The priest raised a hand in blessing. "Thank you for your help, good sirs, and your attention for my rambling. Go with Yanasha," he said, and led the donkey down the path to the south. Seb watched him go.

  "Dogma puts most mountains to shame for implacability. He doesn’t stand a chance."

  Tymon nodded. "Probably not. Then again, maybe that’s not the point."

  "You’re being cryptic again."

  "Yes," Tymon said. He looked at the now empty shrine. "We’d best be going ourselves."

  "Where?"

  "At the moment? Anywhere but here."

  §

  Galan granted an audience to Lady Margate only after she made it perfectly clear that she wasn’t going to go away, but it was Tals who finally tipped the scale

  .

  "Tell her I’m busy. I don’t want to see anyone right now."

  Tals bowed. "Highness, I am at my tether’s end. I tell her you’re busy. She tells me you’re not. I tell her you have much on your mind. She says you have only one thing on your mind, and there’s the problem. I don’t understand her meaning, Highness, but she is rather insistent."

  It was Galan’s considered opinion that Tals knew Lady Margate’s meaning only too well, but there was nothing to be gained by saying so. He reluctantly granted her request. At the appointed time Lady Margate didn’t so much arrive at Galan's quarters as invade, flags flying and with the glint of steel in her eyes. Within a few moments Galan was beginning to see what Tals had been up against.

  Lady Margate curtseyed with surprising grace for her size, then dismissed the guards with such force of command that they left before they quite had time to wonder if they should. She waited only until she and Galan were alone and got right down to business. "Honestly, Highness, how can you be such a fool?"

  Galan sat, stunned. "Lady Margate, are you mad? Don’t you know who I am?"

  "Prince Galan of House Kotara, Crown Prince of Borasur, Protector of the Shrine of Charada, Duke of Colna, Earl of Seleb, recently Knight of the Order of the Ocean Star. Shall I go on? I fancy I know your titles better than you do."

  Galan’s face went bright red. "I’m new at this, Lady Margate, so I have to ask: should I execute you now?"

  "You can do what you want, up to a point," Lady Margate said. "And if you do take my poor head I hope you have a better story than the one you gave King Macol. Even he only believed it because it was expedient to do so."

  Galan just looked at her. "If you know what I assume you do, then you know why I have done what I have done."

  "For someone ‘new to this,’ as you say, you’ve certainly mastered the art of pronouncing words while avoiding meaning. If you’re talking about your unfortunate brother then, yes, I do know. I didn’t dismiss the guards merely for the privilege of chastising you, Highness," Lady Margate said, and then smiled. "That was merely fortunate happenstance."

  Galan imagined a shark would smile thus. "So now you know? How soon before the knowledge is common to every keep and hovel in all the Farlands? Lady Margate, how can I refuse to act then? My brother, a Prince of the Blood, was murdered!"

  "Your brother was indeed murdered, Prince, but there’s a distinction here that you are missing: Ashesa killed your brother, she’s admitted such to you and me both. That doesn’t mean she was responsible for his death."

  Prince Galan sighed deeply. "You’re right, my lady. The distinction eludes me."

  "Oh? Then why is my dear child’s head still on her shoulders? You had the power to take it on the first day, legalities be damned."

  "I had—have, the right. There would have been consequences, right or not. I don’t want a war with Morushe. Or anyone, come to that."

  "Do you hear the excuse in your voice? I do. If ‘justice’ is what you really want and war is the price, well then you’ll pay it, and I think you realize that as well as anyone. Yet you’ve been trying to find some other way out of this. Do you deny it?"

  Galan just stared at her for a moment of two before he found his voice again. "No, of course I don’t deny it!"

  "Why? The truth, Highness. You want another option and I think I can give it to you. But before I do anything, or you decide to haul me away to an adjoining cell and call the headsman, I want to know."

  "Because I’m still in love with Ashesa!"

  The words came out. It wasn’t what he had meant to say. He was no longer sure what he meant to say. But once the words were spoken, Galan knew them for truth. "She killed my brother. I should not love her. Yet I do. Martok forgive me."

