ..." "Illusion, Banedon, illusion. Does not your own Brotherhood practise similar illusions when welcoming guests to Toran?" Banedon nodded. "But enough of this," said Rimoah, drawing up his body. "You said that you would lay your heart bare for us so that we may truly understand your reasons for seeking out the lore of our magic. If you will permit me further illusion, let me lead you from here to our council chamber, so that all of the Magi Regnanti may share in the quest for your truth." Again Banedon nodded, this time in agreement. Rimoah waved one of his bone hands, and immediately they were no longer sitting in the strait cell but instead on a platform at the centre of a large, dimly lit chamber. All around them were ascending ranks of benches occupied by hooded figures. The others of the High Council of Elder Wizards seemed to have the same frailty as Rimoah himself, but it was impossible for Banedon to be certain of this as their cloaks covered their bodies completely: all that he could see from the gloomy depths of their hoods were alert pairs of green eyes, seemingly floating unsupported in the shadow. There was a dusty sound, as of dried leaves stirred on a stone floor by a breath of breeze. "We welcome you," said Rimoah, his voice now seeming to be the voice of hundreds. "I am grateful for your welcome," said Banedon, equally formally. He tried to conceal his terror, and then realized the futility of doing so: in moments he would be allowing these people – if people they truly were – to explore the inmost recesses of his being. "You'll understand that I'm a little ... a little nervous," he confessed, and as he spoke he felt all of the apprehension ebb from him, as if the words themselves had twined together to form a spell. "We understand," said Rimoah gently in that same multiple voice. He gave the younger man a reassuring, supportive smile. "And, if you will now permit us, we shall soon understand everything else of you, Banedon."

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 119 "I grant you my permission," said Banedon, reverting to formal tones. "Then let us begin." Banedon's vision faded. He seemed to be walking across a broad, seamless artificial surface of some intensely hard and dazzlingly white material. The sky above him was a blood red. He stopped in his tracks and looked around him. The surface on which he stood was utterly flat, so that there was no horizon, and the air that he was breathing – if he was indeed breathing – was infinitely tenuous, so that there was no misting with distance as he looked out across the surface. He could see all the way to eternity, and nowhere was there anything except this featureless white plane and the blood-red sky above it. There was no wind, yet he felt chilled, as if a sharp draught were probing through his robes and deep into his body, keening around his bones and joints. And then, quite naturally, as if it had always been there rather than having just appeared, he saw that the rudimentary old table from Rimoah's cell was sitting on the surface about a dozen yards from him. The chairs were there as well, and so was Rimoah himself, looking several centuries younger than before. On the table were two empty mugs and a decanter of wine. Come and join me, said Rimoah's dry voice inside Banedon's mind. Let us speak of this and that, pass the time of day ... even though there are no days here, and no time. Banedon found that he was sitting in one of the chairs, reaching out for one of the mugs, which was now brim-full of wine from the decanter. He drank deeply from it, feeling the sticky warmth of the sweet red wine permeating throughout him. All at once it was as if his entire body were much more alive than it had ever been before – as if the wine possessed some kind of supernatural vitality which it was sharing with him. Rimoah began to speak inside Banedon's head. What he spoke were platitudes. He talked about how the weather had been recently in Dessi, about the quaint activities of a pet animal that he had once had, about an eccentric bunch of Vassagonian travellers who'd come to Elzian some weeks before ... about all sorts of subjects that Banedon couldn't remember even while Rimoah was discussing them. The level in the glass decanter steadily decreased, until finally the vessel was empty and so was Banedon's mug; Rimoah himself seemed not to have touched a drop. Banedon felt so animated by the wine (or was it wine? – it tasted like no wine that he'd ever drunk before) that it seemed to him as if his body must be radiating light. The old man's prattle

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 120 had bored him, and yet he hadn't resented the boredom. He only dimly remembered the council chamber of the Magi Regnanti, and the reasons for his having been psychically transported to this nonexistent place. Despite the vibrancy of his body, his soul was in a deep lake of tranquillity. And now, Rimoah was saying, you have drunk of my wine and there is none of it left. I have been pleased to be your host. I thank you. Banedon bowed his head with a formality to match the formal acknowledgement. It seemed as if the ancient wizard were expecting something from him, but Banedon couldn't imagine what it might be. He glanced at the decanter but it was still empty – which seemed to him to be as it should be, for he had drunk an exact sufficiency of the wine, and desired no more. He said as much. Rimoah's green eyes probed his face, and seemed slightly disappointed by what they saw there. And then they were back in the council-chamber, and Banedon was uneasily aware that he was the focus of hundreds of pairs of eyes. "We can't help you, Banedon," said Rimoah ruefully, spreading his hands as if admitting to some considerable inadequacy. Once again his voice seemed to be that of all the wizards of the Magi Regnanti speaking in unison. "The magic you people of the north have built upon what our ancestors gave you is now beyond anything we possess. And you say that there are yet higher levels than this?" The ancient man's eyes once again seemed to be probing him. "Yes," Banedon said, "we believe that there are higher levels. One of our number – Vonotar – believed that he had discovered such a level when he married left-handed with right-handed magic, and certainly in so doing he possessed himself of great power, but it seemed that this power, at least in his hands, could be used only for evil." Rimoah sighed sadly. "The right-handed path of magic contains only those elements of the magic the Elder Magi brought into the world that were evil. Our ancestors, as soon as they realized that there was some base metal among the pure gold of their magic, divested themselves of it. Little could they have realized that this dross would have been seized upon by these vile creatures of which you speak, the Nadziranim. No, no, no, my young friend – to reunite the two is merely to return the imperfections to the pure strain."

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 121 There was a busy silence. The hooded figures in the array of benches seemed motionless, yet Banedon had the impression that there was considerable activity going on among them. "Then you do not wish me to explore your system of magic?" he said finally. "Oh," said Rimoah off-handedly, "you may explore away as much as you wish. Two of our number will be with you as much as you wish, and the remainder, myself included, will be at your beck and call whenever you should wish us. We have made provision for you to stay among us for as long as you desire – for yourself and for your dwarfish attendants should they" – and here Rimoah smiled openly – "be able to conquer their terrors sufficiently to enter within our portals." "You are very generous," said Banedon, head low. "I accept your kindness on behalf of myself and my companions." "Do not praise our generosity too highly yet, Banedon. You are free to wander among our magics and to borrow from them whatever you see fit, but you may find little there to interest you. Your left-handed magic, as I said, has transcended our own ancient systems." "And maybe we have forgotten things which you still know," said Banedon. "There is always that possibility," agreed Rimoah dubiously. He waved his arm and the High Council of Elder Wizards disappeared. Once again the two of them were alone together in the little naked stone cell where Rimoah had first appeared to Banedon. Rimoah reached a twig-thin arm across the table, and Banedon took the weightless hand offered to him. "I have bid you welcome before," said the ancient mage, "but this time I do so with my entirety, for I and my fellows have seen the core of you, and know that it bears truth." "That is high praise," said Banedon humbly. "You praise us in return," observed Rimoah drily, "simply by your presence here among us." The boy came to escort Banedon out of the Tower of Truth. As they left the room Banedon glanced back over his shoulder and saw Rimoah still seated there, leaning over the table's rough surface, the fingers of his two hands intertwined. He was astonished to see an expression of uncertainty on the old man's face. The dwarfs were, unexpectedly, perfectly happy with the prospect of spending a few days in the Tower of Truth.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 122 "Looks like there ain't much of a night life here for us in Elzian, Guv," Nolrim summed up for the rest of them. "Be as well off in this joint as anywhere else. Do any of these Maggie Regulo look sort of like wenchettes of diminutive stature as would have their eyes caught by stalwart seafaring dwarfs, Guv?" Banedon, remembering the silent rows of hooded figures, laughed out loud. "Hardly," he said. The boy led them up more flights of stairs than it was easy to imagine existed until finally they were in a large airy apartment near to the top of the Tower of Truth. The dwarfs didn't seem to think there was anything out of the ordinary about the fact that seven beds had been arranged along the walls, one of them full-sized and the others proportionately smaller, but Banedon did. His guess that the Elder Magi had had them under some sort of spiritual surveillance since their first arrival in Dessi had obviously been correct. No sooner had they all tested the firmness of the beds and dumped their baggage than two of the hooded figures of the Elder Magi were among them. Even here, with the bright sunlight pouring in through the large picture-windows, it was impossible to detect anything other than the spectral green eyes within the folds of their hoods. They seemed less to walk across the floor than to float, the hems of their dusty robes trailing along behind them. "We are at your service, Banedon," said one of them or both – he couldn't make out. "We are at your service as our Speaker promised you that we would be." "I thank you." Banedon was weary; the effects of the wine that he had drunk during his vision had failed to survive the return to the mundane world. Even so, he was reluctant to wait any longer before plunging into what promised to be a stimulating experience. "Do you have a library that you might show me?" he added eagerly. "We can simulate a library on your behalf," said the voice. "Then do so. Please." "Will you wish your attendants to accompany us?" Banedon saw images of the six dwarfs enjoying themselves in a library. "I think not," he said hastily. Quan looked at him annoyedly. "Then at least bring us back something off of the top shelf, Guv," he said bitterly. The two hooded figures turned away, gesturing to Banedon that he should follow them. Again there was the bewildering maze of stairways, sharp corners, tiny landings and unmarked doors. Finally, not knowing quite how he'd got there, Banedon discovered

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 123 himself in a large, brightly lit chamber. There were spotlessly clean tables running down its centre. Along the walls and on free-standing cases there were thousands upon thousands of books, all neatly in their positions. At the far end was a glass-fronted case containing ancient scrolls in a honeycomb of pigeon-holes. This was not like any library Banedon had ever seen before. He said so, and had the brief impression that the two wizards were laughing at him. They beckoned him over to the nearest table, where he sat down on the chair that one of them pulled back for him. "Tell us which book you would wish to consult," said the voice respectfully. "I ... I don't know the titles of any of your books," he said, aware of how foolish his voice sounded. "Tell us the subject, then." "Well ... eh ... I know nothing at all of your magics. Too little, I fear, for me to name even a subject. Please guide me, librarians. I don't know where to start." "Yes you do." "I tell you I ..." "We saw from your mind how much of the truth of our magics remains in the left-handed system that you Lastlanders have developed. It is an axiom of both systems that all entries to the understanding of magic are as good as each other – that all are in essence the same. So please name your own selected point of entry, and from there your own comprehension will serve as your guide." Banedon thought about this a moment. What the voice of the two Elder Magi had told him was reminiscent of some of the remarks that Qinefer had made during their long conversations in the villa near Barrakeesh, after she had been to the Birthplace and destroyed it – by the same action recreating her selfness. He searched around aimlessly for a suitable topic. There had been the monster that the bizarre horseman, Pintel, had been so agitated about ... "The Gogadeath," he said. "Tell me more about it." Again the sensation that the two hooded figures were silently laughing at him. "The Gagadoth," one or both of them corrected. "We can bring you a book, if you wish, that will transport you into the chilly depths of the Chasm of Gorgoron, where the Gagadoth dwells."

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 124 Banedon frowned. The offer had been expressed oddly. But then he nodded. "Bring me a book on the Gagadoth and the Chasm of Gorgoron," he said. One of the hooded figures retreated smoothly and a little too swiftly to a shelf near the far end of the room, where it plucked down a leather-bound volume, with which it returned. "This book from our collection will serve you as you desire, Banedon," said the voice. Banedon looked at it. This was no dusty tome dragged from an aeons-old tomb, or anything of that sort. Instead it looked brand new, the edges of the pages crisply white. He picked it up and glanced at the ridged spine. Picked out in gold leaf on the leather were the words THE CHASM OF GORGORON: AN EXPLORERS' GUIDE. 8th Edition He glanced at the two hooded figures whom he was now thinking of as the librarians. The book's title seemed too prosaic. Were they having him on? Or was it simply that they were weaving an educative illusion for him, an illusion that would communicate meaning to him through the use of the plainest words that came to hand? Come to think of it, how much of all this was illusion anyway? The librarians had been quite frank in their response to his request for a library: "We can simulate a library on your behalf." He shrugged. It was impossible to determine whether or not his current experiences were illusion or reality; therefore it was pointless to speculate about them being anything other than reality. Just accept them for what they seemed to be. One of the first principles of advanced magic. He opened the book without hesitation. Riffling through the pages, he found the book's beginning and started to read of the adventures he was at this very moment undergoing in the Chasm of Gorgoron ... four His breath was a cloak that shielded the world from his eyes. He was perched on a ledge no more than a couple of feet wide. If he looked up he would, he knew, see the mid-morning sky like a ribbon of blue arching behind and ahead of him, its brightness cutting through the tendrils of yellow-white vapour that

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 125 emanated from the walls of the Chasm of Gorgoron. He was clutching an icicle in his right hand like a staff; he'd broken it free from its mooring a few minutes ago, and had told the hand that held it to ignore the chill of the ice. He was clad not in his customary blue robes of the Brotherhood of the Crystal Star but instead in a one-piece suit comprising a thick woollen jacket and trousers; on a whim, just before leaving Elzian he'd carefully clipped a rectangle from his robe and stuffed it into one of the jacket's pockets. He knew that he was terrified, not just of the Gagadoth but also of the very natural perils of the Chasm of Gorgoron, and yet he was untroubled by the fact: it had been the work of a few moments to weave a spell that would wall off his terrors until later, when he could more easily cope with them. How he would deal with any new terrors that might afflict him was another matter, of course, but one that he'd deal with when he came to it. Somehow he'd expected that it would be deathly silent, lifeless, down here in the chasm, but far from it. Large-eyed birds had chipped eyries into the rearing ice walls, and their chattering and cawing as they squabbled over territory echoed backwards and forwards around him. From time to time already during the descent he had been distracted by the attentions of loudly buzzing insects; some of the more brightly coloured of them had borne what appeared to be vicious stings, and he'd been glad to see them go. And then there were the small reptiles that scuttled and clattered nervously away from his footfall. But he had heard nothing of the Gagadoth. In some ways this surprised him, in some ways not. The Chasm of Gorgoron was, after all, some two hundred miles in extent – there were a lot of other places along its length where the Gagadoth might currently be. And yet, and yet – and here his memories became confused – and yet surely the book the librarians had given him would not have guided him here had there not been some point to the expedition. After a last anxious back up the slippery ledge down which he'd been slowly descending, he turned himself resolutely towards the downward slope. There were plenty of cracks in the ledge's ice, fortunately, so that his icicle-staff served excellently to moor him whenever he felt that his feet were in danger of skidding out from under him. Even if it hadn't, he's have found its presence in his grasp reassuring. And reassurance was what he needed more and more as the descent continued. Although no tangible menaces appeared

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 126 during the next half hour or so, there was an increasingly ominous heaviness hanging in the air, as if the chasm itself were waiting for some outburst of frantic violence. He tried to sing a little song to boost his spirits, but he kept forgetting the words. He was conscious of how alone he was down here, far from any other mortal, and every now and then he found himself momentarily wishing that he'd given into the dwarfs' pleas and permitted them to accompany him. But no: that would have been a very wrong act. Even screened by his left-handed magic he was venturing into considerable danger; the risks to the unprotected dwarfs would have been unacceptably high. A wind was building up. Fancy suggested to him that this might be the breath of the Gagadoth, and he grinned at his own foolishness. An agarashi the Gagadoth might be, and therefore immortal and possessed of many arcane powers, but for all that it was incapable of blowing up a gale. He hoped. His grin faded. Soon the wind was strong enough to pull insistently at his garments, so that he became doubly glad of the support provided by the icicle. As yet he was in no danger of being blown off his feet, but if this kept up ... He lowered his head and watched his feet moving one after the other over the icy ledge as he pressed himself forward into the teeth of the wind. Soon afterwards the wind began to hurl snow and then sleet at him. He paused and pulled up the hood of his jacket, then ploughed on. Now he could no longer see his feet on the ledge so clearly as he shuffled them forwards through shallow drifts. But he wasn't unduly concerned. The elements he could cope with – one of the earliest spells of the second-level magic that Loi-Kymar had taught him was the ability to control the elements in one's immediate vicinity. For the moment, however, it suited him to bear the brunt of the wind: its cold draughts kept him alert. Then a nasty thought struck him. If the Gagadoth was impervious to the spells of the Elder Magi and of the Vakeros, and if it had its own magical powers, and if it had dwelt for so many centuries here in the Chasm of Gorgoron, had he any guarantee that his own magics would have any effect at all down here? Again he stopped. A bird with distinctive dark-blue plumage chose this moment to fly at him, shrieking its protest at this invader. Instinctively he flung up his hand in front of his eyes, and it backed off. Whispering a few expressions of remorse to

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 127 himself and to it, he crafted a basic spell to freeze the bird solid in mid-air. To his relief the spell worked. The petrified corpse dropped like a stone towards the invisible depths below. In different circumstances he might have taken the time and effort in order to concoct a far more elaborate and painful spell in order to bring the creature back to life again, but now was not the moment. Besides, he told himself guiltily, the stupid beast asked for it, flying at my face like that. It was getting darker and darker the further he descended. Soon the wind and the driven sleet grew fierce enough that he constructed a spell to surround himself with a shield of force just strong enough to protect him from their chill. The drain on his own reserves of magical energy was slight, but he made a point of remembering it. Later, should he require to use the full power of his abilities, the tiny additional contribution gained by dropping the shield might be invaluable. Gloom became darkness, and darkness became a pitch blackness, darker than any night. Another simple spell, and now Banedon was at the centre of a globe of luminosity that moved with him as he picked his way carefully down the ledge. He wondered if indeed the Chasm of Gorgoron had a bottom. None of the Elder Magi had been able to give him any estimate as to how deep it might be; at the time he'd dismissed the occasional description of it as bottomless as merely another amusing exaggeration, but now he wasn't so sure. Certainly he wanted to be on some better surface than this ledge when at last – if at last – he confronted the Gagadoth. What was he doing here anyway? Protected from the noise and the blast of the wind, he leaned against his icicle-staff and for the first time confronted the riddle of his twin sets of memories. He could recall quite distinctly that he had been sitting in a library in the Tower of Truth, that the librarians had put a book in front of him, and that it had been the opening and reading of that book which had brought him to this place. That set of memories was seamless, complete. And yet exactly the same could be said of his other, conflicting memories. These told him that, after he'd looked at several books in the library, he'd asked the librarians to escort him back to the dormitory that he shared with the dwarfs. There he'd sat on his bed for an hour or more, ignoring the crewmen's excitable distractions, before eventually asking to be taken to Rimoah. The old wizard had readily agreed to his request that he

