Foix swung around in wide-eyed dismay; within him, his bear shadow was on its feet, snarling. "What was the purpose of that! A warning? If they can do that, why not burst our bellies or our skulls and have it over with?"

Dy Cabon raised a shaking hand. "Free demons cannot slay directly—"

"The Bastard's own death demon does," said Ista. "I have seen it do so."

"That is a very special case. Free demons, those escaped into the realm of matter... well, they might try to slay directly, but—death opens a soul to the gods. Whether the soul chooses to advance through that door at that moment or not is a matter of will, but in that instant it opens both ways. And the demon is vulnerable to recapture."

"And so they jump away when their mount is slain ..." said Foix.

"Yes, but using magic to slay also creates a link between sorcerer and victim. The effort and the backwash are supposed to be very hard on the sorcerer, as well." He paused thoughtfully. "Of course, if a sorcerer uses magic to stampede your horse over a cliff, or any other indirect method of accomplishing your death, the risk does not apply."

A panting soldier in a gray-and-gold tabard burst through the door. "Lord Arhys! There is a Jokonan herald at the gate, demanding parley."

Arhys drew in his breath between his teeth. "Warning indeed. Notice. Well, they have all my attention now. Illvin, Foix, Learned dy Cabon—Royina—will you attend upon me? I want your sight and your counsel. But stay back below the battlement, out of view, as much as you may."

"Yes." Ista paused to release her ligature from Cattilara's neck and be certain the demon would remain quiescent. Foix watched silently, taking up station at Ista's shoulder as if to guard her. Liss had not been named in Arhys's roll, but she rose anyway, arms crossed and shoulders tucked as if trying to make herself small and unnoticed.

Illvin, striding for the door in Arhys's wake, suddenly stopped and swore. "The cisterns!"

Arhys's head swiveled; the two looked at each other. Illvin clapped his brother on the shoulder. "I'll check, and meet you above the gate."

"Hurry, Illvin." Arhys motioned all within to follow him out; Illvin turned aside on the gallery and ran.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

THEY CROSSED THE COURT OF THE FLOWERS AND CLIMBED THE inner stairs after Arhys. Above the gate a projecting parapet thrust out. Arhys shouldered past his archers spread out along the sentry-walk, mounted to the top of the battlement, and stood spread-legged, staring down. Ista peeked out between the toothed stones.

To the right, where the road turned away toward Oby, she could see the Jokonans settling into camp in a grove of walnut trees, just out of bowshot or catapult range. Tents were being set up, and horse lines arranged. On the far side of the grove, some especially large tents of green cloth were rising at the hands of servants, some wearing the uniforms of the palanquin bearers. To the left, down in the valley along the river, another column was pouring in, threatening the town walls. At its rear, some soldiers were already driving a few plundered sheep and cattle into the arms of their camp followers, dinner on the hoof.

Beyond, the countryside looked deceptively peaceful—emptied out, Ista hoped; only one or two barns or distant outbuildings seemed to be on fire, presumably sites of some temporary, desperate resistance. The enemy had not—or not yet—fired the fields and crops. Did they anticipate being in secure possession of them by harvest time? The third column presumably was taking up position behind the castle, along the ridge.

The drawbridge was up, the castle gates closed. On the other side of the deep dry cleft that fronted the wall, the Jokonan parley officer stood, bareheaded. The blue pennant of his office hung limply from the javelin in his hand in the afternoon heat. He was flanked by two tense guards, sea-green tabards over their mail.

As the parley officer turned his face upward, Ista's breath drew in. He was the same translator she had met in the raiding column retreating from Rauma. So, was his new duty a reward or a punishment? He did not notice her, half concealed in the embrasure; but it was quite clear by the alarmed widening of his eyes that he recognized Arhys as the sword-wielding madman who had nearly taken his head off in that ravine. Arhys's stony expression gave no clue if the recognition was returned.

The Jokonan moistened his lips, cleared his throat. "I come under the flag of parley from Prince Sordso to Castle Porifors," he began, in loud, clear Ibran. He gripped the shaft of his blue pennant as a man might clutch a shield, and ground the butt a little harder into the dry soil by his boot. It was considered very bad form to shoot a messenger, likely to be coldly criticized by an officer's peers and commanders, later. Rather too belated a consolation from the messenger's point of view, to be sure. "These are the demands of the prince of Jokona—"

"Doesn't it worry you, Quadrene," Arhys overrode him in a carrying drawl, "that your prince has become a demon-ridden sorcerer? As a pious man, shouldn't you be burning him rather than obeying him?"

The guards did not react, and Ista wondered if they had been chosen for their lack of Ibran. By the grimace that flashed over the parley officer's face, he might have felt that his enemy had a point, but he returned sharply, "They say you are a man dead three months. Does it not worry your troops to be following a walking corpse?"

"Not notably," said Arhys. He ignored the slight murmur of his archers, clustered behind him. The looks they exchanged covered a range of expressions, from disbelief to alarm to revelation, plus one fellow who vented an impressed Ooh. "I can see how it might pose a problem for you. How, after all, can you kill me? Even a sorcerer must find it a troublesome paradox."

With a visible effort, the parley officer wrenched himself back to his script. "These are the terms of the prince of Jokona. You will surrender the Dowager Royina Ista at once, as hostage for your cooperation. All officers and soldiers of the garrison will lay down their arms and march out your gate in surrender. Do this, and your lives will be spared."

"To be corralled as demon fodder, perchance?" muttered dy Cabon, crouched looking through an embrasure farther down the walkway. A rather more merciful fate, Ista couldn't help reflecting, than what a divine of the Bastard caught in such a conflict might normally expect from overexcited Quadrene troops.

"Come, come, Jokonan, would you trouble me to spit upon you?" asked Arhys.

"Pray save your spit, Lord Arhys. I hear such liquids will be hard to come by in there soon."

Lord Illvin had climbed up behind the parapet in time to hear this exchange, and smiled sourly. He cast a quick look out over Ista's head, taking in the enemy's arrangements in a sweeping pass. Arhys glanced down at him; Illvin leaned his shoulders against the wall below his brother's feet and gazed back out over the forecourt. In a voice pitched not to carry to the Jokonans, he reported, "They got both cisterns. Leaking like sieves. I have men bailing with every intact vessel they can find, and trying to line the tanks with canvas to slow the outflow. But it's not good."

"Right," Arhys murmured back. He raised his voice again to the parley officer. "We refuse, of course."

The parley officer looked up with grim satisfaction at what was obviously the expected answer. "Prince Sordso and Dowager Princess Joen are merciful beyond your deserving. They will give you one day to reconsider your stance. I will come again tomorrow to hear your new answer. Unless you send to us first—of course." With a bow, he began to back away, inadequately covered by his two guardsmen. He retreated quite a distance before he dared to turn his back.