“I can'tâ” he began before the meaning of what the sprite had said sank in. Mellie sat cross-legged on the contract, grinning up at Cashel as her right index finger pointed to a spot above a scribe's trained calligraphy.
Cashel coughed as if clearing his throat. He handed his quarterstaff to the secretaryâthe Serian accepted it gravelyâthen squatted in front of the low table and took the pen. He'd seen people writing effortlessly, but people had watched Cashel spin a quarterstaff, too, and that didn't mean they could do it because he had.
“It's easy,” Mellie said. “Stick the point in the ink and then start here where my finger is. I'll guide you.”
The contract had a short preamble, then an indented list followed by a closing. Below that to the right of the sheet was a signature Cashel took to be the broker'sâthe ink was dryâwritten above a scribe's notation; and the signature Jen had just affixed above a similar notation. Jen's writing was if anything more precise than that of the scribe.
Someone had signed below Themo; Mellie was pointing to the similar spot below Jen's name. The scribal notation was the same: Cashel could recognize the shapes of characters even though they didn't project sound or meaning to him. With the laborious care of a man who was used to tasks where the least fraction of his strength would smash the tools he was using, Cashel began to draw his name on the parchment following the line of Mellie's finger.
The parchment grew suddenly warm beneath the heel of his hand. Mellie looked at him, raising her eyebrows in question. Blue fire seemed to tremble from the edges of the documentâbut that must have been Cashel's imagination, since
otherwise the others watching him sign would have said something.
Cashel concentrated silently on his task. Something was happening but he didn't know what; it could wait until he finished what he was doing without humiliating himself in front of friends and enemies alike.
The sprite gave him a wicked grin. Her arm traced a flourish that Cashel followed by the expedient of disconnecting his conscious mind from the motion his hand was making. The pen was out of ink by the time he finished the stroke, leaving only scratches and a tracery of shading on the tough parchment. Mellie crossed her arms in completion, then turned a handspring onto Cashel's wrist.
He straightened and stepped back. Frasa reached for the contract but paused before his fingers touched it. He looked at Cashel in wonder.
Themo stared at the document. “What kind of joke is this?” he roared. He leaped up, kicking the low chair away behind him.
Cashel blinked. The signatures of the broker and his witness weren't the same as they had been when Cashel's hand covered them while drawing his own name. He was sure he hadn't even let his palm brush the parchment, though.
Themo looked at Cashel with a fury the youth had never seen on another man's face. “I'll have your guts for garters!” he said. “Get him, boys!”
The boxer reached for Cashel's arm; the red-haired man tried to draw his sword. A servant dropped a drinks tray and ran out the door shouting; Jen was calling into the courtyard through the louvered windows. The table flipped over, though Cashel didn't see who or what hit it.
Cashel grabbed the guards by their throats. Because he was usually slow and methodical, he always moved faster than people expected when there was a need for haste. The boxer punched him on the side of the head, a glancing blow but enough to send Cashel's vision momentarily black and white.
He swung the two big men together. Their steel caps
clashed like anvils colliding. The helmets flew off as their heads bounced apart. The red-haired man had gone limp; the boxer's eyes crossed but his left arm windmilled blindly.
Cashel slammed their heads together again and flung them both straight-arm against the wall. They smacked hard against the masonry and dropped as though boneless. Themo backed with his hands raised and a distorted look on his face, screaming unintelligibly.
Mellie cheered from Cashel's shoulder. The secretary stood where he'd been, wearing a dazed expression. Cashell snatched the quarterstaff from the man's hand, more to have it than as a useful weapon inside even as large a room as this.
The door flung open again. Highlanders poured in with half-drawn bows and raised stone axes. None of them carried metal weapons; Cashel wondered if it had something to do with their religion.
If the Serians are devil worshippers, what's the Highlanders' god like?
More of the jabbering little men climbed in through the windows.
Jen called a command. From his throat the Highlanders' language sounded like birdsong. One of the little men regretfully lowered the axe that had been an eyeblink from decapitating the broker. He pleaded with Jen, who merely tented his fingers and stared into space with a grim expression.
“Show Master Themo and his companions out of the building,” Frasa said to the robed secretary. “You'll need some help with the two gentlemen who fell, I suppose.”
Cashel started to say that he'd carry the guards out; then he decided he hadn't better touch them again. He hadn't needed to throw them into the wall that way. He knew he shouldn't get angry and hated it afterward when he did, but the cold rage that the boxer's punch had dropped him into hadn't yet dissipated. Better to let somebody else move the fellows.
Cashel bent and picked up the contract that had flown into a corner when the table overset. The writing still didn't mean anything to him, but he could see that the broker and witness signatures were not only different from what they'd been,
they were in squared block letters unlike anything else on the page.
“Themo's name reads LIAR,” Mellie said, sitting in the crook of Cashel's right elbow. “And the foreman who signed below him is LIAR'S WITNESS. My, but you're naughty, Cashel!”
She went off into peals of familiar laughter.
“I didn't do this!” Cashel said in amazement. That's what he'd thought of the broker, sure, but ⦠“I
couldn't
do anything like that!”
“Of course you did it, silly!” the sprite said. “And you were right, too. He's a
nasty
man.”
Servants, sailors from the Serian ship judging from their callused hands, were carrying the guards out. Four held each unconscious man. There was blood on the wall where the fellows had hit. Cashel grimaced and looked away.
Frasa and Jen stood before him. When he looked toward them, they bowed. “Master Cashel,” Frasa said, “we had no idea what you were. Thank you from our deepest hearts.”
“Were you sent to us, sir?” Jen asked.
