Thus it was hardly a surprise that their minds fled from pain, soreness, exhaustion, stench, despair. Without that respite, they could not have gone on as long as they did.

  At ease for a few minutes, their backs against a blue-shimmering parapet which they must scale, they gazed across the bowl, where Garcilaso’s suited body gleamed like a remote pyre, and up the curve opposite to Saturn. The planet shone lambent amber, softly banded, the rings a coronet which a shadow band across their arc seemed to make all the brighter. That radiance overcame sight of most nearby stars, but elsewhere they arrayed themselves multitudinous, in splendor, around the silver road which the galaxy clove between them.

  “How right a tomb for Alvarlan,” Ricia says in a dreamer’s murmur.

  “Has he died, then?” Kendrick asks.

  “You do not know?”

  “I have been too busied. After we won free of the ruins and I left you to recover while I went scouting, I encountered a troop of warriors. I escaped, but must needs return to you by devious, hidden ways.” Kendrick strokes Ricia’s sunny hair. “Besides, dearest dear, it has ever been you, not I, who had the gift of hearing spirits.”

  “Brave darling…Yes, it is a glory to me that I was able to call his soul out of Hell. It sought his body, but that was old and frail and could not survive the knowledge it now had. Yet Alvarlan passed peacefully, and before he did, for his last magic he made himself a tomb from whose ceiling starlight will eternally shine.”

  “May he sleep well. But for us there is no sleep. Not yet. We have far to travel.”

  “Aye. But already we have left the wreckage behind. Look! Everywhere around in this meadow, anemones peep through the grass. A lark sings above.”

  “These lands are not always calm. We may well have more adventures ahead of us. But we shall meet them with high hearts.”

  Kendrick and Ricia rise to continue their journey.

  Cramped on a meager ledge, Scobie and Broberg shoveled for an hour without broadening it much. The sand-ice slid from above as fast as they could cast it down. “We’d better quit this as a bad job,” the man finally decided. “The best we’ve done is flatten the slope ahead of us a tiny bit. No telling how far inward the shelf goes before there’s a solid layer on top. Maybe there isn’t any.”

  “What shall we do instead?” Broberg asked in the same worn tone.

  He jerked a thumb. “Scramble back to the level beneath and try a different direction. But first we absolutely require a break.”

  They spread kerofoam pads and sat. After a while during which they merely stared, stunned by fatigue, Broberg spoke.

  “I go to the brook,” Ricia relates. “It chimes under arches of green boughs. Light falls between them to sparkle on it. I kneel and drink. The water is cold, pure, sweet. When I raise my eyes, I see the figure of a young woman, naked, her tresses the color of leaves. A wood nymph. She smiles.”

  “Yes, I see her too,” Kendrick joins in. “I approach carefully, not to frighten her off. She asks our names and errands. We explain that we are lost. She tells us how to find an oracle which may give us counsel.”

  They depart to find it.

  Flesh could no longer stave off sleep. “Give us a yell in an hour, will you, Mark?” Scobie requested.

  “Sure,” Danzig said, “but will that be enough?”

  “It’s the most we can afford, after the setbacks we’ve had. We’ve come less than a third of the way.”

  “If I haven’t talked to you,” Danzig said slowly, “it’s not because I’ve been hard at work, though I have been. It’s that I figured you two were having a plenty bad time without me nagging you. However—Do you think it’s wise to fantasize the way you have been?”

  A flush crept across Broberg’s cheeks and down toward her bosom. “You listened, Mark?”

  “Well, yes, of course. You might have an urgent word for me at any minute—”

  “Why? What could you do? A game is a personal affair.”

  “Uh, yes, yes—”

  Ricia and Kendrick have made love whenever they can. The accounts were never explicit, but the words were often passionate.

  “We’ll keep you tuned in when we need you, like for an alarm clock,” Broberg clipped. “Otherwise we’ll cut the circuit.”

  “But—Look, I never meant to—”

  “I know,” Scobie sighed. “You’re a nice guy and I daresay we’re overreacting. Still, that’s the way it’s got to be. Call us when I told you.”

