"How much scouting do you think you can do as a prisoner?" She squinted at him. "What are you disguised as?"

His lips twitched. "A coward, dear Ista. As they believe we betray you in terror to save our property, so they will think I have attached myself to you to save my skin."

"I don't think they are going to think any such thing."

"So much the better for my poor reputation, then."

She blinked, beginning to feel light-headed. "If I fail, they will make demon food of you. A very banquet for some Jokonan officer-sorcerer. Maybe Sordso himself."

"Ah, but if you succeed, Royina! Have you given thought to what you will do after?"

She looked away uncomfortably from that dark, intent gaze. "After is not my task."

"Just as I thought," he said in a tone of triumph. "And you accuse me of being fey! I rest my argument. Shall we go?"

She found her hand disposed upon his arm while she was still trying to decide if she was convinced or just confused. He handed her down the stairs as though they advanced together in some procession, a wedding or a coronation or a feast day, or onto a dance floor in a roya's palace.

The illusion ended soon enough as they picked their way across the charnel wreckage of the star court—two more horses lay dead and swelling there this morning—through the shadow of the archway, and into the disorder of the entry court. A dozen men clustered on the walls in view of whatever Jokonan embassy waited without, very nearly the whole of the garrison who could stand.

Two short, round towers bulged outward on either end of the front wall of the forecourt, allowing a covering cross fire upon the outer gate. A few more soldiers, and a broad, familiar figure in unfamiliar clothes, waited by the leftward tower that harbored the postern door. Ista and Illvin, trailed by Goram and Liss, came to a halt there.

"Learned." Ista favored dy Cabon with a nod. He had shed his order's distinctive robes, not that his filthy whites hadn't been ripe enough to burn by now, and was dressed in a hodgepodge of borrowed gear that mostly failed to fit him. In any color but white, Ista noted.

"Royina." He swallowed. "Before you go ... I meant to beg your blessing."

"We are well met, then; before I went, I meant to beg yours."

She stood on tiptoe, leaned over his sadly reduced belly, and kissed his forehead. If the god light passed any message to him, it was too subtle even for her inner eye to read. He swallowed and placed his hand upon her brow. Whatever ceremonious benediction he'd mustered escaped him as he burst into tears: he managed only a choked "Bastard help us!"

"Sh, sh," Ista soothed his agitation. "It is well." Or as well as might be, under the circumstances. She studied him narrowly. His sleepless hours with the spell-sickened, with their impossible demands made upon skills he didn't even possess, had shaken him badly. The bloody rite on the north tower had been even more harrowing. His god, she thought, had sapped and mined his soul very nearly to the point of breakthrough, stressing him close to cracking open, little though he realized it. The gods had either been unusually lucky in driving two such mules down the road to Their task at Porifors, or else had been trying exceptionally hard... I wonder if dy Gabon is Their second sortie?

Five gods—was it possible to pray that her burden might pass to him instead? The notion shook her, and she blinked to clear her vision. She had a hideous conviction that the answer was yes. Yes. Yes! Let the responsibility for disaster pass to another, not to her, not to her again...

Except that dy Cabon's chances of surviving success, let alone failure, seemed to her even less than her own. She fought back an impulse to fling herself upon him and beg him to take her place. No.

I have paid for this place. I am emptied out with the cost of it. I will not give it up for any man.

"Buck up, dy Cabon, or else take yourself off," Illvin muttered, scowling. "Your weeping is unnerving her."

Dy Cabon swallowed again, marshaling his self-control. "Sorry. Sorry. I am so sorry that my mistakes brought you here, Royina. I should never have stolen your pilgrimage. It was presumption."

"Yes, well, if not you, the gods would have just had to send someone else to make the mistakes." Who might have failed upon the road. "If you would serve me, live to testify. Your order will need to know all the truth of this, one way or another."

He nodded eagerly, then paused, as if finding her offer of release harder to digest than he'd expected. He bowed and stood back, brow wrinkled.

Illvin removed his sword and passed it to Goram. "Hold this for me till I return. No point in handing my father's blade to Sordso for a present, unless it be point first." Goram ducked a nod and tried to look stern, but his features just came out looking contorted.

Ista embraced Liss, who, with a glower at dy Cabon, managed not to cry at her. Then Illvin was handing her through the dark, close space under the tower. The door opened to the light, and a soldier grunted and heaved at something that fell with a muffled thump, then turned aside to let the two of them pass.

The object turned out to be a narrow board, which he had thrown across the sharp cleft before the castle wall. Illvin hesitated, and Ista wondered if he thought of all the random breakage Porifors had suffered in the day past, and if this makeshift bridge was likewise vilely ensorcelled. But he cast her a quick, encouraging smile over his shoulder and stepped briskly across it. It bent disturbingly, in the center of its span, but held.

Ista glanced across at the Jokonan embassy drawn up before the gate to accept her surrender. Some dozen horsemen were assembled— mostly soldiers, together with three officers. Ista recognized Prince Sordso instantly. The translator-officer rode nervously by his side. The other officer, a heavy, leathery, bronze-skinned man with gray-bronze hair, was also a sorcerer-slave; Ista saw by the ascendant demon light that filled his skin. As with Sordso, a twisting ribbon of light floated from his belly back toward the distant green tents.

Also tethered thus was the one horsewoman, or rather, a woman who rode pillion Roknari-style behind a servant, sitting sideways on a padded chair atop the horse's haunches with her feet demurely disposed on a little shelf. The sorceress wore courtly, trailing garments, and a broad-brimmed hat tied below her chin with dark green ribbons. She was a much younger woman than Joen, though neither maidenly nor beautiful. She stared intently at Ista.

Ista stepped out after Illvin, keeping her eyes upon his face and not the dark drop below, which was deliberately lined at the bottom with sharp rocks and glinting broken glass. Cattilara's sandals slipped on her sweating feet. Illvin reached to clasp her hand, a hard grip, and pulled her to stand upon the dusty ground beyond. Instantly, the board was jerked back, scraping through the postern door, which was then clapped shut.

The woman rode closer. Even as Ista looked up to return her glower, the demon light within her faded, until Ista only saw skin and clothing. The mere expression of a face, not the colors of a soul. Ista's breath caught, and she looked again at Sordso. Now he appeared no more than a golden-haired young man upon a prancing black horse. Not one of the sorcerers flung up their hands, wincing at the glare of Ista's god light, nor did the demons cringe within them—she could not see the demons within them.

My inner sight is stolen. I am blinded.

Something else was missing. The pressure of the god upon her back, which had borne her forward floating as if in a dream since that bloodstained dawn upon the north tower, was gone as well. Behind her, only an empty silence loomed. Infinitely empty, since so infinitely filled just moments before. She tried frantically to think when she had last felt the god's hands upon her shoulders. She was certain He had been with her in the forecourt, when she had spoken with dy Cabon. She thought He had been with her when she'd stepped onto the board across the cleft.