  Lady Margate nodded. "No doubt, but it’s not Martok you should be asking. You punish yourself as much as you punish Ashesa. As she accepts her confinement with—let’s both be truthful here—uncharacteristic meekness due to her own very considerable remorse. She wished your brother no ill, Galan. She even tried to warn him about Tymon's trap. But he had some very strange ideas about what being a hero meant, one of which prodded him to demand something of Ashesa that she could not give him."

  "That didn't give her the right—" his voice cut off as if someone had interrupted, but Lady Margate had said nothing. When he remained silent, she went on.

  "Highness, I don't pretend to know where those notions came from. You were his brother, so perhaps you know, but it doesn't matter now. What does matter is this—Ashesa defended herself. Yes, she killed your brother, Highness, and in her place I would have done the same. But she did not murder him. Tymon the Black bears that crime."

  Galan looked as if he was in pain. "Even ... even if I can accept what you say, that still leaves the matter where it was before—what must I do?"

  She raised one eyebrow and looked at him like a parent regarding a stubbornly thick child. "Do? You must decide. Here it is, Prince: You can forgive Ashesa, and you can help her forgive herself. You can learn to live with what she’s done, just as she must. Or call the headsman now and let us get this over and done. You’re late for your coronation already. Whether you’re also late for a war or a wedding is entirely up to you."

  "My brother—"

  "Was murdered by the sorcerer known as Tymon the Black for reasons we may never know. That is the way history will remember it, Your Highness. Are you strong enough to do the same?"

  Galan looked at her, all anger gone. "I don’t know."

  "Then I suggest you find out, but do it soon. Right now Ashesa is very confused and hesitant, but she won’t stay that way."

  Galan smiled then. It was a faint sort of smile, but a smile nonetheless. "That I do know."

  "Then you know that she won’t wait in that comfortable cage forever, not for you or a legion better. There’s still time to sort this out, mind, but not a wealth of it. Make your decision as a brother, a lover, or a king, but make it soon."

  With neither leave nor curtsey, Lady Margate withdrew and left Galan to battle his demons alone.

  §

  After their first day in the mountain pass to Wylandia, Aktos paused on the trail for a long time. "Someone else is following them," Aktos said.

  "Following Seb and his sorcerer? Are you sure?" Vor asked.

  Aktos nodded. "I’m not the greatest tracker in the Farlands, and this rocky ground doesn’t help. But the only tracks through here in some weeks have been those two sets, and now this one which I’d noticed but didn’t pay proper heed before. I thought it was coincidence."

  Vor grunted. "This pass isn’t used often but neither is it abandoned, nor is it very wide. How do you know this person, whoever it is, isn’t just going the same way?"

  "Because they follow too closely. You can see here," Aktos pointed to one of the few muddy spots among the rocks and frost," where he loses the track and then casts back and forth several times until he finds and follows it again." Aktos showed the tracks leading away, and Vor could follow them himself for a short while until they moved into the rockfield again and grew too tenuous for his untrained eye to see.

  "You’re right. He’s following, not merely going in the same direction." Vor looked thoughtful. "What could this mean? A bandit?"

  Aktos shrugged. "Possible," he said, in a tone that did not sound optimistic. "Yet the habit of bandits is to go to a likely spot and wait for their prey to come to them. It’s also not their habit to attack a larger party unless they’re very sure of themselves, and the prize is worth the risk. In this instance my instincts say no."

  "Which leaves?"

  "Well, it may be my imagination, but don’t you think the abbot was just a bit, say, jovial to the pair of us? They’re used to visitors. It’s not so rare or remarkable."

  "He was very helpful," Vor said.

  "But not very quick in that help. It’s my considered opinion that everything, from answers to provisioning, took just a mite longer than necessary. Or so it seemed to me at the time, but it was such a small thing I convinced myself I was mistaken."

  Vor stopped. "They knew our errand," he said. "They’ve sent someone ahead to warn Seb and that bastard magician!"

  "Possible," Aktos said. He didn’t sound the least bit uncertain.

  "Well, then. We can’t reach Tymon before he does. We can, however, stop him from reaching Tymon at all."

