Among the gray stones of the cliff face was a hollow. In the hollow hung a golden bell. The thain picked up the copper striker that lay below it. He didn’t trust his trembling fingers to hold the slender stalk of metal so he gripped it with both hands, as if it were the handle of a sledgehammer. He struck the bell as hard as he could (which wasn’t so very hard): three times. Then he waited there, although he could hear his pursuers loping toward him through the snow, voiceless though they were. He struck the bell three more times and fell dead in the shallow snowdrifts at the base of the cliff.

The bell rang in the little hollow. It rang in the watchroom of the Gray Tower, the Graith’s guardpost over the Gap of Lone. It rang in the thains’ Northtower, on the border of Thrymhaiam in the far north. It rang in Anglecross Tower in the west of the Wardlands, in Islandkeep that guarded the Southhold, in the Graith’s chamber in the city of A Thousand Towers. The same bell, or an image of it, swung in all those places. The same signal sounded in all those places.

Many thains had set out to send that signal, but only the one survived to deliver the news before he died: the Wardlands had been invaded.

When his enemies found him dead, they cut up his body and rendered it down for soup, as was their custom. But they could not work the striker loose from the thain’s hands, so they cut them off and left them there at the base of the cliff.

Long the hands lay there in the bitter snows, waiting for nothing.

CHAPTER TWO

Conversations in

A Thousand Towers

Two months earlier, in the dim noon of a late-winter day, two men fought a duel in the city of A Thousand Towers.

The city street, where it could be seen through the drifts of snow, was green-gray as fungus—because, apart from the paving stones and the drifts of snow between the buildings, it was, in fact, fungus. A few decades ago, a maker in New Moorhope had developed a kind of mold that could be cultured into building materials. Whole neighborhoods on the edges of A Thousand Towers were built from the stuff. Some time later, they were as rapidly abandoned. It turned out that the fungus absorbed and accumulated bad dreams, so that buildings made with it became unpleasant, even unsafe to dwell in. Destroying the fungus released the bad dreams all at once with perilous consequences. It was decided to let the neighborhoods age and decay over time, releasing their evil dreams gradually in the world. Few ever went there—only those whose business required privacy, and who didn’t fear the infection of a temporary madness or two.

And that day, these two men came there, laid aside their red cloaks in spite of the cold, and prepared to fight.

“Let me see it again,” said the taller man. He was Naevros syr Tol, famed as the greatest swordsman in the Wardlands or the wide world beyond.

The other man, Morlock Ambrosius, was famous for other things. He drew his sword and handed it to Naevros.

The blade was black as death, veined with bone-white crystal down its glittering length to its point. The grip was black and bound with something that felt smooth but comfortingly resistant to his hand. The sword had heft, but was lighter than a metal sword this long would be. There was a disturbing presence to the thing, not merely physical. There was a power in it, and Naevros didn’t like it.

He handed it back to Morlock, the man who made it and who owned it. Morlock was also the man who had married the only woman Naevros felt he could love. There were other women, many other women, in Naevros’ life, but Aloê Oaij was different, and this ugly crooked fellow with the sideways grin got to sleep with her every night.

By rights, Naevros should have loathed the man like the slime from a pus-rat. Yet, somehow, he rather liked him. Morlock could drink a table of dwarves under the table, for one thing. He didn’t say much, but anything he did say was to the point. And he was the only person in the Wardlands who could fence at or near Naevros’ level.

He handed the blade back to Morlock. “So that’s what you won from the Dead Cor on the Hill of Storms!” he said.

“Eh,” Morlock said and shrugged. Days went by sometimes without him saying much more than that but this time, thank God Sustainer, he found the strength to go on. “Not exactly. The blade Gryregaest lay shattered on the Broken Altar when I went to claim it. Later I came to understand that the Dead Cor and his weapon were one, woven together. It died when he did, at last. I took the fragments and made them, unmade them, remade them into this blade. I call it Tyrfing.”

“‘Tyr’s grasp’?” translated Naevros. “After Oldfather Tyr, of course.” Morlock had been born in A Thousand Towers, but was raised by his foster father Tyr syr Theorn in the distant north. Tyr was long dead now, but far from forgotten.

Morlock bowed his head and made to sheath the sword.

“Not on your dwarfy life,” Naevros said flatly. “Our bet stands. I’ll break your sword or take it in a fair fight.”

“We were drunk last night, my friend,” Morlock said. “There is no need for this. We could fence with wooden swords. I brought a pair with me.”

“But did you bring a pair of anything else?” Naevros taunted him, waggling his hips lewdly. “Afraid I’ll put your eye out? Think Old Ambrosius will be mad at you if you go back home with a broken sword?”

He was joking and he was not joking. He was fond of Morlock and he hated him. He wanted to make him laugh (as he could sometimes do) and he wanted to cut his throat (as he might someday do). He mentioned Morlock’s father, old Merlin, because he knew it would sting Morlock to murderous rage. He was restless and he wanted a fight and Morlock was the only person who came close to his skill. His useless sterile skill.

That taunt did it. Morlock was furious, though he hid it well. He stepped back on the mold-gray street and came to guard. His cold, angry eyes fixed on Naevros and he waited in the pale sunlight.

Naevros drew his own sword—no wizardish wonder-blade, but a good piece of metal made for him by the weapon-masters of Thrymhaiam—and saluted Morlock with it. He lunged and thrusted; Morlock parried and riposted, and they proceeded to fight up and down the gray street, empty but for snowdrifts and nightmares.

At first glance they were ill-matched. Naevros was taller, possessing a catlike grace and a fluent, sharp eloquence with the sword. Morlock was shorter, less lithe, with something askew in his shoulders. Still, he was swift and strong. If anger never quite left his ice-gray eyes, he never let his attacks or his defense become reckless.

Apart from the recklessness of what they were doing. To fence with real swords was madness; it took even more control to refrain from injuring your opponent or being injured by him. That was why Naevros liked it. At any moment he could kill or be killed. It was like dancing along the edge of a cliff.

But the two fought for hours, as the dim sun slid from its cloudy zenith to just above the ragged gray-green peaks of the abandoned houses, and the blades never struck home on either combatant.

As a greenish dusk began to rise, they found their swords in a bind. Naevros tried to force the crooked man back. But the crooked man set his feet and pushed in turn. The taller man slipped out of the bind and leapt aside as his opponent tumbled past, blundering into a wall. The taller man eagerly leapt forward to strike at his fallen foe, but then backed away, gasping as his opponent rose in a cloud of dead spores and dark dreams to face him, his shining dark sword at guard.

Naevros then felt something like fear. He saw the crooked man wearing the blue skull-face of Death, with Death’s blue blade in his hand, as the Kaeniar paint him in their Inner Temples. Most frightening of all was something Naevros felt in himself—an easiness, a welcoming of peace and rest. It would all be so much easier if—