Tymon stopped, and took a long look around at nothing. "I think I’m lost."

  YOU ARE WORSE THAN LOST. YOU ARE THICK. EVEN FOR A MORTAL.

  Tymon still saw nothing and no one. "Amaet?"

  MORE AND MORE. WHY ARE YOU CALLING FOR THAT ONE? SHE IS NOT THE ONE YOU SEEK. I AM.

  "Who are you?"

  YOU ARE WASTING TIME, AND YOU MORTALS HAVE SO LITTLE.

  "I need to ask her a question!"

  NO YOU DON’T. YOU NEED TO LISTEN TO THE ANSWER YOU’VE BEEN GIVEN.

  Tymon sighed. "Riddles. What is it about the Powers that loves riddles?"

  WHAT IS IT ABOUT MORTALS THAT SEEKS PEBBLES AND IGNORES MOUNTAINS?

  Tymon kept looking, but he still saw no one, no image of a willow tree, no shaded cool place by dark waters. Nothing. "If by that you mean I don’t understand, you’re right. What I received from the Oracle was not an answer. It was merely the statement that an answer existed!"

  There was a low, thrumming sound that might have been laughter. If, that is, thunder could be said to laugh. TRUE, BUT CHANGES NOTHING. THE ANSWER IS THERE; WHAT YOU REALLY SEEK IS AN EXPLANATION.

  Tymon thought about it. "Yes."

  THEN FIND IT.

  Now Tymon did see something, if only a lessening of the darkness in one direction. He thought of it as north, if such terms had any meaning there, but that didn’t really matter. It was a path, and he followed it until he came to a familiar place.

  "This is the Shrine of the Oracle of Yanasha. Or at least appears so."

  VERY GOOD. SINCE THE SHRINE IS A PLACE IN THE MORTAL SPHERE, WHICH THIS IS NOT, THEN IT CANNOT BE THE SHRINE OF WHICH YOU SPEAK, CAN IT?

  "Then why does it look like the Shrine?"

  A BETTER QUESTION MIGHT BE: WHY DO YOU SEE IT AS SUCH?

  Tymon sighed. To his own way of thinking he’d long since given up on the idea of getting a straight answer—or one he knew as such—from any Power. Still, there was something in him that persisted in choosing hope over experience. Try as he might, he could not rid himself of the impulse entirely. For the moment he tried to suppress it, and save his attention for what he saw there, trying to understand what it meant.

  He came to the door of the shrine and passed through. The priest was there at the offering bowl, sorting the offering coins into little piles by type—gold, silver, copper—and eating them. He glanced at Tymon, said, "You’ve paid already" and went back to eating coins. They snapped and crunched under his teeth like little sugar wafers; the priest smacked his lips with pleasure. Tymon shuddered delicately and moved past him, out to the back of the shrine and through the small arched door that led outside to the Oracle.

  She was waiting for him, as somehow Tymon had known she would be, huddled alone and miserable in her madness on the little island of dirt, rock, and willows.

  DON’T FORGET THE BLANKET.

  "It was a foolish gesture."

  YET YOU MADE THAT GESTURE.

  Tymon had the blanket in his hands. He held it up, looked at it. It was the same one. Then, because he didn’t know what else to do, Tymon crossed the bridge. It wasn’t exactly the same, this time. This time the Oracle looked at him as he approached, and reached out for the blanket when he offered it.

  THANK YOU, she said, and wrapped herself up snug and warm. Tymon recognized the voice, even though the only sound was in his head.

  So there you are, he thought. "It wasn’t like this," he said aloud.

  THAT’S NOT A QUESTION.

  "All right, then: why have I lost the Long Look?"

  SILLY MAN. YOU DIDN’T LOSE IT, AND THAT’S THE WRONG QUESTION BESIDES. MY PATIENCE IS NOT WITHOUT LIMITS, TYMON. I’LL GIVE YOU ONE MORE CHANCE, BUT THAT’S ALL.

  Tymon thought about it. He hoped this time his understanding was better. "Why did I bring that blanket?"

  BECAUSE, said the Oracle, YOU DIDN’T WANT THE WRETCHED LITTLE GIRL TO FREEZE.

  Tymon frowned. "Just that?"

