Panteles nodded. Romezan snorted. Turan grinned. Abivard said, "A cogent point, the next question being, What do we do about it?'

  The wizards looked at each other again. Again Bozorg spoke for them: "As things stand now, lord, we do not know." Panteles nodded once more.

  Romezan snorted again, on an entirely different note. "Glad to have you along, mages; glad to have you along." Panteles looked down at the ground. Bozorg, who had served at the palace of the King of Kings, glared.

  Abivard sighed and waved to dismiss both mages. "Bend all your efforts to finding out what Maniakes' wizards have done. When you know—no, when you have even a glimmer—come to me. I don't care what I may be doing; I don't care what hour of the day or night it may be. With you or without you, I intend to keep trying to cross that canal. Come—do you understand?"

  Both wizards solemnly nodded.

  X

  When the sun rose the next morning, Abivard proved as good as his word. He mustered his army, admiring the way the men held their spirit and discipline in the face of the frightening unknown. Maybe, he thought, things will be different this time. The sun is in our face already. Videssian magic often has a lot to do with the sun. If we're already moving toward it, maybe they won't be able to shift us away.

  He thought about spreading that idea among the soldiers but in the end decided against it Had he been more confident he was right, he might have chosen differently. He knew too well, though, that he was only guessing.

  "Forward!" he shouted, raising a hand to his eyes to peer into the morning glare to try to see what the Videssians on the eastern bank of the canal were doing. The answer seemed to be, Not much. Maniakes did not have his army drawn up in battle array to meet the Makuraners. A few squadrons of cavalry trotted back and forth; that was all.

  "Forward!" Abivard shouted again, and urged his horse down into the muddy water of the canal.

  He kept his eye on the sun. As long as I ride straight toward it, everything should be all right, he told himself. The canal wasn't that wide. Surely he and his followers could not reverse themselves and go back up onto the bank from which they'd started: not without noticing. No, they couldn't do that... could they?

  Closer and closer came the eastern bank. The day, like all summer days in the land of the Thousand Cities, promised to be scorchingly hot. Already the sun glared balefully into Abivard's face. He blinked. Yes, the far bank was very close now. But the bank up onto which his dripping horse floundered was the western one, with the sun now unaccountably at his back.

  And here came his army after him, storming up to overwhelm the place they'd just left. Their shouts of amazement and anger and despair said everything that needed saying. No, almost everything: the other thing that needed saying was that he and his army weren't going to be able to cross that cursed canal—the canal that might as well have been literally cursed—till they figured out and overcame whatever sorcery Maniakes was using to thwart them.

  Glumly, Abivard ordered the army to reestablish the camp it had just struck. He spent the next couple of hours pacing through it, doing his best to lift the soldiers' sagging spirits. He knew that best would have been better had his own spirits been anywhere but at the bottom of the sea. But he did not have to show the men that, and he didn't

  At last he went back to his own pavilion. He didn't know exactly what he'd do there: getting drunk seemed as good a plan as any, since he couldn't come to grips with the Videssians. But when he got to the tent, he found Bozorg and Panteles waiting for him.

  "I think I have the answer, eminent sir!" Panteles exclaimed in high excitement.

  "I think this Videssian is out of his mind, lord: utterly mad," Bozorg declared, folding his arms across his chest. "I think he wants only to waste your time, to deceive you, and to give the victory to Maniakes."

  "I think you are as jealous as an ugly girl watching her betrothed talking to her pretty sister," Panteles retorted—not a comparison a Makuraner was likely to use, not in a land of sequestered women, but a telling one even so.

  "I think I'm going to knock your heads together," Abivard said judiciously. "Tell me whatever you have to tell me, Panteles. I'll judge whether it's trickery. If it is, I'll do as I think best."

  Panteles bowed. "As you say, eminent sir. Here." He displayed a length of leather about as long as Abivard's forearm: most likely a piece cut from a belt. Joining the ends, he held them together with thumb and forefinger, then pointed to the resulting circle with his other hand. "How many sides does the strap have, eminent sir?"

