Drowsiness was long in coming, leaving them side by side in silent tension as each feigned sleep rather than speak and start anew the arguments that had ruled the evening and much of the night. The bed, a massive and ornate holdover from the days when their chambers had belonged to the grand duke, was sufficiently wide that they could have rested a sword crossways between them, so far to their respective edges were they both crowded.

At last, true sleep had claimed Gedren, though it was a fitful one that set her to tossings and unhappy grumblings and the making of fearsome faces that Cassidor Ephes knew meant that her wrath continued even in her dreams.

He eased from beneath the covers, barely noticing the cold of the room as he slipped into his overrobe and a pair of short wool-and-kidskin boots. He closed the door quietly behind him and glanced at the ring of chairs drawn close to the hearth, where a few long hours ago the grave error of his actions had been made clear to him.

Mayhap the dowager queen of Westreach slept well this night, but if so, she did at the cost of Cassidor's own rest.

Lighting a single candle from the embers, he entered his study. The flickering glow fell upon the stuff of his magic -- pots of colored sand for working wards of protection, jars of rare herbs known for their mystic effects, a mirror of smoked glass into which he might gaze, gloves of soft linen to cover his hands before seeking to read the palm of another.

His most vital of tools, the pouch of smooth-polished precious gems inscribed with signs of silver and gold, rested in a cloth-lined box upon his desk. As he sat, his hand stole of unconscious habit to caress the bulging side of the bag and roll the stones together.

The cast-stones did not hold the answers this night.

Nor, he feared, did any other of the magics at which he was most skilled. He drew a thick book from a shelf and began to turn through the pages.

Master Hadric's script was so small and closely-crowded that most readers would be unable to determine where one word left off and the next began. For Cassidor, who had spent the years of his life between seven and fifteen as the Hadric's apprentice, they were clear as anything writ in inch-high letters would have been.

In his youth, before settling into the comfortable post of court magician to Hothar, Hadric had traveled the length and breadth of Ilgrath and even beyond the seas. Wherever he went, he spoke to practitioners of the secret arts, and noted down all of their methods.

Here were the auguries, hundreds of variations. Some were commonborn superstitions, such as how a girl might learn the name of her future husband by peeling the skin from a fruit in one unbroken curl and then tossing it over her shoulder where it would land to form the initial of his name. Others were complex and ghastly rites involving bloodletting and sacrifice. Still others required materials so expensive and hard to come by that no one but the highest king could afford to have them done.

Cassidor gave each a cursory look, but none seemed more likely to provide an answer than did the cast-stones.

His hindrance was in being an omen-reader only, not a spirit-talker. It would have been much simpler, albeit more dangerous, to communicate directly with the spirits and the gods rather than interpret their will from the omens.

Even had he a spirit-board marked with the proper letters, even had he the sacred wine of far-off Zargos that invited the spirits to speak through the mouth of the drinker, he knew his attempts would be failures at best and disasters at worst.

Woe to the magician who sought to bring the spirits under his control! Those who succeeded still found the task so draining that they were known to age years before their time, and those who failed were said to die in terrible convulsive agonies.

Such was not for Cassidor Ephes, who prided himself on being a cautious man. Too cautious, some would say -- his wife Gedren, for once, who approached all things with vigorousness -- but cautious men suffered less. What was often said of soldiers held true for magicians as well ... the reckless didn't live long!

How, then, to best beseech the spirits? He lacked the time to seek out a fellow magician, for those of his sort were rare in Hothar and had become more rare in the past two decades. The Kathani were fearful of the unseen, and Oldered Kathak had been no exception.

Cassidor shivered as he thought of that fateful night. He had been so certain that he would be next to die, and known that he would not be able to conduct himself with a fraction of the bravery that Hadric had shown.

Take a stand against the soldiers? Fight them off and even kill one armed with nothing more than a carving-knife? It had been all Cassidor had been able to do to keep himself upright and of dry smallclothes.

Perhaps it had been that very terror that had saved him. In looking on him, the Kathani soldiers dismissed him as boy rather than man. Once battle's heat had passed, their fierce warlord-king had decided that the spirits might take exception to the murder of a magician no matter how lowly, and spared Cassidor's life.

Over the next few years, the king had let it be known that while he would tolerate his own personal magician, it was discouraged elsewhere in his realm. Then, years later, Davore Kathak had needed some post for the new queen's younger brother and named Nerrar as Cassidor's apprentice.

Cassidor scowled and wished again he'd had the will to petition Davore to reconsider. If there had been any natural inclination in Nerrar, it was toward scheming, not sorcery.

