He was looking to the west from three stories up in the Ebon Tower. Looming largest was the fiery blaze of the Lesser Palace, whether candlelight or witchfire Konarr could not tell. Plainly, though, the Lady was unnerved, supposed some malign influence to be working in the Lesser Palace, was taking precautions…and was looking in the wrong place!

  At that Konarr grinned, though the double ring of guards round the Lesser Palace had its own ominous overtones.

  Of course, the two of them had not intended returning through the Lesser Palace, but so many men, all wearing the Hawk Helmets, even as he did—for a moment the thought of lifting sword against what in a sense were his own men made him frown, trying to work it out. Of course, he had already slain eight…

  He decided that answers would be meaningless if they did not escape, and Zantain had made it plain what would happen if that happened. So there was only the present question, and a glance at Tassoran showed he did not seem close to answering it.

  Konarr moved to the inner peephole, facing the guardroom. It was almost a pleasure to see only two guards, instead of two thousand.

  But they weren’t really guards, Konarr realized after a moment. They wore the scarlet short-cloak of the Queen’s Personal Guard, but they were dressed in casual fashions of the court apart from that.

  Konarr looked about the room for a moment, then saw two cuirasses sitting on the floor, side by side—ready for use should someone dare to question whether young nobility were properly performing its duty.

  Obviously it was considered more an honorary position than a practical or necessary one, at least by the two nobles, which fit what he had gleaned of court ways in the last twenty years.

  On a nearby table in the guardroom stood three goblets, two of richly chased silver, one of plain unstained wood, dark and cracked with age.

  As Konarr watched, one of the nobles reached for a silver cup and drained it, then refilled the cup from a gallon flask of leather bound with straps of silvery thread.

  Konarr shrugged and continued around the walls of the Ebon Tower, checking each outer and inner peephole until after some minutes he came once more on Tassoran.

  Tassoran was sitting on the floor, his legs crossed.

  “Are you thinking, or simply clearing your mind for death?” Konarr said, chuckling. “You look as relaxed as those lazy fops in the next chamber, pretending they’re guards—drunken louts! If they spent a fiftyday in my Free Company…, well, I wish Zantain had a tunnel into that chamber.”

  “What?” said Tassoran, blinking as he tried to remember what Konarr had said.

  “Why, if I could make my way into the guardroom, we could kill the two guards, and…and…He floundered for a moment.

  Tassoran gave Konarr a sour look. “And then stand there and wonder how to get into the inner chamber from that side, eh? Killing a couple of guards hardly solves the problem of the poisonous fumes.”

  Konarr frowned. “How do the guards get inside, then?” he asked. “They may not be soldiers, but still they must go by a routine, and therefore there must be some way for them to enter the inner chamber. Doesn’t that seem reasonable?”

  “Why?” asked Tassoran. “Only the Lady should need to enter the chamber. I should think she would not want even her nobility to know what lies within—she said as much to me, or so I understood her. No doubt, as Shagon intimated to me, she wipes their minds free after they leave. She would take no chances.”

  “Bah,” Konarr said. “Of course she would take chances. Why should she be uneasy in the heart of her kingdom, on her own palace grounds, in the Ebon Tower. She and her predecessors have held power for so long that—”

  “Tell me what you saw in the next room again,” said Tassoran, struck by a sudden thought. “Quickly. I have an idea.” Irritated at the interruption, Konarr grumbled. But he described the guard chamber once more.

  “Three cups,” said Tassoran softly. “Then there can be no doubt of it—she worked a transformation, and a mightily powerful one. Look you, that orange vapor is instant death —how is she to enter? No, I am sure the guards have means whereby they can avoid the fumes. Unquestionably.”

  “What do you mean?” Konarr demanded, angered at this mystification.

  “Never mind. Just use your Zantain’s handy knack—open the way inside this chamber filled with death.”

  “But the vapor will enter the corridor here—we will die!”

  “Do it,” Tassoran said.

  And he laughed.