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 128 be brought here to the Chasm of Gorgoron, where he might match his sophisticated second-level, left-handed magics against the might of the Gagadoth. They'd flown here aboard ships that seemed much like those that plied the shores of the Lastlands except for the fact that they travelled through the air. Rimoah and several members of his council who'd accompanied them had deposited Banedon by the lip of the chasm and had then retreated into the skies. He could recall all of this having happened. He could recall plunging into the pages of the book. He preferred the latter set of memories as the true ones, however implausible they might seem. He'd never before come across a book that could that for its readers. But then he'd never before been in the Magiocracy of Dessi, either. Ruefully he shrugged. He would have to ask Rimoah the truth of the matter when he got back to Elzian. If he got back to Elzian. He must stop counting his bridges before he burnt them, or whatever it was. And he must get moving again. No use just standing here on the seemingly infinitely long ledge, like a coconut in a coconut shy, waiting to be knocked from its perch. He shuddered. It hadn't been the most fortunate of mental images. Nevertheless he began to push onwards again, sensing that the wind around him was now blowing with a genuine ferocity. He could see dead birds and small animals being blasted past him through the boiling air, and he strengthened his shield accordingly. Not much use keeping out the wind, only to be felled by a blow across the jaw from a frozen lizard moving at ninety miles an hour. At first he didn't notice the new sound that was adding itself to the howling of the wind. Nor, in his cocoon of luminosity, did he become immediately aware of the fact that his surroundings were becoming lighter, as if the world itself contained an inner sun. After a while, though, he glanced up from watching the monotonous plod, plod of his own feet and was astonished by what he saw. He was no longer on the sheer wall of a chasm. Instead, the ledge on which he stood ran along the side of an escarpment that jutted out from what he could see beneath him was a fertile land. Here and there irregular areas of crazily profuse vegetation were interspersed with neat rectangles that seemed to his eyes to be fields. No, not seemed to be. They were. In one of them a man was walking behind a team of horses as they pulled a plough. Amazed, he began to move more quickly than before, dissipating as he walked the spells that had given him light and

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 129 protection from the gale. Looking away from the cliff, he could see for miles across what seemed to be perfectly ordinary countryside. The sky was the blue of a Spring day, even though there was no Sun. And, he realized as soon as he thought about it, no shadows either. The descent of the last few hundred feet to ground level took him the best part of an hour. The nearer he came to the base of the cliff, the more the surface of the ledge was covered by small heaps of loose scree; clearly it had been a while since anyone had last passed along here. He kicked the stones easily off the ledge, clearing the way should he have to retreat at speed. He jumped down the last few feet into a field of barley that came up to the height of his chest. The spines of the barley-ears brushed affectionately against the front of his woollen jacket, snagging and releasing the stitches as he walked through the field towards a gate at its far side. Beyond he could see a man dressed in peasant clothing digging industriously in the rich brown earth. He walked for half an hour or longer before he realized that he wasn't getting any closer to the gate. By this time he'd stripped himself out of his jacket, tying its arms around his waist. Suddenly he felt very vulnerable and, despite the heat from the sunless sky, pulled the garment back on again. Still the peasant in that tantalizingly nearby next field was digging. The man's shoulders rose and fell with clock-like regularity as he lunged with the spade, pressed with his foot, heaved downward on the spade's shaft, strained as he raised his burden and threw the soil back behind him, then lunged with the spade, pressed with his foot, heaved downward ... Banedon looked swiftly away. The man's digging motion was hypnotic. Perhaps that was exactly what it was intended to be. Banedon cursed himself. He'd been a fool to allow himself to be taken in by the scene's seeming normalcy. He glanced back towards the cliff down which he'd climbed, and was not in the least surprised to observe that it was no longer there. He'd not so much walked as leapt into the trap. A gentle wind was blowing across the field of barley, so that the ears undulated. He felt as if he were standing in the middle of a lake of green and misty grey. The ears closest to him seemed to be probing at him inquisitively, their spines now brushing against and through the wool of his jacket with more purpose than before. Despite the circumstances, he smiled once more at his imaginings. And then he was aghast.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 130 He could feel no breeze against his cheek, so what could it be that was rippling the surface of the crop? The proddings of the spines of the barley-ears were becoming ever more insistent, and now one of them jabbed forcefully into his skin, almost puncturing it. He yelled and floundered, beating with his fists at the heads of barley. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that the man in the next field had abandoned his digging and had come to lean on the gate, relaxedly watching his struggles. The fact didn't seem important to Banedon as he fought both to repel the now evilly lungeing spikes as well as to bring his own will back under control. He was panicking where he should be exerting the calmness of mind that he knew was the prerequisite if he were to be able to draw upon his resources of second-level magic. He was obeying his instincts – which were telling him to flail at his countless attackers – instead of controlling his fears and allowing his conscious mind to bring its powerful faculties to bear. But it was so difficult. His instincts were screaming at him so loudly that they drowned out the gentler voice of reason. The peasant leaning on the gate grinned at his strivings, not unsympathetically. And then at last Banedon was able to bring himself under control for long enough that his consciousness was able to start drawing in his reserves of magical energy to assist it in pushing back the gibbering hordes of his panic. Within seconds they'd been banished to the same walled prison where earlier he'd penned his dreads. The ears of barley were still tearing at his clothing, but he could watch them dispassionately now. The aspect of his mentality which governed his second-level magic now stepped calmly to the fore. His inner eye gazed upon the vacuum of space, criss-crossed by invisible streaks of raw energy. Reaching out with fingers of thought, he was able to seize some of these threads and swiftly weave them into a complicated tapestry of magical power. The tapestry took the form of a simple pattern repeated over and over again until all trace of the original simplicity was lost. Now the whole of the intercosmic space was filled with a single yet infinitely diverse pattern of light, and the spell was complete. Through his mundane eyes Banedon could see that he was standing at the centre of a barren field. There was nothing left at all of the living barley that had been threatening him. Not far away from where he stood was a gate, and on the gate a man in simple rustic garb was leaning, smiling amiably at him, chewing on a straw.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 131 Banedon strolled easily over to the gate. "I be of a telling you that you should be avoiding the Gagadoth, I did be," said the peasant cheerily. Banedon was astonished to recognize the face of Pintel, the horseman he'd last seen on the Great Masourn Trail. "How did you come to be here?" he stammered. "Person like me?" said Pintel, then lapsed into one of those disconcerting silences that characterized his conversation. "A person like you," Banedon prompted. "Ah, yes," said Pintel. "Now that do be the sort of question that folk like you do be often an asking of a person like me, that do be. Well, all I can say is all I can say as to anyone who asks me that sort of pertinence, I do, which is that folk like me – as is to say, folk as isn't like folk like you, as otherwise I'd be asking questions of myself, which'd be stupid, it'd be – folk like me, as I was saying, do turn up in the most unexpected places, we do." "You do," Banedon agreed wearily. "Yes, indeedy we do," said Pintel with a merry smile. "And now, if you'll be excusing me I'll be a-saying a goodbye and how nice it's been to be a-meeting with you here." He turned to go, waving back over his shoulder. "But wait!" Banedon cried. "Please wait. There are so many more questions I need to ask you." Pintel paused and stared at him. "Oh, no," he said at length. "I can be answering only the one question, and I already have been an answering it, have I not, because you in your wisdom were an asking the one and only right question of me first time off, were you not a being?" With that he winked, turned away and, stooping to pick up his spade, strode off. Within seconds he was just a tiny mote at the far side of the field in which he'd been digging, and shortly thereafter he'd disappeared entirely. Thwarted, Banedon just stared at the place where Pintel had been. "But I still want to ..." he said weakly to the empty air. The catch on the gate was a complicated tangle of rope and wire, and he struggled briefly with it before being able to push the gate open. As the gate eased back on its smooth hinges it painted a swash of brilliant yellow-blue across the sky, so that when Banedon stepped through the opening he was stepping into a world quite different from the one in which he'd conquered the barley. And disturbingly different from the one in which Pintel had been digging.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 132 Banedon was on a sea-strand. The sands were smooth, unsullied and quartz-white all around him. There were no footprints leading up to the place where he stood; clearly he must always have been here. The sea was a long way out. He could see it only as a line of dark grey-blue against the distant sky. The heat was baking; the remote waters of the sea represented a coolness that was too far away for him to hope to reach in these temperatures. The brightness of the sky was like a punch in the eyes; he rapidly lowered his gaze. He turned around. About a hundred yards inland from where he stood there were patches of tough sea-grass and then, beyond them, lumpy-looking dunes where more grass grew. Further inland he could see green hills and a drifting trace of what looked like smoke. He imagined that there must be a cottage or farmhouse somewhere there, hidden from him by the dunes. Gloomily he began to trudge through the sand towards the smoke. At first the going was no more arduous than walking in sand normally is, but then, as he'd resignedly expected, it grew progressively more difficult, until he seemed to be trying to wade through ankle-deep treacle. And, of course, still, he was no closer to the dunes than he'd been when he'd started. This time, however, he was prepared for the wash of panic, and so was able easily to deflect it. His magic had worked to counter the barley's attack; he had no reason to believe that it would have any more difficulty coping with the viscous sands, which were now slowly climbing up the rough wool of his trousered legs. Again he summoned his second-level magical mentality, and again he conjured a tapestry from the threads of energy that he found in the vacuum. However, now when he touched the mental pattern to reality he felt a distinct resistance before reality altered itself in conformation with his wishes. As the sand became nothing more than sand once more, and as the sky dimmed and heat moderated, he frowned worriedly. Although the enactment of a spell could often drain a magician emotionally and/or administer considerable pain, he'd never before felt anything like that resistance. Some other form of magic was clearly working against his own. The Elder Magi had stressed to him that Gagadoth had learnt how to repel all of their magical attacks upon it. Was the agarashi already so swiftly learning the intricacies of Banedon's own sophisticated second-level process? For the moment he could think of no other explanation for that

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 133 perplexing lag that he'd sensed. The conclusion was an alarming one. He hoped that he was wrong. His mind troubled, he ambled across the sand, looking to the left and right for any signs of life, but seeing none except, far in the distance, a wheeling seagull. He climbed up the unsteady side of a dune and stood atop it, scanning the countryside ahead of him. The plume of smoke that he'd seen earlier proved to be emanating not from a house but from a clump of trees just to the side of a winding track. After a moment's hesitation he set off towards the road. On reaching it he knelt down briefly to look at its surface. The packed stones and earth were undisturbed by any sign that vehicles or livestock had passed over them. It was as if the road had been newly constructed not half an hour before his arrival. The surface even smelt clean. More than anything else that had gone before, this newness brought home to Banedon that he was indeed exploring the inside of an illusion. The question was: whose illusion? Had the Gagadoth penetrated his mind in order to make it conjure up its own phantasm, or was the monster casting its own spell over reality, so that Banedon was wandering lost through a chimerical landscape? Or was there a third explanation, that the various worlds through which he'd passed were constructs created by the Elder Magi? They were questions he didn't feel he was in any position to answer. All he could do was continue in the way that he had been and see what surprises the illusion would throw at up next. He walked along the road, breathing the fresh air. In a few minutes he came to copse he'd seen from his vantage-point on the dune. He smiled wryly as he saw that the trees were an impossible mixture of deciduous and conifer, some in winter nakedness, others in blossom. It was hard to believe that either his own mind or the Elder Magi could have made such an elementary mistake. And yet, as all magicians knew only too well, their magical aspects were perfectly capable of producing such improbable juxtapositions. "Ho there!" came a familiar voice from within the copse. "Who do there be a-being there?" Sniffing around cautiously, as if his sense of smell might tell him something that his other senses could not, Banedon stepped cautiously off the road onto the springy grass. In a few paces he was in among the trees. The interior of the copse was remarkably gloomy, and he had to hold his arms up in front of his face to protect it from the lashing branches. He remembered the way that the waving heads of barley had assailed him, and tried to put the thought from his

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 134 mind: if the trees tried a repeat performance, he'd simply weave the same spell to divert them away into an otherness, as he'd done with the barley. Meanwhile, the darkness of the copse was deepening, just as it had done when he'd been descending the icy ledge into the Chasm of Gorgoron. Just as it had done when he'd been ... He stopped and looked back the way that he'd come. Sure enough, even in the dim light he could see the shelf of ice winding its way up the sheer side of the gorge towards the brightness of day, far, far above him. He let his gaze drop towards his feet and saw the cracked, shiny grey surface on which they rested. He turned his head slowly and saw the chilling winds of the chasm, the billowing clouds of snow that raced between its high walls. He had the uncomfortable sensation that the cone of his vision was not so much running over this scene as painting it in, as if he would be able to see something quite different if only he could turn his head a little faster. He lowered his arms and re-erected the energy screen; after a moment's thought he added the globe of illumination. The icicle-staff was in his hand once again. Had all that he'd been experiencing – the field of barley, the meeting with Pintel, the cloying sands, the unashamedly brand-new road, to copse – had all of these been a reality, insofar as the word "reality" meant very much down here in the Chasm of Gorgoron, or had they been merely a sort of daydream, a series of fancies that had passed across his inner eye while all the time he'd been still standing here on the ledge? Once again he remembered the magicians' old adage, that, if you can't tell the difference between two explanations for something, then it doesn't much matter which of them you choose to believe in. He smiled, hefted his staff, and continued to walk warily down the slope. This time, however, there was no untoward darkening; the light grew gloomier, but only as much as one would have expected it to. This far below the surface of the world there were few of the fitful little reptiles and, seemingly, no birds at all. For a little while he felt very lonely; then he began to enjoy the solitude. There were only himself and the shrieking gale and the hard-driven sleet. Oh, and the icicle in his hand. Mustn't forget the icicle. Wouldn't do to hurt the icicle's feelings, now would it? When he'd been a little lad at his mother's knee she'd told him how sensitive icicles were to matters of courtesy – they were very nice

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 135 individuals, don't get me wrong about that, but very, well, touchy. So Banedon beamed at his icicle-staff and began to tell it that he was extremely sorry that he'd ... His mind rebelled. What in the name of Naar had he been thinking of? Icicles had no souls, no consciousnesses, no personalities. Where had this drivel come from to pollute his thinking processes? And then he relaxed, nodding his head slowly and smiling. So the Gagadoth, even if it had not done so before, had now certainly become aware of him, and had set nets of mental confusion across his path to ensnare him. Much more along the lines of sentient icicles with a touchy sense of the proprieties and his conscious mind might have become too far divorced from the magical aspect of his mentality for the latter to be able to resume control when he needed it to. He had a sudden image of himself, burbling away happily to an inscrutable icicle as he walked right off the edge of the ice-shelf. Not a pretty thought. The Gagadoth's interferences with his mind could be dangerous. Might well prove fatal, unless he kept himself more on his guard than he had been. The realization added a certain determination to his stride as marched further on down the winding ledge. Again there came that sudden loud booming noise, momentarily making itself heard through the bluster of the wind. Banedon paid it no attention, even though he was walking directly towards the direction from which it had seemed to come. Before, he'd been told that the monster had killed untold numbers of human beings, and he'd been appropriately dismayed, but the thought of all that death hadn't affected him directly. Now things were changed, now that the Gagadoth had so forthrightly attempted to harm him, Banedon. Now a challenge had turned into a matter for vengeance. There were some steps cut downwards from the ledge directly into the face of the chasm's side. Without stopping to consider what might be awaiting them at their end, he turned and marched down the steps, crunching his feet down with defiant satisfaction on each tread. Soon afterwards he came to the bottom of them and found himself a gaping black hole. Presumably the mouth of a cave. The blackness seemed to rebuff the light he had created around himself, but he didn't pause to consider this, instead marching straight in through the archway.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 136 His entrance was the signal for countless unwinking lights to come on. Now he did come to a halt. This was indeed a cave that he had entered, but it had never crossed his mind that it could possibly be a cavern on this scale. It was truly huge – penetrating the rock deeply enough that its far side, although brightly lit, was barely visible, dimmed by the distance. Overhead its roof curved in a lazy arc hundreds of feet above him. He was standing on a platform of stone a few feet above the cavern's floor, but for the moment he didn't jump down. For the cavern's floor was covered with debris of all kinds. There were heaps of shattered armour, burst-open trunks of coins and precious gems, bizarre weapons of types that seemed to Banedon's untutored eye to be impossible of any function, huge ripped swatches of embroidered cloth, battered helmets encrusted with diamonds and decorated with martial chasing, leather shields half torn asunder by unimaginable blades, fire-tubes like the one that the Borian dwarfs carried but a hundred times larger, broken farming tools and other implements, a miserable-looking cracked ballista ... But none of these were what Banedon saw. Instead he couldn't take his sickly fascinated gaze off the mountain of human remains that were littered all over the floor and draped across the stacks of artefacts. Some trick of the local conditions down here had preserved the corpses – or bits of corpses – so that he saw them in all the hideousness of the furious treatment to which they had been subjected. Blue tongues probed from straining jaws, eyes bulged from their sockets, intestines lay draggling from burst abdomens ... And yet he saw upon them no mark of physical violence – no sword slashes or bite marks. Those of the carcases that were in pieces seemed not so much to have been torn apart as to have exploded outwards in response to some inexorable force from within. Banedon's breath hissed through his teeth. These were the kinds of mutilations that magic, not weapons, inflicted on human beings. Very rarely he'd committed a Helghast to a death like this, and even then it had been something he'd done only with the very greatest reluctance. Whatever it was that had slaughtered the unfortunate individuals whose remains lay scattered before him had been possessed of an infinite cruelty – a cruelty that was incompatible with the exercise of any form of left-handed magic.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 137 It was the kind of mayhem that a Darklord might take glee in perpetrating. A Darklord, or Agarash the Damned. Or the steed of Agarash the Damned. The Gagadoth. Abruptly the chamber was filed with the racket of insanely echoing, bestial laughter, and Banedon realized that his thoughts had not gone unheard. The monster itself must have been listening in – perhaps had been doing so ever since he'd begun his descent into the Chasm of Gorgoron. The shrieks of crazed hilarity bounced around the cavern's walls, crossing and recrossing each other until they built up a standing interference pattern, with himself at the focus. Banedon smiled grimly. It was a petty, trivial trick. The amplified shock-waves would have killed any normal mortal; as it was, they hardly troubled the force-screen he'd reflexively strengthened around himself as soon as he'd entered the cavern. Had the Gagadoth underestimated him? Or was it merely trying to irritate him by playing meaningless pranks on him? "Show yourself!" he said. The words were not spoken very loudly, but even so they cut through the standing waves the Gagadoth had created with the echoes of its laughter. The echoes abruptly died. "Show yourself!" he repeated. "Show yourself if you dare!" And the Gagadoth did dare. The distant wall of the cave seemed slowly to dissolve into a mist of fine grey droplets. Then these in turn evaporated away to leave a curtain of vapour that rapidly dissipated. From out of the clouds of gas stepped the largest creature that Banedon had ever seen. He tried to estimate its dimensions, but it was too large for his mind to be able to conjure numbers in connection with it. As it pulled itself laboriously out of the massive recess in which it had been hiding it drew itself progressively further up towards its full height, as if it had been folded up when first he'd seen it. Now that it was standing upright on its squat hindlegs it reached halfway to the cavern's ceiling. It was covered all over in great plates of gleaming, blue-green chitin that caught the lights from all around the walls and reflected them distorted into crazy patterns. Its hindlegs were short and powerfully muscled; its forelegs, hanging in front of the bulge of its belly, only a little less so. There was no bulge of genitalia at its crotch: it was an agarashi, and so was not equipped to breed. All four of its legs ended in twelve-toed feet that were armed with razor-sharp claws. At its throat there was a diamond of unprotected skin – a lure, Banedon immediately suspected, for