That had become bitterly clear to Cassidor one day not long past. He had lived for weeks in dread that he would prove unable to keep secret his involvement in the plan to restore a Lendrin heir, certain that Davore would see guilt on his face as blatant as a scream. But no, it had taken Nerrar's cunning to bring Cassidor to suspicion.

He'd been so caught up in worries about what might be happening in Plesvar and Trevale and the rest of the kingdom that he'd never given a thought to auguring for his own safety. Thus, there'd been no warning when Davore's men had arrived to take him into custody.

As before, the thought of fighting them off had never crossed his mind. The thought of intimidating them with threats of his magic did, but only too late to be of any effectiveness.

He could at least pride himself that he'd kept his dignity throughout the arrest, so-called 'trial,' and subsequent imprisonment beneath the Ministry of Justice. It had been mainly anger that kept his back straight and his chin high.

Now Cassidor wondered just what the intent of the spirits and gods had been in all of that mess. Had he been meant to be captured so that the Restoration would fail, especially seen in the light of the truth of Jherion's birth, but it had somehow gone awry? Had his capture been necessary so that Gedren and Ithor and Olinne could also be taken, thereby giving Jherion and Alkath a burning reason to act so decisively and assure their success?

Had the will of the gods been done or thwarted?

What was their will now regarding Jherion, Idasha, and the fate of Hothar?

Those were the questions he yearned to have answered, and none of his present means were helping.

What would wise old Hadric have done? Aside, that was, from not making such a horrible mistake of identity in the first place and seating the wrong person on the throne?

Hadric had even been able to speak to the spirits by the most direct and potent of all magical means. He had dared to journey down the spirit path itself!

Cassidor thoughtfully ran one long finger down the narrow bridge of his nose, then curled his chin into his fist. Though his eyes were fixed on the wall of his study, they were misty and unfocused, while the eyes of his memory summoned forth another room, another time.

The journey-stones ... could they have survived the fire? Unless he was mistaken in his recollection, Hadric had kept them locked in a blackmetal box, hidden away.

Stone and blackmetal did not burn ...

Findersniff crept through the rubble, trying not to bump or brush any of the clumsy pile of tumbled timbers and bring them smashing down on his spine. He was streaked with old soot and newer dust, and more of each puffed up from his tracks as he moved.

He was well into the Burn-Place now, and he didn't much like it. The memory of his great-grandmother's kind stretched back five-and-five-and-five-and-three generations to the Big Fire; his other ancestors had still been outside then, following the tall ones' army and living off the leavings of the supply wagons.

Although so much time had passed, the tale was told to each new brood, told to them while they were still young and impressionable, told in vivid and strong terms to strengthen the dread of fire already inborn in them.

The Burn-Place, therefore, took on the awe and horror of legend. To think of it was to hear the shrill cries of the dying, to smell the charred stink of hair and flesh, to choke on the smoke and see the leaping flames consuming, blocking, trapping. They had died there, those long-ago ones, died by the hundreds when the wood-that-was-above collapsed in a blazing rain of splinter and spark into the room-of-much-food.

That was where Findersniff was now, stealthily crawling through the home of his ancestors. It bore little resemblance to the paradise that had been described. No bottomless bins of root-plants. No mountain-high mounds of sacks stuffed to their seams with tender, sweet grain. No wax-sealed crocks that could be opened by patient work and bring a reward of butter or lard.

All of that had been destroyed in that dim and distant ago, and not even a hint of the scents remained. When Findersniff tested the air, all he could smell was age and rot and dust and ancient smoke.

He came to a clear spot atop a pile and craned his neck to peer upward. His eyes weren't the best, but he could make out the opening, the hole in the wood-that-was-above. Ends poked down at an angle, the wood blackened and eaten away by fire. Beyond that, all was darkness.

Findersniff saw that one of the ends of the wood, a long beam that had been eaten away to thinness at the middle, reached between floor and above. He descended from the pile of rubble and wrinkled his nose in dismay at the prospect of the open space that stretched between him and the beam.

But there was no other way, unless he tried to go up through the place-of-tall-ones-eating. And that wouldn't do, because of the hateful and hated slashclaws that roamed the tall ones' territory.

He inched into the open. The burning here had been intense, reducing the woods to a thick bed of ash that first covered his feet, then reached higher on his legs, until he was sure it would touch his belly. It stirred up as he moved through it, and he had to breathe through his mouth lest he sneeze. Gritty powder coated his tongue and teeth, and more of it settled into his eyes.

