There was a couch in the form of an ebony lioness and ivory chairs in the form of her crouching cubs, all snowed over with furs and rugs, as was the heated floor.

  “You must go trapping often,” I said.

  “Never,” she said. “We take only the pelts of beasts that die in the course of nature, or the woven fleece of living animals.” She looked at me, a strange look, and said, “But you have been hunting often, and would not understand such measures. Now, shall I bring you food and wine?”

  The dwelling, which must be hers, seemed well supplied for visitors, its hypercaust going, candles ready, larder stocked. For whom did they keep food? Could it be, despite Mazlek’s boast at the inn, that some of the Lectorra still needed to cram their bellies?

  “No wine or food for me, lady,” I said. “I live on air, as they say, as any magician should.”

  “So I was told,” she said.

  The candles blazed bright. I put my pack down, with the mask hidden in it, on a lion-cub chair. She stared at me, and abruptly her face sharpened into desolate hunger, as if she had glimpsed some distant sanctuary she could never reach. I thought, She is nineteen, yet maybe she has never been with a man, never come on one she desired, and they dared not force her. Though I could not, even then, be sure of her, if it was to lie with me she wanted, or some deeper unknown

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  thing, some ancient wish or fear in her heart. For she looked afraid, too.

  I went near to her, and put my hands on the fastening of ber dark mantle. She did not stay me, only went on staring into my face. For myself, I kept my eyes on the lacing, and spoke trivia for safety.

  “This splendid palace would have been only a humble rustic outhouse to them, I suppose, your Lost Kainium folk. I saw an underground road of theirs once, clothed with gems and metal and high as the sky, which they had named Worm’s Way. And this, possibly, they would call the Dove Cote or the Hut. Fitting mansion for a witch who milks goats and gathers fruit in her white hands.” At that I took up her fcand. I anticipated the tactile electricity to sear between us again, as it had the first time, but now we were primed to it There was only a dazzle of nerves in my skin that touched on hers, which ran straight through me like silver wire.

  “Well,” I said.

  The mantle slipped off. She wore a blue dress under it, blue as the ceiling, with her whiteness gleaming under. Her body looked like a fire, trying to burn through that gown to reach me.

  But she drew her hand away.

  “Zervarn,” she said, “son of Vazkor-“

  “No names,” I said. “No more names, Ressa. You led me bere, and I followed most willingly.”

  “I did not mean and I did not think-“

  “Think now, and of me.”

  “Karrakaz,” she said.

  “Let her wait. That’s for tomorrow. I’ve forgotten her, as she expediently forgot me.”

  “But-” she said.

  “Be still,” I said.

  Her eyes swam, her mouth, even now trying to speak to me, merged into mine before it could form words, forming instead to welcome me, and draw me in. Her body stretched to me. Her shoulders came free of the blue water of the dress, her breasts rose from the cloth into my hands, each with its central star of fire that became the axis of my palms. She turned her head and cried out softly that this must not be, and yet her arms wound on my back and clung to me as if the world tumbled and only I remained to hold her safe.

  I folded her aside and against me and had us down among the mounded furs. Wherever our bodies met, a fresh con-

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  flagration stirred our flesh. This is new, I thought, but the thought burned from my skull. The dress had been expressly designed for me to loose it; the fastenings melted. Her limbs were cool and smooth, but a warmth within. The silver fleece on her loins did not look human, nor any part of her spread out before me like a flaring snow in the candle-shine, and jeweled with the smoky flush of mouth, the two pink stars upon her breasts, the rose cave into the ice. She was not virgin, and yet, like some goddess-maiden in a legend, her innocence seemed renewed especially for me. But she was knowing, too.

  Her head fell back. She surrendered herself to me with a silent, savage delight, no longer denying anything.

  The unpainted lids of her eyes were like fine platinum. I put my lips there, and tasted salt. I asked her why she wept.

  “Because this should not have been between us.”

  Many a woman has said that, a tedious lament, but with her it was not the same.

  “It was bound to be,” I said. “We are like and like, you and I, Ressa.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And can it be that is your objection? Because we came from the same door, brother and sister? No matter. The fathers were different. Besides, it is a tribal way of seeing things, to balk at this little incest. Come, am I to suppose you educated in a tent? I thought a Javhetrix schooled you.”

  Her tears were dry. Her eyes, which I had seen blinded by pleasure a minute before, were now once more those large opaque disks, unreadable, but reading everything.

  “Then again,” I said, “who will know, since we shall be leaving this magic mountain of your birth?”

  “No,” she said. “You must leave. But I remain.”

  “You will come with me,” I said. “You know you won’t let me travel alone.”

  “I will let you.”

  “I will ask the old lady for you,” I said, attempting to lighten this shade across her face like the first shadow of night. “I will kneel to your Karrakaz-“

  “No,” she broke in, and her strong, slender fingers dug into my arms. “Never go to her now.”