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 138 mortal warriors with lances, so that in aiming for it they would lay themselves open to a sideswipe from one of those massive paws. Its head had the overall form of a horse's, but grotesquely caricatured. Its ears were the shape of rapacious flames. A mighty convoluted tusk protruded from the centre of its forehead, thrusting upwards aggressively as it jabbed the air. To either side of the tusk were its eyes – six of them, gathered in two groups of three. Just behind the tusk was a pink, sensitive-seeming protuberance which Banedon guessed to be some sort of an analogue of the pineal eye. Its nostrils were flared pits above an incongruously toothless mouth. And then Banedon remembered what Pintel had told him, back on the Great Masourn Trail: "Sucks your brains out, it does. Very slowly, so as you can feel 'em go." He looked at the smooth-edged maw with revulsion. And then the Gagadoth was speaking to him. Its voice tore at the air. One of the heaps of armour slumped, so that shapes of metal were sent in a clattering cascade. Fire sprang from the beast's nostrils, plumes of flame yards long. Banedon could understand none of the words that it spoke – if words they were. But the great braying shout that filled the cavern conveyed meaning to him. And the message astonished him. The Gagadoth was revelling in the hideous evils that it had perpetrated, yes, but it was also wailing of aeons-long anguish, of the harsh love that it had held for its master, Agarash the Damned, and of the suffering that had daily afflicted it since that foul butcher's own destruction. Banedon realized that it was in no way trying to justify itself and nor was it ashamed; rather it was proudly declaiming its state-of-being, part of which was the endless grief it felt. The grief which inspired it to its deeds of vengeance against all mortals who served Ishir, the God who had inspired the Elder Magi to slay its master. For half an hour or longer its voice reverberated around the great space. All the while its hindlegs were tramping, tramping, tramping in a menacing stationary march. Banedon was confused and disconcerted by what the agarashi was telling him. He had little prior experience of monsters. All he had known before was what people like Lone Wolf and Qinefer had told him. According to their accounts, monsters were mindless beings of Evil: they had no individuality, so that killing one of them wasn't really like taking a life. The Gagadoth, by contrast, certainly did have individuality. That it was loathsome and unspeakably cruel could not be questioned; that its lust for vengeance was evil, sparked by the death of a master who was in himself the incarnation of evil,

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 139 was likewise no matter for argument. And yet the motives that had given rise to its brutal deeds were love and eternal loyalty – traditionally regarded as in the province of Ishir, not Naar. Banedon wished the monster would hurry up and attack him. At this rate he was likely to end up sympathizing with it. And finally the monologue did indeed come to an end. The Gagadoth stood there defiantly in front of him, its flame-licked head so far above him that it seemed tiny, its marching hindlegs with their clawed feet directly before him and impossibly massive. But still it made no move to assault him. And then he felt soft tendrils of alien thought touching the hinterlands of his consciousness. There seemed nothing aggressive about them; instead they were more like the affectionate mental caresses that he and Jenara might sometimes exchange. And there was also something childlike in them; he was reminded of the way that a ragamuffin street urchin might beg him for a sweetmeat with a mixture of innocence and worldliness. Begone! he snapped inwardly at the insidious thought-patterns. Get away from me. I deny you entrance to my being. But the tendrils, having established a toe-hold, were not to be so easily dislodged. He could feel them growing in strength and confidence as they trespassed ever further into the rarely used fringe-lands of his mind. Swiftly he erected walls around the core of himself, raising barriers to at least limit the spread of the Gagadoth's mental roots. Yet even as the last mental stone of those walls slotted into place he could feel the soft, sensitive tips of the tendrils probing through the crannies on all sides. For a few seconds his mind was conquered by despair, so that the walls began to crumble. Once he had re-established proper control of himself he discovered that a whole forest of tendrils had permeated the barriers and were now setting down roots. He knew what he ought to do. The question was: did he have the nerve to do it? The spell he required to use to eject the invaders was a vastly complicated one, and in order to weave it he would have to retreat from real-time consciousness for several seconds – a long age, in magical terms. In his absence the Gagadoth's tendrils could make colossal incursions into the mainstream of his conscious mind ... so that if, in practice, his spell failed he would surely be doomed. In purely physical terms, too, he would be endangering himself. He would be absent for long enough that the Gagadoth could simply take a couple of steps forwards and flatten him.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 140 He put that possibility away from him. Pintel had been wrong when he'd interpreted the monster's way of killing its victims: instead of physically sucking out their brains it preyed instead by drawing out the contents of their minds. This was the gross and hideously painful violation that caused the bodies of some of its victims to erupt in desecrated protest. And surely Banedon was safe, therefore, from a straightforward physical assault: his mind was surely too great a prize for the thirsting Gagadoth for the creature to wish to lose it, untasted, by killing the brain that housed it. He hoped. His heartbeat refusing all his distracted efforts to steady it, he winged a quick prayer to Ishir to bless him with Her aid, and then closed his eyes. Again, as always, the emptiness of space. Despite the nervous edge to his left-handed thinking, he was able at once to perceive the strands of virtual energy that lay embedded in its fabric of nothingness. He deployed an infinity of mental fingers, and deftly plucked from among all the strands the ones that he required, so that they manifested themselves into the reality of this internal cosmos. Busily his mental fingers raced, weaving the superficially simple asymmetric pattern that, once complete, would of its own accord start budding and spreading until the full complexity of the spell was revealed. But something was trying to stop him. Something was slapping at his fingers, attempting to knock their workings out of true, to distort the pattern so that it would be a mutant, incapable of breeding true. Even at this second level of his magic, the Gagadoth was attacking him. He forced his fingers to speed even more industriously – difficult when he was having to divert part of his magical energies to counter the distractions that the Gagadoth was thrusting into his second-level reality. Impossibly difficult? He hoped not. He prayed not. Already he'd been here for subjective hours, although only a couple of seconds would have passed back in the cavern where he and the Gagadoth were confronting each other. It couldn't be long now until; he had the template for the spell completed, so that from there the spell as a whole could generate itself. All he had to do was to beat off the Gagadoth's attentions just a little longer. He was unsuccessful.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 141 The pattern, awry, fell from his grasp. It dissolved as it fell, its useless, aborted configurations collapsing. And now the Gagadoth's assaults were more forceful and persistent. He shot a bolt of pure malevolence at the incursion, and was joyed to feel it flinch from the blast. Of course, the measure was only a temporary one – already the Gagadoth's thoughts were regrouping – but with luck it might just last long enough that he could ... Weaving. Mental fingers moving faster than sight. This time, when the disruption came, he was expecting it. He shifted the location of the growing pattern in space, so that the mental swipe of the Gagadoth's mind-extension missed his hands completely. He continued busily weaving the strands of coloured energy. And the pattern was growing. The Gagadoth sent ropes of its wrath into his second-level consciousness, hurling them like lassoes in the hope of snaring his wrists. It was a desperate stratagem. The creature had accepted that its initial efforts had failed, and was now trying anything it could think of, no matter how remote the chances of success. Banedon touched the ropes into flame. The flames shot back along the ropes at inconceivable speed. Banedon chuckled as he heard the anguished shriek of the Gagadoth's mind. And all the time the pattern was growing under his fingers. A colossal mental jolt made his mind stagger. Now the Gagadoth was attempting to destroy his tapestry by brute force, throwing the full weight of its consciousness against his own. Banedon was glad it hadn't thought to do so before. He could stand another shock or two like that, but not too many of them. A rapier is a fine weapon, but it cannot prevail forever against a two-handed battle-axe. He tried to move his second-level consciousness to one side, in much the same way as he had made his weaving fingers dodge the Gagadoth's earlier swipings, but the magical energy required was too great – far more than he could sensibly divert from the task of weaving the template. And it was almost done. Another crushing blow. He caught a stitch at the last moment and carefully inserted it exactly where it should go. A single misplaced strand would be enough to render the template useless ... And the pattern was done! It was beginning to grow and spread at a rate so fast that the colours of the individual strands were barely able to keep up.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 142 He retreated swiftly from his second-level consciousness. The last he saw of the pattern he had germinated was a wash of overpowering light that was filling the entire level. And then he was back in the present, in his physical body. The Gagadoth loomed above him, seemingly unchanged – and yet he could sense something of resignation in its stance. The right-handed magic that it had deployed against so many of the Elder Magi had at last failed it. He could sense its responsive, probing tendrils retreating back behind the barriers that he'd initially erected, and then, as the second-level spell that he'd concocted scorched them, right out of even the fringes of his mind. It was his turn to mount an assault. He balled up part of the truth of his own being and hurled it across the intervening magical space at the mind of the Gagadoth. At the mind, he suddenly realized, of the God Naar Himself. And that great timeless mind, in all the massiveness of its Evil, cowered from the blow! Banedon was for a moment too startled to take advantage of the shock that he'd administered. Luckily Naar was even more bewildered. Hastily scrabbling for more of his own truth, Banedon cast another missile at the heart of Darkness, and felt it retreat further. Then, like a monumentally thick steel door, Naar crashed down an impervious defence over the opening to His soul. Banedon's third and final ball of purity crashed against this door futilely. And now the Gagadoth was showing physical changes in accordance with the damage that it had suffered on a mental level. It took a single pace forwards with one of its mighty hindlegs, but the leg itself gave way under the monster's huge weight. The whole of the agarashi's body now seemed to be collapsing in upon itself. Wrinkles appeared all across the chitinous plates that armoured it. Flames spurted now not only from its flaring nostrils but also from the interstices that were opening up between the shrinking plates. And it screamed. A last scream that encapsulated in a single explosion of tormented sound all of the anguish that it had experienced over the millennia since its master, Agarash the Damned, had been destroyed. The bitterness of its grief tore great chunks of rock out of the cavern walls; piercing heat assailed Banedon's physical body, singeing his garments. As before, the Gagadoth spoke no words in its scream. And yet he could understand completely what it was yelling:

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 143 "I never asked to be created!" And then the rocks were tumbling all around him, and he raised his arms above his head in a futile attempt to protect himself as the still-massive body of the Gagadoth collapsed towards him, growing ever larger in his tear-filled vision as it fell ... five He was looking at the last page of the book that the librarians had given to him ... how long ago? He felt spiritually eviscerated. His whole body ached with remembered pain. Exhaustion tugged him downwards, making his limbs heavy. Slowly, slowly, he closed the back cover of the book and raised his eyes to the two hooded figures, who stood motionless before him, their green eyes regarding him sombrely. "You have slain the Gagadoth," said one or both of them quietly. "I have read of the Gagadoth being slain," he corrected. But that didn't seem right to him. He hadn't been reading about the descent into the Chasm of Gorgoron and the magical duel with the great agarashi: he'd been there, himself. His whole mind and body were telling him that. "You have simultaneously occupied two quite separate channels of existence," the voice of the Elder Magi explained patiently. "The acceptance by you of one of them as reality renders the other as mere illusion. It is up to you to choose which is the truth and which the fiction." "I ... I don't know which to choose," said Banedon. "I'm ... too ... tired." He slumped forward and rested his head on the closed book. The librarians glanced unnecessarily at each other. Then they each touched a finger to Banedon's body so that it floated clear of the table against which it had been resting and the chair on which it had been sitting. Moments later, still in its curled up position, Banedon's body was lying on its side on his bed in the dormitory near to the roof of the Tower of Truth. The six dwarfs, abandoning the game of samor they had been playing, came to gather round the bed and look in turn at Banedon and the two hooded wizards. "Happen the Guv's having a bit of a kip, eh?" said Lirkin. "That's what always happens to me when I try this reading lark."

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 144 "Shut your gob," said his brother. "You don't know nothing. The Guv's in a trance, that's what he is. Them magicians is always trancing. It helps 'em keep their cardiovascular systems in trim." "What's a cardiothingummy system?" said Lirkin suspiciously. "Sounds smutty to me." "It's what these magician geezers keep in trim by trancing all the time, stupid!" Banedon slept for nearly forty-eight hours. When he awoke he remembered little of the library or of the book, and nothing of the Chasm of Gorgoron or of his confrontation with the Gagadoth. All he could recall was that he had searched through the byways of the Elder Magi's ancient magic and found little to interest him there beyond some useful curios. His mission had been a failure. He was going to go back to Vassagonia empty-handed. six The dwarfs had already gone out to give the camels their final grooming in preparation for the return journey, leaving Banedon alone in the dormitory sadly contemplating his half-packed luggage, when Rimoah came to him. "There is a chance, however, that you may be able to help us." For a moment Banedon didn't know what Rimoah was talking about. The old man had a disconcerting habit of suddenly continuing a conversation that had been abandoned long before. Then he realized that Rimoah was referring to the way that Banedon seemed to have garnered so little from his magical quest. "How may I help you?" he said, bowing his head. "There is a creature called the Gagadoth which has taken to itself all the land around the Chasm of Gorgoron – slaughtering all who try to resist it. Even the port of Gologo is at risk from its depredations." Banedon was confused. He had heard of the Gagadoth, of course – that oddly spoken horseman, Pintel, had talked about it. But why should Rimoah chose to start speaking of it now – now that Banedon was preparing to leave Dessi? He had a sudden suspicion. "And you wish me to fight against this creature?" he said warily.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 145 "No, no, nothing like that. We have few warriors, but of those some of the bravest have ridden in vain against the creature – and paid with their lives for their temerity. The Gagadoth cannot be fought by physical means alone. It seems to be only partly of this time and partly of some other, so that, even if the portion of it that is in this time is harmed, the beast simply pulls more of itself in from that other time." Rimoah paused to cough, then continued: "We have tried using our magic against the monster, of course, but none of our sorcery seems able to prevail against it. Your second-level left-handed magic, on the other hand ..." This was all sounding too familiar to Banedon, as if he were being asked to do something that he had already done. "You wish me to go to the ... the Chasm of Gorgoron and confront this ... this beast ... magically?" he said. "But ..." "No, not even that. All that we ask is that you lend your magic to some of us – perhaps a dozen of the most courageous of us all – so that they may venture against the Gagadoth." "`Lend'!" exclaimed Banedon. "Why! All the magic at my command is yours for the asking, as a gift. I would have offered it to you before ... but ... but I'd have thought it an impertinence to do so. Here, let you yourself be the repository of all the magical knowledge that I have." He reached out impetuously and put the tips of the fingers of both his hands into the old man's still-outstretched palm. Both of them closed their eyes, and Banedon felt the energy draining from his body at the same time as everything that he knew of second-level magic was transmitted from his own mind to that of Rimoah. Moments later, when the process was done, he was sagging at the knees. He sat down on the edge of his bed, covering his face with his hands. It seemed to be a long while before he'd recovered sufficient energy to be able to look up at the still-standing figure of ancient wizard. His mouth dropped. He was looking at the figure of a stranger. No – not a stranger at all. The person standing there so easily and youthfully was Rimoah – yet a Rimoah transformed. And it was also someone else whom he recalled: Pintel, the enigmatic horseman whom he'd next seen as a peasant digging in a field when he was in ... But there his memories petered out into an unreliable haze. Rimoah/Pintel was smiling at him, watching his confused thoughts chase each other across his face. "Yes, Banedon," he murmured, "you've met me before."