He trod on what felt like a number of small sticks and nutshells before the end of one tilted up to poke through the ash. Findersniff halted, rigid and wide-eyed, and pawed away more of the ash until he could see for certain that he was stepping on what he thought he was stepping on.

Bones.

The bones of his kind, his mother's tribe's ancestors.

Many of the bones were broken, and all of them were burnt, and Findersniff had no trouble envisioning those who had been caught directly beneath the hottest, most Big Fire part of the wood-that-was-above when it became the wood-that-was-falling. First the weight had crushed them, and then the flames had devoured them.

He shuddered and pushed the bones back beneath the ash so that he would not have to see them.

Overhead, the wood gave a sudden loud creak and the darkness brightened with flamelight. Flecks of char like dirty snowflakes sifted down onto Findersniff. He hunched low to the ground, trying to brace and prepare his body for the impact.

The wood creaked again, and then groaned as if in relentless misery. More flecks and a long piece of jagged wood came down.

Findersniff cowered and waited for the end. He wasn't sure which would be worse ... dying, or failing the Master. But when the noise lessened and no more debris fell, he became emboldened again and peered upward.

He couldn't see much other than the small and moving center of light, making a strange-shaped shadow. He hears the scuffling drag and thump of a tall one's steps. Going near to the wall up there, he guessed. Skirting the edge of the hole.

This, then, was why the Master had sent him. Curdnibbler had been right, for all that he had only the blood of the lesser, smaller, stupider tribe in his veins.

Findersniff gathered his bravery and dashed for the beam. He kicked up clouds of soot and dust, disturbed more ancestral bones, and once banged himself painfully on a chunk of stone that he didn't see until it was too late, but he reached the beam alive and wasted no time scrambling up the slanted angle of it.

When he got to the top, he darted toward the wall for safety and concealment. He didn't expect the wood to give way under him, as it had supported the far heavier weight of a tall one, but he wasn't taking chances.

He saw the tall one clearly for an instant, lit from the other side by the pillar of fire it bore in its spindly pale hand.

That was the worst of the tall ones ... bad enough that they hoarded food in such great numbers yet resisted sharing it with Findersniff's tribe and reducing them to raiding and thievery. Bad enough that they befriended the slashclaws and freely gave them delicious rinds of bacon and fish-heads and entrails. But worst of all, yes, worst of all, was how they ruled the fire and brought it into their home-places.

This one was a small flame, barely more than a flicker, but it sent a cloud of light to outline the tall one. And a tall one indeed, it was, even by the standards of their kind. Tall and narrow.

Findersniff slunk along the angle where wall met floor, getting closer. The tall one was moving with great care and caution, as if mindful that at any instant the wood-that-was-now-beneath might give way and dump him into the ashes.

Signs of the Big Fire were everywhere up here, dulling what few contents of the room had survived. But even beneath those scents was another that Findersniff could easily identify. Old bloodspill, the deathblood of tall ones, well-baked by the heat.

The tall one picked his way around the edges, pausing now and then to shift things with dusty clatters and clunks. Findersniff knew search-behavior when he saw it, but what could a tall one want in here after so long? His senses told him that none of them had set foot in here since the time of the Big Fire, that with the exception of spiders and low-crawlers and a single long-ago family of birds, no other living thing had.

Closer and closer, prodded not only by his own innate curiosity but by the will of the Master ... closer and closer yet.

Stones grated, and Findersniff watched in amazement as the tall one pried up a large flat one from the hearth, then reached into a deep space beneath.

The tall one jerked his hand up at once, uttering a caw of disgust. Low-crawlers dropped from the cloth that covered his arm, and skittered away in all directions. One passed in front of Findersniff and he snapped it up, crunching through the carapace. Countless bristly legs flailed at the inside of his cheeks. Sour-tangy juice flooded his mouth.

As he devoured the treat, he watched the tall one tip his flame into the space beneath the hearthstone. The tall one took up a stick and poked it around in the depths. He then reached in again, and brought out a heavy thing of dark, gleaming metal.

Findersniff obeyed the Master's urgent demands, creeping even nearer in hopes of having a better look. The sides of the thing -- it was a box, he realized -- were plain and unmarked. In the back of his mind the Master clamored insistently.

The tall one seemed to be trying to open it, but with no luck.

Closer ... closer ... and as the Master's command changed, Findersniff regarded the slope of the tall one's back. Cloth to give good purchase, a quick scramble up to the nape of the neck where it was so pale and unprotected as the tall one craned his head down to study his prize.