  YOU CAN LIE TO YOURSELF ALL YOU PLEASE, BUT YOU CAN NOT LIE TO ME. YOU HAD OTHER CONSIDERATIONS, OF COURSE. YET YOU STRIP THIS ONE TO THE CORE, AND THAT’S WHAT YOU FIND. THAT’S WHAT IT MEANT, AND THAT’S ALL IT WAS.

  The Oracle looked at him then, the way she had looked at him that night. There was no madness in her eyes, but rather something far more terrible. She said the same thing, in a voice that was not quite her own. "You are answered."

  "Yes," Tymon agreed, "I believe I finally am."

  Tymon returned to darkness, the Oracle and the shrine were at first hidden and then, Tymon realized, gone. He looked around him, this time to the west where a lightness began and then grew to become brighter and brighter until it almost blinded him. Almost. And then he could see very well indeed.

  The Long Look had returned.

  §

  Seb dreamed about a boat on a quiet river. It was summer; he was warm. The banks of the river were firm and covered with soft grass and willows. Ahead there was an island, where many friends he did not have gathered for a picnic, waiting for him. They called out and waved to him, and he happily paddled in their direction.

  The river changed from placid to raging in the space of a heartbeat. The boat shuddered violently, rocking side to side and finally turning completely over. Seb fell down in the cold darkness where someone or something grabbed him, shook him, held him, drowned him—

  "—Seb wake up!"

  Seb woke, blinking in the very early morning light, or rather what there was of it. The hands shaking him were Tymon’s. Seb yawned. "If anyone would rock my boat, it would have to be you."

  Tymon stopped, but only for a moment. "Hurry. There’s work to do and almost no time to do it."

  Seb sat up, yawning and scratching. "What are you talking about?"

  "I need twine, and I need wood. Real wood, not this dried cow flop we’ve been using for fuel. Sticks, twigs, saplings...and clay. I think I saw a bank of it near that stream we passed on the way to the Oracle, as well as a small grove of aspen. We shouldn’t be far from it now."

  Seb struggled against the cobwebs in his head. "What’s happened?"

  "Nothing yet, but something will if we don’t move quickly. Get your ax."

  Now Seb was fully awake. He threw the blankets off and reached for his boots. "You’ve seen something, haven’t you?"

  Tymon didn’t even look up as he shoved equipment into his pack willy nilly. "Yes."

  Seb finally understood. "It’s the Long Look. It’s back."

  It wasn’t a question, so Tymon didn’t answer it. Seb scrambled to his feet and rolled up his blankets as quickly as he could, while dreams of retirement and friends and picnics and afternoons on lazy rivers died on the cold morning frost.

  It only took an hour or so to find what Tymon required. Seb cut several small saplings to length, found a chunk of spalted deadfall for the torso. Tymon took the wood and twine then whittled and tied and knotted until a wooden approximation of a man with stick arms and legs and a molded clay head lay on the dead grass. Tymon carved two glyphs on its chest and knocked once on the body like someone trying to open a door, and it was done.

  The stick-golem sat up.

  Seb shivered. No matter how many times he had seen this done, it still raised the hairs on the back of his neck. Seb’s discomfort grew when the creature bent its jointed arms and held its twiggy fingers before its face. It seemed to be looking at its hands, though it was hard to tell since the creature had no eyes. Nor proper hands, either. Seb did not know how the creature saw. He did not know how it stood or walked and seemed to be alive either, but that was all part of the mystery.

  Tymon rummaged about in his pack until he found a soiled tunic and this he slipped over the creature’s head, then a spare blanket wrapped and hid the rest of the body and made a deep cowl for the head. When Tymon finished dressing his creation he spoke to it. "I know you’re just now come to being and that’s a stressful thing, but there’s no time to contemplate your existence. I have job for you."

  Seb listened along with the golem as the creature got its marching orders. The very last thing Tymon did was to present the creature with the knife he had used to create it. Then the creature set off on the path back toward the northern pass, slowly at first on its sapling legs, then faster and faster as it got its balance and some more coordination in its body. Soon it was out of sight.

  Tymon watched as the golem disappeared. "We’ll follow, but it can travel much faster than we can, for all that it’s a rushed job and not very strong. Either it will be in time or it won’t. Either it will be enough or it won’t."

  "The Long Look didn’t tell you?"