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 146 But Banedon wasn't listening to him. "Is this what my magic has done to you?" he said. "No," said Rimoah. "No, this is how I always appear, except when I wish not to. We of the Council of Elder Wizards could have taken your magic from you, you know, when first we looked inside your mind, but we chose not to – that is not the way of the Magiocracy of Dessi. We wanted you to give it to us as a gift – and also we wanted to test you, to ensure that the branch of magic that you practise had not corrupted you the way you tell us that other forms of magic corrupted your countryman, Vonotar. We treasure your gift not just because indeed your second-level magic is far more powerful than our own but also because you had the goodness of heart to give it to us. And the humility that you displayed before your giving shows us that your heart is pure and free from all taint of corruption. "There is no such beast as the Gagadoth – and there never has been. We invented it as a means to test you for your wisdom, for only a fool would have ventured alone against a creature of unknown powers armed only with a form of magic that might prove ineffectual against it. A warrior with your advanced knowledge, perhaps – yes, perhaps someone like that could have undertaken such a quest. But someone like you – armed only with your magic and your fear – would have risked destroying not only yourself but all the magical lore contained within the chambers of your young mind." A kindly smile from the icy face of the ancient man. "There is wisdom in timely cowardice, Banedon, and you displayed that wisdom." Banedon swallowed. He had no high estimation of his own bravery, yet it went against the grain to hear himself described as a craven – however wise a craven. Besides, hadn't he determined that, if ever he were given the chance to take on the Gagadoth in a magical duel, he would accept it? Wasn't that what he'd decided, when he'd been speaking with the two hooded Elder Magi downstairs in the library? Hadn't the whole purpose of asking them for that book been to find out more about the Gagadoth and about its dwelling-place, the Chasm of Gorgoron, so that he could plan his strategy against the agarashi? So strange that he could no longer remember a single word of what he'd read in that book. And yet he knew that he'd studied it long and diligently ... Rimoah was turning away from him. "In return for the gift that you have given us, Banedon," the old/young man was saying, "we have a gift for you. Come, and I shall show it to you."

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 147 Mouth still open in bewilderment, Banedon followed him all the way down the countless flights of rickety stairways that honeycombed the Tower of Truth, his saddlebag thumping along on the steps behind him, until they came out of the building's front entrance. Hovering fifty feet above the level of the street was one of those flying vessels that he'd sailed in ... when? He shook the half-dream from his head, and looked at the vessel in awe. It was not unlike a small war-cruiser, with a high prow and two sets of sails. Its wooden hull sported a keel, as if it had been designed for marine use, and yet it was clear that it had never seen the water. A rope-ladder hung down invitingly from its deck. Banedon could see that the six dwarfs had already scrambled up there and were now running around investigating the craft. Nolrim was even climbing dangerously up into the rigging. Clearly the dwarfs were overjoyed at the prospect of travelling once again in a sailing vessel, even if it was one that sailed through the air rather than over the water. "You would lend this ship to me?" said Banedon incredulously. "Not lend," replied Rimoah. "As I said, the Sky Rider is our gift to you." "But I have no knowledge of the arts of ... of seamanship," he spluttered. "Your attendants are familiar with those conventional arts," remarked Rimoah quietly. "As for the more magical aspects of guiding and powering the Sky Rider, I took the liberty of supplying them to you while you were giving me your flood of information about your magic. You'll find that you know how to sail her, all right." And Banedon realized that indeed he did. The necessary knowledge was lodged securely in his mind, as if it had always been there. "When you were plying me with wine," he said, "long ago, on that featureless white plane of existence, I drank until I finished all that was in the decanter. And then we returned to the council chamber. But, just before we did, I saw you glance at the decanter and then at my face, as if you were hoping that I'd do something more. At the time I didn't understand the expression on your face, but I think I do now. You were hoping that I'd refill the decanter for you – that I'd give of my own wine in return for the wine that you had so generously given to me."

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 148 Rimoah smiled. "Everyone has different ways of rationalizing magical experiences," he said. "I cannot begin to guess what it was that you saw then. But, yes, we were hoping that you would give us of your magic – as indeed you have now done. And there are other magical experiences that you have undergone since you came to us here in Elzian that I cannot describe to you because it was you, and not me, who was a part of them. Perhaps you don't even know yourself yet what they were, nor how to depict them in your own mind. Now, come, it is time for you to go aboard your vessel." Up on deck, Banedon stood and looked down at Rimoah, who was waving a slender but strong hand at him. "Killed any Gagadoths lately, Guv?" said Quan. Banedon turned to stare baffledly at him. The dwarf squirmed. "Just a joke, Guv," he said. "Just a way of passing the time of day, like." But Banedon wasn't certain whether or not the dwarf had been joking – and would never be. And the words of the librarians still echoed in his mind: "You have simultaneously occupied two quite separate channels of existence. The acceptance by you of one of them as reality renders the other as mere illusion. It is up to you to choose which is the truth and which the fiction."

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 149 The Fourth Campfire THE AUTUMNAL EQUINOX It had been a long time since Lone Wolf had felt in such a good humour. In recent weeks his studies of the Book of the Magnakai had been accelerating, so that, despite the damage which time had inflicted on the decipherability of Sun Eagle's centuries-old handwriting, and despite the difficulties of comprehending allusions and references which had been topical hundreds of years before but which were now infernally obscure, he was mastering more and more of the lesser mysteries that the book contained. Soon, he was confident, he'd be branching into some of the more fundamental wisdom – the wisdom that would raise his mental and physical status to that of what had been called in the old days a Magnakai. And, once he had made that breakthrough, there must surely be the possibility that the final defeat of the forces of Naar would not be too distant. He grinned. Adding to his good cheer was the fact that, under the inspiring leadership of Petra and Viveka, the team of Kai acolytes had over the past six months made considerable progress in the rebuilding of the Monastery. One whole wing of the original building had been reconstructed; sight of it still brought bittersweet memories to Lone Wolf of the times when he, as a child, had been a new acolyte here. He'd never been the most industrious of students, ever preferring to dodge his lessons and bolt off into the surrounding woodlands where he could laze or climb trees or fool himself that he and the forest animals were having meaningful conversations. He smiled sadly as he recalled how Storm Hawk, his grizzled old tutor, had watched his truancy with a mixture of compassion and ruefulness; the smile faded when he recalled how Storm Hawk had died under the ensorcelments of the renegade wizard Vonotar. It was curious the way that memories always behaved like that – weaving themselves together so that each recollection of pleasure brought with it a sorrowful companion. Banedon was trying to tell Petra a joke. "What's got two thumbs, speaks Giak, and likes being kissed by blondes?" the young magician was saying. "Oh, Ishir, I don't know," she said wearily. "What has got two thumbs, speaks Giak, and likes being kissed by blondes?"

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 150 "Ok." "Ok?" "Yes, ok. It's a Giak word. It means `me'. You see, that's the point of the ..." "Do you know any other Giak words?" said Petra, looking him straight in the face, her eyes unnaturally wide. "Well, I suppose" – a self-deprecating cough – "I suppose I do know a few. Yes. A few." "Gosh, you're so much cleverer than I thought. I do like clever men. Can you tell me the meaning of a Giak phrase I picked up the last time I was in Holmgard?" "Well, it, er, depends." Banedon looked as if he were wishing he could find a dark corner to hide himself in. "I ... I can't promise anything, you know. I'm not utterly fluent in ... er ... Giak. But" – rallying his reserves – "I could certainly have a try, if you liked." "Well, here it goes, Banedon. Although I couldn't understand it, I memorized it very clearly." Petra's prim-seeming lips gave vent to a short burst of gutturals and glottal-stops. Then she turned and wandered off, leaving the magician red-faced. He saw Lone Wolf grinning at him. "Please don't bother translating that for me," said Banedon. "The only word I could understand was `off', but I got the gist of the rest." Lone Wolf's grin got wider. "I don't think you can have," he said, "or you'd be borrowing my sword to fall on." "I wasn't seriously ..." began Banedon. He let the words peter out. There was a wistful expression on his face. "Alyss," said Lone Wolf softly. "You miss her still, don't you?" "Do you miss Qinefer?" said Banedon. He looked sharply at Lone Wolf's face and saw it crumple. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. It was a cheap retort. My apologies." "Don't worry," said Lone Wolf. "It's an old grief. I've learnt to live with it – I've had to." "I miss her." "Who? Alyss or Qinefer?" "Both of them, but it was Qinefer I was meaning right then. She had a lot to teach both of us, you know, and yet neither of us lifted a finger to try to stop her walking right out of our lives." Banedon stooped and picked up a fallen horse-chestnut; he bounced it in his open palm a couple of times and threw it off in among the trees.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 151 "I was deaf and blind to what she was trying to tell me," Lone Wolf admitted. "I was too immature in those days to see that anything else was important except the slash of my sword and the chop of my axe. If I'd listened to her ... but I didn't. I preferred drabness to the colours she was trying to bring into my life." "What would you do if she came back again?" "I hate to admit it, but I'd probably repeat the mistake. Even now that I've decrypted so much of the Book of the Magnakai and accordingly matured so much, she'd still be asking of me more imagination than I think I'll ever possess." He sat down on the grass and pulled on Banedon's hand until the magician joined him. "But the question's a pretty academic one," he added, "because I don't think she'll ever come back." "Neither do I," said Banedon softly. "Neither do I. She told me a lot of what she'd discovered through her interaction with the Birthplace – a lot more than she had time to tell you – and yet it's only now that I'm beginning to understand it properly. But one thing she said quite definitely was that there were always different routes we can take from one place to another, and that the routes cross each other only occasionally. She said that you'd chosen your own pathway, the route of – what did you say just then? The route of `the slash of your sword and the chop of your axe' – and that nothing she could say would make you even pause to glance for a moment over the walls on either side of that roadway. And she, she wasn't going to abandon her own route, either. She once called it the `pathway of dreams' when she was speaking to me about it. I envy her those dreams." The two of them were silent for a long while. "I don't seem to have the power to dream," said Lone Wolf eventually. Banedon, glancing sideways, thought he saw a tear forming in his friend's eye. He decided to change the subject rapidly. "Talking of old friends," he said, "I'm surprised that Carag hasn't put in an appearance yet. He was very definite, when he was bidding us his farewells last Fehmarn, that he'd be here for the feast this equinox. I hope he's safe." The remarks did nothing to cheer Lone Wolf – if anything, they made him even more depressed. The existence of a Giak was a precarious one, and usually short: the Giaks were right at the very bottom of the pecking order among the hosts of Darkness, and could meet their ends at the slightest whim of any of the others. It would be just like fate to send Lone Wolf not only unwelcome memories of Qinefer and realizations of his own inadequacies but

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 152 also the news of the death of an old ally. Misfortunes were reputed to come in threes, after all. And to think that only a few minutes before he'd been feeling happier than he had in a long while. There was a sudden commotion from the trees, and both Lone Wolf and Banedon looked up alertly. The young acolyte Jaan, hair streaming behind her, came running out towards them. "It's Carag!" she shouted. "He's remembered! He's here – here for the feast tonight!" Lone Wolf was ridiculously overjoyed. He knew that the feeling of exhilaration that was romping through him was merely an overreaction to the gloom that had pervaded him, but he didn't care. At last – some good news! "Bring the little fellow here to us," he said warmly, getting to his feet. "It'll be good to see his ugly chops again!" "He's on his way," said Jaan breathlessly. She ran on past them, presumably to tell Viveka and Petra the good news. Banedon was smiling broadly. "You," he said, "a Kai, looking forward to greeting Carag, a Giak!" "You'd be the same if he'd saved your life," said Lone Wolf simply. Then a familiar squat figure stomped out of the forest's dimness, scything an angry fist clear through the trunk of a young tree as he came. "Carag!" cried Lone Wolf. "Well met!" "I ... got ... news ... bad for ... you," grated the Giak, frowning at both of them. The frown if anything made his grey-green face marginally less repulsive than usual. "If it'll keep, you can tell us later," said Lone Wolf. "For the moment let's just share a goblet or two of some fine liquor that Viveka found for us." "`Found'?" said Banedon suspiciously. "Er, yes," said Lone Wolf, abashed. "I made a point of not asking too hard exactly what she meant by that." Banedon chuckled. "It's amazing what falls off the back of wagons," he said. "Yes," said Lone Wolf. "Truly amazing." All this while Carag had been regarding the pair of them sourly. "The ... I got ... news ... is ... badbadbad," he said. "Changes ... Darklands ... in the ... have been ... there. For the ... changes ... worse." It wasn't quite enough to sober Lone Wolf. "Then you'll have something to tell us around the campfire tonight," he said. "Viveka, me, Banedon – we've all told stories. This time it's got to

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 153 be the turn of either you or Petra, and I can't see Petra volunteering, can you?" "I can't see her volunteering without a fight, anyway," muttered Banedon. Carag's mood seemed to be brightening. "Story ... a," he announced. "Yes ... I ... story a ... of news ... my ... make. Raggin ... good ... story ... youbet!" "I think you've just made a very big mistake," said Banedon frankly to Lone Wolf. "We're in for a tedious evening." "Don't be such an old sourpuss," said Lone Wolf impatiently, putting an arm around Carag's shoulders and then, a moment later, removing it thoughtfully; nothing a long wash wouldn't put right. "If you can't stand the prospect of Carag's telling, make sure you get plenty to drink before it starts." That night Banedon did exactly what his friend had suggested, and for years afterwards he was to regret having done so – because he was sound asleep by the time Carag started. A couple of the acolytes hauled him off and dumped him unceremoniously in the undergrowth when his snoring got too loud.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 154

C A R A G 'S T E L L I N G or How the Forces of Darkness Came to Have a New Lord one Helgedad, where the grey sky spits flames and the orange clouds glower, where the air is a blizzard of ash. The greatest of the eight fortress-cities of the Darklands had been erected over seventeen hundred years before by Vashna, the first of the Darklords whom Naar had sent to be his emissaries on Magnamund. Earlier Vashna had sent out his vile hordes to defeat the Drakkarim in the bloody struggle that became known as the War of Desecration; the cruel, humanoid species had become his fiefs. In the dungeons beneath the grim city were created the spawn that the Darklords used in their wars against mortals: from here came Giaks, Doomwolves, Vordaks, Helghast and the flying creatures, the Kraan and the larger Zlanbeast, which perpetually formed a screeching cloud around Helgedad's ash-coloured topmost turrets. Vashna had built the great fortress-city atop an outcrop of granite that jutted upwards from the centre of a vast lake of molten, angrily bubbling lava; the lake itself was surrounded by the ash-desert of Naogizaga, which stretched in miserable lifelessness all the way to the horizon and beyond. A solitary bridge of twisted metal linked Helgedad to Naogizaga, but few used it except the hordes of Giaks which passed to and from across it in pursuit of their endless, sleepless tasks. Above them flew Kraan and, more rarely, Zlanbeast bearing Helghast, Drakkarim, Vordaks ... and, sometimes, one of the Darklords himself might choose to come to the capital of the Darklands, his great Zlanbeast's wings pulsing steadily beneath him while, behind, came his retinue of Xaghash and others on their lesser Kraan. But there was one Darklord who habitually used the bridge. Gnaag. The Darklord of Mozgôar could have used more flamboyant means of transport, as did his sixteen fellow-Darklords, but instead he generally elected to go on foot.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 155 Gnaag was not the tallest of the Darklords, and seemingly had few of the others' physical powers. His was a slight, insectile form. The outer flesh (or what passed for flesh) of his body was well-nigh invisible, so that his internal organs could be clearly seen, throbbing wetly and greenly. Blood oozed in regular waves from the dome of his bald head. The claws of his thin-toed feet carved out narrow grooves as he walked. There was a feyness in his gestures, a fragility in his bearing; yet, for all that, he was a creature of very considerable strength – a fact which he generally chose to conceal, for his own sly reasons. The Darklord's predilection for walking naturally meant that the creatures of his retinue likewise had to go on foot rather than ride aloft on the flying spawn. Had the Giaks of his train been humans they would have complained bitterly (if very, very quietly) about the extra burdens placed on them by their master's idiosyncracy, but Giaks, with their inability to conceive of any circumstance other than the present one, were unable to comprehend that their lot could be any better than it was. The inability to comprehend that it could be much worse than it was would have been shared by any objective observer. However, there was one Giak in the throng following Gnaag across the bridge today who was capable of resentment. Unobserved by his fellows, he was turning his loathsome little face upwards and eyeing the wheeling Kraan with a grimace of envy – a grimace which, fortunately for him, none other could interpret, nobody ever having seen an emotion of such sophistication expressed on a Giak face before. Carag cursed one last time at his miserable lot and turned back to follow the rest of the fifty or so Giaks that were straggling along in Gnaag's wake. The metal of the bridge squawked and clattered under their bony little feet. The lumpish little creatures conversed tediously among each other in their rapid-fire voices, which ranged erratically in pitch from a high piping to a gruff rumble and back again, seemingly without any control on the part of the speaker. Boredly, Carag tried to interest himself in one of the nearby discussions, but almost immediately realized that he had heard it almost word for word a thousand times before. His thoughts reached slowly out to embrace other times, times which he could remember only hazily but, even so, well enough to know that he'd been much happier then than he could ever hope to be in the Darklands, under the sway of an unpredictable master. That master, Vonotar, had given him much – most importantly, the awareness without which he would not now have been able to be thinking these