A quick scramble, yes, and a good clamping bite ... it wouldn't be the first time he'd tasted of tall one, though this would be his first of mature years and health. No unattended babe or sickly elder, this one!

He hunkered down, tensing his legs for the first leap.

The tall one turned and saw Findersniff. A startled outcry burst from him. Just as Findersniff jumped, the tall one sprang up from his crouch.

Findersniff struck on the side of the tall one's leg, digging into the cloth. But it was loose now, not drawn tight against his back but swaying. Findersniff's weight made him swing, clinging on for all he was worth, unable to catch flesh in his jaws.

The room spun dizzily as the tall one hopped around in horrified panic. Findersniff skidded downward, leaving long rents in the cloth.

The wood-that-was-beneath cracked loudly. The tall one flung himself backward as part of it gave way, crashing down into the Below. Findersniff held on tight as they fell, and ended up in the tall one's lap.

He didn't waste the opportunity, launching himself at the tall one's face. A fast snap of teeth on nose or lip to distract him, and then under the chin for the soft meat of the neck --

The metal box slammed into him with pulverizing force. Findersniff was torn free from the cloth, tumbling dizzy-sick with a flare of pain all down his side. He landed, rolled, hit the wall, bounced back, new hurting with each bounce, heard the wood give a threatening moan, and then spilled into open space.

He fell into a thick heap of ashes -- ploof! -- and lay there twitching while his stunned head tried to sort out what had happened to the rest of his body.

In Findersniff's mind, the Master shouted furiously. But his legs were slow to respond, and each time he tried to gather them under himself, they'd turn traitor and he would flop onto his belly again. The soot got into his nose, sending him into a sneezing fit that jabbed pain into every part of him.

Above, he could hear the tall one moving with less care and more haste, back the way he'd come.

The Master raged at him to follow, but there was little Findersniff could do. It would take all his strength just to pull himself out of the place of the Big Fire and hopefully back to the safety of his tribe.

Upon finding that the blackmetal box was there where he remembered it, and intact, Cassidor Ephes had been filled with an awe approaching reverence.

Not even the loathsome centipedes that had briefly crawled over his hand had been able to dim that feeling. When he lifted it from its place of twenty-year concealment, he'd felt such a thrill of purpose and rightness that he thought he might burst from it.

But when he'd seen the rat, and then felt its horrible dragging weight as it tried to claw its way up his overrobe, it had all been swamped by an encompassing revulsion.

No ordinary rat, that monster! During his confinement in the dungeons below the Ministry of Justice, he'd seen rats aplenty, but those had been normal dungeon-rats with bodies a handspan long.

The creature that had attacked him was more than twice that size, from nose to tail longer than a man's forearm. Its humpbacked withers rose a good six inches from the floor, its sharply-pointed face framed in a shaggy whitish-grey mane that gave it a wolfish aspect. The eyes, too, had not been normal rat-eyes, beady and reddish; these had been yellow and strange.

Shaking from reaction, unable to remember anything of his rapid trip back from the dismal burnt-out shell of Hadric's old quarters, Cassidor shoved the so-recently-treasured box at a tabletop without heeding to see if it came securely to rest.

He stripped off his overrobe, casting it from him as if it were diseased, and looked down on himself with dread. The rat-thing's claws had been the rival of any cat's, tearing through the heavy cloth with ease.

But his undertunic and breeches were only snagged in a place or two, and his skin was unmarked. No blood drawn, no vile poisons infecting his body. He removed them anyway, and dunked a rag into the pot of water Gedren always kept warming over the back of the fire to scrub himself thoroughly.

Relief eased his tremors, but it was an incomplete relief hampered by the memory of the rat-thing's face mere inches from his own. It had been on him, its hot and fetid breath mingling with his!

And there had been something more to it, a malign presence, a consciousness, glaring at him from those terrible eyes.

He bundled up everything he had been wearing and threw it down the dump-shaft in the corner. Only when he was fully dressed again in fresh, untainted clothes ... only when he was sitting in his familiar chair with a much-needed mug of mead ... only then did he let himself grow calm.

It had, in all likelihood, been only a normal rat. With his nerves drawn bowstring-tight by his harrowing trip into that unstable place where the floor seemed about to collapse at any moment, his imagination must have inflated the rat's size and menace. Who wouldn't, having one suddenly spring at him out of the darkness like that?

Cassidor managed a rueful chuckle at his own folly. It came out sounding weak and false, but was better than none.

