Chapter 15

THREE DAYS LATER AT SUNRISE THEY CROSSED THE BORDER south of the two forts and Devin entered Tigana for the first time since his father had carried him away as a child.

Only the most struggling musicians came into Lower Corte, the companies down on their luck and desperate for engagements of any kind, however slight the pay, however grim the ambience. Even so long after the Tyrants had conquered, the itinerant performers of the Palm knew that Lower Corte meant bad luck and worse wages, and a serious risk of falling afoul of the Ygrathens, either inside the province or at the borders going in or out.

It wasnt as if the story wasnt known: the Lower Corteans had killed Brandins son, and they were paying a price in blood and money and brutally heavy oppression for that. It did not make for a congenial setting, the artists of the roads agreed, talking it over in taverns or hospices in Ferraut or Corte. Only the hungry or the newly begun ventured to take the ill-paying, risk-laden jobs in that sad province in the southwest. By the time Devin had joined him Menico di Ferraut had been traveling for a very long time and had more than enough of a reputation to be able to eschew that particular one of the nine provinces.

There was sorcery involved there too; no one really understood it, but the travelers of the road were a superstitious lot and, given an alternative, few would willingly venture into a place where magic was known to be at work. Everyone knew the problems you could find in Lower Corte. Everyone knew the stories.

So this was the first time for Devin. Through the last hours of riding in darkness he had been waiting for the moment of passage, knowing that since they had glimpsed Fort Sinave north of them some time ago, the border had to be near, knowing what lay on the other side.

And now, with the first pale light of dawn rising behind them, they had come to the line of boundary cairns that stretched north and south between the two forts, and he had looked up at the nearest of the old, worn, smooth monoliths, and had ridden past it, had crossed the border into Tigana.

And he found to his dismay that he had no idea what to think, how to respond. He felt scattered and confused. He had shivered uncontrollably a few hours ago when they saw the distant lights of Sinave in darkness, his imagination restlessly at work. I’ll be home soon, he had told himself. In the land where I was born.

Now, riding west past the cairn, Devin looked around compulsively, searching, as the slow spread of light claimed the sky and then the tops of hills and trees and finally bathed the springtime world as far as he could see.

It was a landscape much like what they had been riding through for the past two days. Hilly, with dense forests ranging in the south on the rising slopes, and the mountains visible beyond. He saw a deer lift its head from drinking at a stream. It froze for a minute, watching them, and then remembered to flee.

They had seen deer in Certando, too.

This is home! Devin told himself again, reaching for the response that should be flowing. In this land his father had met and wooed his mother, he and his brothers had been born, and from here Garin di Tigana had fled northward, a widower with infant sons, escaping the killing anger of Ygrath. Devin tried to picture it: his father on a cart, one of the twins on the seat beside him, the other—they must have taken turns—in the back with what goods they had, cradling Devin in his arms as they rode through a red sunset darkened by smoke and fires on the horizon.

It seemed a false picture in some way Devin could not have explained. Or, if not exactly false, it was unreal somehow. Too easy an image. The thing was, it might even be true, it might be exactly true, but Devin didnt know. He couldnt know. He had no memories: of that ride, of this place. No roots, no history. This was home, but it wasnt. It wasnt really even Tigana through which they rode. He had never

even heard that name until half a year ago, let alone any stories, legends, chronicles of its past.

This was the province of Lower Corte; so he had known it all his life.

He shook his head, edgy, profoundly unsettled. Beside him Erlein glanced over, an ironic smile playing about his lips. Which made Devin even more irritable. Ahead of them Alessan was riding alone.

He hadnt said a word since the border.

He had memories, Devin knew, and in a way that he was aware was odd or even twisted he envied the Prince those images, however painful they might be. They would be rooted and absolute and shaped of this place which was truly his home.

Whatever Alessan was feeling or remembering now would have nothing of the unreal about it. It would all be raw, brutally actual, the trampled fabric of his own life. Devin tried, riding through the cheerful birdsong of a glorious spring morning, to imagine how the Prince might be feeling. He thought that he could, but only just: a guess more than anything else. Among other things, perhaps first of all things, Alessan was going to a place where his mother was dying. No wonder he had urged his horse ahead; no wonder he wasnt speaking now.

He is entitled, Devin thought, watching the Prince ride, straight-backed and self-contained in front of them. Hes entitled to whatever solitude, whatever release he needs. What he carries is the dream of a people, and most of them dont even know it.

And thinking so, he found himself drawn out of his own confusion, his struggling adjustment to where they were. Focusing on Alessan he found his avenue to passion again to the burning inward response to what had happened here—and was still happening. Every hour of every day in the ransacked, broken-down province named Lower Corte.

And somewhere in his mind and heart—fruits of a long winter of thought, and of listening in silence as older and wiser men spoke— Devin knew that he was not the first and would not be the last person to find in a single man the defining shape and lineaments for the so much harder love of an abstraction or a dream.

It was then, looking all around at the sweep of land under the wide arch of a high blue sky, that Devin felt something pluck at the strings of his heart as if it were a harp. As if he were. He felt the drumming of his horses hooves on the hard earth, following fast behind the Prince, and it seemed to Devin that that drumming was with the harp-strings as they galloped.

Their destiny was waiting for them, brilliant in his mind like the colored pavilions on the plain of the Triad Games that took place every three years. What they were doing now mattered, it could make a difference. They were riding at the very center of events in their time. Devin felt something pull him forward, lifting and bearing him into the riptide, the maelstrom of the future. Into what his life would have been about when it was over.

He saw Erlein glance over again, and this time Devin smiled back at him. A grim, fierce smile. He saw the habitual, reflexive irony leave the wizards lean face, replaced by a flicker of doubt. Devin almost felt sorry for the man again.

Impulsively he guided his horse nearer to Erleins brown and leaned over to squeeze the other mans shoulder.

"Were going to do it!" he said brightly, almost gaily.

Erleins face seemed to pinch itself together. "You are a fool," he said tersely. "A young, ignorant fool." He said it without conviction though, an instinctive response.

Devin laughed aloud.

Later he would remember this moment too. His words, Erleins, his laughter under the bright, blue cloudless sky. Forests and the mountains on their left and in the distance before them now the first glimpse of the Sperion, a glinting ribbon flowing swiftly north before beginning its curve west to find the

sea.

The Sanctuary of Eanna lay in a high valley set within a sheltering and isolating circle of hills south and west of the River Sperion and of what had been Avalle. It was not far from the road that had once borne such a volume of trade back and forth from Tigana and Quileia through the high saddleback of the Sfaroni Pass.

In all nine provinces Eannas priests and Morians, and the priestesses of Adaon had such retreats.

Founded in out-of-the way parts of the peninsula—sometimes dramatically so—they served as centers of learning and teaching for the newly initiated clergy, repositories of wisdom and of the canons of the Triad, and as places of withdrawal, where priests and priestesses who chose might lay down the pace and burdens of the world outside for a time or for a lifetime.

And not just the clergy. Members of the laity would sometimes do the same, if they could afford "contributions" that were judged as appropriate offerings for the privilege of sheltering for a space of days or years within the ambit of these retreats.

Many were the reasons that led people to the Sanctuaries. It had long been a jest that the priestesses of Adaon were the best birth doctors in the Palm, so numerous were the daughters of distinguished or merely wealthy houses that elected to sojourn at one of the gods retreats at times that might otherwise have been inconvenient for their families. And, of course, it was well known that an indeterminately high percentage of the clergy were culled from the living offerings these same daughters left behind when they returned to their homes. Girl children stayed with Adaon, the boys went to Morian. The white-robed priests of Eanna had always claimed that they would have nothing to do with such goings-on, but there were stories belying that, as well.

Little of this had changed when the Tyrants came. Neither Brandin nor Alberico was so reckless or ill-advised as to stir up the clergy of the Triad against their rule. The priests and the priestesses were allowed to do as they had always done. The people of the Palm were granted their worship, odd and even primitive as it might seem to the new rulers from overseas.

What both Tyrants did do, with greater or lesser success, was play the rival temples against each other, seeing—for it was impossible not to see—the tensions and hostilities that rippled and flared among the three orders of the Triad. There was nothing new in this: every Duke, Grand Duke, or Prince in the peninsula had sought, in each generation, to turn this shifting three-way friction to his own account. Many patterns might have changed with the circling of years, some things might change past all recognition, and some might be lost or forgotten entirely, but not this one. Not this delicate, reciprocal dance of state and clergy.