  "How many sides?" Abivard frowned. "What foolishness is this?" Maybe Bozorg had known what he was talking about. "It has two, of course: an inside and an outside."

  "And a strap across the Videssian's backside," Bozorg added. But Panteles seemed unperturbed. "Just so," he agreed. "You can trace it with your finger if you like." He held the leather circle out so Abivard could do just that Abivard dutifully did, hoping against hope Panteles wasn't talking to hear himself talk, as Videssians often did. "Now—" Panteles said.

  Bozorg broke in: "Now, lord, he shows you idiotic nonsense. By the God, he should be made to answer for his foolishness with the lash!"

  Anything that could so anger the Makuraner mage was either idiotic nonsense, as he'd said, or exactly the opposite. "As I said, I will judge," Abivard told Bozorg. He turned to Panteles. "Go on. Show me this great discovery of yours, or whatever it is, and explain how it ties up all our troubles like a length of twine around a stack of cured hides."

  "It's not my discovery, and I don't know if it ties up our troubles or not," Panteles said. Oddly, Abivard liked him more for that, not less. The more spectacular a claim, the less likely it was to be justified.

  Panteles held up the length of leather once more and again shaped it into a continuous band. This time, though, he gave it a half twist before joining the two ends together between his thumb and index finger. Bozorg gestured as if to ward off the evil eye, hissing, "Trickery."

  Panteles took no notice either of him or of Abivard's hand upraised in warning. The Videssian wizard said, "This was discovered in the Sorcerers' Collegium in Videssos the city some years ago by a certain Voimios. I don't know whether it's magic or not in any formal sense of the word. Maybe it's only trickery, as the learned Bozorg claims." Like any Videssian worth his salt, he used irony as a stiletto. "Whatever it is, it's interesting. How many sides does the strap have now?" He held it up so Abivard could trace out his answer as he had before.

  "What do you mean, how many sides does it have?" Abruptly, Abivard regretted doubting Bozorg. "It has to have two sides, the same as it did before."

  "Does it?" Panteles' smile was mild, benign. "Show me with your finger, eminent sir, if you'd be so kind."

  With the air of someone humoring a madman, Abivard ran his finger around the outside of the strap. A moment later, he would run it around the inside, and a moment after that he would give Panteles what he deserved for making him the butt of what had to be a foolish joke.

  But in tracing the length of leather with his finger, he somehow found himself back where he'd begun after having touched every finger's breadth of it. "Wait a moment," he said sharply. "Let me try that again." This time he paid closer attention to his work. But paying closer attention didn't seem to matter. Again he traced the entire length of leather and returned to his starting point.

  "Do you see, eminent sir?" Panteles said as Abivard stared down at his own finger as if it had betrayed him. "Voimios' strap—that's the name it took on at the Sorcerers' Collegium— has only one side, not two."

  "That's impossible," Abivard said. Then he looked at his finger again. It looked as if it knew better.

  "You just made a continuous line from your starting point back to your starting point," Panteles said politely. "How could you do that if you went from one side to another? You just got there backward and were taken by surprise."

  As Panteles had doubtless meant them to, the words hung in the air. "Wait," Abivard said. "Let me think. You're trying to tell me Maniakes' wizards have turned the canal into a strap of Voimios—is that what you called it?"

  "Close enough, eminent sir," Panteles said.

  "Drivel!" Bozorg said. He snatched the leather strap out of Panteles' hand and threw it to the ground. "It's a fraud, a fake, a trick. There's no magic whatever to it, only deception."

  "What do you have to say to that?" Abivard asked Panteles.

  "Eminent sir, I never claimed there was any magic in Voimios' strap," the Videssian wizard answered. "I offered it as analogy, not proof. Besides—" He stooped and picked up the length of leather Bozorg had thrown down. "—this is a flat thing. To twist it so it has only one side, all you need do is this." He gave it the deft half twist that turned it baffling. "But if you were going to make it so that something with length and width and height turned back on itself the same way, the only twist I can imagine to do such a thing is a magical one."