Cashel didn't know what to say or do. For want of a better choice he handed the contract to Frasa. “I shouldn't have hit those fellows,” he muttered. “On the wall, I mean.”
“If you'll consent to act for us further,” Frasa said, “our only remaining hope is to contact our other broker, Sidras or-Morr. We can't go out ourselves, and Sidras may reasonably feel that it's unsafe to come here to negotiate with us.”
The outside door opened. The crowd roared; the clang of a stone hitting the helmet of a member of Themo's entourage rang through the factory. Nobody in the street was a worse enemy to the Serians now than the disgruntled broker, but with luck the two groups would bloody each other well before the mob realized they were all on the same side.
“the lives in a house on Government Square,” Jen said. “We haven't contacted him since we landed, however.”
“I know where it is,” Cashel said. He'd passed through the square with Benlo. He supposed he could find it again. If
he got confused, well, he had Mellie to help him. “But I don't think I ought to be doing that sort of business for you.”
“We trust you implicitly, Master Cashel,” Jen said. “Of course the risk to you is terrible. Perhaps we'd better reload the cargo and take a loss for the trip.”
Cashel shrugged. “It doesn't look that bad a risk,” he said. “I mean, if I wait till things settle down for a while out there.”
He picked up one of the steel caps lying on the floor. It had been the boxer's; he had a big head.
Jen took the cap from Cashel's hands. “We'll have the dent hammered out of it, Master Cashel,” he said. “Is there anything else you'd like?”
I'd like to know what's going on
, Cashel thought. Aloud he said, “No, I guess I'll be all right.”
“Of course we'll be all right!” Mellie said, stretching like a grinning cat. “It'll be fun!”
I
lna was alone.
She'd thought she'd see Garric and Tenoctris ahead of her when she plunged through the portal, but there was nothing: no figures, no ahead; even the portal had vanished.
She stood on a gray plain, though even the notion of standing was a distortion of reality when she couldn't feel ground beneath her feet. She had no sense of falling; no sense of anything really.
“Garric!” Ilna called. She could hear her voice but it had no overtones or echoes. There was no other sound.
The horizon was dead flat in all directions. The sky was minusculely lighter than the ground, but even that difference could have been a self-created illusion, a small madness her
mind had worked on itself to keep from shattering completely.
Ilna reached behind her and waggled a hand through empty air. She couldn't have been more than inches from the gate of light by which she'd entered this limbo, but there was no sign of it now. She walked around the imagined doorway, hoping in vain it was visible from the other side.
She began to walk. One direction was the same as all others. She left no footprints behind her, nor were there any landmarks to prevent her from going in circles.
The horizon shifted as she moved toward it: sometimes the line of gray over gray was higher, as though she was looking up a hill, sometimes lower, as though she was on the crest. Each stride took the same amount of effort as the one before it, and the line of the horizon was always horizontal.
They abandoned you here, Ilna.
She held a steady pace, a ground-devouring pace that she could keep up all day and half the night besides. She wouldn't run. There was no place to run to.
They tricked you into coming here. They're laughing now about the way they got rid of you.
Her hands knotted the halter as she strode on. When they finished, the rope was a single mass the size of a man's head. Her fingers began to pick it apart again.
You weren't good enough for Garric and his new friends. They were embarrassed to have you around.
There was a point of light in the sky directly ahead of her. It was too small to be the sun, but it shone brilliantly sharp against the gray. She continued to walk.
The anonymous surface beneath her feet gave way to coarse gravel, though it was minutes of further walking before Ilna could see anything but undifferentiated gray. Her stride hadn't changed since she began walking. Her hands were knotting the rope again in a fashion wholly different from the first time, though the result would seem identical to anyone else.
The ground was like the shingle beach of Barca's Hamlet.
They all laughed at you there too, Ilna.
When she first saw the tree she felt that she'd always known its presence. It was in black silhouette against the light gray sky, and the sun was behind it. She walked on.
You would have sacrificed everything for them, Ilna. But they cast you away.
The tree's trunk and surface roots seemed normal enough, but Ilna found herself wondering how far away it really was. Her strides didn't appear to bring the tree any closer.
Its branches were leafless and twisted into a loose knot, a stylized tree-of-life pattern. They began to move.
You're lucky to have found me, Ilna. There are terrible things in this place.
“Who are you?” Ilna said. Her voice vanished without an echo. There was nothing in any direction except the tree.
I'm your friend. I'll give you everything you want.
There were tears on her cheeks. “I want to go back!” She wouldn't beg. “Please let me go back!”
Of course I'll take you back, Ilna; I'm your friend. I know that you don't belong in this place, so I'll take you to where you should be. But you're a weaver. Wouldn't you first like to learn how to really weave?
“I don't understand,” Ilna said. She didn't know when she'd stopped walking; she now stood motionless on the gravel plain. The rope was a limp coil in her hands.
I can teach you to weave patterns that will make you a queen, Ilna; a goddess, even.
“How can you ⦔ Ilna said. Then she said, “Why?”
They won't sneer at you again, Ilna. Garric left you to run after that stuck-up hussy, but he'll never leave you again. They'll all notice you.
“I want to go back ⦔ Ilna whispered.
But first shall I teach you to weave, Una?
“Yes,” she said. She dropped the halter of rye straw and shouted again,
“Yes!”
Then I'll teach you, because I'm your friend.
The branches were moving faster. The pinpoint sun glared hotter, brighter. Ilna had to turn her head.
Your only friend.
The branches continued to weave patterns in her mind; ever deeper in her mind. For the first time in her life, Ilna was not alone.