Those fire-ravaged rooms should have been demolished or repaired decades ago. But Oldered had been too busy establishing and increasing his conquered territories, and Davore had always had too many other uses for his money.

Now, though, something needed to be done. It was a lucky miracle that no one had gone exploring there before! The grim tales of what had once happened in Hadric's room, plus fears of spirits, had served to keep a generation of servants' children out of there, but they couldn't count on that much longer. Something had to be done before tragedy made it a necessity.

"I'll speak to Jherion about --" he murmured, then broke off in chagrin, remembering the reason he'd been inspired to go there in the first place.

He slid the blackmetal box to the edge of the table and examined it. The box itself was undamaged, but the clasp had been warped by the heat. He found a small kit of tools in the bottommost drawer of his desk.

One of the hinges had a scrap of red-stained fur caught in it, bringing on a renewed shiver for Cassidor. Using a tweezers from his kit, he plucked it free and dropped it onto the embers. The fur sparked and crisped into nothingness.

A thin-bladed chisel proved just the thing to pry the clasp. The hinges rasped as he opened the lid, some gritty soot raining from them.

The box contained only two objects, but the sight of them was enough to leave Cassidor breathless.

The first was a book, a tiny book bound in faded scarlet leather and tied shut with a ribbon that had once been white. The ivoried length was so aged that it came apart as he touched it. On the cover was a design, a complicated pattern of lines and arcs drawn between a dozen points.

The second item was a lumpy bag that differed from the one in which he kept his cast-stones only in material -- worn, threadbare linen instead of velvet -- and the contents. He ran a finger over it, noting the difference at once. His cast-stones were polished and rounded and smooth; the hard objects within this bag were rough-edged.

He untied the cord that bound the top, and spread the journey-stones on the table. They looked for all the world like plain rocks. Grey, grey stippled with crystalline flecks, grey with black bands, dull black, murky white with brownish veins, tan layered with red, drab dun-brown ... these could have been picked from the roadside of anywhere in Ilgrath.

Although he could not feel any sense of power from them, he knew not to be fooled by their mundane appearance. He had seen with his own eyes Hadric work great magics with these stones.

There were twenty in all, and a list on the first page of the tiny book helped him identify their meaning. The following pages were taken up with the patterns in which the stones could be laid to perform a variety of spells.

As he read over some of them, Cassidor's mouth went dry and palms went wet. He wasn't surprised that Hadric had seen fit to keep this separate from the larger book in which he'd inscribed all of his omen-magics.

Journey-stones, he'd called them. And journey-stones they were, letting a magician detach his own spirit from his body and send it traveling. But Cassidor had never dreamed what else might be possible!

Cassidor looked with apprehension at the simple stones. On the few occasions Hadric had used them, he'd always been sure to have an apprentice close by, to watch over his body as his spirit went journeying, and to intervene should something go wrong.

He was nowhere near Hadric's mastery of skill, had never even attempted anything such as this, and had no apprentice to help him.

And yet, it seemed the only way.

Sighing, Cassidor turned to the appropriate page and studied it intently.

Several minutes after learning through Whiskertwitch that the tall one was no longer moving, the Master turned an iron handle and released the mechanism that held the section of wall in place.

Those who had constructed it had known what they were doing. Even after all these years of disuse, the wall moved smoothly and quietly. Its weight swiveled on an unseen hinge, opening just far enough to admit the body of a large, armored man.

The Master was neither large nor armored. Even allowing for the clumsy, irregular shape of his body, he was able to slip easily inside.

A draft whirled around him as chill air from the passageway met with the warmer air of the sitting room. Ashes and snowblossom petals were caught briefly in the gust, but the man at the table paid no attention.

Despite Wiskertwitch's report that the tall one was motionless with eyes open, the Master had expected to find Ephes sleeping in his chair. Instead, he saw that the female rat had been right.

Cassidor Ephes did not move or look up as the Master approached. His eyes were wide and unblinking, staring at a spot perhaps ten inches above an arrangement of stones. Had it not been for his steady, very slowed breathing, the Master might have assumed him dead.

The Master limped around the table, noting the empty box, the book clasped loosely in Ephes' hands, the flattened linen bag.

This was what he'd been after? A scattering of valueless rocks?

Valueless, mayhap. Powerless? Certainly not! No normal explanation could account for his condition. It had to be sorcery of some kind with which the Master was unfamiliar.

Which was, of course, not saying much ...

Ignoring the stones for the time being, he returned his gaze to Cassidor Ephes himself. A sneer of loathing tugged his mouth into a painful twist.