  Trying again and again to cross the canal and failing had already done more strange things to Abivard's imagination than he'd ever wanted. He turned to Bozorg. "Have you got a different idea how the Videssians could have turned us back on ourselves?"

  "No, lord," Bozorg admitted. "But the one this Videssian puts forward is ridiculous on the face of it. His precious Voimios probably got some of his horse's harness on poorly, then spent the next twenty years cadging cups of wine on the strength of it."

  "Are you denying what Panteles says is true, or are you only disparaging it?" Abivard asked pointedly.

  The question had sharp teeth. Bozorg might have been furious, but he was no fool. He said, "What he said about the strap may be true, I suppose, no matter how absurd it sounds. But how could anyone take seriously this nonsense about twisting a canal back on itself?"

  "I'd say some thousands of soldiers take the notion seriously, or would if they heard it," Panteles shot back. "It happened to them, after all."

  "So it did," Abivard said. "I was one of them, and thinking of it still makes me shiver." He looked from Panteles to Bozorg and back again. "Do you think the two of you, working together—" He put special stress on those words. "—can find out whether what happened to the canal is the magical equivalent of a Voimios strap?"

  Panteles nodded. A moment later, more grudgingly, Bozorg did, too. Panteles said, "Making a magic of this sort cannot have been easy for Maniakes' wizards. If the traces of the sorcery linger on this plane, we shall find them."

  "And if you do?" Abivard asked. "What then?"

  "Untwisting the canal should be easier for us than twisting it was for them—if that's what they did," Panteles answered. "Restoring a natural condition takes far less sorcery than changing away from what is natural."

  "Mm, I can see the sense in that," Abivard said. "How soon will you be able to find out if Maniakes has turned the canal into a strap of Voimios?"

  Bozorg stirred. Abivard looked his way. He said, "Lord, do you feel easy about using a Videssian to fight the Videssians?"

  Abivard had been wrestling with that question since he had realized magic was holding him away from Maniakes' army. He'd worried about it less since Panteles had started his elaborate theoretical explanation: any man dedicated enough to put so much effort into figuring out what might have gone into a spell wouldn't be content unless he could have a hand in unraveling it, too... would he?

  "How say you, Panteles?" Abivard asked. "Eminent sir, I say I never imagined turning a Voimios strap from an amusement into a piece of creative sorcery," Panteles answered. "To understand how that's done and then to figure out a spell to counter it—I'm lucky to be living in such exciting times, when anything seems possible."

  His eyes gleamed. Abivard recognized the expression on his pinched, narrow face. Soldiers with that exalted look would ride to their deaths without flinching; minstrels who had it crafted songs that lived for generations. Panteles would go where knowledge and energy and inspiration took him and would pursue his target with the eagerness of a bridegroom going to his bride. "I think it will be all right," Abivard said to Bozorg. "And if it isn't all right, I trust your skill to hold disaster away from us."

  "Lord, you may honor me beyond my worth," the Makuraner mage murmured.

  "I don't think so," Abivard said heartily. "And as I've told you, I expect you to work with him. If his idea turns out to be wrong-headed after all, I'll need to hear that from you so we can figure out what to try next."

  He hoped with all his heart that Panteles and Bozorg would be able to find a way around—or through—Maniakes' magic. If they could, the sorcery would be a one-time wonder: if not, every time Makuraners tried to clash with Videssians, they would find themselves going back the way from which they had come. That would be a worse disaster than defeat in battle.

  "What one mage has done, another may undo," Panteles declared. To that Bozorg assented with a cautious nod.

  "Finding out what the mage has done can be interesting, though," Abivard remarked.

  "Truth, eminent sir. I do not know if I have proposed the correct explanation, either," Panteles said. "One of the many things I need to learn—"

  "Don't just stand there." Abivard realized he was being unfair, but urgency counted for more. "Go find out what you can by whatever means you can. I intend to send riders up and down the canal—provided they don't think they're riding north when they're riding south or the other way around. If we can force a crossing somewhere else—"

  "Then the notion of the Voimios strap becomes moot," Panteles interrupted.