  "Even under the best of conditions—which this is not—the Long Look only tells me what’s going to happen without intervention. It never tells me what to do about it, nor often either if I should do anything. That part’s always been up to me. Which," he said, and sighed, "was precisely the problem."

  Seb nodded, and began to finish his packing while Tymon did the same. "I wondered if you’d get around to telling me. So what happened? What was the problem with the Long Look?"

  "Nothing. The problem was me."

  Seb hoisted his pack. "I don’t understand."

  "Neither did I, until some Power nearly hit me over the head with it. You’ve said before that you believe the Long Look is a curse, and I’d pretty much come to agree with you, but we were wrong. It’s not a curse, at least not strictly speaking. It is something within me, something I was born with. I think I was aware of it at some level even as a child, but it was only during my later studies that it really manifested its full power."

  Seb trudged along gamely, though Tymon, carried away with his eloquence again, was walking too fast. "First, slow down. Second, tell me what that has to do with the Long Look going away."

  "Don’t you see? The Powers neither gave nor removed the Long Look; they use it just as they use me, and I confess I’ve been a willing tool for the most part. But when it failed it was only because I, so deep down that I wasn’t aware of it, wanted it to fail."

  Seb frowned for a moment, but the cloud on his brow soon lifted. "Ah, I see. Without the Long Look you’d be freed of the responsibility."

  Tymon shrugged slightly. "Well, there is that. But it wasn’t the main thing."

  Seb, feeling a little proud of himself for his insight, was somewhat let down. "It wasn’t? Then what was?"

  "I was afraid of the same thing Takren was afraid of. That we were going to become monsters. Just as dark and just as evil and twisted as everyone believed."

  Seb laughed. When he finally stopped he said, "Tymon, you are a monster. Ask anyone!"

  Tymon shook his head. "I’m not talking about anyone’s opinion, Seb; I’m talking about my own."

  Seb’s good humor left him. "Oh."

  "I know what people say of me, Seb. I know there are good reasons that all good folk think of me as they do; we’ve even added to rumor when the possibility arose. Yet, when I tote up the balance of the things I’ve actually done, it’s still not very pretty. I know there are reasons for that, too. My deeds have always bothered me. I was afraid that they weren't bothering me enough."

  Seb almost smiled again, but he resisted. "Then, it seems, I was right. If you were afraid of what the Long Look was making you become, the obvious solution was to get rid of it."

  Tymon sighed. "Or bury it so deep that the difference wasn’t worth mentioning."

  "So what dug it up?"

  "The Oracle of Yanasha, when I brought her that blanket."

  "For reasons you explained."

  "I was lying. As much to myself as to you. I brought her the blanket because she was cold," Tymon said. "I-I didn’t want her to be cold." Tymon looked at him. "I’ll have much to answer for in the final tally, no doubt, but I’m no monster."

  "No, you’re not, Tymon," Seb said. "I always knew that, even if you didn’t."

  Tymon smiled. "Thank you for that."

  Seb cleared his throat and then looked at the path ahead. "So, where to now? Back to the pass as quickly as we can?"

  "Yes. And then, well, we’ll see. A lot has happened in my temporary blindness. There’s no guarantee that we can set it all to rights."

  "Is there ever?"

  "No. One thing I can guarantee, however."

  "And this is?"

  Tymon smiled. "Only that, as before, for some matters the people involved are just going to have to straighten things out on their own."

  §

  Koric looked at the first few white flakes as they fell. He held out his hand and let one cold wet flake settle there. It turned to water almost instantly. "Is that snow?"

  It almost never snowed near the coast and, other than a few white-capped mountains near the monastery, Koric had never even seen it. Koric was uncertain what to do. The temperature was falling as night approached and while time was important so was not freezing to death. He looked around; there wasn’t much in the way of firewood, and he didn’t think the situation would improve much further on.

  I think the best I can do is look for shelter.

  There didn’t seem to be much in the way of that, either. He thought about going further; maybe his luck would be better father along the trail.

  I need to get out of sight.

  Koric blinked. Where had that notion come from? Out of sight? There was no one else around to be out of sight of. He started off again, and again the thought returned, stronger. Koric tried to take another step and stopped in a near panic.

  "What is happening?" he asked, softly.