And so the temples still stood, and the most important ones still flourished their gold and machial, their statuary, and their cloth-of-gold vestments for services. Save in one place only: in Lower Corte, where the statues and the gold were gone and the libraries looted and burned. That was part of something else though, and few spoke of it after the earliest years of the Tyrants. Even in this benighted province, the clergy were otherwise allowed to continue the precisely measured round of their days in city and town, and in their Sanctuaries.

And to these retreats came a great variety of men and women from time to time. It was not only the awkwardly fecund who found reason to ride or be carried away from the turbulence of their lives. In times of strife, whether of the soul or the wider world, the denizens of the Palm always knew that the Sanctuaries were there, perched in snowbound precipitous eyries or half-lost in their misty valleys.

And the people knew as well that—for a price—such a withdrawal into the regimen, the carefully modulated hours of retreats such as this one of Eanna in its valley, could be theirs. For a time. For a lifetime. Whoever they might have been in the cities beyond the hills.

Whoever they might have been.

For a time, for a lifetime, the old woman thought, looking out the window of her room at the valley in

sunlight at springs return. She had never been able to keep her thoughts from going back. There was so much waiting for her in the past and so little here, now, living through the agonizingly slow descent of the years. Season after season falling to the earth like shot birds, arrows in their breasts, through this lifetime that was her own, and her only one.

A lifetime of remembering, by curlews cry at dawn or call to prayer, by candlelight at dusk, by sight of chimney smoke rising straight and dark into winters wan gray light, by the driving sound of rain on roof and window at winters end, by the creak of her bed at night, by call to prayer again, by drone of priests at prayer, by a star falling west in the summer sky, by the stern cold dark of the Ember Days ... a memory within each and every motion of the self or of the world, every sound, each share of color, each scent borne by the valley wind. A remembrance of what had been lost to bring one to this place among the white-robed priests with their unending rites and their unending pettiness, and their acceptance of what had happened to them all.

Which last is what had nearly killed her in the early years. Which, indeed, she would say—had said last week to Danoleon—was killing her now, whatever the priest-physician might say about growths in her breast.

They had found a Healer in the fall. He had come, anxious, febrile, a lank, sloppy man with nervous motions and a flushed brow. But he had sat down beside her bed and looked at her, and she had realized that he did have the gift, for his agitation had settled and his brow had cleared. And when he touched her—here, and here—his hand had been steady and there had been no pain, only a not unpleasant weariness.

He had shaken his head though in the end, and she had read an unexpected grief in his pale eyes, though he could not have known who she was. His sorrow would be for simple loss, for defeat, not caring who it was who might be dying.

"It would kill me," he said quietly. "It has come too far. I would die and I would not save you. There is nothing I can do.”

"How long?" she had asked. Her only words.

He told her half a year, perhaps less, depending on how strong she was.

How strong? She was very strong. More so than any of them guessed save perhaps Danoleon, who had known her longest by far. She sent the Healer from the room, and asked Danoleon to leave, and then the one slow servant the priests had allowed to the woman they knew only as a widow from an estate north of Stevanien.

As it happened she had actually known the woman whose identity she had assumed; had had her as one of the ladies of her court for a time. A fair-haired girl, green eyes and an easy manner, quick to laugh.

Melina bren Tonaro. A widow for a week; less than that. She had killed herself in the Palace by the Sea when word came of Second Deisa.

The deception was a necessary shielding of identity: Danoleons suggestion. Almost nineteen years ago. They would be looking for her and for the boy, the High Priest had said. The boy he was taking away, he would soon be safely gone, their dreams carried in his person, a hope living so long as he lived.

She had been fair-haired herself, in those days. It had all happened such a long time ago. She had become Melina bren Tonaro and had come to the Sanctuary of Eanna in its high valley above Avalle.

Above Stevanien.

Had come, and had waited. Through the changing seasons and the unchanging years. Waited for that boy to grow into a man such as his father had been, or his brothers, and then do what a descendant in direct line of Micaela and the god should know he had to do.

Had waited. Season after season; shot birds falling from the sky.

Until last autumn, when the Healer had told her the cold large thing she had already guessed for herself. Half a year, he had said. If she was strong.

She had sent them from her room and lain in her iron bed and looked out at the leaves on the valley trees. The change of colors had come. She had loved that once; her favorite season for riding. As a girl, as a woman. It had occurred to her that these would be the last fall leaves she would ever see.

She had turned her mind from such thoughts and had begun to calculate. Days and months, and the numbering of the years. She had done the arithmetic twice, and a third time to be sure of it. She said nothing to Danoleon, not then. It was too soon.

Not until the end of winter, with all the leaves gone and ice just beginning to melt from the eaves, did she summon the High Priest and instruct him as to the letter she wanted sent to the place where she knew—as he knew, alone of all the priests—her son would be on the Ember Days that began this spring.

She had done the calculations. Many times.

She had also timed it very well, and not by chance. She could see Danoleon wanting to protest, to dissuade, to speak of dangers and circumspection. But the ground was out from under his feet, she could see it in the way his large hands grew restless and the way his blue eyes moved about the room as if seeking an argument on the bare walls. She waited patiently for him to meet her gaze at last, as she knew he would, and then she saw him slowly bow his head in acceptance.

How did one deny a mother, dying, a message to her only living child? An entreaty to that child to come bid her farewell before she crossed over to Morian. Especially when that child, the boy he himself had guided south over the mountains so many years ago, was her last link to what she had been, to her own broken dreams and the lost dreams of her people?

Danoleon promised to write the letter and have it sent. She thanked him and lay back in her bed after he went out. She was genuinely weary, genuinely in pain. Hanging on. It would be half a year just past the Ember Days of spring. She had done the numbers. She would be alive to see him if he came. And he would come; she knew he would come to her.

The window had been open a little though it was still cold that day. Outside, the snow had lain in gentle drifting folds in the valley and up the slopes of the hills. She had looked out upon it but her thoughts, unexpectedly, had been of the sea. Dry-eyed, for she had not wept since everything fell, not once, not ever, she walked her memory-palaces of long ago and saw the waves come in to break and fall on the white sands of the shore, leaving shells and pearls and other gifts along the curving beach.

So Pasithea di Tigana bren Serazi. Once a princess in a palace by the sea; mother of two dead sons, and of one who yet lived. Waiting, as winter near the mountains turned to spring in that year.

"Two things. First, we are musicians," said Alessan. "A newly formed company. Secondly: do not use my name. Not here." His voice had taken on the clipped, hard cadences Devin remembered from the first night in the Sandreni lodge when this had all begun for him.

They were looking down on a valley running west in the clear light of afternoon. The Sperion lay behind them. The uneven, narrow road had wound its way for hours up around the shoulders of an ascending sequence of hills until this highest point. And now the valley unrolled before them, trees and grass touched by the earliest green-gold of spring. A tributary stream, swift-running with the melting snows, slanted northwest out of the foothills, flashing with light. The temple dome in the midst of the Sanctuary gleamed silver in the middle distance.

"What name, then?" Erlein asked quietly. He seemed subdued, whether because of Alessans tone or the awareness of danger, Devin did not know.

"Adreano," the Prince said, after a moment. "I am Adreano dAstibar today. I will be a poet for this reunion. For this triumphant, joyous homecoming.”

Devin remembered the name: the young poet death-wheeled by Alberico last winter, after the scandal of the "Sandreni Elegies." He looked closely at the Prince for a moment and then away: this was not a day to probe. If he was here for any reason it was to try, somehow, to make things easier for Alessan. He didnt know how he was going to go about doing that though. He felt badly out of his depth again, his

earlier rush of excitement fading before the grimness of the Princes manner.

South of them, towering above the valley, the peaks of the Sfaroni Range loomed, higher even than the mountains above Castle Borso. There was snow on the peaks and even on the middle slopes; winter did not retreat so swiftly this high up, this far south. Below them though, north of the contoured foothills, in the sheltered eastwest running of the valley Devin could see green buds swelling on the trees. A grey hawk hung in an updraft for a moment, almost motionless, before wheeling south and down to be lost against the backdrop of the hills. Down on the valley floor the Sanctuary seemed to lie within its walls like a promise of peace and serenity, wrapped away from all the evils of the world.