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 156 thoughts – but Carag had never been able to understand the treacherous sorcerer's mood-swings and motivations, and so had lived in constant dread that some simple misunderstanding might lead to Vonotar condemning him to a fate very, very substantially worse than death. Such fates the magician had on occasion meted out to others: Carag shuddered at his foggy memories of their agonies. That was something that the Giaks around him didn't do: shudder. The elevation of Carag's intellect and the enhancement of his memory to even its current unreliable sluggishness had brought disadvantages as well as benefits. But, he recalled, he had had friends, too, in the lands of his memories – notably in Sommerlund. Here in the Darklands the word "friend" had no meaning. The greatest friend of all had been a big youth called Lone Wolf. Before that – and here Carag had almost literally to wring the recollections out of his dry brain-cortex – there had been another Sommlending who had played an important part in his life. That person had been a sorcerer, Vonotar, who had imposed his will upon Carag's and proved himself to be if anything an even harsher master than the Darklords. Vonotar was gone now: long ago Lone Wolf had despatched him into the limbo of the Shadow Gate, yet not before the magician had had time both to effect profound changes in the Giak's mental abilities. Carag had gained a rudimentary – an extremely rudimentary – intelligence, which had brought with it such alien capabilities as memory and friendship. And the nous to recognize that all traces of those capabilities must be kept concealed from his fellows. As must the fact that he had a name, given to him by Vonotar. No Giak was named; Carag wondered if, because of Vonotar's gift, he had become something that was no longer a Giak. Making sure that nobody was looking at him, Carag shiftily dropped the heavier of the two burdens he'd been carrying down between the tormented metal spars of which the bridge was made. A disturbing number of seconds later he saw it puff up an instantaneous little flame as the package was destroyed at the red-hot surface of the lava-lake, far beneath. He cackled silently. So many items were lost during these futile peregrinations of Gnaag's through the inefficiency and stupidity of the bearers that one extra missing burden would never be noticed. He held his

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 157 shoulders a little straighter as he walked squatly on his way, just one of the crowd. He allowed his thoughts to wander back to Sommerlund. His early excursions there had been involuntary. He had served in two minor forays that Zagarna had ordered before that Darklord's final, doomed invasion. Then he had been taken there by Lone Wolf after the capture and defeat of Vonotar; Carag had been honoured by confusing crowds of Sommlending, all speaking in their incomprehensible booming fashion, and had made good his escape as quickly as he could. But then fate and his own new-found attributes of intelligence had conspired to take Carag there again, in order to try to warn Lone Wolf that the Darklord Haakon intended to kidnap him; then later, after the kidnap had been successful, it had been Carag who had helped Lone Wolf escape from Helgedad and return home. And then ... well, Carag had come to like not only Lone Wolf but a few of the other mortals he'd met in Sommerlund: the black woman whose departure had so upset Lone Wolf, the killer-woman with the scar on her face, the spotty weakling who had learnt to master magics almost as great as those of Vonotar, the soldier who kept her yellow hair cropped close, the children – except that some of them couldn't be called children any longer – and ... "Food!" Gnaag suddenly cried up ahead. The convoy stopped as a Giak resignedly approached the Darklord. There was a spray of thrashing limbs and droplets of ichor, a whine cut off short, and then Gnaag was feeding. The rest of the party milled about, mutely waiting for the Darklord to finish his repast. It was hard to estimate the time of the equinoxes, here in this land of perpetual gloom, but Carag had got into the habit of trying to attend each of the reunions that his friends held in Sommerlund. Another of the little secrets he hid so assiduously from those around him. Along with his age. Nobody knew what the natural life-expectancy of a Giak was, for no Giak ever lasted that long. Serving as both food animals and cannon-fodder, individually utterly expendable – even their bodily oils were used for lighting and fuel – they were lucky to survive a year after their emergence from the hideous spawning pits beneath the fortress-city. But Carag, advantaged by his meagre gift of intelligence, had been able to survive the many threats of Giak existence and was now at least several years old – possibly as many as six or seven. It was lucky that no one was interested in enough in Giaks ever to look at them and realize that they were not in fact indistinguishable from each

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 158 other, and that one of them had been around for really an impossibly long time. Gnaag's messy meal was over, and the Darklord turned to continue his slow progress across the bridge. They were close enough to Helgedad now to make out details of the looming, ominous slabs of stone and metal that made up its huge hulk. The walls were almost windowless, but here and there along the black expanses Carag could see broken rectangles of a light that was almost as bright as that of the teeming lava beneath him. The tops of the crazily shaped construction made a jagged silhouette against the lesser darkness of the sky; the shape was like a drawing of a scream. Above, as always, there were the swarms of endlessly circling Kraan. All around the base of the fortress-city, which looked more as if it had been thrust up from the ground than as if it had been built, a profusion of Giaks scurried about their business, ignoring the many littered corpses of their fellows. From time to time one of the flying spawn would swoop down from above and snatch up one of the Giaks, soaring back aloft again with the shrieking, struggling, almost pathetic little figure firmly grasped in its vicious claws. It was said that, when the Kraan and Zlanbeast were really hungry, the sky around Helgedad rain green ichor. Carag had never seen that, but he could well believe it. It was wise of him to have attached himself to Gnaag's retinue these past three years. Without the implicit protection of the Darklord's presence, Carag, for all his intelligence, would have been as vulnerable as any of his fellows to the random predations of the flying beasts. His ugly face split in a poor imitation of a human's grin. There were so many things he knew that would remain forever mysteries to all the untold millions of the Darklords' Giaks. And there was at least one thing he knew which not even the Darklords themselves had yet discovered. He knew that Haakon, one of the three Lords of Aarnak and the Archlord of all the Darklords, was dead. two "Haakon is dead!" bellowed Ghurch, Darklord of Ghargon. His vast voice almost filled the great meeting-chamber of the Darklords. Carag, one of the six score or so Giaks tucked away at the back of the hundred-yard-long hall, could hardly see Ghurch, even

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 159 though the latter's massive form was standing on a stone podium. In front of the podium, here and there around the chamber, the other sixteen Darklords were gathered, each surrounded by a cloud of rapidly darting Nadziranim as well as two or three Xaghash. In theory, all of the Darklords gathered here were of equal status – except for Slûtar, who had been defeated in the battle for Archlordship by the late Haakon, and was therefore treated as a pariah by the others – but in practice the ruthless, powerful-minded Ghurch was conceded by the rest, through sheer terror, to be the most important among their number. Not in all history had one Darklord slain another, but there could always be a first time; and, if any of them could be impetuous enough to take this drastic step, it would be Ghurch. He looked the part. He was in fact no taller than Gnaag, but this was easy to forget, for his entire body spoke of massiveness and strength: he seemed to be almost as wide at the shoulders as he was tall. His colossal head was made to seem even larger than it was by the rich, leonine mane of coarse orange hair that surrounded it. His face, too, was a sickly orange colour; in it, eyes burnt a malevolent blue and treble rows of startlingly white teeth filled a lamprey-like mouth. Down both the front and the back of his body ran a wall of sharp, bony spikes; the wall on the rear continued along the back of his tree-like tail. Grey spittle flew as he repeated his dramatic shout: "Haakon is dead!" "Can this be true?" said Xog, one of the seven Darklords of Helgedad itself. Carag blinked solemnly as he looked at Xog, surprised that the creature had had the temerity to seem to doubt Ghurch's statement. The rumours that Xog was frightened even of his own Xaghash were certainly false, but the fact that they should have been circulated at all was ample evidence of the low esteem in which he was held by the other denizens of Helgedad. "True? It is as true as the name of Naar itself, I warrant!" boomed Ghurch, turning his incandescent gaze upon the smaller Darklord. "While all of you craven motleys have merely wrung your paws and bleated about how uncertain things have been ever since our communications with Haakon in Vassagonia were disrupted through the destruction of the Birthplace, only I – I – have had the audacity and the initiative to send my spies to the desert nation and find out the truth!" It was impossible to believe that Xog was cowering away from this verbal blast, but that was the impression he give. "I beg your ..." he began.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 160 "Silence, lackwit!" yelled Ghurch. "Listen to what I tell you! It has taken me three long years to establish the truth of the matter – that Haakon has been returned to the soul of our Creator. The mortals of the Lastlands have become less stupid than they were, and are far more alert to our infiltrations than they used to be. Especially is this true in Vassagonia itself, where Haakon's ally, the Zakhan Kimah, has been overthrown and usurped by a weakling who believes in peace! Peace – hah! When this buffoon, Allani, has been subjected to my wrath, he shall be in so many pieces that all the mortals in Magnamund will each be able to bury a morsel of it while weeping for the death of this Allani's dreams of peace! Even now he is driving out the rogues who for generations have infested the Zakhan's court!" "But what of Haakon?" persisted Xog. "How comes he to be dead?" "That vile Sommlending brat," roared Ghurch. "The one who slew our long-lamented comrade Zagarna! The one they call Lone Wolf!" Carag nodded cheerfully. The name was a pleasant reminder of happier times. Then, suddenly terrified that someone might be watching him, he changed his grating chuckle into a snarl of stark hatred. "So close was our dear Haakon to capturing the Book of the Magnakai, hidden all these centuries in the Vassagonian Tomb of the Majhan – so close was he, and yet the Kai whelp intervened and seized it from his grasp, slaughtering him with a barbaric thrust!" There was consternation among the other Darklords. All had loathed and abominated Haakon – they all loathed and abominated each other anyway, but they reserved an especially bitter variety of hatred for whichever of their number should become their Archlord – and were not-so-secretly delighted to hear of his demise. What was terrifying to them was its manner. That a single Darklord, Zagarna, should not many years ago have been killed by a mortal was bad enough; to lose a second in the same way set a frightening precedent. Worse news still was that the Book of the Magnakai had now fallen into the hands of a Kai: surely Lone Wolf would not delay long before he began to use its precepts to assist him in his task of training new, young Kai warriors to follow in his footsteps. Glancing around, trying not to be too obtrusive about it, Carag saw that two of the Darklords were declining to share in the general agitation. One of them, as he might have expected, was the one who demanded his own insignificant allegiance. Gnaag's body

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 161 was a-twitter, but no more than it normally was. It was almost impossible to read any expression on that angular, insectile face, but Carag gained the distinct impression that the Darklord was both confidently expectant and vastly amused. The other was Unc, one of the two surviving Darklords of Aarnak, a being of almost the same physical presence as Ghurch, but without the same riotous obscenity of colour. Unc's features were almost lost in the broad, gelatinous expanses of his grey flesh; stubby arms and legs, as thick as tree-trunks, jutted out incongruously from a torso that resembled nothing more than a squat, blunted cone. Carag could see that Unc was standing perfectly still, one of those plate-like hands wrapped contemplatively around the lightning-spear that the Darklord wore at what passed for his waist. Carag couldn't determine whether Unc's stillness expressed horror, pensiveness or what. Slowly the din abated, until at last the only sounds in the fetid air were the pipings of a few Vordaks, suddenly curtailed. "Do not waste your regrets on that scum Haakon!" It was Unc's voice that shockingly shattered the silence. "As he was too much of a weakling to defeat even a single mortal sprat, then surely he was also too much of a weakling to be our leader!" Outrageous at first, Unc's suggestion rapidly gained ground among the Darklords and their Xaghash retinues. Ghurch, still isolated on the platform, spat furiously as he saw the way that the lumpish Darklord had seized the initiative from him. It was clear to Carag that Ghurch had been hoping to grasp the opportunity of the Darklords' disarray to step without opposition into the vacancy that Haakon's demise had left. Clearly Unc had come to the same conclusion, and was now countering Ghurch's attempt. "Ay, Haakon was always a lily-liver!" one of the throng was shouting. "All wind 'n' fury 'n' no guts!" yelled another. Not far from Carag, some of the Xaghash were beginning to enact a clumsy parody of the dead Archlord's mannerisms. They lurched around in circles, grotesquely lampooning the airs and graces which, it was now safe to claim, Haakon had affected. Carag allowed himself another grin: the atmosphere of the gathering was such that it was safe for him to display amusement at the low humour. "Stop!" bellowed Ghurch. "In the name of Naar, stop!" The few Zlanbeast present reeled. The hearing of the giant bat-like predators was more sensitive than that of most of the other forms of spawn. A couple of them collapsed, ichor seeping from the earless aural cavities at the sides of their skulls.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 162 "Stop!" Ghurch cried again, and this time his efforts had some effect. As the chattering and shouting of the others gradually petered out, they slowly turned to look at the furious figure of the gigantic orange Darklord. When at last the chamber had become sufficiently quiet that he could speak in more normal tones, Ghurch continued. "Is there anybody here who would have dared mock Haakon thus had he still been among us?" he demanded, the blue flames of his eyes fluttering slyly. The words were like pointing fingers of guilt. Minor Darklords glanced at Xaghash and then looked away at nothing. Some of the Xaghash in turn lashed out at lesser beings, slashing their bodies viciously open. Carag, standing on tiptoe in an attempt to see Ghurch more clearly, was tense. The Giak was probably more capable than anyone else present of understanding that the moment was a very dangerous one. In putting his fellows on the defensive, Ghurch was relying on his own preeminence among them to prevent them from petulantly turning all of their resentment against him. If Ghurch's gamble failed ... But it seemed that it hadn't. And then Unc spoke. "I would have dared to express my opinions to that scum's face," he rumbled sternly. "And I believe he knew that. That is why he never chose to come to Aarnak after he had been invested as our Archlord. He was frightened of me, I claim – frightened of me!" Exactly as had happened when Unc had last intervened, there was an initial horrified silence followed by a rapidly swelling roar of approval for what he had just said. And again Ghurch, towering over them at the far end of the room, was made to seem isolated. Suddenly Gnaag, who had kept his peace throughout all this, spoke up. His voice was not loud, yet it had a peculiar penetrative quality, so that even the loudest-bellowing Darklord was swiftly hushed. "Unc has shown us all that he has courage, albeit a little belatedly," he observed, "while Ghurch has demonstrated that he has the foresight to plan the actions that we should take to minimize any further threat from the Kai brat and his type. Myself, I would be hard-pressed to decide which of these two fine and mighty beings would be the better as our Archlord, but of one thing I am quite certain: there is none other in this room whose qualities match those of these two. What say you all?"

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 163 There were somewhat dutiful cries of concurrence. For inscrutable reasons of his own, Naar had created the Darklords so that they should all live in perpetual suspicion of each other, but Gnaag was the least trusted of all. He had yet to become overtly embroiled in any of the political intrigues which had for millennia dogged any attempt by the Darklords to mount a coherent assault on the Lastlands – he had prudently divorced himself entirely from the Archlord Zagarna's doomed campaign – and yet somehow he seemed always to come out on top, or as near as he wanted to be to the top of, any reshuffling there might be of the Darklords' relative prestiges. All of them present here in the chamber could recall how, in the titanic duel of wits between Haakon and Slûtar, Gnaag had seemed to be totally uninvolved and yet how, at the end of the day, the whole imbroglio had had a distinctly Gnaagish flavour to it, as if the other two contenders for the Archlordship had been dancing to Gnaag's choreography. "I am glad, then, that we are all agreed," Gnaag continued blandly, as if the great hall had been rocked by enthusiastic cheering. "It is surely now our duty to the greatest Lord of all, our God Naar, to debate within ourselves as to which of these two we would wish to acknowledge as our master." Another cacophony. Carag hunched down so that his face was below the level of the Giaks around him. He wanted to think deeply, and he knew that his face could betray him as he indulged in this unfamiliar activity. That Gnaag was playing some secret game, Carag took for granted: none of the other Darklords were skilled at duplicity, but to Gnaag it came almost as second nature. The trouble was that Carag couldn't work out what that game might be. Not for the first time he wished that he could consult Lone Wolf or Viveka or one of the other Sommlending he'd come to know: surely they'd have no trouble interpreting Gnaag's motives. Clearly there was wisdom in immediately defusing any ambitions for the throne that any of the other Darklords might have. Gnaag was perfectly correct to say that only Ghurch and Unc merited more than a moment's consideration – it would be a wasteful diversion should one of the remainder try to stake a claim. Yet, of the two, Ghurch was the obvious candidate. His intelligence was little higher than Carag's own, yet the huge being was possessed of a considerable animal wit – his boast that he had been the only Darklord with the initiative to do something concrete to solve the mystery of the abrupt cessation of communications between the Darklands and the redoubt in Vassagonia was a respectable one. Unc, by contrast, although gloriously courageous

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 164 and ruthless in his own ponderous fashion, would not have recognized a piece of creative thought had it come up and tried to bite him. So why was Gnaag trying to give Unc's claims the same weight as Ghurch's? It was as if he were trying to set up some sort of a contest where instead he should be using his influence to bring about as rapid a resolution of the succession as possible. The Darklords and their minions required the installation of a strong leader as soon as possible – otherwise their thrust against the mortals of the Lastlands must surely be impaired. And any protracted struggle between the two powerful Darklords would, whichever of them should prove to be successful, inevitably weaken both of ... Carag suddenly caught on. If both the principal protagonists were hopelessly weakened and their various supporters in total disarray, then the field would be clear for a third Darklord, one hitherto unconsidered, to step naturally to the Archlord's throne. Gnaag was prepared to risk a short-term vulnerability of the battalions of Naar in order to secure the Archlordship for himself. And Carag couldn't deny that, in the longer term, the acceptance of Gnaag as Archlord would immeasurably strengthen the forces of Evil. Gnaag would be calculating on that: the Darklord might be duplicitous, but he was an astonishingly faithful servant of Naar. He would be reckoning, also, that the Sommlending and their allies would have no knowledge of the interregnum and thus would be unlikely to exploit that period of weakness. As far as Gnaag was concerned, it was a reasonable gamble. How, after all, could the Sommlending ever discover what was going on here in the heart of the Darklands? Who was there to tell them about it? three Beneath him the drab grey of the Darklands was an almost uninterrupted ocean of ash, its monotonous surface broken only by evidences of continuing volcanic action; active cones were rare, but the landscape was spotted with dead calderas and scar-like lava flows, and even up here the air was rich with the stench of sulphurous gases.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 165 The Kraan on which Carag was perched drove on through the heavy sky, chattering continuously to itself, its great wings punching the air. He'd taken a risk, Carag knew, separating himself from the rest of Gnaag's company and appropriating a Kraan, but not too great a risk: one of the advantages of insignificance was that, whenever you did something totally out of the ordinary, it was generally assumed that you must be acting under orders given by a superior; besides, the Darklords were so feared by their underlings that all Carag would have needed to do, if questioned, would have been to refer the questioner to Gnaag, secure in the knowledge that there would be no further inquiry. Sometimes Carag speculated as to how things would be run if he were magically to be put in command of the forces of Darkness. Much more efficiently, for a start. Sometimes he could see long caravans of slowly moving Giaks below him. On occasion other Kraan would swoop near to him, their passengers regarding him with a cold lack of interest before the flying spawn continued on their way. When he'd left the fortress-city, Helgedad had been in turmoil. The Darklords – with the obvious exception of Gnaag – had lined up in almost equal numbers behind the two protagonists. Gnaag himself had gone through an elaborate pretence of trying to persuade Unc and Ghurch to debate their relative merits there and then, in front of the rest, in something approaching a civilized manner. As Carag, still watching unobtrusively from his station at the rear of the chamber, could have predicted the "debate" had come to nothing. Within minutes insults had been thick in the air, and then Unc had stalked from the place, retreating with his retinue northwest to Aarnak to muster his not inconsiderable forces. With him had gone the Darklords Dakushna and Zhanshal, the latter perhaps a trifle wistfully, as if his loyalty to Unc as a fellow Lord of Aarnak were being stressed by his judgement that Ghurch was the more worthy contender for the throne. Not long afterwards the remainder of the meeting had disintegrated in a melee of mutual vituperation and some angry slaughter of Vordaks, Giaks and even Xaghash. The Darklords of Helgedad seemed unanimous in declaring themselves for Ghurch; most of the others were Unc's. No one wished to have the support of Slûtar, recalling his humiliation only a few years before by Haakon. On the horizon far ahead of Carag he could see a more solid greyness growing upwards against the sky. At last, after days'