  She is afraid, I thought. She reckons she has betrayed the sorceress by lying with me, and will be punished. So ‘much for our loving mother.

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  “She shan’t harm you when I am near,” I said.

  Ressaven’s eyes flamed up. And I saw it was anger.

  “You are not a fool,” she said. “Do not act one. This I give you is a prophecy, a warning. Abandon the island and make your life elsewhere. Forget this coupling, and forget your search for Karrakaz.” Her anger faded, and she said gently, “Now, let me go.”

  “I am not done with you,” I said.

  “But I am done with you, Zervarn. Yes, it is half my blame that we are here. And yes, you are my conqueror and I yield to you. But now it is over. Do not make me battle. You are not accustomed to the women of this mountain.”

  The argument had made me lust for her again. She did not struggle after all, and when I stirred within her, she moaned. The curve where her shoulder met her throat held a scent of strange flowers, clearer than the orange blossom. It was the last perfume I breathed for some while. My head was full of light one second, then full of black, a painless blow struck from within that ended our couching as surely as a knife in my heart.

  I had the last dream of my father that night.

  I did not properly grasp its import then; it was only another jagged blade picked up in the cold dawn that woke me alone in that place.

  How well do I remember it, as if it were reality, a memory, which maybe it might have been; or in some other life where circumstances are other than in this, perhaps it has been, is.

  I was a child once more, in the dream, possibly five years of age. He had taken me to a high window to look down upon a marching of troops in the streets. It was winter there also, snow white on the ground, the men and the horses clattering black against it. He was black, too: black clothing, black prince’s hair, the dark skin and the black jewels on it. Gazing up at him more often than at his troops below, I saw, with the alarming foreshortened image that the child generally has, a leaning pillar of dark with the blank face above it. But when he said, “Look below,” I obeyed him at once. I was five years, yet I knew, I had learned: he was to be obeyed. “You must remind yourself at all times,” he said, “that you accede to this, strive for this, train your body and your brain for this. I will not have you mewling in the hall with a puppy like any peasant’s brat in some steading. You were born my

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  son so that you shall become as I am. Do you understand me?” I said that I did. He turned eyes on me that were like dead coals. He moved me about and away from him with his impersonal fingers. I was aware that I hated and feared him, that this was the bond between us, fright and a child’s loathing that one day would be a man’s. Then I should kill him as efficiently as he had killed my dog. Or he would kill me.

  When I glimpsed my mother in the doorway, I walked to her-he had persuaded me not to run many months ago. Her face was masked in gold and green gems; I had never seen it unmasked. Yet, despite herself, she was my safe harbor, and I hers, for such a thing one may know at five years of age, for all one could not voice it, nor set it down.

  The lights of the mansion window roused me, and the caress of her hands in the dream, which had seemed like the touch of Ressaven.

  Part HI

  The Sorceress

  1

  One morning hour saw me across the wooded valley and at the roots of the mountain, the villa hidden far behind in trees. It was a tranquil day, to be sure, the sky clear as glass. A long-necked bird rose from a glow of water as I passed, its wings beating their own winds. It had been drinking there at the brink of the broken ice, not a care in the world, no feuds or aspirations to plague it.

  She had left me no footsteps in the snow to follow, no stamp of those agile and beautiful bare feet. She had levitated in order to deceive me, as she had deceived me in the warm candlelight with that little sound of hers that made me forget she was witch before woman. I had not been ready for the onslaught of her Power with which she had stunned me. It was her dread that made her betray me, yet it set my teeth on edge that she had not trusted me, put my strength at least beside the strength of Karrakaz.

  Still, she would come to learn. I did not have to depend on footsteps for my guide. I had recollected the marble town on the mountain slope, which she had told me of so incidentally. The moment I pictured it, I knew with the force of divination that the town was the sanctum of the sorceress.

  I kept to the ground, to the cloak of the trees. I did nothing to stir up alarms. Only the bird’s flight could have marked me, and then, not for sure. I was still woodsman enough to make, otherwise, a quiet road to the mountain. I had a conviction she might be watching for me.

  I had left my pack in the villa, opened, with the mask staring up for any to discover-my signature, perhaps, upon what had happened there.

  By now the dream had returned to my mind, that picture of

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  my father I had never before constructed. Yet, not so strange. Not one man or woman I had encountered who knew his name had had a good word to spare for him. They held him in awe, and they hated him; I had had evidence in Eshkorek of that awe and hate they would have eased on me only because I was his seed. This much poison cannot pour in one’s ears without it will leave some trace. I would have been strange indeed if somewhere in me I had not begun to wonder. Would he have been to me the princely father I had imagined, or as I had finally seen him in the dream? The impetus of his despair had left me. I had almost imperceptibly ceased to reckon him the pivot of my life. I had vowed murder to him, yet it was no longer a passion in me to achieve it, and I felt no driving force rebuke my flagging vengeance. Had these issues perished with my youth in BarIbithni, destroyed by plague and terror and resurrection? Or merely because I had begun to reason him less than I had at first supposed?