Devin knew it was not so.

They rode down, not hurrying now, for that would have been unusual in three musicians come here at midday. Devin was keenly, anxiously aware of danger. The man he was riding behind was the last heir to Tigana. He wondered what Brandin of Ygrath would do to Alessan if the Prince was betrayed and taken after so many years. He remembered Marius of Quileia in the mountain pass: Do you trust this message?

Devin had never trusted the priests of Eanna in his whole life. They were too shrewd, by far the most subtle of the clergy, by far the most apt to steer events to their own ends, which might lie out of sight, generations away. Servants of a goddess, he supposed, might find it easier to take the longer view of things. But everyone knew that all across the peninsula the clergy of the Triad had their own triple understanding with the Tyrants from abroad: their collective silence, their tacit complicity, bought in exchange for being allowed to preserve the rites that mattered more to them, it seemed, than freedom in the Palm.

Even before meeting Alessan, Devin had had his own thoughts about that. On the subject of the clergy his father had never been shy about speaking his mind. And now Devin remembered again Garins single candle of defiance twice a year on the Ember Nights of his childhood in Asoli. Now that he had begun to think about it, there seemed to be a great many nuances to the flickering lights of those candles in the dark. And more shadings to his own stolid father than he had ever guessed. Devin shook his head; this was not the time to wander down that path.

When the hill track finally wound its way down to the valley floor, a wider, smoother road began, slanting towards the Sanctuary in the middle of the valley. About half a mile away from the stone outer walls, a double row of trees began on either side of the approach. Elms, coming into early leaf. Beyond them on either side Devin saw men working in the fields, some lay servants and some of them priests, clad not in the white of ceremony, but in nondescript robes of beige, beginning the labors that the soil demanded at winters end. One man was singing, a sweet, clear tenor voice.

The eastern gates of the Sanctuary complex were open before them, simple and unadorned save for the star-symbol of Eanna. The gates were high though, Devin noted, and of heavy wrought iron. The walls that enclosed the Sanctuary were high as well, and the stone was thick. There were also towers—eight of them—curving forward at intervals around the wide embrace of the walls. This was clearly a place built, however many hundreds of years ago, to withstand adversity. Set within the complex, rising serenely above everything else, the dome of Eannas temple shone in the sunlight as they rode up to the open gates and passed within.

Just inside Alessan pulled his horse to a halt. From ahead of them and some distance over to the left they heard the unexpected sound of childrens laughter. In an open, grassy field set beyond a stable and a large residence hall a dozen young boys in blue tunics were playing maracco with sticks and a ball, supervised by a young priest in the beige work-robes.

Devin watched them with a sudden sharp sadness and nostalgia. He could remember, vividly, going into the woods near their farm with Povar and Nico when he was five years old, to cut and carry home his first maracco stick. And then the hours—minutes more often —snatched from chores when the three of them would seize their sticks and one of the battered succession of balls Nico had patiently wound together out of layers and layers of cloth, to whoop and slash their way about in the mud at the end of the

barnyard, pretending they were the Asolini team at the upcoming Triad Games.

"I scored four times one game in my last year of temple schooling," Erlein di Senzio said in a musing voice. "Ive never forgotten it. I doubt I ever will.”

Surprised and amused, Devin glanced over at the wizard. Alessan turned in his saddle to look back as well. After a moment the three men exchanged a smile. In the distance the childrens shouts and laughter gradually subsided. The three of them had been seen. It was unlikely that the appearance of strangers was a common event here, especially so soon after the melting of the snow.

The young priest had left the playing field and was making his way over, as was an older man with a full black leather apron over his robes of beige, coming from where the sheep and goats and cows were kept in pens on the other side of the central avenue. Some distance in front of them lay the arched entrance to the temple and beside it on the right and a little behind, the smaller dome of the observatory— for in all her Sanctuaries the priests of Eanna tracked and observed the stars she had named.

The complex was enormous, even more so than it had seemed from above on the hill slopes. There were a great many priests and servants moving about the grounds, entering and leaving the temple itself, working among the animals, or in the vegetable gardens Devin could see beyond the observatory. From that direction as well came the unmistakable clanging of a blacksmiths forge. Smoke rose up there, to be caught and carried by the mild breeze. Overhead he saw the hawk again, or a different one, circling lazily against the blue.

Alessan dismounted and Devin and Erlein did the same just as the two priests came up to them, at almost exactly the same moment. The younger one, sandy-haired and small like Devin, laughed and gestured at himself and his colleague.

"Not much of a greeting party, Im afraid. We werent expecting visitors this early in the year, I must admit. No one even noticed you riding down. Be welcome though, be most welcome to Eannas Sanctuary, whatever the reason you have come to us. May the goddess know you and name you hers." He had a cheerful manner and an easy smile.

Alessan returned the smile. "May she know and surely name all who dwell within these walls. To be honest, we wouldnt have been certain how to deal with a more official greeting. We havent actually worked out our entrance routines yet. And as for early in the year— well, everyone knows new-formed companies have to get moving sooner than the established ones or they are likely to starve.”

"You are musical performers?" the older priest asked heavily, wiping his hands on the leather apron he wore. He was balding and brown and grizzled, and there was a gap where two of his front teeth ought to have been.

"We are," said Alessan with some attempt at a grand manner. "My name is Adreano dAstibar. I play the Tregean pipes, and with me is Erlein di Senzio, the finest harp player in all of the peninsula. And I must tell you truly, you havent heard singing until youve listened to our young companion Devin dAsoli.”

The younger priest laughed again. "Oh, well done! I should bring you along to the outer school to give a lesson to my charges in rhetoric.”

"Id do better to teach the pipes," Alessan smiled. "If music is part of your program here.”

The priests mouth twitched. "Formal music," he said. "This is Eanna, not Morian, after all.”

"Of course," said Alessan hastily. "Very formal music for the young ones boarding here. But for the servants of the goddess themselves . . . ?" He arched one of his dark eyebrows.

"I will admit," said the sandy-haired young priest, smiling again, "to a preference for Rauders early music myself.”

"And no one plays it better than we," Alessan said smoothly. "I can see we have come to the right place. Should we make our obeisance to the High Priest?”

"You should," said the older man, not smiling. He began untying the apron-strings at his back. "Ill take you to him. Savandi, your charges are about to commit assault upon each other or worse. Have you no control at all over them?”

Savandi spun to look, swore feelingly in a quite unpriestly fashion, and began running towards the games field shouting imprecations. From this distance it did indeed seem to Devin that the maracco sticks were being used by Savandis young charges in a fashion distinctly at variance with the accepted rules of the game.

Devin saw Erlein grinning as he watched the boys. The wizards lean face changed when he smiled.

When the smile was a true one, not the ironic, slipping-sideways expression he so often used to indicate a sour, superior disdain.

The older priest, grim-faced, pulled his leather apron over his head, folded it neatly, and draped it over one of the bars of the adjacent sheepfold. He barked a name Devin could not make out and another young man—a servant this time—hastily emerged from the stables on their left.

"Take their horses," the priest ordered bluntly. "See that their goods are brought to the guest house.”

"Ill keep my pipes," Alessan said quickly.

"And I my harp," Erlein added. "No lack of trust, you understand, but a musician and his instrument...”

This priest was somewhat lacking in Savandis comfortable manner. "As you will," was all he said.

"Come. My name is Torre, I am the porter of this Holy Sanctuary. You must be brought to the High Priest." He turned and set off without waiting for them, on a path going around to the left of the temple.

Devin and Erlein looked at each other and exchanged a shrug. They followed Torre and Alessan, passing a number of other priests and lay servants, most whom smiled at them, somewhat making up for their dour, self-appointed guide.

They caught up to the other two as they rounded the southern side of the temple. Torre had stopped, Alessan beside him. The balding porter looked around, quite casually, then said, almost as casually:

420 TIGANA "Trust no one. Speak truth to none but Danoleon or myself. These are his words. You have been expected. We thought it would be another night, perhaps two before you came, but she said it would be today.”

"Then I have proved her right. How gratifying," said Alessan in an odd voice.