Whiskertwitch, responding to his urge if not his direct order, clambered down from the ceiling beams by way of a thick tapestry. She reached the floor, hurried warily across the open space, and tilted her white-maned head to look up at the Master expectantly.

A nod from him, and she would be sinking her long teeth into Ephes' unsuspecting flesh.

The rats might resent his intrusion into their realm and his command over their wills, but they were helpless to resist. Especially the ones such as Whiskertwitch, descended from the Kathani army-rats. They had no choice but to recognize him as one of their own.

He bade her to hold. For one thing, he didn't know what Ephes was doing but it was clearly magic, so killing him now could be dangerous. For another ... a quick death as he sat there insensate would hardly satisfy the thirst for vengeance, now, would it?

No, when Cassidor Ephes died, the Master wanted him to be fully aware of every excruciating second.

He crossed to behind the magician, thinking to take the book from him.

As he did so, he realized that from here he could see the oddest thing ... ripples in the air and on the table, between and above the stones. They became more defined as he continued moving.

When he was fully behind Ephes, they were clear as day. Lines of power, like strands of finespun glass, connecting the stones and rising in a goblet-stem shape. At the highest point, where all the strands came together, a spark of light twinkled like a tiny captive star.

Once he looked at that twinkle he could not look away. It seemed to grow rapidly larger, as if he were rushing toward it, falling toward it ... falling into it ...

The world was alive with spirits.

Cassidor Ephes felt them all around him, a coursing storm buffeting him as he was drawn along at unearthly speed. They passed close to him, or in some cases through him, and as each did he was overcome with an understanding of its true nature, only to lose that understanding as his thoughts were engulfed by the next one ...

And then he was through, shaken and disoriented at the unknowable forces he'd just witnessed. His senses gradually resolved themselves, and he reeled anew at the place in which he found himself.

It was his own room, and yet not.

All times were one.

Eras were layered one upon the next, overlapping each other. They varied in patternless cycles, some becoming more vivid while others faded to the merest whisper of an image.

Here was Hothar Castle when it had been nothing more than a wooden palisade built upon a fenced-in motte. And here it was furnished as it had been in the time of King Haldorn, over eighty years before. And here ... a grassy hill dotted with the campfires of the nomads that had finally decided to cease their wandering ways and settle for good on the shores of the river.

Shades moved through these phantom chambers, their ghostly voices mingling and muffling so as to be incomprehensible. Their clothes and hairstyles encompassed the history of Hothar as well, from those early nomads in their garb of rough hides on through two centuries of fashions.

These, Cassidor realized, were Hothar's dead. The spirits of the dead, all existing in worlds of their own times but brushing shoulders with all other times as well. They seemed largely unaware of each other, even when occupying the same space at once, and utterly oblivious of him.

Or so he thought, until the room shifted again and he found himself seeing it as it had been only half a year before. The changes that Gedren had wrought were not done. This was the chamber of Avar Kathak.

As if the very thinking of him summoned him forth, Avar Kathak appeared.

He had been past his fiftieth summer when he died, but the man now in the room looked to be no more than twenty-five, young and strong, untouched by grey. He opened his arms to a smiling woman, and swung her around so that her golden braids flew.

This proof of what waited beyond death was so gladdening to Cassidor's heart that he laughed softly.

At the sound, Avar Kathak looked his way. Their eyes met with such a jolting directness that Cassidor knew he had been seen even before Avar spoke his name.

"Ephes! Traitor magician!" His voice was faint but distinct. "My nephew tells me we have you to thank for this! Who bears claim for your death? Did your usurper-heir decide that an advisor who would be false to one king might be false to another?"

To this, Cassidor had no immediate answer, horrified at the possibility of meeting up again with Davore and his court.

Avar Kathak, however, did not seem disposed to be vengeful. "And so, thank you I do! My Lydra and I are reunited again. Only tell me, what news of my son?"

"Felin is not here? You did not take up the mantle of High Commander after he died?"

"I took it from him and sent him away that he would live!" Avar said. The more they spoke, the more his voice and flesh lost that ghostly quality. The room seemed to solidify around them. "You've no news of him?"

Cassidor backed away, shaking his head in consternation, mind spinning at the implications. As he reached the wall, it melted into intangibility at his touch. Avar and Lydra vanished from his sight.

Eras continued shifting and flickering around him as he traversed the halls. He stayed well away from any places where it seemed he might encounter the former king -- the great hall, the royal chambers, the garden.