  CHAPTER SEVEN: The Sigil of Tron

  Konarr creased his forehead. ’There will be one stone that must be moved physically,” he said slowly. “We can move through the wall at…this point,” he continued, moving his hands along the wall as he spoke and stopping finally at a lighter-colored slab. “The slab on the inner wall of the chamber is solid but not thick, and it pivots.”

  He stepped forward into the stone wall, stooping a bit, and the stone vanished, leaving a small dead end tunnel. Then he reappeared. “This is your part of the game,” he said .“After you…

  Tassoran entered the small tunnel and pressed his shoulder against the inner slab.

  For a moment nothing happened. Tassoran increased the pressure, and the slab shifted a trifle.

  Slightly more pressure…and the slab pivoted silently open.

  Hastily Tassoran drew back from the opening and observed the fumes in the chamber, as they wafted slowly toward him. He crouched in the tunnel, ready to propel himself backward to safety if the fumes moved past the boundary of their chamber.

  But they did not, hovering instead in a thin orange haze around the pivoted slab.

  “Now what?” asked Konarr.

  “Check at the guardroom peephole,” Tassoran said after a moment’s consideration. “I’m going to cause a stir and I want to know what the guards do before they actually get in here —or raise an alarm.”

  “Mmmm,” said Konarr. “Right. I suppose we must take the chance.”

  Konarr went to the guardroom peephole.

  Tassoran drew the sword Konarr had taken from the Hawk Guard that had been left sleeping in the charnel pits.

  Then, holding the blade with the aid of a piece of cloth, he stuck the pommel through the opening into the chamber and began banging it noisily against the floor.

  The vapors shifted slightly, but menaced him no more than before.

  “That fetched them,” Konarr called, as once more Tassoran withdrew from the tunnel and looked toward his companion. “They’re coming to the chamber door and talking excitedly. But the peepholes carry no sound.”

  “Does it seem as if they may open the chamber door?” asked Tassoran edgily. He stepped away from the small tunnel and observed with satisfaction that it once more looked like solid stone.

  “They’re opening the chamber,” Konarr said. “Ha! Now they’re excited!”

  “Will they sound an alarm, do you think?”

  “It does not look as if they will,” Konarr answered slowly,

  “There—one of them almost stepped into the room. I suppose he saw the slab ajar. Unfortunately the other one stopped him.”

  “Fine,” said Tassoran.

  And he ducked into the tunnel for the third time, and it reappeared the moment he touched the “surface” of the stone.

  Behind him he could hear Konarr. “He sees the tunnel now—both of them do! You should be able to hear them.”

  Yes, thought Tassoran, and they can hear you; wish I’d thought of that, but too late now!

  “Ho, Veneste, it is magic, as I said—.first the slab, then the tunnel, then the voices.”

  It was a languid voice that came to Tassoran as he crouched waiting in the tunnel, round its corner so that he could not be seen from the door.

  “Oh, very well, Hallon, it is magic. Everything here is magic. Naturally. Just don’t go inside investigating without the goblet.” Veneste sounded equally languid, though his voice was deeper and richer.

  “Well, get it for me, then, and let’s find out what is happening.”

  Tassoran almost laughed, so clearly could he visualize Veneste drawing himself up haughtily.

  “May I remind you,” Veneste said chillily, “that we are of equal rank, and that I am not to be ordered about by you?”

  “Oh, devastation be visited on your pride. My Lord Veneste, most humbly I beseech you to favor me by presenting me with that goblet?”

  There was silence, then a single set of footsteps, back, forth.

  “Put the cup on the floor and let’s get on with it,” Veneste said. There was a wooden clack of the cup being set on the stone, and then a brief sliding noise.

  Tassoran saw the orange fumes grow agitated in their hovering near him; then they streaked away with rare speed.

  Around the corner of the tunnel, he could hear a distinct click.

  “Ha!” said Veneste, and laughed. “Like magic! Now let’s look into this tunnel to nowhere.”

  “Not so fast,” said Hallon. “The Lady’s orders are, only one man in the chamber at a time. You know that.”