Devin felt suddenly cold. Off to their left, in the games field, Savandis boys were laughing again, lithe shapes clad in blue, running after a white ball. From within the dome he could hear, faintly, the sound of chanting. The end of the afternoon invocations. Two priests in formal white came along the path from the opposite direction, arm in arm, disputing animatedly.

"This is the kitchen, and this the bakehouse," Torre said clearly, pointing as he spoke. "Over there is the brewhouse. You will have heard of the ale we make here, I have no doubt.”

"Of course we have," murmured Erlein politely, as Alessan said nothing.

The two priests slowed, registered the presence of the strangers and their musical instruments, and went on. "Just over there is the High Priests house," Torre continued, "beyond the kitchen and the outer school.”

The other two priests, resuming their argument, swept briskly around the curve of the path that led to the front of the temple.

Torre fell silent. Then, very softly, he said: "Eanna be praised for her most gracious love. May all tongues give her praise. Welcome home my Prince. Oh, in the name of love, be welcome home at last.”

Devin swallowed awkwardly, looking from Torre to Alessan. An uncontrollable shiver ran along his spine: there were tears, bright-sparkling in the brilliant sunlight, in the porters eyes.

Alessan made no reply. He lowered his head, and Devin could not see his eyes. They heard childrens laughter, the final notes of a sung prayer.

"She is still alive then?" Alessan asked, looking up at last.

"She is," said Torre emotionally. "She is still alive. She is very—" He could not finish the sentence.

"There is no point in the three of us being careful if you are going to spill tears like a child," Alessan said sharply. "Enough of that, unless you want me dead.”

Torre gulped. "Forgive me," he whispered. "Forgive me, my lord.”

"No! Not my lord. Not even when we are alone. I am Adreano dAstibar, musician." Alessans voice was hard. "Now take me to Danoleon.”

The porter wiped quickly at his eyes. He straightened his shoulders. "Where do you think we are going?" he snapped, almost managing his earlier tone again. He spun on his heel and strode up the path.

"Good," Alessan murmured to the priest, from behind. "Very good, my friend." Trailing them both, Devin saw Torres head lift at the words. He glanced at Erlein but this time the wizard, his expression thoughtful, did not return the look.

They passed the kitchens and then the outer school where Sa-vandis charges—children of noblemen or wealthy merchants, sent here to be educated—would study and sleep. All across the Palm such teaching was a part of the role of the clergy, and a source of a goodly portion of their wealth. The Sanctuaries vied with each other to draw student boarders—and their fathers money.

It was silent within the large building now. If the dozen or so boys on the games-field with Savandi were all the students in the complex, then Eannas Sanctuary in Lower Corte was not doing very well.

On the other hand, Devin thought, who of those left in Lower Corte could afford Sanctuary schooling for their children now? And what shrewd businessman from Corte or Chiara, having bought up cheap land here in the south, would not send his son home to be educated? Lower Corte was a place where a clever man from elsewhere could make money out of the ruin of the inhabitants, but it was not a place to put

down roots. Who wanted to be rooted in the soil of Brandins hate?

Torre led them up the steps of a covered portico and then through the open doorway of the High Priests house. All doors seemed to be open to the spring sunshine, after the shuttered holiness of the Ember Days just past.

They stood in a large, handsome, high-ceilinged sitting-room. A huge fireplace dominated the southwestern end and a number of comfortable chairs and small tables were arranged on a deep-piled carpet. Crystal decanters on a sideboard held a variety of wines. Devin saw two bookcases on the southern wall but no books. The cases had been left to stand, disconcertingly empty. The books of Tigana had been burned. He had been told about that.

Arched doorways in both the eastern and western walls led out to porches where the sunlight could be caught in the morning and at eve.

On the far side of the room there was a closed door, almost certainly leading to the bedchamber.

There were four cleverly designed, square recesses in the walls and another smaller one above the fire where statues would once have stood. These too were gone. Only the ubiquitous silver stars of Eanna served for painted decoration on the walls.

The door to the bedroom opened and two priests came out.

They seemed surprised, but not unduly so, to see the porter waiting with three visitors. One man was of medium height and middle years, with a sharp face and close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair. He carried a physicians tray of herbs and powders in front of him, supported on a thong about his neck.

It was at the other man that Devin stared, though. It was the other man who carried the High Priests staff of office. He would have commanded attention even without it, Devin thought, gazing at the figure of what had to be Danoleon.

The High Priest was an enormous man, broad-shouldered with a chest like a barrel, straight-backed despite his years. His long hair and the beard that covered half his chest were both white as new snow, even against the whiteness of his robe. Thick straight eyebrows met in the middle of a serene brow and above eyes as clear and blue as a childs. The hand he wrapped about the massive staff of office held it as if it were no more than a cowherds hazel switch.

If they were like this, Devin thought, awed, looking up at the man who had been High Priest of Eanna in Tigana when the Ygrathens came, if the leaders were all like this then there were truly great men here before the fall.

They couldnt have been so different from today; he knew that rationally. It was only twenty years ago, however much might have changed and fallen away. But even so, it was hard not to feel daunted in the commanding presence of this man. He turned from Danoleon to Alessan: slight, unprepossessing, with his disorderly, prematurely silvered hair and cool, watchful eyes, and the nondescript, dusty, road-stained riding clothes he wore.

But when he turned back to the High Priest he saw that Danoleon was squeezing his own eyes tightly shut as he drew a ragged breath. And in that moment Devin realized, with a thrill that was oddly akin to pain, where, despite all appearances, the truth of power lay between these men. It was Danoleon, he remembered, who had taken the boy Alessan, the last prince of Tigana, south and away in hiding across the mountains all those years ago.

And would not have seen him again since that time. There was grey in the hair of the tired man who stood before the High Priest now. Danoleon would be seeing that, trying to deal with it. Devin found himself hurting for the two of them. He thought about the years, all the lost years that had tumbled and spun and drifted like leaves or snow between these two, then and now.

He wished he were older, a wiser man with a deeper understand-big. There seemed to be so many truths or realizations of late, hovering at the edge of his awareness, waiting to be grasped and claimed, just out of reach.

"We have guests," Torre said in his brusque manner. "Three musicians, a newly formed company.”

"Hah!" the priest with the medicine-tray grunted with a sour expression. "Newly formed? Theyd have to be to venture here and this early in the year. I cant remember the last time someone of any talent showed up in this Sanctuary. Can you three play anything that wont clear a room of people, eh?”

"It depends on the people," said Alessan mildly.

Danoleon smiled, though he seemed to be trying not to. He turned to the other priest. "Idrisi, it is just barely possible that if we offered a warmer welcome we might be graced with visitors happier to display their art." The other man grunted what might or might not have been an apology under the scrutiny of that placid blue gaze.

Danoleon turned back to the three of them. "You will forgive us," he murmured. His voice was deep and soothing. "We have had some disconcerting news recently, and right now we have a patient in some pain. Idrisi di Corte, here, our physician, tends to be distressed when such is the case.”

Privately, Devin doubted if distress had much to do with the Cortean priests rudeness, but he kept his peace. Alessan accepted Danoleons apology with a short bow.

"I am sorry to hear that," he said to Idrisi. "Is it possible we might be of aid? Music has long been known as a sovereign ease for pain. We should be happy to play for any of your patients." He was ignoring for the moment, Devin noted, the news Danoleon had mentioned. It was unlikely to be an accident that Danoleon had given them Idrisis formal name—making clear that he was from Corte.

The physician shrugged. "As you please. She is certainly not sleeping, and it can do no harm. She is almost out of my hands now, in any case. The High Priest has had her brought here against my will.

Not that I can do very much anymore. In truth she belongs to Morian now." He turned to Danoleon.

"If they tire her out, fine. If she sleeps it is a blessing. I will be in the infirmary or in my garden. Ill check in here tonight, unless I have word from you before.”

"Will you not stay to hear us play, then?" Alessan asked. "We might surprise you.”

Idrisi grimaced. "I have no leisure for such things. Tonight in the dining hall, perhaps. Surprise me.”

He flashed a small, unexpected smile, gone as quickly as it appeared, and went past them with brisk, irritated strides out the door.

There was a short silence.

"He is a good man," Danoleon said softly, almost apologetically.

"He is a Cortean," Torre muttered darkly.

The High Priest shook his handsome head. "He is a good man," he repeated. "It angers him when people die in his care." His gaze went back to Alessan. His hand shifted a little on his staff. He opened his mouth to speak.

