So I proceeded, staggering along roughly northward, and overhead the wreck black stacks of Hessu’s port staggered in rhythm with my stride.

  The heat of the day came, a slaty pressuring of low sky. Once something shrilled in the marsh among the towering fern-trees. And once, between the buildings, I sank to my knees in a gaping mouth of mud, and dragged myself free with difficulty.

  I saw no men and no beast. Neither did I reach the dock or the shore.

  At last I lay down in the shade of a wall, full length in the muck and reeds, with no watch for enemies. (He was everywhere. Why trouble to look out for him?) Their Power contained mine. They kept me in. I had fled the warren and was now caged on the surface. I muttered with a sort of fever, dozed, and tossed about, a pitiful object if there had been any to take pity.

  When I recovered myself, the light was fading in slashes of madder and bronze behind the crossed swords of upper foliage and the broken roofs. Something shifted against me, and

  101

  I found six or seven leeches oozed from a pool in the street and supping on my calves. I tore them off me, rending them and myself. In the smoking dusk my blood welled, and the wounds did not heal.

  In Masrian theater, the storm always comes at such a moment. The melodrama of thunderclap and red lightning hyphenate the bellows, prayers, and poetry of the doomed hero. And so it was. The sky blacked over, building to a mountainous pressure, which was suddenly carved by three white blades and a crash of battling clouds. The rain fell hot as my blood on the antique cobbles.

  I blundered into a doormouth and leaned there inside the shadows. The rain hung like a curtain outside; I could see nothing through it. Thunder rang across the sky, and my head cleared abruptly. Vitality and intelligence seemed to wash back into me. I looked at the leech-marks and they were sealing. Now was the time to break for the dock. The natural storm had sluiced off their sticky magic, and I might find the lagoon and a boat, and reach open water.

  Behind, something whispered my name. Not my chosen name that was, but the name my krarl had given me.

  Tuvek.

  I turned around slowly, not wanting to see, though I left the uncleaned knife in its sheath, accepting its uselessnes.

  A hall went back from the doorway, uncertainly lighted by crevices in its walls, featureless, save at the farthest end of it there was a white shining. I could not distinguish what it was, but even as I stared and held my breath, soft fibers came drifting out and fastened about the pitchy walls, the roof, interweaving, methodical, ultimately floating around me also. An enormous web. And at its center, in the pale luminance, a spider?

  I began to walk that way, toward the white core of the web. It was not so much a compulsion as a deadly, angry knowledge that I could never get away in the other direction.

  The threads of the web fluttered as I broke through them, and re-formed, fastening me securely within. The touch of them was like an icy kissing. I could observe something seated in the light now, the center of its whiteness. I think I had begun to believe it from the hour I woke to Lellih at the couch’s foot, telling me my dream.

  I had anticipated finding Uastis, had cast my net for her. But she had grown more astute with the years, the sum of my whole lifetime, in which she might have prepared her

  102

  weapons. What better and more hidden place for my mother to choose for herself than BitHessee-over-the-marsh? What better kingdom, rotten, masked, vengeful?

  She had twice my years, perhaps a little more, but she looked, as I had suspected she would, far older. Her face was, as ever, covered, on this occasion in the Hessek mode, with a figured veil of heavy white silk. Yet her arms and throat were bare, the stringy harsh albino flesh gathered on the bone, and under the robe, the shape of the two withered dugs that never suckled me. Her white hair was plaited and held with silver links, and the long talons of her hands were enameled the color of dying fire.

  I could say no word. I had sworn to slay her when I discovered her, but I was helpless. I gawked like an idiot, and she spoke, this hag, and her voice was young and fresh and beautiful, and harder than blue alcum.

  “I was rid of your father by means of my hate. You also I may kill. Unless you consent to serve me.”

  “If you wanted my service, you should have kept me by you.”

  “You were his curse on me,” she said. “And I am still.”

  “Hessek is mine,” she said. “Obey me. Lead my people to victory, and I will spare you and reward you.”

  Suddenly my brain revived. I perceived that none of this made sense.

  “Shlevakin,” I said, “they are shlevakin. Rabble. Hessek is nothing to Uastis the cat-goddess of Ezlann. This is some further trick of Shaythun’s priests.” Before I properly guessed it, my hand had shot out and snatched the veil from her face.

  I jumped backward with my eyes starting from their sockets almost. It was not a woman’s face at all, but the head of a white lynx-its fur had brushed my palm as I wrenched off its covering, and I had scented the rank perfume of its mouth. Pale green irises like diluted jade, brown teeth striped with old blood.

  I knew it for an illusion, but it seemed, in every particular, quite real. At that, in panic, I drew the knife from my belt and thrust it at the nearer gleaming right eye. Reality met the unreal, as the knife pierced tissue and she screamed. And vanished.

  The web trembled, became what it was: cobwebs. Of the spider-bag-cat-queen nothing remained. The knife lay on the floor, but it was stained new red.