At long last -- or did it matter here? -- he reached his destination. The door was unburnt, and it felt quite real beneath his knuckles as he rapped upon it.

Hadric opened it. "Come in, Cassidor."

Whiskertwitch chattered and squeaked, but the Master did not respond. His presence, which for many weeks now had been as persistent and irrevocable as a flea at the back of her mind, was gone as though it had never been.

The Master stood rigid and glassy-eyed, a breathing corpse somehow propped upright behind the other tall one, who was seated but every bit as rigid and glassy-eyed.

"I hoped that you would eventually find your way here," Hadric said, pouring each of them a steaming mug of tea. "You found the journey-stones, and used them?"

"Yes," Cassidor said. He accepted the tea and sipped. Though part of him insisted that it was not real, the rest seemed prepared to accept it as well as the other comforts of the room.

It was much as he remembered it, cluttered but comfortable, smelling of herbs and parchment and candlewax and spices. Hadric himself was not the aging man of six decades that he had been in life, but was nearer to Cassidor's own age. They sat across from each other not as teacher and student now but nearly as equals.

"But, knowing your caution," Hadric went on, "the need must be great."

"Your kindly way of sharing my wife's opinion that I am something of a coward," he said wryly.

Hadric snorted amusedly. "If you are, the blame is mine. You were a reckless boy before I took you on as my apprentice. Had I not scared, instilled, and almost beaten caution into you, we both would have paid the price. Perhaps I overdid it a touch, but you seem to have turned out well enough."

"Should I live another hundred years, I'll never be the man you were."

"I think you think a bit much of me."

"You fought them, and died bravely. I groveled before Oldered Kathak, all but begging for my life. I even denounced you, after all you'd done for me."

"You did what you had to do, and I don't fault you for it. I was an old man known throughout Ilgrath for being stubborn and set in my ways. Even if I'd surrendered, the Kathani would still have executed me, knowing they could never trust me. Since my death was inevitable, I chose to meet it on my own terms."

"I must admit, while I did not know just what to expect of the spirit path, this isn't precisely what I had in mind."

"Oh, this isn't all there is to it," Hadric said. "This is only the part where we once-mortals are. It is like a deep lake. In the shallows you'll find some types of reeds and fishes, which differ from those in the depths."

"The spirits ... the gods?"

He nodded. "In the depths. They're greater and stranger than we ever imagined, and they concern themselves little with those of us here in the shallows. It is the real world, the world of the living, that interests them."

"I must know their will." He explained to Hadric how he, Ithor, Gedren, and Baron Halan had conceived a plan to oust the Kathaks and put a Lendrin king on the throne. "But earlier this night -- it seems so much longer than that! -- we learned that the child was switched at birth with another. It is this other, a girl named Idasha, that is the true Lendrin heir."

"Does she know?"

"No ... nor would she have any desire to rule if she did. The dowager queen, Chian of Westreach, only revealed this because she felt that someone should know. She had harbored this secret for nigh twenty years. Now it is in my lap! Gedren insists that we would be destroying countless lives if we made it known now. The people already love Jherion and believe in him. But it is all a lie!"

"You could always divorce him of his bride and have him marry this Idasha --"

Cassidor nearly choked on his tea. "The bride is Olinne Halan, whose brother Alkath is in love with Idasha himself. If I even suggested such a thing, their father the baron would run me through with his belt-knife!"

"Well, then ... why not leave it be?"

"Leave it be?!? We have put a false king on the throne! The day after tomorrow, all of Ilgrath -- excepting of course Kathan -- will acknowledge him!"

"What of it? You did so unknowingly and with the best of intentions. It has proved good for Hothar already, has it not?"

"Yes, but that is not the point. The people deserve to know the truth."

"When all it will do is hurt them? At the moment, you have a willing and able king. If you stripped him of his crown, not only would you be robbing the people of their faith in their leaders but you would be attempting to install a resentful queen in his place. You told me yourself that Idasha has no desire to rule. How will you force her to?"

"I cannot perpetuate a lie."

"Aha." Hadric sat back and folded his hands. "So that's the real problem. You're thinking not of what's best for Hothar but of yourself. You bent your neck to the Kathaks for twenty years, when you inwardly hated them for what they'd done. This is not the same thing, Cassidor. Not at all. You've blinded yourself into thinking that all truth is good, when honestly, don't we all know better?"

The Master clapped his hands to the sides of his head. "Stop! Stop! No more of this whirling madness! I cannot bear it!"

The instant he screamed those words aloud, he forgot his confusion and terror in the wonder of realizing that he was whole again.