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 166 travel, he was coming within sight of the Durncrag Mountains, the grim range of tall, inhospitable mountains that cordon off the Darklands from Sommerlund and the remainder of Magnamund. The end of his journey was, quite literally, in sight. Not far beyond the Durncrags lay the isolated valley in which nestled the Kai Monastery, where his friends dwelt. They would be surprised by his visit. It was yet several weeks until the equinox. Carag hoped they would be pleased to see him. Certainly they would be eager to hear his news of developments at Helgedad. With the Darklords seemingly heading for a civil war, there would never be a better time for the Sommlending and the other Lastlanders to gather their forces and strike against them. It didn't cross Carag's mind, as he dreamt of a world free of the Darklords and their Evil machinations, to wonder what sort of niche a reformed Giak might find in that world. If any. The hours dragged on. As the Durncrags neared, the sky changed, enough light percolating over the jagged peaks from Sommerlund for the air to turn from grey to a sullen, swirling yellow. Then, seemingly paradoxically, it darkened again. It took a long while – and many miles – for Carag to work out why this should be so, and then he recalled how much the Lastlands were affected by the rising and setting of the Sun. In Sommerlund, night had fallen. The realization cheered him. In the darkness the Kraan was unlikely to be shot out from beneath him by any enthusiastic Sommlending archer who might chance to spot them. His friends might be irritated to be aroused from their slumbers by his arrival, but that didn't trouble Carag: since he never slept himself, it was impossible for him to place any importance on the fact that others did. And at last the Durncrags' snow-capped summits were beneath him, seeming incongruously like pale valleys in the gloom. He kicked the drum-like sides of his Kraan, although already the beast was flying as fast as it could. Once more he was grinning, looking forward to his reception. "Hoki! Hoki!" he yelled above the beating of his steed's wings. And then, as befitted the occasion, he switched to Sommlending: "Pleas ... ure! Pleas ... ure!" Now he was clear of the Sommerlund foothills of the range. Dotted here and there along them where orange lights denoting the campfires of the Border Rangers stationed there to give warning of any incursions from the Darklands. Carag wondered if,

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 167 perhaps, some wakeful Ranger guard might have looked towards the gibbous Moon and seen, flitting across it, the silhouette of a Kraan and its rider. There would be nothing the guard could do, of course, except wake his fellows so that they could all watch for a few hours lest this single Kraan was the forerunner of a host ... The stars were out in profusion. Carag knew that Lone Wolf had discovered how to navigate according to them, and he envied his friend. He himself had to make do with dimly seen features of the topography beneath him; his night vision, although far keener than that of any mortal creature, was still not as good as that by day. For a while he wandered the familiar meanders of a river. Then, on reaching a distinctive oxbow lake, he struck off to his right and soon found himself flying above forested land. Sure enough, not long afterwards he spotted the gap in which the Monastery lay. He muttered a few monosyllabic commands to the Kraan, which obediently began to circle down towards the clearing. As near as Carag could estimate, it was the very middle of the night. In order not to startle his friends, he had the flying creature set him down a couple of hundred yards from the Monastery, so that he could make the final approach on foot. They landed in a flurry of broken branches and Giak curses. Leaving his groggy transport with strict instructions that it should stay where it was until he returned, Carag jogged quite cheerfully along a woodland path towards the Monastery. An arrow zinged past his head and thunked into the bole of a tree behind him. "I ... Carag!" he croaked, jerking to a stop. He looked around him. Even though he could see quite clearly, there seemed to be no one else around. The ramrod-straight trees were silent, lifeless. "I ... Carag!" This time a flurry of arrows. Carag dove for the undergrowth. Instinctively he drew the evil-looking black serrated sword from his belt. He looked at it numbly. He had no wish to use it against his friends. But were they indeed his friends, out there in the night? Had the Monastery perhaps been overrun by others? "Not ... hurt ... you!" he shouted. "I ... friend! I ... Carag ... LoneWolffriend! Vivekafriend!" The bush in which he was hiding was rocked by a wave of arrows and stones. Two of the arrows penetrated the foliage to take

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 168 him in the chest, and he pulled them out irritatedly, careless of the lumps of flesh they took with them, before he darted to a new place of concealment. Either his attackers were foes or they were too terrified to hear the words that he was yelling to them. He would remember, next time he shouted, to change his position immediately afterwards, so that his voice would not guide their missiles. He peered between two leafy boughs. Still he could see no sign of his assailants. He remembered something that Viveka had once told him – that humans thought in three dimensions – and accordingly shifted his gaze upwards to check if perhaps there might be people lurking in the branches of the trees. Still no sign. With a sudden lurch of foreboding, he craned round and squinted directly up the trunk of the tree under which he was crouching. No. There was no Sommlending perched there, sighting along his arrow at the Giak beneath. Time for another attempt at communication. He picked out his next hiding-place in advance – a brief widening in a narrow stream-bed – and poised himself to leap towards it. "I ... Carag ... friend ... Kai!" He sprang sideways, expecting to land in shallow water. Instead he sprawled down a suddenly writhing human body. Both of them screamed in shock and terror together. Before Crag properly knew what was going on, the Sommlending had squirmed out from beneath him and was belabouring him about the head and shoulders with a heavy club. "I ..." he began to plead, but the weapon struck him straight in the mouth and silenced the rest of his sentence. By the time he'd chewed his way through of the wood to be able to get the club out of his mouth, the attacker had vanished into the forest, leaving nothing behind her but screams. Angrily Carag picked up the bow and quiver he found half-floating in the water and reduced them to splinters. He stood up, and more arrows sang around him. So it hadn't been just a single guard who'd seen him. But if there were several of them, surely one of them should have recognized his name? Puzzled, he remained stationary, ignoring further volleys of arrows until one hit him in the eye. He snapped off the shaft and threw it away, knowing that the acid of his body fluids would soon deal with the embedded part of the arrow.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 169 "I ... Carag! I ... friend!" he called rather halfheartedly as he retreated into the protection of a clump of snarlweed. In the distant he could hear raised voices. The guard who'd fled from him must have run to the Monastery and be rousing the acolytes there. Rousing Lone Wolf and Viveka as well. One or other of them, possibly both, would soon be here to straighten the situation out. Just so long as no stray arrow should find some vital part of him ... "Tell ... Lone Wolf ... Carag!" he cried. A hatchet spun through the air with dizzying speed and crashed into a branch close to him, breaking it. Behind him he could hear the Kraan responding to the sounds of the fracas. Its chittering suddenly reached a new pitch. Carag cursed. He hoped that it was just confusion that was making the spawn frightened – that it wasn't that a flanking party of Kai acolytes had come across it and were attacking. It was a long way home to Helgedad from here, and it would take Carag weeks if he had to make the journey on foot. His Kai assailants were no longer troubling to stay silent. Another bad sign. Reinforcements must have joined them from the Monastery, so that they were confident now of dealing with however many Giaks there might be in the shrubbery. Carag tried to be optimistic – tried to reassure himself that the chances were steadily increasing that Lone Wolf or Viveka or Petra or even Jaan would be among them – but his mind had never been attuned to optimism. He thought about how ironic it would be were he to die here in Sommerlund having survived for so long the far greater dangers of existence in Helgedad. A lot of thrashing about in the bushes. Human voices raised. The jerky brightness of torches held high. "I ... Carag!" he called yet again, plaintively. The Sommlending were now making enough noise that his cry might be lost in the din. "I ... friend ... yours ... LoneWolffriend ... Petrafriend ... Qineferfriend ..." Loud shouts and a hail of arrows, ripping the leaves around him to confetti. "Zinoz zut!" he swore, ducking. He retreated further into the foliage. Best to get well clear until morning, when he could make a new approach. Besides, he should get back to see what was happening to the now-shrieking Kraan.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 170 As if to underline his decision, another and much heavier throwing-axe came whirling through the branches, surrounding him with a blizzard of splintered wood before itself crashing down on his head. Genuinely irate now, his vision wobbling, he stooped, picked up the weapon, and hurled it with colossal force back in the direction from which it had come. Moments later he heard it smash against the distant Monastery wall. The raucous voices quieted for a few seconds as the humans realized quite how much damage the thrown axe would have done had it hit any of them. That showed 'em! thought Carag with brief smugness as he trampled away through the shrubbery, uprooting any bushes that got in his way and casting them contemptuously aside. Terrified birds rose in squawking discord from the trees around him; absentmindedly he plucked one low-flyer from the air and stuffed it into his eager mouth, which instinctively gobbled the still-struggling carcase down. Without breaking stride, half-blinded with uncontrollable fury, he hacked out viciously with his serrated sword at a nearby branch, shattering it. That made him feel good, so he did it again with another. And another. He stopped after about the fifth. That last branch had felt somehow ... different as his sword had splintered through it. No, "splintered" was the wrong word: that had been the difference. Also, the impact had been accompanied by something that had sounded very much like a truncated scream. He looked back along the trail of devastation his passage had left. He shrugged angrily. Well, how was he to have known that some idiot terrorized Kraan would hold its neck just so? The beast's head was still moving in the dim moonlight, as if it were trying to speak to him. He muttered a brief imprecation concerning the stupidity of Kraan and turned away. Then stopped. So far as he knew, there had been only one Kraan here in the forest – the one that had brought him here. He scuttled back and, whimpering stupidly, made a vain attempt to jam to twitching head back on the stump of the neck. Abandoning the futile effort, he stood beside the corpse with his hands outstretched, his ugly face a mask of anguish.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 171 How long ago was it that he'd been imagining how efficiently things would be run if ever he became leader of the forces of Darkness? From various loud crashing noises in the woods he could guess that the party of human searchers was coming closer. There wasn't time for him to stand here fretting any longer. Remembering once again what Viveka had told him about the art of concealment, he rammed his serrated sword back in his belt – tearing a long and unnoticed slice out of his thigh – and shinned laboriously up a nearby tree. He was only just in time. The bough beneath his feet was still quivering when four young people in the green capes of Kai acolytes came springing into the little clearing where the Kraan's corpse lay. Squinting down at the tops of their heads, Carag tried to guess if any of them could be Viveka or Lone Wolf or Petra or any of the others who might recognize him. No such luck. For a few seconds he debated the wisdom of repeating his cry of "I ... Carag" but, remembering the sort of response his previous entreaties had elicited, decided against. "The Giak can't be far," said one of the warriors. Carag took an instant dislike to him. "Its trail of destruction ends here." "Wait a moment for the others to catch up," said a second Kai, "and then we can comb the area better. It might have escaped by Kraan, of course, but seems odd that it should have brought two of the spawn with it." Carag took an instant dislike to her as well. "Odder still," said the first, "that it should have killed the Kraan at all. I wonder if it's some halfwitted attempt on its part to throw us off the track. Those Giaks aren't exactly infant prodigies you know." The female leader of the party giggled. "I'd say they were as thick as two short planks except ..." "... if you did you'd get message-scrolls from angry short planks," her male counterpart finished for her. He gave a deep chuckle. Even just looking at the tops of their heads, Carag could see the two of them gazing fondly at each other, and felt nauseous. There had to be some way that he could communicate with them without being instantly turned into a pin-cushion. Surely one of his friends must have told them about him. It seemed beyond the bounds of possibility that they themselves had never encountered him before at one of the equinoctial gatherings he'd attended. The two smaller Kai were obviously unable to relax enough to join in the badinage of their elders. Instead they were

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 172 staring nervously this way and that into the dense barrier of the trees, trying to discern movement in the flickering light of their lanterns and torches. Carag was shrewd enough to recognize that it was these two who represented the greater danger to him: the older pair might have sense to stay their attack a moment, just long enough for him to gasp out an explanation of his presence, but the younger ones, in their fear, would react instantly. Oh that Lone Wolf would appear out of the trees just now! But Lone Wolf didn't. Instead the original party was joined by a pair of other youths of similar age to the older ones. The acolytes exchanged a few words which Carag couldn't quite catch, and then started dividing up the area to be searched. None of them thought to look upwards: Giaks weren't the only ones, Carag mused, to be guilty of this sort of oversight. Within a few minutes all six of the young Kai were out of his immediate range of vision. He gave them a little while longer and then cautiously inched back down the tree. At its base he found himself in yet another quandary – in which direction should he flee? – and this time when he tried to solve it by recalling some advice that Viveka had given to him the result was merely to deepen the dilemma. Always flee in the unexpected direction, she'd said. He could head directly back towards the Monastery, risking encountering advancing search parties, or he could go the opposite way, which was the obvious course. The trouble was that humans were so blasted clever: they'd have thought this out for themselves, so that they'd be keeping an eye open for him bolting towards the Monastery – in other words, the "unexpected" direction would in effect be the predictable one. Suddenly he had a bright idea. Quickly he scrambled back up the tree and settled himself in the crook between two branches and the trunk. The unexpected thing to do was simply to stay where he was, he reflected, wriggling his body until it was secure. That'd fool 'em. And he was right. Although the corpse of the Kraan was visited on two further occasions during the night – possibly by the same party as before – his seclusion in the branches remained undisturbed except by some somnolent but inquisitive hornets, which served him as tasty snacks. The stench of the rapidly decaying Kraan beneath him rose noxiously upwards, reminding him pleasantly of home. When dawn came he watched the stars slowly disappearing and wondered if those particular ones ever returned again or if the Gods created a new lot for each fresh night.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 173 It was in this philosophical frame of mind that he clambered stiffly down the tree in the morning light and sedately set off in the direction of the Monastery once more. As its ruined walls came into view through the treetops he began to move progressively more cautiously: last night's Kai sentries had shown themselves to be dangerously arrow-happy, and there was no reason to think that the morning's might be any different. He flung himself into a bush when he first saw the figure standing at the top of the walls, gazing directly at him. Lying flat on the ground, an unfortunate squirrel crushed flat beneath him, he took a more careful look and realized that the distant silhouette was staring not at him but at something lying between them, about halfway between where Carag was hiding and the walls of the Monastery. Screwing up his little red eyes, he was able to discern that the person on the walls was oddly familiar to him. After a little further mental racking he became satisfied that it was the young magician, Banedon. And beside him there was another, smaller person, no larger than a Giak. At first Carag thought that this might be a human child, but then he saw that the proportions of the body were all wrong and, besides, so far as he knew Sommlending children didn't grow tangled beards. Could this be one of the Borian dwarfs whom Banedon had mentioned so many months ago? But, if so, what was the little man doing here? Stretching his hearing, Carag could just pick up the occasional words and parts of words that the wind chose to bring him. Most of what they were saying was no more than a jumble of vowels and consonants to him – what in the name of Naar could they be meaning by things like "thrust/mass yield ratio", "muzzle velocity", "test-firing" and "prototype"? Nervously he brought himself up to a crouching position and craned forwards over the top of the bush behind which he'd been hiding. He was unable to hear any better, but now he could smell a curious mixture of brimstone and saltpetre – perhaps that was merely a coincidence. A preternatural hush filled the woodlands. All the forest creatures were stilled, as if in anticipation of something dread. Carag pulled himself fully to his feet. This was silly. Banedon knew him well. All he had to do was to shout and wave and the magician would recognize him. But Banedon and the dwarf were covering their ears and turning half away from him, as if in terror.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 174 Carag looked around him, but couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. "Fire!" Banedon yelled. Carag slowly began to wonder why Banedon would want fire brought to the top of a ruined wall when ... KERRRRUMP! The trees and bushes all around him were stripped bare by a massive shockwave that threw the Giak instantly flat on his back. Lying there stunned and deafened, he was able to see, passing directly above him at incomprehensible velocities, a bizarre collection of metal and stone artifacts – bent forks, headless statuettes, half-bricks, broken axe-blades, the shaftless head of a morningstar, a surprisingly intact commode, a trowel, numerous foreign coins, an incomplete samor set, a cracked crystal ball, half a pair of scissors, some wooden children's building blocks and half a million other items which Carag couldn't identify. The impact of the shrapnel was sufficient to uproot a tall but dying tree that had stood in the path of the blast. This now toppled with gratuitous slowness towards Carag until it crashed down to the forest floor, its crumbly upper branches studding his body in innumerable places. I'm beginning to feel, thought Carag as he lay there in a misery of pain, that maybe I'm not wanted here. His hearing slowly returned. All the birds and animals in this part of the forest must either have fled beforehand or been slaughtered by the shrapnel, for there was a queasy silence around him. Snapping off some twigs with his teeth, he raised his head and tried to peer through the cage of branches. The area behind him looked as if a bomb had hit it – which, Carag thought, was a reasonable approximation to what had indeed happened. Chopping at the branches with the sides of his hands, he was able to clear enough space so that he could squirm around and get up on all fours. Sorrowfully he began to crawl away from the Monastery, bitterly cursing not only the ruin itself but also all who visited there, most notably magicians and dwarfs. He'd tried his best, he told himself, but all that had resulted was a shambles. Naar himself must have been watching his actions, and intervened directly to stop him telling his allies of events in the Darklands. Perhaps even Ishir himself had conspired for once with the Lord of Darkness, for according to what his Sommlending friends had told him the Gods were notoriously keen on ensuring that no untoward event should upset the delicate balance that existed between them.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 175 "Quan, you silly idiot!" Banedon was shouting. "How many times did I tell you to go easy on the explosives? Now you've gone and split the barrel, so we'll have to start over!" The dwarf was cackling in hysterical glee. Carag heard neither of them as he sloped miserably off. It was going to be a long walk to Helgedad. A very long walk. four Three days into the Darklands, on the far side of the Durncrag Mountains, he struck lucky. A party of Kraan-mounted Giaks heading to take up positions in the Durncrags had left its provisions behind and, seeing him beneath, had swooped down to find out if he were embarked on urgent business or expendable. As with all Giaks except sometimes Carag himself, they were innately inclined to shift loyalties towards whichever individual present possessed the most forceful personality, and so within a few minutes they were settling down, snarling and squabbling contentedly, to feast on one of their own number while Carag was mounting the Kraan that the party no longer required. They had had no news to tell him of events at Helgedad. They themselves were out of Kaag, Slûtar's stronghold. Slûtar was touchy on the subject of the succession to the Archlordship, and so nobody talked about it at Kaag. Within a few days of constant flying Carag came in sight of Helgedad – or, at least, to a place where Helgedad should have been visible. But at the moment even the vast fortress-city and the lake of lava around it were lost among the colossal collection of spawn that completely obscured the ash-plain of Naogizaga all around it and the sky above it. Carag had only once before seen an army of similar proportions, when Zagarna had been mustering his troops around Kaag in order to mount his invasion of Sommerlund, but even that host would have been dwarfed by the display that was now ahead of him. The noise was inconceivable, millions of spawnish throats bellowing and squealing their battle-lust; primitive horns and cornets rent the air with their unmusical blasts. The hordes of Giaks, Vordaks, Doomwolves, Drakkarim and Xaghash spread out for many miles in every direction, including upwards, as a great column of Kraan and Zlanbeast roiled in a maddening morass of motion up to the dun clouds and even beyond. Mixed in among the ground forces, Carag could just see, were countless patches of dusty blood colours