"My lord, my name is Adreano dAstibar," Alessan said firmly. "This is Devin . . . dAsoli, whose father Garin you may perhaps remember from Stevanien." He waited. Danoleons blue eyes widened, looking at Devin. "And this," Alessan finished, "is our friend Erlein di Senzio, who plays harp among other gifts of his hands.”

As he spoke those last words, Alessan held up his left palm with two fingers curled down. Danoleon looked quickly at Erlein, and then back to the Prince. He had grown pale, and Devin was suddenly made aware that the High Priest was a very old man.

"Eanna guard us all," Torre whispered from behind them.

Alessan looked pointedly around at the open archways to the porches. "This particular patient is near death then, I take it?”

Danoleons gaze, Devin thought, seemed to be devouring Alessan. There was an almost palpable hunger in it, the need of a starving man. "Im afraid she is," he said keeping his tone steady only with an

obvious effort. "I have given her my own chamber that she might be able to hear the prayers in the temple. The infirmary and her own rooms are both too far away.”

Alessan nodded his head. He seemed to have himself on a tightly held leash, his movements and his words rigidly controlled. He lifted the Tregean pipes in their brown leather sheath and looked down at them.

"Then perhaps we should go in and make music for her. It sounds as if the afternoon prayers are done.”

They were. The chanting had stopped. In the fields behind the house the boys of the outer school were still running and laughing in the sunlight. Devin could hear them through the open doorways. He hesitated, unsure of himself, then coughed awkwardly and said: "Perhaps you might like to play alone for her? The pipes are soothing, they may help her fall asleep.”

Danoleon was nodding his head in anxious agreement, but Ales-san turned back to look at Devin, and then at Erlein. His expression was veiled, unreadable.

"What?" he said at length. "Would you abandon me so soon after our company is formed?" And then, more softly: "There will be nothing said that you cannot know, and some things, perhaps, that you should hear.”

"But she is dying," Devin protested, feeling something wrong here, something out of balance. "She is dying and she is—" He stopped himself.

Alessans eyes were so strange.

"She is dying and she is my mother," he whispered. "I know. That is why I want you there. There seems to be some news, as well. We had better hear it.”

He turned and walked towards the bedroom door. Danoleon was standing just before it. Alessan stopped before the High Priest and they looked at each other. The Prince whispered something Devin could not hear; he leaned forward and kissed the old man on the cheek.

Then he went past him. At the door he paused for a moment and drew a long steadying breath. He lifted a hand as if to run it through his hair but stopped himself. A queer smile crossed his face as if chasing a memory.

"A bad habit, that," he murmured, to no one in particular. Then he opened the door and went in and they followed him.

The High Priests bedchamber was almost as large as the sitting room in the front, but its furnishings were starkly simple. Two armchairs, a pair of rustic, worn carpets, a wash-stand, a writing desk, a trunk for storage, a small privy set apart in the southeastern corner. There was a fireplace in the northern wall, twin to the one in the front room, sharing the same chimney. This side was lit, despite the mildness of the day, and so the room was wanner though both windows were open, curtains drawn back to admit some slanting light from under the eaves of the porticoes to the west.

The bed on the back wall under the silver star of Eanna was large, for Danoleon was a big man, but it too was simple and unadorned. No canopy, plain pinewood posts in the four corners, and a pine headboard.

It was also empty.

Devin, nervously following Alessan and the High Priest through the door, had expected to see a dying woman there. He looked, more than a little embarrassed, towards the door of the privy. And almost jumped with shock when a voice spoke from the shadows by the fire, where the light from the windows did not fall.

"Who are these strangers?”

Alessan himself had turned unerringly toward the fire the moment he entered the room—guided by what sense, Devin never knew —and so he appeared controlled and unsurprised when that cold voice

spoke. Or when a woman moved forward from the shadows to stand by one of the armchairs, and then sit down upon it, her back very straight, her head held high looking at him. At all of them.

Pasithea di Tigana bren Serazi, wife to Valentin the Prince. She must have been a woman of unsurpassed beauty in her youth, for that beauty still showed, even here, even now, at the threshold of the last portal of Morian. She was tall and very thin, though part of that, clearly, was due to the illness wasting her from within. It showed in her face, which was pale almost to translucence, the cheekbones thrust into too sharp relief. Her robe had a high, stiff collar which covered her throat; the robe itself was crimson, accentuating her unnatural, other-worldly pallor—it was as if, Devin thought, she had already crossed to Morian and was looking back at them from a farther shore.

But there were golden rings, very much of this world, on her long fingers, and one dazzling blue gem gleamed from a necklace that hung down over her robe. Her hair was gathered and bound up in a black net, a style long out of fashion in the Palm. Devin knew with absolute certainty that current fashion would mean nothing, less than nothing, to this woman. Her eyes looked at him just then with swift, unsettling appraisal, before moving on to Erlein, and then resting, finally, upon her son.

The son she had not seen since he was fourteen years old.

Her eyes were grey like Alessans, but they were harder than his, glittering and cold, hiding their depths, as if some semi-precious stone had been caught and set just below the surface. They glinted, fierce and challenging, in the light of the room, and just before she spoke again—not even waiting for an answer to her first question—Devin realized that what they were seeing in those eyes was rage.

It was in the arrogant face, in the high carriage and the fingers that held hard to the arms of her chair.

An inner fire of anger that had passed, long ago, beyond the realm of words or any other form of expression. She was dying, and in hiding, while the man who had killed her husband ruled her land. It was there, it was all there, for anyone who knew but half the tale.

Devin swallowed and fought an urge to draw back toward the door, out of range. A moment later he realized that he neednt bother; as far as the woman in the chair was concerned he was a cipher, a nothing.

He wasnt even there. Her question had not been meant to be answered; she didnt really care who they were. She had someone else to deal with.

For a long time, a sequence of moments that seemed to hang forever in the silence, she looked Alessan up and down without speaking, her white, imperious features quite unreadable. At last, slowly shaking her head, she said: "Your father was such a handsome man.”

Devin flinched at the words and the tone, but Alessan seemed scarcely to react at all. He nodded in calm agreement. "I know he was. I remember. And so were my brothers." He smiled, a small, ironic smile. "The strain must have run out just before it got to me.”

His voice was mild, but when he finished he glanced sharply at Danoleon, and the High Priest read a message there. He, in turn, murmured something to Torre who quickly left the room.

To stand guard in front, Devin realized, feeling a chill despite the fire. Words had just been spoken here that could kill them all. He looked over at Erlein and saw that the wizard had slipped his harp out of its case. His expression grim, the Senzian took a position near the eastern window and quietly began tuning his instrument.

Of course, Devin thought: Erlein knew what he was doing. They had come in here ostensibly to play for a dying woman. It would be odd if no music emerged from this room. On the other hand, he didnt much feel like singing just now.

"Musicians," the woman in the chair said with contempt to her son. "How splendid. Have you come to play a jingle for me now? To show me how skillful you are in such an important thing? To ease a mothers soul before I die?" There was something almost unbearable in her tone.

Alessan did not move, though he too had gone pale now. In no other way did he betray his tension though, save perhaps in the almost too casual stance, the exaggerated simulation of ease.

"If it would please you, my lady mother, I will play for you," he said quietly. "There was a time I can remember when the prospect of music would indeed have brought you pleasure.”

The eyes of the woman in the chair glittered coldly. "There was a time for music. When we ruled here. When the men of our family were men in more than name.”

"Oh, I know," said Alessan, a little sharply. "True men and wondrous proud, all of them. Men who would have stormed the ramparts of Chiara alone and killed Brandin long ago, if only through his abject terror at their ferocious determination. Mother, can you not let it rest, even now? We are the last of our family and we have not spoken in nineteen years." His voice changed, softened, grew unexpectedly awkward. "Must we wrangle yet, can our speech be no more than the letters were? Did you ask me here simply to say again what you have written so many times?”

The old woman shook her head. Arrogant and grim, implacable as the death that had come for her.

"No, not that," she said. "I have not so much breath in me to waste. I summoned you here to receive a mothers dying curse upon your blood.”

"No!" Devin exclaimed before he could stop himself.