  Then again, I pondered if the dream were some witchcraft worked on me.

  I myself had conjured false images of him-the shadow that rose from the fire, the unreal guide in the Eshkirian fortress, and the force that pushed me to the slaughter of Ettook-all overflowings simply of my own thought, not a momentous ghost but spillage from a cup. And in BitHessee, in the circle of beasts, others had conjured him inadvertently from my brain with their rampant spell.

  Traversing that valley, I began to go over the rest, seeking for Vazkor of Ezlann inside myself. And he was not there, not anymore. Certain of his mental fires had remained in me to deceive me once, and now they also were dead. I recalled the cave that night I tracked the Eshkiri raiders, and that death-vision of water and the teeth of knives, and waking to say, “I will kill her.” It was the last thought he had had, futile, floundering, impotent. That had been his legacy to me, a sword he could not take up, and which I had no right to draw for him. Whomever I slew or spared in my days on the earth, it must be my quarrel, not another’s. It is unlucky to weep at sea for, they would tell you, the ocean is salt enough. For sure, we have enough griefs of our own that we should not assume the burden of others.

  Sending or otherwise, the dream of my iron father had brought me to the truth.

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  I met no one on my journey. Once I noted the tracks of a she-fox in the snow. Where the trees gave way to the bald white upsurge of the mountain, I found a girl’s silver bangle hanging on a bush, like a signal of derision, but maybe it was innocent.

  There was a path up this side of the mountain; I was inclined to follow it, for it seemed worn naturally by the passage of many feet, and would no doubt lead straight to the witch’s sanctuary.

  A few trees grew about the path, stands of holly and bold briars. I climbed doggedly for near on an hour up this smooth slope and along another, between the trees, over the worn path. At last I realized I had been clambering there too long, and the landscape had not radically altered.

  There was sorcery even here. I halted and cleared my mind of its inner thoughts and gazed around me keenly. I was still at the mountain’s foot. I had gone about twenty yards and stridden in a circle, or up and down, I know not which, for it was all one. Like any peasant or yokel they had wanted to mislead, they had confounded me because I had been too sure and too unthinking. No more. I would be careful now.

  I did not take the path after that, but trod the rocky way. In a few minutes I was clear of the woods and on the upland. Looking back, I glimpsed valley, cliff-line, the shining pallor of the sea, and the silver clouds boiling up from it like curled steam from a caldron.

  I kept my senses outward, my instincts ready. Once I noted a symbol carved in the snow by a stick, some wizardry item meant to confuse the brain. I kicked it into a slush before I went on.

  Finally there was a wall of slaty stone, and a tall door in it of iron inlaid with semiprecious gems. It looked incongruous enough so that I took it for a spell, but it was not. Just another fancy of the Old Race for spectacle. Above, the far peak gored the ether, its whiteness changed to blue steel on the white sky. The door of iron had no bolt, no bar, no ring or knob to grasp.

  Had Ressaven come this way, escaping me?

  I saw in my mind’s eye that white hand of hers with its jade bracelet-that hand, one of a pair which had clung to me-laid on a panel of quartz in the iron door. When I guided my own fingers there, the door slid aside into the wall of rock.

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  A black pine stood beyond the door. Beyond the pine, the mountain town of the goddess.

  For a moment, I was shown a waste, fallen pillar drums, smashed tiles, the empty courts of a ruin. But I grimly put the illusion aside from me, and the mirage drifted off like dust, leaving reality behind.

  There was one central street forty feet broad, straight as a rule, that ran for half a mile right up the slant of the mountain. It had a bizarre aspect, this road, being laid with alternate square paving stones of green and black, from which the snow had been scoured or on which the snow had never been permitted to alight. It pointed into the distance, a perfect toy of mathematical perspective, and at its peak rested a building of steps and columns and many roofs piled one above the other. In a Masrian play, a drumbeat would have thudded as I set eyes on it: Here was the citadel of Karrakaz.

  On either side the street of jade and black paving, the royal mansions mounted or declined at pleasing angles on the slopes. Every vista was aesthetic, everything arranged hi relation to its neighbor, like the model of a city made for a king’s child to play with.

  It was silent as a model, too. Another would have thought it dead as Kainium, but I felt their presence there, the Lectorra, I felt their stealth, their curiosity, and a hint of something more, a nebulous and unadmitted fright.

  A dry fountain stood a couple of feet along the road, a roaring dragon with open jaws. As I stepped on the paving, the dragon’s muzzle of ice cracked off with a loud noise, and green water gushed out. Next second, the water changed color to the appearance of blood. It seemed they had not given over their games. I went by and up the street without another glance, for it had the spoor of Lectorra all over it, that oldest trick of liquid into blood.