  Then there were footsteps—slow, almost hesitant footsteps.

  Tassoran waited until his man was well into the room, from the sound of his steps—then with a loud cry he sprang around the corner of the tunnel and confronted the young nobleman’s raised sword with his own.

  Taken completely aback, even though he had been prepared for the unusual, the young Hallon stood motionless for a long moment. Then he took a step backward, then two, slowly working the tip of his sword around in tiny spirals, and Tassoran admired the way he had recovered himself. Still—

  “Houl paradonalosiath vellemascabar chul tivithu Zamaba—Zamaba—Zamaba!” Tassoran chanted.

  Once more Hallon stopped in his tracks.

  He stared at Tassoran for a moment, a look of mute appeal came over his face—and he dropped to the floor as if struck dead.

  “The original ’amaqit tongue! Very impressive,” said Konarr, behind Tassoran. “What about the other one?”

  Veneste had taken one careful step inside the chamber, at the sound of the ancient ’amaqit language, and, seeing Hallon’s collapse, stepped back into the guard chamber.

  Tassoran started toward him, preparing to hurl the aeons-old Incantation of All Forgetting for a second time. In a moment, however, Veneste realized what he had to do and had lunged for the wooden cup.

  But before he could grasp the cup, Tassoran had hurled his sword point-first at the man’s chest.

  The sword caught Veneste in the shoulder instead. Reacting to the pain, he tried nonetheless to stagger toward the cup, but lurched awkwardly sidewise instead; fell, and his forehead slammed into the lintel. There was one weak moan, then silence except for four men breathing, two strongly, two weakly.

  “Very impressive,” said Konarr. “Now if you will recover the Sigil of Tron, we can consider how to remove ourselves from this place.”

  “The Lady Tza has a certain style of economy in her magic workings,” said Tassoran, taking the wooden cup and peering inside at something that rattled inside. “She transformed the sigil into gravedust fumes, and thus the sigil guarded itself!”

  Konarr reached for the wooden chalice to pluck the sigil out. “Let us have a look at it!” he said—but Tassoran grabbed his wrists, a shocked look on his face.

  “Not inside the chamber, man, it’ll transform itself back into the gravedust fumes 1”

  Konarr blanched.

  “Come,” said Tassoran, “we must be moving away from here.” He started toward the slab marking Zantain’s stone tunnel.

  Now it was Konarr who felt a shock of alarm. “No!” he said. “We mustn’t trust to Zantain’s paths any more! Don’t ask me why—if we get away with our lives we can ask him, but let us get out of this accursed hell tower!”

  Tassoran was irritated; he h%d planned a peaceful withdrawal and now Konarr was urging him to push their good fortune, perhaps too far—to go down through the Lady Tza’s own ways and staircases through the Ebon Tower, to the ground, and across the bridge that legend said she only could tread.

  He placed his shoulder against the open slab and urged it to its former position up against Zantain’s mystic passageway. “At least she may never know how we came this way—to our deaths,” he said, in bitterness tempered with a very little satisfaction.

  “For a practical thief,” Konarr said, grinning, “you take more stock in ancient tales than any respectable young lad of four or five in Zetri town. How do you think these fine brainless fops I studied to imitate so well, yesterday, how do you think they reached these chambers?”

  To illustrate his meaning, he dropped to his knees beside Hallon’s body, which moved slightly in its unconsciousness as Konarr touched it

  Understanding, Tassoran started searching the relaxed body of Veneste, and presently came across a small wire spiral with a regular pattern of notches in the wire.

  He showed it to Konarr, who nodded and presently located a similar device on Hallon. It seemed clear that the two pieces of wire fitted together to form a complex heliform structure that had a look of being complete about it.

  “I’ll be busy holding to my incantation later,” said Tassoran, “and think it best you carry this. I suspect it will protect us while we are in the tower.”

  Konarr nodded, and they went out into the guard chamber.