In the same second Danoleon took a long stride forward. "My lady, no indeed," he said, anguish in his deep voice. "This is not—”

"I am dying," Pasithea bren Serazi interrupted harshly. There were spots of bright unnatural color in her cheeks. "I do not have to listen to you anymore, Danoleon. To anyone. Wait, you told me, all these years. Be patient, you said. Well, I have no more time for patience. I will be dead in a day. Morian waits for me. I have no more time to linger while my craven child gambols about the Palm playing ditties at rustic weddings.”

There came a discordant jangling of harpstrings.

"That," said Erlein di Senzio from the eastern window, "is ignorant and unfair!" He stopped, as if startled by his own outburst. "Triad knows, I have no cause to love your son. And it is now more than clear to me whence his arrogance comes and his lack of care for other lives, for anything but his own goals. But if you name him a coward simply for not trying to kill Brandin of Ygrath then you are dying a vain, foolish woman. Which, to be perfectly frank, does not surprise me at all in this province!”

He leaned back against the ledge, breathing hard, looking at no one. In the silence that followed Alessan finally moved. His stillness had seemed inhuman, unnatural, now he sank to his knees beside his mothers chair.

"You have cursed me before," he said gravely. "Remember? I have lived much of my life in the shadow of that. In many ways it would have been easier to die years ago: Baerd and I slain trying to kill the Tyrant in Chiara . . . perhaps even killing him, through some miracle of intervention. Do you know, we used to speak of it at night, every single night, when we were in Quileia, still boys. Shaping half a hundred different plans for an assassination on the Island. Dreaming of how we would be loved and honored after death in a province with its name restored because of us.”

His voice was low, almost hypnotic in its cadences. Devin saw Danoleon, his face working with emotion, sink back into the other armchair. Pasithea was still as marble, as expressionless and cold. Devin moved quietly toward the fire, in a vain attempt to quell the shivering that had come over him. Erlein was still by the window. He was playing his harp again, softly, single notes and random chords, not quite a tune.

"But we grew older," Alessan went on, and an urgency, a terrible need to be understood had come into his voice. "And one Midsummers Eve Marius became Year King in Quileia, with our aid. After that when we three spoke the talk was different. Baerd and I began to learn some true things about power and the world. And that was when it changed for me. Something new came to me in that time, building and building, a thought, a dream, larger and deeper than trying to kill a Tyrant. We came back to the Palm and began to travel. As musicians, yes. And as artisans, merchants, athletes one time in a Triad Game year, as

masons and builders, guards to a Senzian banker, sailors on a dozen different merchant-ships. But even before those journeys had begun, mother, even before we came back north over the mountains, it had all changed for me. I was finally clear about what my task in life was to be. About what had to be done, or tried. You know it, Danoleon knows; I wrote you years ago what my new understanding was, and I begged your blessing for it. It was such a simple truth: we had to take both Tyrants together, that this whole peninsula might again be free.”

His mothers voice overrode his steady passion then, harsh, implacable, unforgiving: "I remember. I remember the day that letter came. And I will tell you again what I wrote you then to that harlots castle in Certando: you would buy Cortes freedom, and Astibars and Tregeas at the price of Tiganas name. Of our very existence in the world. At the cost of everything we ever had or were before Brandin came. At the price of vengeance and our pride.”

"Our pride," Alessan echoed, so softly now they could barely hear. "Oh, our pride. I grew up knowing all about our pride, mother. You taught me, even more than father did. But I learned something else, later, as a man. In my exile. I learned about Astibars pride. About Senzios and Asolis and Certandos. I learned how pride had ruined the Palm in the year the Tyrants came.”

"The Palm?" Pasithea demanded, her voice shrill. "What is the Palm? A spur of land. Rock and earth and water. What is a peninsula that we should care for it?”

"What is Tigana?" Erlein di Senzio asked bluntly, his harp silent in his hands.

Pasitheas glance was withering. "I would have thought a bound wizard should know that!" she said corrosively, meaning to wound. Devin blinked at the speed of her perception; no one had told her about Erlein, she had deduced it in minutes from a scattering of clues.

She said: "Tigana is the land where Adaon lay with Micaela when the world was young and gave her his love and a child and a gods gift of power to that child and those who came after. And now the world has spun a long way from that night and the last descendant of that union is in this room with the entire past of his people falling through his hands." She leaned forward, her grey eyes blazing, her voice rising in indictment. "Falling through his hands. He is a fool and a coward, both. There is so much more than freedom in a peninsula in any single generation at stake in this!”

She fell back, coughing, pulling a square of blue silk from a pocket in her robe. Devin saw Alessan begin a movement up from his knees, and then check himself. His mother coughed, rackingly, and Devin saw, before he could turn his eyes away that the silk came away red when she was done. On the carpet beside her Alessan bowed his head.

Erlein di Senzio, from the far side of the room, perhaps too far to see the blood, said, "And shall I now tell you the legends of Senzios pre-eminence? Of Astibars? Will you hear me sing the story of Eanna on the Island shaping the stars from the glory of her love-making with the god? Do you know Certandos claim to be the heart and soul of the Palm? Do you remember the Carlozzini? The Night Walkers in their highlands two hundred years ago?”

The woman in the armchair pushed herself straight again glaring at him. Fearing her, hating her words and manner and the terrible thing she was doing to her son, Devin nonetheless felt humbled in the face of so much courage and such a force of will.

"But that is the point," she said more softly, sparing her strength. "That is the heart of this. Can you not see it? I do remember those stories. Anyone with an education or a library, any fool who has ever heard a troubadours sentimental wailing can remember them. Can hear twenty different songs of Eanna and Adaon on Sangarios. Not us, though. Dont you see? Not Tigana anymore. Who will sing of Mi-caela under the stars by the sea when we are gone? Who will be here to sing, when one more generation has lived and died away in the world?”

"I will," said Devin, his hands at his sides.

He saw Alessans head come up as Pasithea turned to fix him with her cold eyes. "We all will," he

said, as firmly as he could. He looked at the Prince and then, forcing himself, back to the dying old woman raging in her pride. "The whole Palm will hear that song again, my lady. Because your son is not a coward. Nor some vain fool seeking a young death and shallow fame. He is trying for the larger thing and he is going to do it. Something has happened this spring and because of it he is going to do what he has said he will do: free this peninsula and bring back Tiganas name into the world.”

He finished, breathing in hard gasps as if he had been running a race. A moment later, he felt himself go crimson with mortification. Pasithea bren Serazi was laughing. Mocking him, her frail thin body rocking in the chair. Her high laughter turned into another desperate fit of coughing; the blue silk came up, and when it was withdrawn there was a great deal of blood stain. She clutched at the arms of her chair to steady herself.

"You are a child," she pronounced finally. "And my son is a child for all the grey in his hair. And I have no doubt that Baerd bar Saevar is exactly the same, with half the grace and the gifts his father had.

Something has happened this spring, " she mimicked with cruel precision. Her voice grew hard and cold as midwinter ice: "Do you infants have any idea what has really just happened in the Palm?”

Slowly her son rose from his knees to stand before her. "We have been riding for a number of days and nights. We have heard no tidings. What is it?”

"I told you there was news," Danoleon said quickly. "But I had no chance to give you the—”

"I am pleased," Pasithea interrupted. "So very pleased. It seems I still have something to tell my son before I leave him forever. Something he hasnt learned or thought out all by himself already." She pushed herself erect again in the chair, her eyes cold and bright like frost under blue moonlight. There was something wild and lost in her voice though, trying to break through. Some terrible fear, and of more than death. She said: "A messenger came yesterday at sunset, at the end of the Ember Days. An Ygrathen, riding from Stevanien with news from Chiara. News so urgent Brandin had sent it by his sorcerous link to all his Governors with instructions to spread the tidings.”

"And the tidings are?" Alessan had braced himself, as if preparing to receive a blow.

"The tidings? The tidings, my feckless child, are that Brandin has just abdicated as King of Ygrath.

He is sending his army home. And his Governors. All those who choose to stay with him must become citizens of this peninsula. Of a new dominion: the Kingdom of the Western Palm. Chiara, Corte, Asoli, Lower Corte. Four provinces under Brandin on the Island. He has announced that we are free of Ygrath, no longer a colony. Taxes are to be shared equally among us now, and they have been cut in half.