  Deep within the grotto, the Pythoness sways on her throne, in the ebb and flow of her oracular dream. As nearly as Ricia and Kendrick can understand what she chants, she tells them to fare westward on the Stag Path until they met a one-eyed graybeard who will give them further guidance; but they must be wary in his presence, for he is easily angered. They make obeisance and depart. On their way out, they pass the offering they brought. Since they have little with them other than garments and his weapons, the Princess gave the shrine her golden hair. The knight insists that, close-cropped, she remains beautiful.

  “Hey, whoops, we’ve cleared us an easy twenty meters!” Scobie said, albeit in a voice which weariness had hammered flat. At first the journey, through the land of Narce, is a delight.

  His oath afterward had no more life in it. “Another blind alley, seems like.” The old man in the blue cloak and wide-brimmed hat was indeed wrathful when Ricia refused him her favors and Kendrick’s spear struck his own aside. Cunningly, he has pretended to make peace and told them what road they should take next. But at the end of it are trolls. The wayfarers elude them and double back.

  “My brain’s stumbling around in a swamp, a fog,” Scobie groaned. “My busted rib isn’t exactly helping, either. If I don’t get another nap I’ll keep on making misjudgments till we run out of time.”

  “By all means, Colin,” Broberg said. “I’ll stand watch and rouse you in an hour.”

  “What?” he asked in dim surprise. “Why not join me and have Mark call us as he did before?”

  She grimaced. “No need to bother him. I’m tired, yes, but not sleepy.”

  He lacked wit or strength to argue. “Okay,” he said, stretched his insulating pad on the ice, and toppled out of awareness.

  Broberg settled herself next to him. They were halfway to the heights, but they had been struggling, with occasional breaks, for worse than twenty hours, and progress grew more hard and tricky even as they themselves grew more weak and stupefied. If ever they reached the top and spied Danzig’s signal, they would have something like a couple of hours’ stiff travel to shelter.

  Saturn, sun, stars shone through vitryl. Broberg smiled down at Scobie’s face. He was no Greek god, and sweat, grime, unshavenness, the manifold marks of exhaustion were upon him, but—For that matter, she was scarcely an image of glamour herself.

  Princess Ricia sits by her knight, where he slumbers in the dwarf’s cottage, and strums a harp the dwarf lent her before he went off to his mine, and sings a lullaby to sweeten the dreams of Kendrick. When it is done, she passes her lips lightly across his, and drifts into the same gentle sleep.

  Scobie woke a piece at a time. “Ricia, beloved,” Kendrick whispers, and feels after her. He will summon her up with kisses—

  He scrambled to his feet. “Judas priest!” She lay unmoving. He heard her breath in his earplugs, before the roaring of his pulse drowned it. The sun glared farther aloft, he could see it had moved, and Saturn’s crescent had thinned more, forming sharp horns at its ends. He forced his eyes toward the watch on his left wrist.

  “Ten hours,” he choked.

  He knelt and shook his companion. “Come, for Christ’s sake!” Her lashes fluttered. When she saw the horror on his visage, drowsiness fled from her.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “Please, no.”

  Scobie climbed stiffly erect and flicked his main radio switch. “Mark, do you receive?”

  “Colin!” Danzig chattered. “Thank God! I was going out of my head from worry.”

  “You’re not off that hook, my friend. We just finished a ten hour snooze.”

  “What? How far did you get first?”

  “To about forty meters’ elevation. The going looks tougher ahead than in back. I’m afraid we won’t make it.”

  “Don’t say that, Colin,” Danzig begged.

  “My fault,” Broberg declared. She stood rigid, fists doubled, features a mask. Her tone was steady. “He was worn out, had to have a nap. I offered to wake him, but fell asleep myself.”

  “Not your fault, Jean,” Scobie began.

  She interrupted: “Yes. Mine. Perhaps I can make it good. Take my fuel cell. I’ll still have deprived you of my help, of course, but you might survive and reach the boat anyway.”

  He seized her hands. They did not unclench. “If you imagine I, I could do that—”

  “If you don’t, we’re both finished,” she said unbendingly. “I’d rather go out with a clear conscience.”