  There was no answer, and no real alternative to obeying the impulse. Koric looked around and finally spotted a crevice in the west wall of the pass. He tested it with his staff. It wasn’t more than four feet deep, but it was large enough to wedge himself inside, and a fallen boulder shielded at least part of it from view. Koric pushed his travel pack in as far as it would go, then wrapped himself in a dark blanket and followed, holding his staff in front of him as he wedged himself in.

  The snowflakes were getting thicker as he settled in to watch, and wait, for what he did not know. When his breathing slowed and he was finally free of his own footsteps, he heard a new sound, distant but not very. A slow crunch crunch rhythm on the falling snow. It stopped often and the began again. Slowly, carefully. Koric was neither a hunter nor a tracker, but he had sense enough to know when he was being stalked. Bandits? It seemed more than likely. Koric waited, shivering, hoping the snow would hurry up and cover his trail and knowing it was too late as the footsteps got closer and closer.

  "Hello, Koric. I must say I never thought it would be you."

  Koric pushed backward, hoping against hope to find a deeper crevice than the one he knew was there, but there was no place to hide.

  "Aktos," he said.

  The assassin nodded, and the dagger was already in his hand. "Apparently it is your fate to be killed by me."

  Koric took a tighter grip on his staff, though there was no room to use it, and Aktos blocked the only way out. "Will you at least tell me why?"

  "Why? Next I suppose you’ll be telling me that you aren’t here to warn Tymon of our coming? Ah, no. It’s written in your expression as plain as any text. That is why you are here. And that is why I must kill—ah!"

  Something flashed by the crevice behind Aktos. The assassin spun quickly, and Koric saw a splotch of red on his tunic before he slipped out of sight. Koric inched his way out of the crevice to find Aktos confronting a nightmare.

  "Well now," Aktos said, "what are you?"

  His voice was calm enough but Koric could see the fear in his eyes. Koric shared it. The thing facing the assassin in the snow, a short single-bladed knife in its twiggy fingers, was not a human being. It was hardly taller than Seb, a simacrulum of wood and clay, dressed in a tattered shirt. It balanced itself on two little stumps of wood, leaving round holes in the snow wherever it stepped. It circled Aktos, then struck again with such great speed that a new line of red appeared on the back of Aktos’s right hand.

  The assassin glanced back at Koric now free of the crevice. "You’ll run if you’ve a brain in your head, but I’ll catch you once I’ve attended to this thing."

  Koric could barely croak out the words. "Maybe it will attend to you. Maybe there are more of them."

  Koric could see that Aktos wanted to look around them, perhaps expecting mannequin assassins to appear behind ever boulder and bush. "No," he said. "I’ve heard of these things. Tymon’s work. But rather shoddy, hasty. The twine at the joints is near to giving way. I wager this is the only one."

  "Tymon did this?"

  Aktos spared him another glance. "Surely you don’t think the man’s reputation is entirely idle talk, do you?" The mannequin danced forward again; Aktos barely eluded it.

  Koric took a better grip on his staff. "That thing’s faster than you are."

  Aktos conceded the point. "But I have better reach." He drew his rapier with one smooth motion and struck in almost the same wile. A piece of clay exploded from the side of the creature’s head, but it did not falter.

  "Ah, silly me. I know better than that—" Aktos struck again and, though the mannequin parried, Aktos still managed to slice one of the cords at its left hip; the cord wasn’t completely severed and the creature stumbled, recovered, then favored the damaged hip as it changed the direction of its circling. Aktos smiled. He was still wary, but the fear was gone.

  "See? It can be hurt. It can be destroyed. In the last century Toman of Calyt destroyed a magic guardian of brass and steel to kill the Duke of the Isles. I can do as much to this piece of wood. Rather a feather in my cap, I think."

  Aktos struck again. This time the creature parried and almost managed to run up his guard. Almost. With its blade on Aktos’s sword that left its body undefended. Aktos kicked it solidly and the thing spun end over end across the snow before it clattered into a boulder. It started to rise again but Aktos was there, striking once, twice, three and four times at it the twine of its joints. Koric fancied he could almost see the spark or life or animation or whatever passed for living in the mannequin fade out. It collapsed, a puppet with all its strings completely cut, and lay scattered and still in the snow.

 

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