Beginning yesterday. Cut by considerably more than half here in Lower Corte. Our burden will now be equal with the others. The messenger said that the people of this province—the people your father ruled— were singing Brandins name in the streets of Stevanien.”

Alessan, moving very carefully, as if he were carrying something large and heavy, that might shift and fall, turned toward Danoleon. Who was nodding his head.

"It seems that there was an assassination attempt on the Island three days ago," the High Priest said.

"Originating in Ygrath: the Queen and Brandins son, the Regent. It apparently failed only because of one of his Tribute women. The one from Certando who almost started a war. You may remember that, twelve, fourteen years ago? It seems that in the wake of this Brandin has changed his mind about what he has been doing. Not about staying in the Palm, or about Tigana and his revenge, but about what must be done in Ygrath if he continues here.”

"And he is going to continue here," Pasithea said. "Tigana will die, still be lost forever to his vengeance, but our people will be singing the Tyrants name as it dies. The name of the man who killed your father.”

Alessan was nodding his head reflexively. He seemed, in fact, scarcely to be listening, as if he had suddenly withdrawn entirely inside himself. Pasithea fell silent in the face of that, looking at her son. It

grew deathly still in the room. Outside, far away, the uncontrolled shouts and laughter of the children in the field came to their ears again, the louder for the silence within. Devin listened to that distant mirth and tried to slow the chaos of his heart, to attempt to deal with what they had just heard.

He looked at Erlein, who had laid down his harp on the window-ledge and walked a few steps into the room, his expression troubled and wary. Devin tried desperately to think, to gather his scattered thoughts, but the news had caught him hopelessly unprepared. Free of Ygrath. Which was what they wanted, wasnt it? Except that it wasnt. Brandin was staying, they were not free of him, or the weight of his magic. And Tigana? What of Tigana now?

And then, quite unexpectedly, there was something else bothering him. Something different. A distracting, niggling awareness tugging at the corner of his mind. Telling him there was something he should know, should remember.

Then, equally without warning, the something slid forward and into place. In fact . . .

In fact, he knew exactly what was wrong.

Devin closed his eyes for a moment, fighting a sudden paralyzing fear. Then, as quietly as he could, he began working his way along the western wall away from the fireplace where he had been standing all this time.

Alessan was speaking now, almost to himself. He said: "This changes things of course. It changes a great deal. Im going to need time to think it through, but I believe it may actually help us. This may truly be a gift not a curse.”

"How? Are you genuinely simple?" his mother snapped. "They are singing the Tyrants name in the streets of Avalle!”

Devin winced at the old name, the desperate pain at the heart of that cry, but he forced himself to keep moving. A terrifying certainty was rising within him.

"I hear you, I understand. But dont you see?" Alessan dropped to his knees on the carpet again, close to his mothers chair. "The Ygrathen army is going home. If he has to fight a war it will have to be with an army of our people and what few Ygrathens stay with him. What ... oh, mother! . . . what do you think the Barbadian in As-tibar will do when he hears this?”

"He will do nothing," Pasithea said flatly. "Alberico is a timorous man spun neck-deep in his own webs, all of which lead back to the Emperors Tiara. At least a quarter of the Ygrathen army will stay with Brandin. And those people singing are the most oppressed people in the peninsula. If they are joyous, what do you think is happening elsewhere? Do you not imagine an army can be raised in Chiara and Corte and Asoli to fight against Barbadior for a man who has renounced his own Kingdom for this peninsula?”

She began coughing again, her body rocking even more harshly than before.

Devin didnt know the answer. He couldnt even begin to guess. He knew that the balance had completely shifted, the balance Alessan had spoken about and played with for so long. He also knew something else.

He reached the window. Its ledge was about the height of his chest. He was a small man; not for the first time he regretted it. Then he gave thanks for his compensations, offered a quick prayer to Eanna and, hands flat on the ledge for leverage, pushed upward hard and swung himself like a gymnast through to the portico. He heard Pasithea still coughing behind him, a hard, painful sound. Danoleon cried out.

He stumbled and fell, crashing into a pillar with his shoulder and hip. He pushed up and off, scrambling to his feet in time to see a figure in beige robes leap up from a crouch beside the window, swearing furiously, and sprint away. Devin grappled for the knife at his belt, a blind, thought-obliterating rage rising in him. It had been too uproarious in the games field. The same sound as before, when the priest had left them alone.

Only this time the priest had left them alone while he spied on this room.

Alessan was at the window, Erlein just behind him.

"Savandi!" Devin gasped. "He was listening!" He spat the words over his shoulder because he was already running after the other man. He spared a fleeting moment of thanks, and wonder, for whatever Rinaldo the Healer had done to his leg in that Certandan barn. Then anger swept over him again, and fear, and the absolute need to catch the other man.

He vaulted the stone balustrade at the back end of the portico without breaking stride. Savandi, sprinting for all he was worth, had cut west toward the back of the Sanctuary grounds. In the distance on their left Devin could see the children playing in the field. He gritted his teeth and ran. These cursed priests! he was thinking, fury almost choking him. Will they undo everything, even now?

If Alessans identity became known anywhere in this Sanctuary Devin had little doubt how swiftly that knowledge would reach Brandin of Ygrath. He had no doubts at all about what would happen then.

And then he was assailed by another whirling thought, one that terrified him. He drove himself to even greater speed, legs pumping, his lungs sucking for air. The mindlink. What if Savandi could link to the King? What if Brandins spy could directly contact him in Chiara now?

Devin cursed in the depths of his heart but not aloud, sparing his breath for speed. Savandi, lithe and quick himself, raced down the path past a small building on the left and cut sharply right, about twenty strides ahead of Devin, around the back part of the temple itself.

Devin sped around the corner. Savandi was nowhere to be seen. He froze for a moment, seized by panic. There was no door into the temple here. And only a thick barrier of hedges, just coming into green on the left.

Then he saw where the hedges were quivering and he leaped for that spot. There was a gap forced low down. He dropped to his knees and scrambled through, scratching his arms and face.

He was in a cloistered area, large, beautifully serene, gracefully laid out, with a splashing fountain at the center. He had no time to value such things though. At the northwest corner the cloister gave onto another portico and a long building with a small domed roof at the near end. Savandi was just now sprinting up the steps to the portico and then through a doorway into the building. Devin looked up. At one second-story window an old man could be seen, white haired and hollow-cheeked, gazing down without expression on the sunlit cloister.

Running flat out for the doorway, Devin realized where he was. This was the infirmary, and the small dome would be a temple for the sick who sought the comfort of Eanna but could not venture down the path to her larger dome.

He took the three steps to the portico in one flying leap and burst through the doorway, knife in hand.

He was aware that following so fast he was an easy target for an ambush if Savandi chose to lie in wait.

He didnt think that would happen though—which only increased his deeper fear.

The man seemed to be racing away from where his fellow priests might be found, in the temple itself, the kitchens, the dormitory or the dining room. Which meant that he didnt expect help or aid, that he couldnt really be hoping to escape.

Which meant, in turn, that there was probably only one thing he was going to try to do, if Devin gave him enough time.

The doorway gave onto a long corridor and a stairway leading upward. Savandi was out of sight but Devin, glancing down, gave a quick prayer of thanks to Eanna: running across the damp ground of the cloister the priest had picked up mud on his shoes. The trail was unmistakable on the stone floor and it went down the corridor and not up the stairs.

Devin sped in pursuit, flying down the hallway, skidding into a left turn around a corner at the far end. There were rooms at intervals all along and an arched entrance to the infirmarys small temple at the opposite end. Most of the doors were open; most of the rooms were empty.

But then, in that short corridor he came to one closed door; Savandis trail led there and stopped.

Devin clutched the handle and threw his shoulder hard against the heavy wood. Locked. Immovable.

Sobbing for breath he dropped to his knees, grappling in his pocket for the twist of wire he was never without: not since Marra had been alive. Since she had taught him all he knew about locks. He untwisted and tried to shape the wire, but his hands were trembling. Sweat streamed into his eyes. He wiped it furiously away and fought for calm. He had to get this door open before the man inside sent the message that would destroy them all.

An exterior door opened behind him. Steps thudded quickly down the hallway.

Without looking up, Devin said: "The man who touches or hinders me dies. Savandi is a spy for the King of Ygrath. Find me a key for this door!”