  “And what about my conscience?” he shouted. Checking himself, he wet his lips and said fast: “Besides, you’re not to blame. Sleep slugged you. If I’d been thinking, I’d have realized it was bound to do so, and contacted Mark. The fact that you didn’t either shows how far gone you were yourself. And…you’ve got Tom and the kids waiting for you. Take my cell.” He paused. “And my blessing.”

  “Shall Ricia forsake her true knight?”

  “Wait, hold on, listen,” Danzig called. “Look, this is terrible, but—oh, hell, excuse me, but I’ve got to remind you that dramatics only clutter the action. From what descriptions you’ve sent, I don’t see how either of you can possibly proceed solo. Together, you might yet. At least you’re rested—sore in the muscles, no doubt, but clearer in the head. The climb before you may prove easier than you think. Try!”

  Scobie and Broberg regarded each other for a whole minute. A thawing went through her, and warmed him. Finally they smiled and embraced. “Yeah, right,” he growled. “We’re off. But first a bite to eat. I’m plain, old-fashioned hungry. Aren’t you?” She nodded.

  “That’s the spirit,” Danzig encouraged them. “Uh, may I make another suggestion? I am just a spectator, which is pretty hellish but does give me an overall view. Drop that game of yours.”

  Scobie and Broberg tautened.

  “It’s the real culprit,” Danzig pleaded. “Weariness alone wouldn’t have clouded your judgment. You’d never have cut me off, and—But weariness and shock and grief did lower your defenses to the point where the damned game took you over. You weren’t yourselves when you fell asleep. You were those dream-world characters. They had no reason not to cork off!”

  Broberg shook her head violently. “Mark,” said Scobie, “you are correct about being a spectator. That means there are some things you don’t understand. Why subject you to the torture of listening in, hour after hour? We’ll call you back from time to time, naturally. Take care.” He broke the circuit.

  “He’s wrong,” Broberg insisted.

  Scobie shrugged. “Right or wrong, what difference? We won’t pass out again in the time we have left. The game didn’t handicap us as we traveled. In fact, it helped, by making the situation feel less gruesome.”

  “Aye. Let us break our fast and set forth anew on our pilgrimage.”

  The struggle grew stiffer. “Belike the White Witch has cast a spell on this road,” says Ricia.

  “She shall not daunt us,” vows Kendrick.

  “No, never while we fare side by side, you and I, noblest of men.”

  A slide overcame them and swept them back a dozen meters. They lodged against a crag. After the flow had passed by, they lifted their bruised bodies and limped in search of a different approach. The place where the geologist’s hammer remained was no longer accessible.

  “What shattered the bridge?” asks Ricia.

  “A giant,” answers Kendrick. “I saw him as I fell into the river. He lunged at me, and we fought in the shallows until he fled. He bore away my sword in his thigh.”

  “You have your spear that Wayland forged,” Ricia says, “and always you have my heart.”

  They stopped on the last small outcrop they uncovered. It proved to be not a shelf but a pinnacle of water ice. Around it glittered sand-ice, again quiescent. Ahead was a slope thirty meters in length, and then the rim, and stars. The distance might as well have been thirty light-years. Whoever tried to cross would immediately sink to an unknown depth.

  There was no point in crawling back down the bared side of the pinnacle. Broberg had clung to it for an hour while she chipped niches to climb by with her knife. Scobie’s condition had not allowed him to help. If they sought to return, they could easily slip, fall, and be engulfed. If they avoided that, they would never find a new path. Less than two hours’ worth of energy abode in their fuel cells. Attempting to push onward while swapping Garcilaso’s back and forth would be an exercise in futility.

  They settled themselves, legs dangling over the abyss, and held hands and looked at Saturn and at one another.

  “I do not think the ores can burst the iron door of this tower,” Kendrick says, “but they will besiege us until we starve to death.”

  “You never yielded up your hope erenow, my knight.” replies Ricia, and kisses his temple. “Shall we search about? These walls are unutterably ancient. Who knows what relics of wizardry lie forgotten within? A pair of phoenix-feather cloaks, that will bear us laughing through the sky to our home—?”