  Abivard shook his head. "Not quite. Oh, we might be able to get around it this one time, but it would keep on being a trick Maniakes has and we don't. He could use it again, say, in a mountain pass where we didn't have any choice about how we tried to get at him. If we can, I want us to have a way to beat this spell so it doesn't stay in the Avtokrator's arsenal, if you take my meaning."

  Both Panteles and Bozorg bowed as if to say they not only understood but agreed. Abivard waved them off to begin their investigation. At his shouted orders, horsemen did gather to ride off up and down the canal. But before they set out, one of them asked, "Uh, lord, how are we to know whether the spell still holds?"

  Abivard wished he hadn't asked that. Sighing, he answered, "The only way I can think of is to ride out into the canal and try to cross it. If you do, you've passed the point where the Videssians' magic works. If you don't—"

  One of the riders committed the enormity of interrupting the army commander "If we don't—if we come back where we started from—and we haven't gone crazy before then, that's when we know."

  The other horsemen nodded. The fellow had made a pretty fair joke, or what would have been a pretty fair joke under other circumstances, but none of them laughed or even smiled. Neither did Abivard; nor did he stand on his dignity or rank. He said, "That magic is plenty to drive anyone mad, so my best guess is that we've all gone mad already, and getting bitten by it one more time won't do any harm."

  "You have a good way of looking at things, lord," said the fellow who had interrupted him. He rode south along the canal. Some men followed him; others headed north.

  Was it a good way of looking at things? Abivard didn't know. If Maniakes' magic extended a good distance up and down the canal, some of those men were liable to have to endure having their world twisted several times, not once alone. You could grow used to almost anything... but to that?

  Something else occurred to him: was the canal folded back on itself for the Videssians, too? If they tried to cross from east to west to attack him, what would happen? Would they make it over to his side of the canal, or would they, too, end up riding out onto the bank from which they'd departed? The question was so intriguing, he almost summoned Bozorg and Panteles so he could ask it. All that restrained him was the thought that they already had enough to worry about.

  And so did he. The riders he'd sent north along the canal came back perhaps sooner than he'd expected with the news that the spell, whether it was some larger version of Voimios' strap or not, extended in that direction as far as they'd traveled. They hadn't traveled so far as he'd hoped, but the fear on their faces said they'd gone into the canal as often as they could stand.

  Men who'd ridden south began coming back to Abivard's camp, too, not all at once like those who'd gone the other way but a few at a time, some going back into the canal after others could bear it no more. Whether they came soon or late, they had the same news as the men who had traveled north: when they tried to go east over the canal, they found themselves unable.

  Last of all to return was the fellow who had suggested that going into the canal would make a man crazy. By the time he came back, the sun was setting in the west. Abivard had begun to wonder whether he'd gone into the canal and never come out.

  He shook his fist at the sun, saying, "I've seen that thing too many times—may it drop into the Void. I tried to ride away from it a dozen times, maybe more, this afternoon, and I ended up coming right back at it every one of them. Sorry lord; that spell goes on a long way south."

  "No cause for you to be sorry," Abivard answered. "I'd call you a hero for braving the canal more than anyone else did."

  "A hero?" The rider shook his head. "I'll tell you what I'd call me, and that's a bloody fool. By your leave, lord, I'll go off and polish my armor—keep it from rusting as best I can, eh?" Abivard nodded permission. Sketching a salute, the soldier strode off.

  Abivard muttered something foul under his breath. Maniakes' mages could certainly hold the spell in place for half a day's ride, or perhaps a bit less, to either side of his own position. That meant that shifting camp wasn't likely to do much good, because the Videssians were liable either to move or to extend the spell to his new position.

  If he couldn't go around the twisted canal, he'd have to go through it. Going through it meant beating Maniakes' magic. Between them, Bozorg and Panteles would have to come up with some answers.