"It is done!" came a voice he knew. "It is open. Go!”

Devin flung a glance over his shoulder and saw Erlein di Senzio standing there with a sword in his hand.

Springing to his feet Devin twisted the handle again. The door swung open. He charged into the room. There were jars and vials lining shelves around the walls, and instruments on tables. Savandi was there, on a bench in the middle of the room, hands at his temples, visibly straining to concentrate.

"Plague rot your soul!" Devin screamed at the top of his voice. Savandi seemed to snap awake. He rose with a feral snarl, grabbing for a surgical blade on the table beside him.

He never reached it.

Still screaming, Devin was upon him, his left hand gouging at the priests eyes. He slashed forward and up with his right in a hard and deadly arc, plunging his blade in between Savandis ribs. Once, he stabbed, and then again, raking savagely upward, feeling the blade twist, grinding against bone with a sickening sensation. The young priests mouth gaped open, his eyes widened in astonishment. He screamed, high and short, his hands flying outward from his sides. And then he died.

Devin released him and collapsed on the bench, fighting for breath. Blood pounded in his head; he could feel a vein pulsing at his temple. His vision blurred for a moment and he closed his eyes. When he opened them he saw that his hands were still shaking.

Erlein had sheathed his sword. He moved to stand beside Devin.

"Did . . . did he send . . . ?" Devin found that he couldnt even speak properly.

"No." The wizard shook his head. "You came in time. He didnt link. No message went.”

Devin stared down at the blank, staring eyes and the body of the young priest who had sought to betray them. How long? he wondered. How long was he doing this?

"How did you get here?" he asked Erlein, his voice hoarse. His hands were still shaking. He dropped the bloodied knife with a clatter on the tabletop.

"I followed from the bedchamber. Saw which way you went until I lost you around the back of the temple. Then I needed magic. I traced Savandis aura here.”

"We came through the hedges and across the cloister. He was trying to shake me.”

"I can see that. Youre bleeding again.”

"Doesnt matter." Devin took a deep breath. There were footsteps in the corridor outside. "Why did you come? Why do this for us?”

Erlein looked defensive for an instant, but quickly regained his sardonic expression. "For you? Dont be a fool, Devin. I die if Alessan does. Im bound, remember? This was self-preservation. Nothing else.”

Devin looked up at him, wanting to say something more, something important, but just then the footsteps reached the doorway and Danoleon entered quickly with Torre close behind. Neither of them said a word, taking in the scene.

"He was trying to mind-link with Brandin," Devin said. "Erlein and I got to him in time.”

Erlein made a dismissive sound. "Devin did. But I had to use a spell to follow them and another on the door. I dont think they were strong enough to draw attention, but in case there is a Tracker anywhere around here we had better get moving before morning.”

Danoleon seemed not to have even heard. He was looking down at Savandis body. There were tears on his face.

"Dont waste your grief on a carrion bird," Torre said harshly.

"I must," the High Priest said softly, leaning upon his staff. "I must. Dont you understand? He was born in Avalle. He was one of us.”

Devin abruptly turned his head away. He felt sick to his stomach, hit by a resurgence of the raging white fury that had sped him here, and had driven him to kill so violently. One of us. He remembered Sandre dAstibar in the cabin in the woods, betrayed by his grandchild. He was seriously afraid he was going to be ill. One of us.

Erlein di Senzio laughed. Devin wheeled furiously around on him, his hands clenched into fists. And there must have been something murderous in his eyes, for the wizard quickly sobered, mockery leaving his face as if wiped away with a cloth.

There was a short silence.

Danoleon drew himself up and straightened his massive shoulders. He said, "This will have to be dealt with carefully or the story will spread. We cant have Savandis death traced to our guests. Torre, when we leave lock this room with the body in it. After dark, when the others are asleep we will deal with him.”

"Hell be missed at dinner," Torre said.

"No he wont. You are the porter. You will see him ride through the gate late this afternoon. He will be going to see his family. It fits, just after the Ember Days, and in the wake of the news from Chiara. He has ridden out often enough, and not always with my permission. I think I have an idea why now. I wonder if he ever really rode to his fathers house. Unfortunately for Savandi, this time he is going to be killed by someone on the road just outside our valley.”

There was a hardness to the High Priests voice that Devin had not heard before. One of us. He looked down at the dead man again. His third killing. But this one was different. The guard in the Nievolene barn, the soldier in the hill pass, they had been doing what they had come to the Palm to do. Loyal to the power they served, hiding nothing of their nature, true to their manifest cause. He had grieved for their dying, for the lines of life that had brought him together with them.

Savandi was otherwise. This death was different. Devin searched his soul and found that he could not grieve for what he had done. It was all he could do, he realized with a sense of real uneasiness, to refrain from plunging his dagger again in the corpse. It was as if the young priests corrosive treachery to his people, his smiling deceit, had tapped some violence of passion Devin hadnt known lay within him.

Almost exactly, he thought suddenly, the way that Alienor of Castle Borso had done, in a very different sphere of life.

Or, perhaps, at the heart of things, not so very different after all. But that was too hard, too dangerous a knot to try to untie just now, in the staring presence of death. Which reminded him of something, made him suddenly aware of an absence. He looked quickly up at Danoleon.

"Wheres Alessan?" he said sharply. "Why didnt he follow?”

But even before he was answered, he knew. There could only be one reason in the world why the Prince hadnt come.

The High Priest looked down at him. "He is still in my chamber. With his mother. Though I am afraid it may be over by now.”

"No," Devin said. "Oh, no." And rose, and went to the door, and into the corridor, and then out through the eastern doorway of the infirmary into the slanting light of late afternoon, and began, again, to run.

Along the back curve of the temple dome, past the same small building as before and a little garden he hadnt noticed coming here, then back, flying, down the path to the High Priests house, and up onto the portico between the pillars, as if rewinding events like a ball of wool, to the window through which he had leaped such a little while ago. As if he could race back not only past Savandi, past their coming here, but all the way back, with a sudden, incoherent longing, to where the seeds of this grief had been planted when the Tyrants came.

But time was not rewound, neither in the heart nor in the world as they knew it. It moved on, and things changed, for better or for worse; seasons changed, the hours of sunlit day went by, darkness fell and lingered and gave way to light at dawn, years spun after each other one by one, people were born, and lived by the Triads grace, and they died.

And they died.

Alessan was still in the room, still on his knees on the simple carpet, but beside the bed now, not by the heavy, dark oak chair as before. He had moved, time had moved, the sun was further west along the curving sky.

Devin had wanted to somehow run his way back through the moments that had passed. That Alessan might not have been left alone, not with this. On his first day in Tigana since he was a boy. He was no longer a boy; there was grey in his hair. Time had run. Twenty years worth of time had run and he was home again.

And his mother lay on the High Priests bed. Alessans two hands were laced around one of her own, cradling it gently as one might hold a small bird that would die of fright if clutched too fast but would fly away forever if released.

Devin must have made some kind of sound at the window for the Prince looked up. Their eyes met.

Devin ached inside, wordless with sorrow. His heart felt bruised, besieged. He felt hopelessly inadequate to the needs of such a time as this now was. He wished that Baerd were here, or Sandre. Even Catriana would know what to do better than he.

He said, "He is dead. Savandi. We caught him in time." Alessan nodded, acknowledging this. Then his gaze went down again to his mothers face, serene now as it had not been before. As it very likely had not been for the last long years of her life. Time, moving inexorably forward for her, taking memory, taking pride. Taking love.

"Im sorry," Devin said. "Alessan, Im so sorry.”

The Prince looked up again, the grey eyes clear but terribly far away. Chasing images backward along a skein of years. He looked as if he would speak but did not. Instead, after another moment, he gave his small shrug, the calm, reassuring motion of acceptance, of shouldering another burden, that they all knew so well.

Devin suddenly felt as if he could not bear it anymore. Alessans quiet acquiescence was as a final blow in his own heart. He felt torn open, wounded by the hard truths of the world, by the passing of things. He lowered his head to the windowsill and wept like a child in the presence of something too large for his capacity.

In the room Alessan knelt in silence by the bed, holding his mothers hand between his own. And the westering sun of afternoon sent light in a golden slant through the window and across the chamber floor, to fall upon him, upon the bed, upon the woman lying there, upon the golden coins that covered her grey eyes.