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 176 – the battle-standards of the subdivisions of the various armies of the Darklords. Every now and then, either at ground level or amid the hideously squalling pillar of flying creatures, there was a flash of polychrome as a Nadziran made a momentary manifestation before vanishing once more to go about its necromantic business. So great was the multitude that the very shape of the world around it seemed to be distorted, as if sky and ground alike were being sucked in towards it. For a second Carag panicked, as did his Kraan. The small-brained spawn threw back its horned head and shrieked in terror, its body convulsing; Carag had to grab at its neck in order to stop himself from falling, and it was probably the urgency of that imperative that saved him from being lost completely to hysteria. Instead, he clung on like grim death, watching the surface of the grey desert reel and rock beneath him as the Kraan jerked uncontrolledly across the sky. At last it began to heed his commands, and he was able to get its head turned around so that they were facing away from the sprawling mass of spawn. He punched the side of its head as hard as he could in order to reassure it further, then clicked at it that it should fly lazily around in circles. He thought fervently. He'd no wish to become embroiled in the mayhem that was certain to break out soon. Darklords had no compunction about sending in wave after wave of lesser spawn to their dooms, and frequently did so. As, seemingly, just one more Giak among hundreds of thousands of others, he would inevitably be used as battle-fodder if her were there to be used. Yet how could he escape? If he were simply to flee the scene, it was certain that a fleet-flying Zlanbeast would be despatched to deal with this anomalously behaving Giak. And nor could he continue forever where he was. Inspiration came. Carag looked up towards the top of the pillar of airborne spawn. He gave a little gasp of dread as he saw just how very far aloft that extended: the uppermost levels of Kraan were just an indistinguishable blur of greyness against the very highest clouds. Yet, if his plan were to have any chance of success, he was going to have to surmount even those clouds. He kicked the Kraan's sides, urging it upwards. If he stayed here any longer thinking about what he intended to do, his courage would ebb away and he'd end up doing nothing. He conjured up a mental image of Lone Wolf's face, and concentrated on the courage that he'd seen the Kai warrior display in the past. All he had to do was emulate that.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 177 Easier thought than done. Although the Kraan rose rapidly, it seemed to Carag that upward progress was taking forever, so tall was the column against which he was gauging the ascent. When he glanced downwards, however, he could see the ragged borders of the gathered armies receding from him with frightening speed. He didn't glance downwards again. He could imagine his own body tumbling and turning for an eternity as it fell. Giaks are not normally given to feats of the imagination; he was probably the first of them ever to discover in himself a fear of heights. The Kraan's wings were beginning to labour as the air against which they were beating became thinner. This high up, the atmosphere was much clearer: there was little of the stinging yellowness that characterized it closer to the plain. Carag stuck out his lumpy tongue and tasted it; it seemed to him to taste of Sommerlund – or, more like, of Kalte, the frozen land to the north where Vonotar had taken him years before. And still he urged his mount higher. Now, as it was beginning to guess at least a part of his intentions, it was growing fearful, shaking its body angrily at him as he spurred it to greater and greater efforts. But his persistence was being rewarded. Up here the column of circling Kraan and Zlanbeast was more diffuse, its boundaries less defined; closer to the ground it had seemed almost solid, so great had been the number of bodies crammed into the limited space, but here it was no more densely crowded than the sky above Helgedad normally was. "Higher! Higher!" he was shouting at his airborne steed, hoping against hope that its terror would not take it over completely. Its habitual chittering cries had merged together into a single, continuous high-pitched scream, but nevertheless its deeply ingrained training was triumphing over its panicked apprehension. Now its wings were flapping at double the normal speed, so thin had the air become. And suddenly they entered the topmost clouds of Magnamund's atmosphere. For a moment or two Carag could see nothing but a mist of oily white, and then they broke through into a place where the world seemed empty and infinitely brightly lit. Now when he glanced down he felt no horrors, for it was if they were not far above the surface of a woolly prairie. The Sun was like a hole punched through the sky to reveal a furnace beyond. And, even though the Sun was so bright, there were stars. A profusion of stars. More stars than Carag could ever have imagined existed.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 178 Here at last was the answer to his speculation of a few days ago. The Gods had no need to preserve the stars of one day for use the next: long ago they had created for themselves an infinite supply upon which they could draw as much and as often as they wished. After staring at the stars in wonderment for several minutes, he suddenly remembered where he was and why he had come here. He looked carefully all around him, but there was not another living creature in sight. Beating the straining Kraan about the head to comfort it, he gently urged it across the landscape of cloud until he judged that they were directly above the centre of the column up the periphery of which they had ascended. That centre would be less congested that the rest of the column, and it should be possible to plunge speedily down through it until they came close to ground level somewhere above Helgedad. His voice sounding like a kitten's mewl in the rarified air, he screamed at the Kraan that he wanted it to descend. To his astonishment, the beast refused. He drew his sword and with difficulty jabbed it into the Kraan's powerful shoulder, so that droplets of grey-green ichor flew, but still the creature declined to do anything more than continue wheeling around in easy circles. The terror which it had kept in check all through their impossibly long ascent had now clearly taken over its mind completely. The surface of the clouds beneath them gave it the illusion of being close to the ground. It was not going to descend through that shield to face the petrifyingly long descent that would await it. Carag's mind was in turmoil. They couldn't stay up here forever. Sooner or later the Kraan would tire as its reserves of energy were depleted. When matters became critical it would, obviously, throw him from its back and devour him before he could drop too far. It seemed to Carag that he was probably as good as dead already. He accepted the fact, then prodded his slow brain into trying to devise some plan whereby, just possibly and against infinite odds, he might nevertheless cheat the inevitable. It was easier to think now that he'd consciously abandoned the possibility of his survival. He glared at the Sun and the stars as if somehow they were withholding an obvious scheme from him. The stars in the firmament seemed to be as densely packed as the bodies in the mass of Kraan beneath him. As densely packed.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 179 He prayed rapidly to Naar that his estimate of their position as directly above the core of the living pillar had been reasonably accurate. This wasn't going to work, of course, and he would die. But then he'd been going to die anyway, so what difference did it make whatever he did? His sword was still in his hand. He stuck it in his belt, making certain that it was securely jammed. He pulled himself up until he was crouching precariously on the Kraan's back, just behind its neck. Deciding that he was clocking up yet another first for a Giak – becoming certifiably insane – he leapt sideways and grabbed the leading edge of one of the Kraan's wings two-thirds of the way along from its body towards the wing's first clawed joint. His body swung over in a somersault, his wrists crackling in protest, so that he hung beneath the surface of the wing as the Kraan, thrown off-balance, lurched unpredictably through the air. The beast's scream spiralled higher and higher until it was lost to Carag's hearing. Frantically it thrashing its burdened wing in an attempt to shake him clear, but he gripped the leathery edge as tightly as he could and somehow stayed attached. Eventually the thrashings decreased. Now came the really difficult bit. Tightening the grip of his left hand yet further, as if that were possible, he grappled sightlessly for the hilt of his serrated sword. His first swipe for it missed completely, and he was certain that he must lose his hold – but then he had it. Screaming himself, he slashed the jagged blade across the Kraan's throat. A flood of its ichor in his face. Blindly he slashed again, feeling the metal bite into spawn-flesh. The wing onto which he was clutching suddenly began to move more feebly. He threw the sword away from him so that once again he had both hands free to hold on with, first wiping the clinging ichor clear of his eyes. There was a swish close to his face and he realized that the Kraan, in its death-throes, was trying to pick him off with its razor-sharp beak. Navigating around the claw with difficulty, he handed himself further along the edge of the wing. And then, finally, the creature surrendered its clasp on life. For a few moments longer it hung in the air, and then it plummeted.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 180 Carag's weight twisted the Kraan's body so that the wing to which he was holding led the falling weight down through the cloud layers. And then they were in the highest regions of the mighty shaft of chattering spawn. At first they dropped freely. Cursing himself for his lunatic schemes, Carag painstakingly inched his hands back upwards towards the Kraan's body, the air whistling about him. After an infinity of patience he was at the corpse's shoulder. Loosing off another prayer in the general direction of the Lord of Darkness, he once more set his right hand free. Straining his shoulders until he felt sure that they must burst asunder, he groped wildly upwards, negotiating his stubby hand around the curve of the dead beast's breast until he touched the freely flexing hinge of the further wing. A couple more mindless swipes and he had a hold of the wing's leading edge just beyond the joint. Still they were falling. The air was singing around them. Wriggling and squirming, throwing his body this way and that, Carag coaxed the falling Kraan's body around until it was more or less level above him, so that, one hand clasping each wing, he hung as if crucified beneath. The wind was trying to tug both of the wings upwards and away from him, but somehow – he knew not how – he managed to retain his hazardous grip. It became easier after a while. A little easier. Only a very little. Once he had satisfied himself that he could hold this position for as long as need be, he let his right hand cautiously sidle further out along its wing from the Kraan's body. Once his arm was at full stretch he rested for a moment, numbly aware that the air through which they were now plunging was more densely inhabited; it couldn't be long before they must crash into one of the other creatures, and at the speed at which they were falling there was a high probability that the impact would be lethal. He tried not to think about it too much as this time he edged his left hand outwards. Still his luck held. Still no collision. Still his strength endured. Reaching out a few inches further with his right hand. Now, again, with his left. And then the right. And then ... Slowly, uncertainly, the Kraan's wings were being drawn round until they were pointing roughly downwards. And now he could feel that his descent was being retarded by the resistance of

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 181 the air against the great canopy of leathern wing that he was bringing into play. For the first time in a long time he dared to look around him, and he saw that the forms of the flying Kraan were even thicker in the air than before but also, reassuringly, that they seemed to be shooting upwards past him much more slowly. Now that his careering path downwards was decelerating, he began desperately to yearn for one of the collisions he'd so recently been praying that he should avoid. The first caught him unawares. The wing of a Kraan hammered into his side, almost but not quite jolting him free of his hold. His mind left him for a few moments. As soon as he could find the resolution to do so, he peered downwards, past the jut of his belly and his waving feet. Far beneath, it looked as if there were a solid surface of black leathery flesh, but, a little closer to him, it was still possible to make out individual Kraan bodies among the jostling airborne herds. Glancing frantically around him, he tried to judge the moment when it would be safest for him simply to let go of the canopy of wings – too late and he would be crushed as the dead Kraan impacted directly on top of him, too soon and there would still be too long a drop before he landed on any of the backs beneath. After a few more moments' thought he realized that the calculation was beyond his reasoning powers. Shrugging mentally, he just opened his hands when the time seemed right. At once the Kraan, its wings fluttering in the uprush of air, drifted off to one side, crashing down on top of one of its living fellows, tearing open a huge gash in the live beast's wing. Carag had time to see nothing more. With a crunch that seemed as if it would drive his groin out through the top of his head, he landed astride one of the flying spawn. Too near the tail. Almost immediately he began to slither backwards. He thrust his body forwards, groping with his outstretched arms for any handhold whatsoever. There was none, but coat of the beast's back was rough enough that he could gain sufficient friction between it and his hands to slow the slide. He gripped with his senseless legs and was soon able to lug himself forwards up the Kraan's swelling back until – at last, at last – he was seated more or less upright in the saddle-shaped depression just behind its neck. For possibly the first time since he'd slit the Kraan's throat thousands of feet above in the stratosphere he began to believe that there was a chance that he might get out of this alive.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 182 But he didn't think about it too hard. That would have been to tempt fate beyond its endurance. Besides, there was no peace here. The jostling spawn were clearly unaware that one among their number now bore a rider, and they were regardless of the effect that their buffeting and pounding against each other was having on him. Carag shook his head angrily to clear it, and for the next few minutes concentrated exclusively on retaining his seat. Then, shouting shrilly, clubbing with his fists, he drove his new mount steadily downwards through the deafening throng. five Helgedad was unnaturally quiet, despite the cackling screams of the ceiling of spawn overhead. Carag dismounted warily, his body feeling as if it had been through a mill-race, and immediately the Kraan he had plucked from the flock beat its wings lustily a couple of times and then soared impatiently upwards to join its fellows. The little Giak looked around him at the grim walls, which now, illumined only by the heavy light from the surrounding lava lake, glowed in a deep ominous red. There were a few others of his kind in evidence, scuttling furtively hither and thither, but gone was the ceaseless bustle that had ever before characterized the place. As he slowly trudged towards the nearest doorway he saw a solitary Drakkar heading away from him purposefully, but other than that and the rare Giak there were only the swiftly darting Nadziranim. The cloudy, only semi-existent right-handed magicians seemed to be everywhere. In fact, even only relatively small numbers of Nadziranim could give this impression, especially when agitated or apprehensive, when their unpredictable manifestations increased in both frequency and brevity, but Carag had the definite impression that, even so, a high proportion of the Nadziranim of the Darklands were congregating at Helgedad rather than adopting their positions among the colossal armies that circled the fortress-city. He trusted that they would consider him to be too insignificant to deserve their notice. He was, after all, just one Giak out of millions ... as always. Inside, again, there was the same unsettling almost-emptiness. His own footsteps and those of the infrequent Giaks he encountered rattled and echoed around the walls of Helgedad's huge chambers and passages. There was little light in

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 183 here, so the presence of the rushing Nadziranim became even more noticeable. Carag had no clear idea where he was heading. His instincts had told him that Helgedad was the only safe place for him, but now that he was here he was uncertain as to what he should do. Find some quiet corner, maybe. The nearest eating-chamber would be a good place – the exertions of the past few hours had made him ravenously hungry. But would there be any food there? Yes, surely some of Helgedad's Giaks must have been injured in the commotion of the great exodus and left behind for spawn to prey on. He came to the end of a long hallway, turned left down a corridor filled with rot and excrement, skipped stiffly down a dank flight of crumbling stone stairs and found himself in an eating-chamber. Sure enough, it was filled with the whines and whistles of mortally wounded Giaks. Some had already died and he ignored their corpses, preferring his flesh fresh; however, touched by a disturbing frisson of the quality of mercy that his Sommlending friends sometimes preached about, he carefully chose a Giak that was very close indeed to extinction and, rather than play with it, ripped out its throat with a single, surgical plunge of his powerful jaws. Fed, ichor smearing his face, he looked around uncertainly. The physical need was gone, but there still remained the mental hunger: what should he do? For want of anything better, he ambled back up to ground-level and followed the direction in which most of the Nadziranim seemed to be heading – so far as he could judge by comparing concentrations of their flickering lights at the opposite ends of Helgedad's straight, miles-long corridors. In this way, some hours later, he found himself coming to a part of the gigantic fortress in which he'd never been before. He guessed that it was normally the province of only the Darklords and their closest retainers, the Xaghash and of course Nadziranim. This was a long way from the open meeting-chamber where he had witnessed Ghurch and Unc issuing their rallying cries. Instead, these were secretive-seeming corridors, much narrower than was the norm throughout the rest of Helgedad. Small doors on ancient hinges led off them – small enough that at least the bulkier Darklords must find difficulty entering them. Trembling, Carag opened a couple of these and saw dusty windowless rooms built, like the corridors, on an incongruously modest scale. He rounded a corner to enter a new passage and saw, at its end, an open door. The room beyond it seemed to be bathed in