  Aktos bowed. "I can travel faster alone, Sir. If you think speed is needed."

  Vor barely hesitated. "Speed is needed. I have an appointment to keep within seven days, whether our current business is concluded or not."

  Aktos frowned. "A meeting? You didn’t tell me anything of this."

  "Because it doesn’t concern you. Right now that messenger does, so go on ahead and kill him. Then stay for me. I want no action taken on Tymon and Seb without my presence, even if the opportunity arises."

  "Are you certain? I trust my skill and would hope that you do as well, albeit those are two very challenging targets."

  Vor sighed. "Your skills are not in question, but that devil has risen from the dead once already. I’m going to be there to make sure it doesn’t happen again."

  Ω

  11 Monsters and heroes and everyone else

  "They’ve been in there for some time," Tals said.

  Lady Margate, intent on her needlework, barely nodded. "Hmmm."

  They were in the corridor outside Princess Ashesa’s cell, and had been for what seemed like hours, at least to Tals. Lady Margate, on the other hand, could have given a stone lessons in patience and taught a milch cow a thing or two about serenity, so far as Tals was concerned. She merely sat, plying her needle, taking advantage of the last of the good western light from a row of high windows lining the walkway to the tower. Tals had tried sitting for a while, but now all he could do was pace the length of the corridor, over and over.

  Say, rather, most of the length of the corridor. When the voices within Ashesa’s cell had risen to an almost intelligible pitch, Tals had tried to use the cover of his perambulations to get an ear closer to the cell door. All he heard was a distinct rumble of disapproval from the ‘inattentive’ Lady Margate. He’d sighed deeply and gone, chastised, back to his pacing.

  Tals finally stopped in front of her. "I gather you know more about this than I do," he said, which only brought another "Hmm" from Lady Margate. Tals tried again. "Lady Margate, do you know what they’re talking about or not?"

  Lady Margate finally looked up. "Of course I know what they’re talking about, and so do you. They’re discussing their future and trying to decide if they have one, and their respective kingdom’s say in the matter be hanged. That’s all we know and all we need to know."

  "Dynastic marriages should not turn on the whim of the people involved," Tals said.

  Lady Margate paused to replenish her needle with blue thread. "Ideally? No. Yet surely you will concede that this situation is a little unusual?"

  "Aye, that I will. Though exactly how unusual continues to elude me."

  She smiled at him. "One doesn’t need to know all the details, Sir Tals; indeed in the future that knowledge could be an absolute inconvenience. It is the results that concern both me and you now, and those are currently out of our hands. Do sit down. You hover like a vulture."

  "I’m sorry, but I can’t help it. How long must we wait?"

  Lady Margate raised an eyebrow. "I gather that’s a rhetorical question?"

  Tals sighed and sat back down. "Your pardon, Lady. I just wish there was something I could do."

  Lady Margate shrugged. "We’ve done all we can do except wait and pray, so that’s what we’re going to do. The rest is up to them. I find needlework very soothing in this sort of situation."

  "I’m a knight," he said. "If I touch a needle other than to sew up a wound I’ll never be able to show my face in the field again."

  "Then go hit someone in the practice yard. Or read a book. Do whatever you must do, but do not touch that door. There’s too much at stake."

  Tals leaned closer. He looked at what Lady Margate was doing for some moments, then, "Could you show me how you do that?"

  "Why?"

  Tals looked unhappy. "The altar of my curiosity," he said. "demands a sacrifice."

  §

  "Have you ever wondered about Wylandia, Seb?"

  Seb dropped another piece of dried cow dung on the campfire. "What do you mean?"

  "I mean it is less than it should be, as a kingdom, as a place in the world. The valleys are rich, the grazing is good, the temperature relatively mild considering how far north we are. The hills have ores and gems in abundance. And yet...."

  Seb finished the thought. "And yet it remains a pariah among the Seven Kingdoms. Neither their mineral wealth nor their prized horses are traded as extensively as they should be. Too restrained by the passes that bottle it up here, and yet still making the occasional raid—with provocation always claimed—just as in ancient times. Any of that?"