  103

  I went out into the rain, and walking down the flooded street, got easily to the shore and the dock. I found a boat with equal ease; there were about ten of them pulled up among the reeds. I unshipped the oars and rowed into the lagoon. The thick water spread in slinking rings under the splintering rain. The thunder had sunk northward, scud following it in procession over the darkening dusk sky. I did not consider that I should lose myself any more, even in the many channels of the delta. I was guided to the ocean by an instinct such as that which sends the fish to warmer waters at the year’s end. Besides, by a foolish, unpremeditated act-the ham-fisted blow of a terrified tribesman-I had torn the web of Old Hessek. Before it knit again, I should be gone.

  Not that the affair was done between us.

  The rain ceased, and the papyrus boat slipped through the slender giant trees toward the sea, as a ruddy hunter’s-bow of moon was painted in on the emptied night.

  Although the hag they had shown me had been only the illusion of Uastis, I was now grimly convinced that she was somewhere near. I saw her strategy in the wickedness of Old Hessek, the poison of her enchantments like a powerhouse that they might tap. True, she was indifferent to the aspirations of BitHessee, but she might use them to destroy the threat which was myself. She had known I would seek her, and she had left pitfalls in my road. Well, she had taught me a lesson. In the future, I would be more ready.

  As for the RatHole, a notion had come to me. If she were watching out to see me tumble, she had better beware, the bitch.

  About an hour later, the reeds opened on the vista of the ocean, pure salt air, fish leaping, and, far to the east, the jewel haze of BarIbithni.

  10

  I gave the city and the docks as wide a berth as had my Hessek guides on the previous journey, since any craft spotted on route from BitHessee might arouse the suspicion of the Masrian watch. Sheer marble walls, palace parks, and the ornate grounds of Masrian fanes stretched down into the

  104

  sea all along the coast east of the bay of Hragon, and I had no choice but to come ashore in the garden of a temple. Here, amid the incense of the night-blooming scarlet lilies of the south, I stove in the papyrus boat and sank it in the black water under the temple wharf.

  I met a red-robed priest in the garden, who took no more note of me than if I had been a prowling cat. Perhaps worshipers commonly came here after sunset, or, more likely, lovers, to keep trysts in the bushes.

  It was close on midnight when I reached my apartment house and found all the courts in darkness. This was unnatural anywhere and at any hour of night in the Palm Quarter, and I trod with caution. No need; violence had come and gone before me.

  The outer doors were broken off their chains, the inner doors similarly forced. Trampled drapes lay about, and smashed crocks, and the black dog my sailor guard had been keeping had had its neck snapped and been thrown in the gutter outside for the street sweepers.

  Of Kochus and my men no trace remained, and I could guess the fate of the women.

  I had such a variety of enemies by now, I was unsure of who these visitors had been. As I was staring about, I heard a noise and whipped around, to find a figure at my elbow, one of the kitchen girls.

  “My lord,” she squeaked, “oh, my lord.”

  Her face was smeared with tears and fright, of me as much as anything. I sat her on the broad rim of the fountain, and gave her a drink of koois from a silver flask that had been overlooked; most of the other valuables, the alcohol and the wine, had disappeared.

  Amazement at being served by the master of the house pulled the girl together, and she poured out her tale without preamble.

  Trouble had arrived sometime in the hour before dawn, when she was already up to light the oven-fire behind its shield, and fetch the water for the bath-tanks from the public well.

  The Hessek guard had been whispering together and acting oddly all night. (Most probably, I thought, they had got word I had been persuaded over the marsh. Just then, all Hesseks appeared to be in league against me.) However, despite their agitation, or because of it, their watch was not thorough. The outer gates were suddenly shattered, and the yard and courts

  105

  aswarm with men. They shouted for me, and getting no answer, routed the appalled household from their beds or from the places in which they had hidden. The girl did not see much of this. Accustomed to calamity from an immature age, she had taken refuge in the great tank that fed the faucets of the bath. She had long been acquainted with this tank, having had to fill it every day with nine pitchers of water from the well. Now it was only part full, and she crouched down in the dark and water, and heard indicative sounds as the strangers beat and took Kochus and the Hesseks prisoner, and presently ransacked the rooms, thereafter extending their quest to neighboring courts. Finding no trace of me, they at last turned their attention to my property, drank my liquor, and lay with the kitchen women, who, the girl prudishly declared, being loose hussies, were apparently audible in consent and approbation.

  At length, silence encouraged my girl from the tank. She found the havoc much as I had found it, and no one on hand save the alarmed neighbors, most of whom fled for fear of further activity. She alone had remained to warn me.

  Seeing she was braver and more quick than the rest of them put together, I gave her the silver flask to keep and some silver cash I had on me-makeshift reward for all her gallantry. But she blushed and gave me back the coins, saying she loved me and had done it for that. Poor little thing, I had scarcely noticed her, a skinny, small brown waif of poor Masrian stock, and not much above thirteen. Still, she did not try to give me back the flask. I imagine life had taught her already to put some prudence before sentiment.

