"What was that?" he asked.

"Did you hear anything? Or see anyone?"

"No, but I'll swear you did."

"What, would you not swear instead that I am mad?"

"No."

"And yet you see no god lights, hear no voices. How do you know?"

"I saw my brother's face when you blessed him. And yours when he blessed you. If that is madness, I would run down the road after it dressed as I am, and barefoot."

"I will walk slowly."

"... Good."

He helped her to her feet.

Liss said anxiously, "Royina, what of Foix?"

Ista sighed. "Foix went down beneath many soldiers and sorcerers. I did not see his soul arise, nor his demon flee. I fear he is taken, perhaps wounded as well."

"That's... not good," said dy Cabon, still kneeling by Illvin's pallet. His teeth grated in a little, nervous gesture. "Do you think ... do you think Joen can bind him into her array?"

"I think yes, given time. What I do not know is how long he can resist her." Five gods, I do not wish to lose another boy.

"Not good at all," Illvin agreed.

He had barely exhaled, steadying himself upright, when a shout rang out, Goram's voice: "Lady Catti! No!"

Ista twisted around. Cattilara was on her feet, her bloody robe falling wide about her. Her eyes were huge, her mouth open. The demon light within her had expanded to the margins of her body, and pulsed violently.

"The demon is ascendant!" Ista cried. "It is taking her. Seize her, do not let her run!"

Goram, closest, attempted to take her arm. A violet light appeared in her palm, and she shoved it toward him. He fell, retching. Ista staggered toward her, stepping between her and the opening of the stairs. Cattilara started forward, then shied away, her hands raised as if to shield her eyes. She looked around frantically. Her knees bunched, and she lunged for the wall.

Liss sprang forward and grabbed her ankle. She twisted, snarling, and yanked at Liss's hair. Illvin danced forward, hesitated for an instant of calculation, and clipped her precisely across the side of the head. She flipped backward, half-stunned.

Ista tottered over and fell to her knees beside her. She seemed to see the demon like a tumor spreading tendrils throughout Cattilara's body. Winding like a parasitical vine around the tree of her spirit, sapping strength, and life, and light. Stealing the high complexities of personality, language, knowledge, and memory that it could not, in the fundamental disorder of its nature, ever make for itself.

Oh. Now I see how to do this.

She reached out with her spirit hands and lifted the demon, trailing recoiling tendrils, from Cattilara's soul. It came unwillingly, flopping in panic like some sea creature drawn out of the water. Ista held out a material hand, fingers spread for a screen, and pushed back the trailing shreds of Cattilara's soul, like carding wool, until only the demon was left in her hand. She held it up dubiously before her face.

Yes, said the Voice. That's right. Go ahead.

She shrugged, popped the demon in her mouth, and swallowed it.

"Now what? Are You going to extend this metaphor to its logical conclusion? It would be just like You, I think."

I shall spare you that, sweet Ista, said the Voice, highly amused. But I do like your vile sense of humor. I think we shall get along well, don't you?

There was no cranny in her armored spirit for the demon to wedge itself within, to clutch, to hold; and it wasn't only that she was filled by the god. She felt the demon, knotted up in terror, pass out the other side of her soul. Into the realm of the spirit. Into the hands of the god its Master. Gone.

"What will happen to the pieces of the other souls who are tangled up in it?" she asked in worry. But the Voice had vanished again or, at least, didn't choose to answer.

Cattilara was crouched on the tower platform, panting and hiccupping in little short sobs.

Illvin cleared his throat apologetically, and shook out his hand. "The demon tried to fling you to your death, and its freedom," he told her.

She stared up at him with a ravaged face. In a ragged voice she said, "I know. I wish it had succeeded."

Ista motioned the sewing woman, Goram, and Liss to her. "Get her to a bed, a real bed, and call her women to her. Find her what comforts this castle can yet yield. Don't let her be left alone. I'll come to her when I can." She saw them down the spiral stairs, Cattilara, weary beyond weeping, leaning on the sewing woman and shrugging away from Liss.

Ista turned back to find Illvin and dy Cabon slumping worriedly on the eastern parapet, staring down at the Jokonan camp in the growing light. It roiled with activity, half hidden beneath the trees. Wisps of smoke still rose from the tents that had been burned. A stray saddled horse trotted away from a man trying to catch it; his Roknari curses carried faintly through the moist dawn air. Ista craned her neck in hope, but it did not appear to be Illvin's red stallion.

"So what has happened, Royina?" asked dy Cabon, gazing down in perplexity. "Have we won or lost?"

"It was a very great hunt. Arhys slew seven sorcerers before they brought him down. He stumbled at the eighth. I think it was a sorceress. I wonder if she was young and beautiful, and he could not force his hand swiftly enough to the task?"

"Ah," said Illvin sadly. "That would be Arhys's downfall, wouldn't it."

"Perhaps. The Jokonans had realized how few were his numbers and were combining against him by then, anyway. But the freed demons are fled away in all directions; Joen did not recover any."

"Alas that we do not have two more Arhyses to complete the task," said Illvin. "Perhaps ordinary men must try now." He hitched his shoulders and frowned.

Ista shook her head. "Joen has hurt us, and now we have hurt her back. But we have not defeated her. She still holds eleven sorcerers on her strings and an army barely scratched. She is in a rage; her assault will redouble, without mercy."

Dy Cabon slumped on the parapet, thick shoulders bowed. "Then Arhys rode in vain. We are lost."

"No. Arhys has won us everything. We have only to reach out our hands to collect it. You didn't ask me what I did with Cattilara's demon, Learned."

His brows went up, and he turned toward her. "Did you not bind it in her, as before?"

"No." Ista's lips drew back on a smile that made him recoil. "I ate it."

"What?"

"Don't look at me; it's your god's metaphor. I have finally penetrated the mystery of the Bastard's second kiss. I know how the saint of Rauma accomplished her task of booting demons out of the world and back to their holy commander. Because it seems the trick of it has now fallen to me. Arhys's parting gift, or rather, something he made possible." She shivered with a sorrow to which she dared not yet give way. "Illvin."

Her voice was sharp, urgent; it jerked him from the grieving lassitude that seemed to be overtaking him, as he leaned all his weight on the wall and stared into nothing. He had lost, she reminded herself, a worrisome amount of his own blood in the past hour, for such an already-depleted man. Muddled with Cattilara's, it was spread out in clotting pools across half the tower platform. His wounds had all closed as if they had never been, except for the row of scabbed needle holes bound with thread across his shoulder. He looked back at her and blinked owlishly.

"What is the swiftest, most efficient possible way by which I might come face-to-face with Joen?"

With unthinking brilliance, he replied simply, "Surrender." Then stared at her aghast, and clapped his hand to his mouth as if a toad had just fallen from his lips.