  Tymon nodded. "Yes. All of it. Aldair is a good man, for a king. Even his enemies say so. Yet it doesn’t seem to make any difference. This year he negotiates with Morushe to advantage; the next he’ll lead a quick slash and burn raid over some imagined slight or other and undo all. It’s a land of bad choices; the method of validating the Oracle is just one example. I want to think about this, as time permits."

  "Fine. Just stop stalling on the current problem."

  "I don’t understand," Tymon said.

  "There’s something you’re not telling me. And before you get cryptic, let me be more specific: there’s something about the Oracle of Yanasha you’re not telling me."

  Tymon stared at the fire. "You’re right."

  Seb looked at him. "You did receive an oracle, didn’t you? She died, but she spoke to you before she did. Is that what happened?"

  "Yes, Seb."

  Seb blinked. "I suspected as much. Yet I did not expect you to be so straightforward about it."

  Tymon shrugged. "I’m never deliberately obtuse, and even if I chose to be so, this ‘oracle’ would be cryptic enough without any help from me. Frankly, I’m baffled."

  "What did she say?"

  "It was after I wrapped her in the blanket. She looked at me for a moment, and said ‘You are answered.’ Then she died. She closed her eyes and she just...stopped."

  The flicker of emotion on Tymon’s face apparently worried Seb. "’You are answered’? That’s exactly what she said to Hoba."

  Tymon chewed on a ragged thumbnail. "Yes."

  Seb sat down by the fire. "She was the Oracle of Yanasha, but she was also a mad, starving little girl. Perhaps she was babbling."

  Tymon nodded. "Perhaps."

  Seb poured himself a mug of the strong bitterbush tea, though he couldn’t quite tell if the full pungency was from the tea or the smoke from their fire. "You don’t believe that, I take it."

  Tymon looked away from the fire now; this time his gaze was fixed on the sky full of stars above them. "When she said the same thing to Hoba it was nothing less than the truth. And, as with Hoba, the voice was not entirely that of a little girl. Especially not one so near death as she was."

  "You keep mentioning her condition."

  Tymon shivered, and pulled his blanket closer about him. "Do I? I didn’t realize."

  "Deny it if you want. I’m just telling you what I see."

  "I know the reason the Oracle is treated as it is."

  "That’s not the same thing. You don’t agree with it, any more than that guilt wracked priest does."

  "I never said otherwise."

  Seb conceded the point. "You wrapped her with the blanket before she spoke, that and nothing more?"

  "Nothing. I didn’t speak to her at all."

  "Neither did Hoba. Tuls sang, which wasn’t exactly a question...." Seb’s voice trailed off. He frowned in confusion for a moment, then smiled. "She did not answer Hoba. She said that he was answered, that an answer had come. And it had. She said the same thing to you, and there you have it."

  Tymon kept his gaze on the stars. "Now who’s being cryptic?"

  "Not at all. I just mean that there was something in your actions that forms the answer to your question. The fact that you never asked it apparently does not matter."

  "I’m not a total fool, Seb. That occurred to me, too. But what did I do? I just brought a blanket. It was not a courageous thing, since I fear no priests and suspect that Yanasha cares even less about her sect’s dogma than I do. I simply didn’t want the waif to die before I’d received her Oracle. It was selfishness."

  "So you keep saying."

  Tymon sounded almost desperate. "But what else? And what does it have to do with the Long Look in either case?"

  "I think you keep asking yourself that, and I think you keep getting the wrong answer. We’re tired. Let’s sleep on it, and maybe we’ll both be thinking clearer in the morning."

  Seb banked the fire while Tymon found a decent sleeping spot nearby. After he had lain there a while looking at the stars Tymon realized it wasn’t sleep he needed as such. Rather it was the open doorway that sleep could sometimes bring, when you asked it the right way. He set his sight on a distant goal and closed his eyes.

  The understanding took time, but Tymon hadn’t realized just how distant the goal was. He had been walking for what he thought was a long time, though granted it was hard to be certain in that place. Time wasn’t as straightforward a notion there as it pretended to be in the conscious world. Here the masks were missing, save the ones you brought along yourself.

 

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