  “I fear not, my darling. Our weird is upon us.” Kendrick touches the spear that leans agleam against the battlement. “Sad and gray will the world be without you. We can but meet our doom bravely.”

  “Happily, since we are together.” Ricia’s gamin smile breaks forth. “I did notice that a certain room holds a bed. Shall we try it?”

  Kendrick frowns. “Rather should we seek to set our minds and souls in order.”

  She tugs his elbow. “Later, yes. Besides—who knows?—when we dust off the blanket, we may find it is a Tarnkappe that will take us invisible through the enemy.”

  “You dream.”

  Fear stirs behind her eyes. “What if I do?” Her words tremble. “I can dream us free if you will help.”

  Scobie’s fist smote the ice. “No!” he croaked. “I’ll die in the world that is.”

  Ricia shrinks from him. He sees terror invade her. “You, you rave, beloved,” she stammers.

  He twisted about and caught her by the arms. “Don’t you want to remember Tom and your boys?”

  “Who—?”

  Kendrick slumps. “I don’t know. I have forgotten too.”

  She leans against him, there on the windy height. A hawk circles above. “The residuum of an evil enchantment, surely. Oh, my heart, my life, cast it from you! Help me find the means to save us.” Yet her entreaty is uneven, and through it speaks dread.

  Kendrick straightens. He lays hand on Wayland’s spear, and it is though strength flows thence, into him. “A spell in truth,” he says. His tone gathers force. “I will not abide in its darkness, nor suffer it to blind and deafen you, my lady in domnei.” His gaze takes hold of hers, which cannot break away. “There is but a single road to our freedom. It goes through the gates of death.”

  She waits, mute and shuddering.

  “Whatever we do, we must die, Ricia. Let us fare hence as our own folk.”

  “I—no—I won’t—I will—”

  “You see before you the means of your deliverance. It is sharp, I am strong, you will feel no pain.”

  She bares her bosom. “Then quickly, Kendrick, before I am lost!”

  He drives the weapon home. “I love you,” he says. She sinks at his feet. “I follow you, my darling,” he says, withdraws the steel, braces shaft against stone, lunges forward, falls beside her. “Now we are free.”

  “That was…a nightmare.” Broberg sounded barely awake.

  Scobie’s voice shook. “Necessary, I think, for both of us.” He gazed straight before him, letting Saturn fill his eyes with dazzle. “Else we’d have stayed…insane? Maybe not, by definition. But we’d not have been in reality either.”

  “It would have been easier,” she mumbled.

  “We’d never have known we were dying.”

  “Would you have preferred that?”

  Broberg shivered. The slackness in her countenance gave place to the same tension that was in his. “Oh, no,” she said, quite softly but in the manner of full consciousness. “No, you were right, of course. Thank you for your courage.”

  “You’ve always had as much guts as anybody, Jean. You just have more imagination than me.” Scobie’s hand chopped empty space, a gesture of dismissal. “Okay, we should call poor Mark and let him know. But first—” His words lost the cadence he had laid on them. “First—”

  Her glove clasped his. “What, Colin?”

  “Let’s decide about that third unit, Luis’s,” he said with difficulty, still confronting the great ringed planet. “Your decision, actually, though we can discuss the matter if you want. I will not hog it for the sake of a few more hours. Nor will I share it; that would be a nasty way for us both to go out. However, I suggest you use it.”

  “To sit beside your frozen corpse?” she replied. “No. I wouldn’t even feel the warmth, not in my bones—”

  She turned toward him so fast that she nearly fell off the pinnacle. He caught her. “Warmth!” she screamed, shrill as the cry of a hawk on the wing. “Colin, we’ll take our bones home!”

  “In point of fact,” said Danzig, “I’ve climbed onto the hull. That’s high enough for me to see over those ridges and needles. I’ve got a view of the entire horizon.”

  “Good,” grunted Scobie. “Be prepared to survey a complete circle quick. This depends on a lot of factors we can’t predict. The beacon will certainly not be anything like as big as what you had arranged. It may be thin and short-lived. And, of course, it may rise too low for sighting at your distance.” He cleared his throat. “In that case, we two have bought the farm. But we’ll have made a hell of a try, which feels great by itself.”