  I asked her if she could tell who the invaders might be, and she said at once, “They wore yellow and black-the guard of Basnurmon Hragon-Dat, the Heir of the Emperor. Everyone knows his wasp device.”

  I sent the girl off to her home, after she had surprised me by insisting that she had one. Then I collected up any money-raising portable items that might have been accidently ignored by Basnurmon’s morons, and went straight out to the nearby hiring stables, dressed as I was in BitHessee mud.

  The man who opened up for me seemed innocent enough, but had heard the news of soldiers sacking my courts, and was nervous with questions to which I did not reply. A chain of cash got a mount from him, and an hour after the midnight bell I had crossed the bright streets of the Palm Quarter

  106

  and was hammering on the bronze Fox Gate of Pillar Hill, the entrance to the Citadel.

  There were three or four decent rooms, the central chamber large and well furnished, more than a soldier’s cell, commander or otherwise. The lamps were the plain pleasant shade of the yellow wine that stood by in the crystal flagon. On the lime-washed walls were swords of damascened alcum, and a collection of shields, and bows and spears for hunting or war; and in one place hung a leopard’s pelt, something Sorem had taken himself and been proud of. I should not have been ashamed to have got it myself. There was an unMasrian quality in the lack of clutter, but neither was it unaesthetic. The woven Tinsen rug had all the jeweled colors the lamps did not, and the wine cups of polished malachite would not have looked amiss on any fancy table of Erran’s in Eshkorek.

  A sleet-gray bitch hound lay before the open windows where the cool breeze of earliest morning crossed the stone veranda. Dim sounds rose up there from the garrison, mingled with the stir and shrill scent of lemon trees in the court below.

  They bedded late in the Citadel, as elsewhere in eastern BarIbithni. I had no difficulty in gaining entrance at the Fox Gate; it appeared Sorem had also heard news of the marauders. Some of his men had been sent out to try to intercept me, and the watch on the gate been primed to let me in. Altogether there had been extravagant events in the Citadel, as I was to learn, since we parted with our formal courtesies at the Field of the Lion.

  Sorem came in, wide awake and fully dressed in the casual military gear of the jerdat. His face was tense, alert, and he grinned at me with a boy’s excitement, which told me more than anything that some fresh game was up. A girl poured us our wine and went away, and we stood to drink in silence, Masrian tradition with the first cup, to show the grape you honor his gift.

  This done, Sorem said, “I owe you my life and I pledge you your safety. Beyond that, you had better know this is unlawful ground you’re standing on.” “Unlawful, how?”

  “Word of Basnurmon’s tactics reached the Citadel, and the jerds have declared for me,” he said simply. “At least, my four brother commanders here in the garrison and my own

  107

  under-captains have done so, while I think the soldiery itself has no complaint against me and prefers me to Basnurmon. That puts all those five jerds, which currently occupy the Citadel, under my command. The astounding matter has remained secret from the city itself due to the loyalty of these men. They seem prepared to risk livelihood and life for me. But technically, Vazkor, Pillar Hill is now as much outlaw territory as Old-Hessek-over-the-marsh.”

  I drank off the remainder of my wine at a gulp. This fitted so perfectly with the wild plan that had been jelling in me that I could almost swear someone’s god had a hand in it.

  “And what do you know of Old-Hessek-over-the-marsh?” I said.

  He was surprised, as well he might be.

  “The name they give it here speaks for itself-the RatHole. A sink of wretchedness and corruption. They cling to the old faith of Hessek there, some foul magic, involving, reputedly, human sacrifice. Since the time of my grandfather, Masrianes, who conquered the south and built this city, Masrian rule has tried to stamp out such activities, bring these people from their swamp, and eradicate the villainies they practice.

  “And instead of the swamp, you offer them what? Slavery under Masrian masters? Or the lives of beggars in your fine streets.”

  “That’s not my doing, Vazkor. It’s the Emperor’s code that suppresses Hessek labor, and his tax of BitHessee that insures Hessek slaves. Every year he creams off three hundred children from Old Hessek for slaves, mostly for use in the mines of the east. The priests of the RatHole make no complaint, in fact I have heard it said their marsh could not support more children than they keep, that the tax prevents a famine. Still, it’s vile, not something I should want to put my seal on, if I were master in the Crimson Palace.”

  I smiled at that. I had never seen his ambition before; no doubt he had learned to conceal it. Now, things being as they were, the malice of the heir Basnurmon naked in its intent at last, and the Citadel declared for Sorem, the voices that had been whispering in him twenty years made themselves heard.

  This close, and in the steady light of the lamps, I could see him very clearly for maybe the first time.

  He was a little shorter than I, perhaps by the width of my thumb joint, not much in it; in build we might have been brothers. Neither of us had lived soft. The palms of his hands