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 184 lights of more colours than were physically possible. A Nadziran shot past his shoulder, ignoring him completely. He needed no further clue to realize that this was where the right-handed necromancers were forgathering. But why? Did he really want to know why? Wouldn't his best plan be to get as far away from here as he could, and as quickly as possible? Carag didn't know what made him continue towards the rectangle of brilliance at the corridor's end, but he did. He slunk close to one of the walls, recognizing as he did so that the manoeuvre was no more than symbolic, a gesture – the Nadziranim could detect him as clearly there as if he'd been standing in the middle of the corridor shouting at the top of his voice. He put one foot cautiously in front of the other, forcing his mind to concentrate on nothing else. He felt his body protest as he countermanded the instincts that were urging him to turn and flee. And at last he was at the doorway. Red pupils nictating, he peered around it. The chamber into which he was staring was arched, roughly circular and unfurnished except for a single wooden chair at its centre. In that chair sat Gnaag, the Darklord of Mozgôar, to whom Carag theoretically owed his allegiance. The large, many-faceted eyes of the Darklord sparkled and flashed in the reflected light of the Nadziranim scampering all around the walls and vaulted ceiling of the chamber as he turned his great insectile head placidly from one side to the other. To Carag it seemed as if Gnaag were exhileratedly happy, as if the Darklord were trying to keep in check the impulse to erupt with joy. The plans whose initiation Carag had suspected were clearly coming to fruition. The Darklord was speaking. "Gentlemen," he was saying to the Nadziranim in the deceptively quiet, sarcastic tone he often adopted; the sound was like the wind moving through dead leaves. "Gentlemen, most of you are now gathered here. You represent among you more power than all the armies of Unc and Ghurch and their adherents, massed on Naogizaga." The Nadziranim flickered in the affirmative. As Gnaag continued talking, alternately flattering, coaxing and exhorting the necromancers, Carag began to unravel the details of what had been going on in his absence. Slûtar was the Darklord whom all the others had ignored during the escalation towards open warfare of the political duel

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 185 between Unc and Ghurch – all the others, that is, except Gnaag. Although Slûtar himself was politically powerless for historical reasons of shame, he still had around him Nadziranim. Although tainted like their master by his past failure, they retained all their necromantic powers: they were as capable of ever, but chose not to show the fact. This in no way affected their status, for either better or worse, among the Nadziranim retained by the other Darklords: the necromancers respected or despised each other for reasons that were not comprehensible to outsiders. Only Gnaag among the Darklords had taken account of this fact; unlike the others he did not dismiss Slûtar's Nadziranim as ineffectual hangovers from a time of lost might. Instead, he had covertly made approaches to the shamed Darklord while also sending his own Nadziranim among Slûtar's, so that secret alliances were forged on both mundane and psychic planes. The net result was that Gnaag soon had twice as many Nadziranim under his direct command as had any of the other Darklords. Moreover, these necromancers were devotedly loyal to him. For millennia they had been in thrall to beings who were significantly less intelligent than they were themselves. Alone among the Darklords, Gnaag could converse with them on something approaching an equal level. Both their self-interest and their inclinations spurred them to support his endeavours. And they were loyal, too, to Naar. They felt that their God had been ill served by the Darklords who had succeeded Vashna. Haakon had been profoundly witless; before him, the solidly unimaginative Zagarna had given stupidity a bad name. Now two almost equally asinine Darklords were vying for the throne of the Darklands, and it was the expectation of the Nadziranim that the success of either of them would lead to a reign every bit as disastrous as those of their immediate predecessors. If Evil were to be served well, then Gnaag was the only logical choice as the leader of Naar's temporal forces. They were exploiting Gnaag, in a way. He was fully aware of this and was therefore able to exploit them in equally well recognized turn. The arrangement was mutually profitable. Slûtar, too, was content with the situation, for always Gnaag held out the tantalizing possibility that his own accession to the ultimate power might bring Slûtar along in his wake. Another mutually profitable arrangement. Gnaag was nothing if not good at setting up mutually profitable arrangements. In concert, Gnaag's and Slûtar's Nadziranim had travelled among their fellows in the retinues of the other Darklords and, as anticipated, had found them far from unreceptive to the notion

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 186 that Naar could better be served if they abandoned, at least in the short term, the less fundamental loyalties they had towards their Darklord masters. The Nadziranim had not been quite unanimous in declaring their covert support for Gnaag – those attached to Unc and Ghurch had, for obvious reasons, been the least willing to change their allegiances – but fully ninety per cent of all the necromancers in the Darklands were now his creatures. For as long as it suited them to be, of course. Gnaag quite understood this. He would ensure that it would suit them to be loyal to him until the end of time. They had his word on it. Being Nadziranim, they knew that for once his word was his bond. Gnaag had permitted the battle hosts to be drawn up by the rival factions, but he was planning to make his strike very soon – certainly before a full-scale battle could develop. He planned to make his move in the moments immediately before the conflict could start – just before the titanic armies tore each other to shreds, and the might of Naar's emissaries on Magnamund likewise – so that all of the Darklands could bear witness to the fact that none but Gnaag was fit for the Archlordship. Gnaag prided himself in the expert way he manipulated public relations. This was to be his finest coup. No one knew about except the Nadziranim and Gnaag himself. And now a solitary Giak, cowering ignored just outside the doorway, drinking in the information. Eventually Carag crept away, his mind filled beyond saturation by the information he had gleaned. Part of him perversely supported Gnaag's endeavours: it was easy to sympathize with the Darklord, frustratingly surrounded by minds far less able than his own. And Gnaag was quite right: he was the best leader that the Darklords could choose. Again Carag remembered his own grand fantasies of how things would be done were he himself to become the commander of the forces of Evil. But mostly Carag was horrified as he calculated the consequences of Gnaag's accession to the throne – and he had no doubt at all that Gnaag's bid for power would indeed succeed. His horror was rooted in that self-same fact: Gnaag was without question the best Darklord to become their leader. He was the one who'd be most effective in waging war against the Sommlending and the other Lastlanders. Carag's friends. With Gnaag at the helm, the forces of Evil could well triumph over Carag's friends. And there was nothing Carag could do to stop it.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 187

six Gloomily Carag stumped out of one of the fortress-city's great portals. Aside from the lava's glow, it was as black as night. The column of flying spawn had dispersed, scattering themselves in an even, unreflecting blanket all across the broad ceiling of the sky. Although the place where Carag was standing was elevated only a few tens of feet above the level of Naogizaga, so flat was the plain that he could now clearly appreciate the size of the armies that had been gathered. From above they had looked like a colossal stain on the grey land, but distance had somehow diminished the sense of scale. Here, close to the ground, he could see them as aggregates of many millions of creatures – looming Xaghash, slavering Doomwolves, squealing Giaks, black-clad Drakkarim and all. Looking across the sea of their heads, he could see it extending as far as the horizon, as if it would never end, as if it filled the whole world. He was given little time to contemplate the scene. From behind him he heard the sound of a clawed foot scraping stone. He dashed a glance back over his shoulder and saw, far away at the end of a corridor, a brilliantly gleaming cloud of moving hues at whose centre walked the crazily lean figure of the Darklord Gnaag. Trying to look as if he were intent performing some duty, Carag strode of to one side, waiting until he was certain that he was out of Gnaag's sight before he broke into a stiff-legged scuttle. Something was due to happen – something that he didn't want to miss seeing, even if it meant that he died in the process, so he ran as quickly as he could towards a place where the elements had eroded one of Helgedad's sheer walls to roughness. Standing directly under the metal cliff, he looked up towards the Kraan-shrouded sky. The climb would have been an impossible prospect for any mortal, but to Carag it merely looked a bit more difficult than he would have liked. Soon he was a hundred feet above the ground and clambering onto a broad windowledge some forty feet across and four or five feet deep. To the little Giak it was like a generous stage. Scooping his hands around his eyes he peered through the fogged mica of the window, just in case there might be someone inside looking out at him; reassured, he turned back to watch what he anticipated would be a rare spectacle.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 188 Only three Darklords had lost their lives over the millennia since Naar in his twisted wisdom had placed twenty of them here in Magnamund, and none of those three had succumbed to the malevolence of their fellows. Carag was certain that he was about to witness the former number rise from three to five, and that Gnaag intended to break the unacknowledged taboo against killing his peers. The Giak rubbed his hands together in a peculiarly human fashion and settled down to wait for what he expected would be a delicious exhibition of carnage. He had to remind himself quite strenuously that he wasn't here for pleasure at all – that his sole motive in watching the spectacle was to be able, later, to recount the exact circumstances in full detail to his friends, as they would wish of him. He was a spy, that was it. Not a voyeur. A spy. He rubbed his hands together again enthusiastically. And chuckled. This was going to be goo ... extremely useful and informative. Beneath him he could see that Gnaag had strolled lazily out into one of the open courtyards at the front of the fortress. Although the Darklord made no show of ostentation himself, the effect of his surrounding swarm of flickering Nadziranim was to make him seem as if he were dressed from heat to foot in the most garish of all Magnamund's priceless gems. Gnaag halted. The Nadziranim continued their silent hum of activity. Carag stopped himself from applauding. Then Gnaag raised his long right arm and pointed to the sky ahead of him. A group of the Nadziranim clustered together out of the cloud and came spinning and weaving around the outstretched limb until it looked as if it were cast from a mixture of gleaming precious metals. Carag felt rather than saw the Nadziranim gathering together their magical energies. The air felt brittle and strained. The temperature seemed to have dropped several degrees. Then Gnaag was swirling his arm in a great fan. As it swung around the circle the sky changed colour behind it, the black bodies of the Kraan becoming a pale, transparent blue that shone with its own light. Carag blinked, amazed. From dull redness the day had become like a cool day in the middle of a Sommerlund summer. He glanced upwards, expecting to see the Sun near the zenith, but of course all he saw was the turbulent, watery blue of the millions of moving bodies.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 189 There was a brief hush as the massed armies became aware of the transformation, and then chaotic cries of consternation, each side naturally assuming that the other had been responsible. Carag grinned. All of the spawn on the battlefield were, naturally, expecting fire and naphtha to rain from the skies or great chasms to open beneath them and swallow them up. His grin faded. Come to think of it, he'd got no good reason to think that that wasn't exactly what was going to happen. He wondered if he had the strength to shatter through the window's mica and find protection within. Now Gnaag's entire body was incandescent, the cloud of Nadziranim clinging closely to him as if they were trying to concentrate their necromantic essence into his physical form. Carag looked at the Darklord and grimaced. Gnaag looked like a being transfixed by the darkest energies of the universe, like an encapsulation of all the mystic forces at Naar's command. His presence somehow transcended reality. Now Gnaag was stretched out both of his overlong arms, the colours of the Nadziranim dripping from them to form a dissolving cloak of a multitude of dying colours. The Darklord's multiple eyes were beacons of malevolence, and Carag ducked and cringed, suddenly convinced that if a single facet of those eyes should catch sight of him he must surely be reduced to a cinder. Peeping between two trembling fingers he saw Gnaag seem to grow in stature until he was standing impossibly tall above the tormented metal floor of the courtyard. As the Darklord continued to increase in height Carag found that he could see right through the gargantuan body, as if it were painted in transparent inks on a thin soap-film. Now Gnaag was hundreds of feet tall, shimmering with brilliant light, his outstretched hands seeming to touch their fingertips to the horizons. Gnaag was becoming not only as large as all the sky, he was becoming the sky, blending the blueness of the Kraan into his own essence, so that the world was arched by a wash of calm blue decorated in a billion diamond fragments. And then the image was gone. Darkness returned. Beneath Carag, Gnaag was crumpled on the courtyard's floor, his body seeming pathetically slight. Mystified, Carag stared up at the sky. It seemed at first that all had been returned to the way it had been before the Nadziranim had begun to weave their spells. All over the heavens were the dark bodies of the Kraan, cutting off the few rays of the Sun's light that ever penetrated to the Darklands.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 190 And then he saw what Gnaag and the Nadziranim had done. The countless Kraan were slowly dissolving, their bodies disintegrating as the winds of the high atmosphere tore at them. Where the curtain of their forms had been black, now it was fading to grey. Except in two places. About twenty degrees away from the zenith on each side Carag could see, as he screwed up his eyes to their tightest focus, that a single Zlanbeast retained its black form. In perfect symmetry the two bodies were falling together, one on either side of the sky, dropping as if they had been cast downwards by the hand of one of the Gods. And all around these two rapidly growing points of darkness the grey sky itself seemed to be falling. But gently, like snow. The armies of the plain were almost silent now as they watched the two Zlanbeast plummet. It was as if the innumerable warrior spawn had been hypnotized by the sight of those inexorably dropping shapes, which seemed to be gathering speed, growing larger as they came closer and closer to the ground ... The world itself seemed to sigh as the two dead Zlanbeast impacted with a crash that stirred up twin clouds of ash from Naogizaga's sere surface. And then there was a wall of noise all around Carag as the armies gave vent to their terror ... for the sky still seemed to be descending at its own more sedate pace to envelope them where they stood. Giaks screamed and slashed out in panic at their neighbours. Dumbly tall Xaghash, eyes unfocused, snatched spawn-flesh wherever they could find it and stuffed it into their reflexively grinding maws, feeding themselves voraciously in a fear-reaction that dated back to long before the Darklords themselves had come to Magnamund. The Drakkarim were turning and fighting among each other, their black carved helmets slick with their greasy blood as, crazed, they sought to slaughter everything that moved. Doomwolves sprang at each other's throats. Helghast destroyed Vordaks with bolts of energy, so that cloying vapour drifted across the scene of carnage. And, everywhere, what had once been the bodies of millions of Kraan settled slowly down in great drifting flakes of light ash to cover the scene like a blanket of filthy snow, so that the sounds of death grew muffled and finally disappeared altogether. Leaving Carag on his windowledge, all alone, it seemed, in an empty grey world. Empty except for the fallen form of the Darklord Gnaag in the courtyard far beneath him. Lightly covered in ash, that form

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 191 was now slowly beginning to move. As Carag watched a swarm of Nadziranim, their colours muted and weary, approached the disturbance and gathered around it. The slowly dancing textures of light dimmed briefly, as if their energy were being drained; and then Carag could see that the Darklord was pulling himself to his feet. Gnaag seemed exhausted, like his allies, the Nadziranim; he wavered as he stood, and reached out instinctively to try to find support that was not there. But then steel came to the Darklord's stance as he surveyed the silent plain through the still-falling flakes of ash. Here and there spawn were beginning to crawl out from under the grey covering. They were unnaturally quiet, as if what had happened had been too great for their fears to encompass; some were even turning to help pull their comrades free of the embracing ash. The vivacity fully returned to his body, Gnaag spun around, beckoning the Nadziranim to him. The Darklord's body was slowly beginning to move in its customary twitching fashion as he tiredly walked back towards the open portal through which he had emerged only a few minutes before. Perched above, Carag watched him go, thinking of how those scant minutes had seen the world change. Now he could hear sounds of industry. Showing a degree of cooperation that Carag had never witnessed before, the spawn and the Drakkarim were forming work-posses to help dig more and more of their number out from under the fall of ash. Helghast joined forces with Vordaks, Doomwolves with Giaks – it all seemed unpleasantly unnatural to Carag, who was accustomed to the state of constant near-murder that existed between the various breeds among the armies of Darkness. He knew that it wouldn't last, of course – that it couldn't. Soon things would return to normal, or something like it, as Gnaag reformed the forces of Evil in preparation for the next onslaught against the people of the Lastlands. But from now on there would be only fifteen Darklords. Carag could see two great, immobile mounds in the ash. The toiling bands of spawn were giving them a wide berth, none of them willing to go anywhere near the two Darklords who had it seemed been selected by the wrath of Naar for especial persecution. The two Zlanbeast which had been slaughtered like all the rest but whose bodies had not been dissipated into wafer-thin flakes of ash, so that they plummeted from the sky like bolts of wrath, had been precisely aimed. Crushed by the falling weights of the dead Zlanbeast, Unc and Ghurch would wage war against each other no more.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 192 The forces of Evil were united again, and this time they were under the leadership of a Darklord possessed of ruthless intelligence and quicksilver cunning. Gnaag. Standing on the broad windowledge Carag shuddered, wrapping himself in his own arms as if he were trying to keep out the chill of the world.

The Equinoctial Legends (The Tellings) // 193

Envoi AN END TO CAMPFIRES

Years had passed since Lone Wolf had started his profound studies of the Book of the Magnakai. It had been an exacting task and was still by no means complete, but nevertheless he had succeeded in understanding enough of Sun Eagle's cramped and desperately faded handwriting to be able to master three of the ten Magnakai disciplines. And now he had come across yet another passage of great significance: Seek and find the Lorestone of Varetta, for this alone holds the power and the wisdom ... There, tantalizingly, the fragment ended – but the hint was sufficient for Lone Wolf: clearly Sun Eagle, the first of all the Kai, had believed the recovery of this Lorestone to be of paramount importance. Lone Wolf knew that Varetta was one of the oldest cities of Magnamund, lying in the Stornlands beyond the Maakengorge, far to the south of Sommerlund. The war among the Darklords to determine Haakon's successor would not last forever, and the forces of Evil could at any moment resume their assault on the Lastlands. He would therefore have to act swiftly and in secrecy, knowing that the future of all Magnamund depended on the success of his mission. Accordingly, one cold morning he bade farewell to Viveka, Petra and the acolytes at the Monastery and, secure astride his proud mare, Reason for Coming Back, he headed southwards towards the Stornlands ...