  Now Tassoran reached inside the wooden goblet and took out a small carved piece of some aged, cracked wood, stained with the millennia. “Not much for the eye, certainly,” he said. “The carvings seem not to make sense.”

  “It’s not very impressive,” Konarr agreed.

  Tassoran put the sigil back in the cup and fitted it securely, if with some difficulty, into his leathern pouch.

  Then, Tassoran in the lead and hoping he still retained the strength for another burst of the ’amaqit-chant if they should come across someone else in the Ebon Tower, they left the guard room and started down the black marble steps outside.

  Nothing happened as they made their way downward except that they noticed the smell of cinnamon and mint and clove and countless other scents and fragrances eddying through the air in endless changing combinations…

  “The Lady’s gardens,” muttered Konarr. “I have heard there is not their like in all the New Lands for varied richnesses of nature…and they are witching scents, for certain!”

  Tassoran assented, then resumed worrying how long they had before something interrupted the smooth eventlessness of their flight.

  Presently, he knew.

  They came to the foot of the Ebon Tower, where they were startled to see for the first time an expanse of white marble—great glittering white paves that led outside through great open arches to the vision of the gardens just beyond the moat of deadly fishes. And, beyond the endless delight of the gardens, the impressive bulk of the Lesser Palace, its windows still ablaze with light in the gloom of night—and the supreme magnificence of the Greater Palace, it’s glory shrouded now. For it was still some days to the end of the fiftyday, though spring was running strong in every living thing. Come the Festival of High Spring, and the Greater Palace would be thrown open to the winter courtiers and all the great families, noble and wealthy, of Zetri, and mad revelry would split the nights asunder for long weeks after…

  And—advancing across from the Lesser Palace was the Lady Tza, a white cloak lightly shielding her from the crisp night air, leading a full company of hawk-helmeted men— and they were within a dozen paces of the far end of the narrow footbridge over the wide, wide moat!

  Konarr yelped with surprise and tossed the interlocked wire helix up in the air. The two men saw its path as a glowing arc, before it hit a white slab by the verge of the dew-moist grass, then bounced hissing and steaming into the grass.

  Behind them on the stairs came footsteps, and angry shouts.

  Then Konarr pointed at the narrow bridge, and his voice quavered in horror!

  “There! Do you not see it! It must be a gaphalon, see, see the arms, so many of them, twenty, forty…we can’t get by, lad! It throws its arms over the walkway itself…”

  “Come on, old captain,” Tassoran laughed, “we’ll make it! See—the gaphalon has already drawn back!”

  “That’s thin hope for a man still in the strength of his latter youth,” Konarr answered, as they started to run for the footbridge.

  “Here’s a better one,” said Tassoran, grasping Konarr’s strong right hand. “Hold on—I can see we aren’t going to make it any other way. I hope I get the spell right—and don’t let go, or you won’t be covered!”

  Tassoran muttered hastily under his breath; Konarr made no sense of the words, even when it became obvious he was repeating the same three or four words over and over again, quickly, in different patterns.

  “There!” said Tassoran. “That completes the nine of nines. Hold on and we’ll try to get out of here without any more of these bothersome interruptions…And don’t talk to me—I must concentrate on repeating the magic schema…

  They began running again.

  It was moments before Konarr realized—concentrating as he was on the new and difficult problem of holding Tassoran's left hand as they ran—that the several dozen arms of the gaphalon that he had clearly seen thrashing wildly a moment ago were now frozen, without any motion he could see.

  They were so close to the monster as they passed onto the footbridge itself, that Konarr could even see, in one wild glance, the drops of water themselves, hanging motionless in the air, suspended in their various paths from initial up to inevitable down.

  But Konarr found that too much for his habits of mind, and he turned his head the other way as they reached the midpoint of the footbridge.

  Deep into the otherwise placid waters of the righthand side of the moat, there extended a clear and distinct funnel of air thrusting the water aside—or so it seemed to Konarr. At the base of the funnel and almost impossible to outline, hung a gigantic shadowy shape, barely visible and that only through some strange natural phosphoresence that surrounded it.