His hands ... the fingers were as straight and nimble as they'd ever been. His body ... upright rather than hunched around his pains. His face ... unscarred, the nose no longer canted to one side. And his tongue ...

"I can speak," he said in amazement.

"So you can," a man who seemed to be a younger version of Avar Kathak said. "Tell me, what news of my son?"

Gedren Ephes half-woke in the night, as was her habit, needing the privy. She groggily but cheerily cursed her ancestors for spawning a family of small-bladdered folk, and crawled back into bed with a sigh.

She slid over meaning to curl up against Cassidor before remembering that she had been cross with him. But maintaining an anger had never been her way. To flare fast and then burn out, that was her way.

So she slid further, stretching her arms toward where Cassidor's warmth should be. And farther ... the width of this bed was just ridiculous --

She reached the edge, and only then came fully awake when she understood that he wasn't there at all.

"Stubborn pack-beast," she muttered. "Gone to sleep in your study?"

Well, she couldn't allow that. They had been in love too long to let something like this come between them.

Meaning to go coax him back to bed, she wrapped herself in a robe and padded barefoot to open the door to the sitting room.

Several things hit her in quick succession -- Cassidor's blank-eyed stare, the opening in the wall, the cloak-swaddled figure standing behind her husband, the stones on the table.

Then she saw the oversized rat, streaking across the carpet toward her with curved fangs bared.

Gedren yelled and snatched up the first weapon at hand, a wooden box inlaid with squares of silver.

Her aim was as keen as ever, but the rat was quick. It dodged the thrown box, then came at Gedren again with a high-pitched snarl.

Rather than retreat and slam the door, Gedren grabbed for more missiles. She hit it a glancing blow with a sculpture of an eagle, then a crockery mug exploded inches in front of the rat's nose.

The rat squealed and fled for the opening in the wall. Gedren gave chase, seizing a poker from the hearth. She swung, struck the rat's hindquarters. The poker clanged onto stone, jarring her hands and making her drop it. The rat squealed again. Its leg was dragging as it escaped into the darkness.

Gedren's hip bumped into the table and sent stones clattering. Cassidor jerked from head to toe and cried out. His chair tipped, spilling him to the floor where he lay dazed and uncomprehending.

A strangled, inarticulate howl burst from the throat of the cloaked figure as he stumbled backwards. His hands, horribly twisted with swollen knobs for knuckles and crookedly jutting fingers, came up to clutch at the hood. It fell back to reveal his face.

Before Gedren could draw breath for a shriek, he shoved past her and lurched through the opening after the rat. With a grinding noise of metal on stone, a section of wall moved back into place and closed the gap.

"Cassidor?"

He groaned questioningly in response.

"I brought a damp cloth for your head. You bumped it when you fell."

Cool, wonderful pressure soothed his brow. Trickles of water ran down from his temples, bringing him fully aware.

"Gedren!"

"You were expecting another?"

"What ... what happened?"

"I was about to ask you the same!" She pushed him by the shoulders as he made to try and sit up. "Oh, no. You stay right there."

"My head is pounding so ... it sounds like masons breaking apart a wall."

She chuckled. "No, dearest, that's just masons breaking apart a wall. In our sitting room."

"What?"

"Jherion has guards searching the entire castle, but with no way of knowing where that secret passage goes, they're not likely to find much. And as none of us could figure out how to open it, he's having the problem addressed directly."

"Secret passage? Searching for what?"

"For Nerrar."

He sat up despite her hands. "Nerrar!"

"I know, I know ... I earnestly did believe him dead, but I saw him with my own --"

"Gedren, wait ..." He winced and rubbed his temples. "Start at the beginning?"

She did. "So do tell me, Cassidor, do tell me that you didn't know he was there, that you hadn't found him and put him back to work as your apprentice!"

"No, certainly not! I've no idea how he came to be there. You say he was ... staring at the stones?"

"Yes, just as you were. I picked them up and put them back in the bag before Jherion set the masons to work. They're not your usual cast-stones ...?" she trailed off expectantly.

"Journey-stones," he replied. "They were Hadric's. But that means Nerrar went journeying as well? Nerrar? On the spirit-path?"

"Mayhap you should start at the beginning now," she said. "What's a spirit-path?"

He smiled weakly and patted her hand. "Something I didn't need to travel after all. The wise counsel of my old teacher proved answer enough. Never it mind, Gedren my dearest. We have a coronation ball to prepare for, and a king to crown."

Continued in Vol. VII -- The Rat-Master

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