Along with his son, his friend, and Ricolf's vassals, he sat in the front pews of the temple and, peering down at the tiny tesserae of the floor mosaic, prayed that the farseeing god would give him the guidance he sought. When he raised his eyes, the eunuch priest said, "I shall conduct you to the Sibyl's chamber. If you will come with me-"

A black slit in the ground led to the countless caverns below Biton's shrine. Duren's eyes were large as, side by side with Gerin, he set foot on the stone steps that eased the suppliant's way on the beginning of the journey. Gerin's heart pounded, though he had been this way several times before. Behind him, Wacho and Hilmic muttered nervously.

He wondered whom Biton's priests had found for a Sibyl to replace Selatre. When the farseeing god restored his temple compound, he'd wanted to restore Selatre to her place as well. Gerin would not have-indeed, how could he have? — hindered that, but Selatre had begged Biton to let her stay in the new life she'd found, and the god, to the Fox's relief and joy, had done as she asked. Now Biton spoke through someone new.

The air in the caverns was fresh and cool and moist, with a hint of a breeze. Gerin, with his itch to learn, wished he knew how it circulated rather than merely that it did. The priest carried a torch, and others burned at intervals along the rock wall. The flickering light did strange, sometimes frightening things to the shadows the travelers along that ancient way cast.

Yet it also picked out sparkling bits of rock crystal set into the rough walls of the passage, some white, some orange, some red as blood. And, now and again, the torchlight showed ways branching off from the main track, some open, some walled up with brick and further warded by potent cantrips.

Gerin pointed to one of those walled-off passages. "Do the monsters still lurk back there, behind the spells that hold them at bay?"

"We believe so," the priest answered, his sexless voice quiet and troubled. "Those wards are, however, as the lord Biton made them. None of us has been past them to be certain-nor, I might add, have the monsters made any effort to return to the world of light."

"Those horrible things." Ratkis Bronzecaster made a hand sign to avert ill-luck. "They gave us no end of trouble when they were loose." And do I get any credit for tricking the gods into taking them off the surface of the world? Gerin thought. Not likely. But then Ratkis went on with a thought that hadn't occurred to him before: "I wonder if they have gods of their own down here."

Now Gerin's fingers twisted in the avert-evil sign. Some of the monsters-not all-might well be smart enough to conceive of gods, or to have whatever gods who already dwelt in these caves take notice of them: philosophers argued endlessly about how the link between gods and men (or even between gods and not-quite-men) came into being. The Fox was certain of one thing-he didn't want to meet whatever gods might dwell down here in this endless gloom.

"I wonder what Geroge and Tharma would think if we ever brought them down here," Duren said as he walked along the fairly smooth path uncounted generations of feet had worn in the stone.

"That's another good question," Gerin agreed. He started to add that he didn't want to answer it, but stopped and held his peace. If the monsters at Fox Keep did prove troublesome as they matured, he might have no choices left but to slay them or send them down here with their fellows.

The passage wound down and down through the living rock. Most times, that was just a semipoetic phrase to the Fox. Down in the midst of it, though, the rock of the cave walls did seem alive, as if it were dimly conscious not only of his presence but also of separating him from the monsters in the deeper, walled-off galleries.

And it would have twitched and writhed like a living thing in the earthquake that had freed the monsters. Gerin wondered what being underground here when the quake struck would have been like. He was glad he hadn't found out; he and Van had spoken with Selatre (whose name, of course, he had not then known) less than a day before the temblor shook the whole northlands.

A pool of brighter light ahead marked the entrance to the Sibyl's chamber. The priest asked, "Would you like me to withdraw so you can put your question to Biton's voice on earth in private?" Having him withdraw would have involved paying him more. When no one seemed ready to do that, he shrugged and led the suppliants into the chamber.

Torchlight shimmered from the Sibyl's throne, which looked as if it was carved from a single, impossibly immense black pearl. Clad in a simple white linen shift, the girl on the throne was plainly of the old northlands stock whose blood still ran strong around Ikos; by her looks, she might have been cousin to Selatre.

"What would you ask my lord Biton?" she asked. Her voice, a rich contralto, made Gerin move her age up a few years: though maid-slim, she was probably on his side of twenty, not the other one.

He asked the question in exactly the words upon which he and Ricolf's vassals had agreed: "Should my son Duren succeed his grandfather Ricolf the Red as baron of the holding over which Ricolf held suzerainty till he died?"

The Sibyl listened intently-as well she might, for she was listening for her divine master as well as herself. The mantic fit hit her hard, as it had the predecessors of hers whom Gerin had seen on that black-pearl throne: Selatre, and before her an ancient crone who had been Biton's voice on earth for three generations of suppliants.

Eyes rolled back in her head to show only white, the Sibyl writhed and twitched. Her arms jerked and flailed, seemingly at random. Then she stiffened. Her lips parted. She spoke, not with her own voice, but with the firm, confident baritone Biton always used:

Ricolf's vassals were being difficult. Gerin had been sure they would be difficult, from the instant the eunuch priest led him, his son, Van, and them out of the Sibyl's chamber. Now, back at the hostel in the village of Ikos, they, or at least three of them, openly bickered with the Fox.

"Didn't mean a thing," Wacho Fidus' son declared, thumping his balled fist down onto the table. "Not one single, solitary thing."

" `The young man shall hold all the castles/ And all within shall be his vassals'?" Gerin quoted. "That means nothing to you. Are you deaf and blind as well as-" He broke off; he'd been about to say stupid. "We asked about Ricolf's holdings, and the god said he'd rule all the castles. What more do you want?" A good dose of brains wouldn't hurt. You could take them by enema, so they'd be close to what you use for thinking now.

"The god said `all the castles, " Authari Broken-Tooth declared. "The god said nothing about Ricolf's castles. Duren here is your heir, too. When you die, he stands to inherit your lands and the keeps on them."

Gerin exhaled through his nose. "That's clever, I must admit," he said tightly. "Are you sure you didn't study Sithonian hair-splitting-excuse me, philosophy-south of the High Kirs? The only problem is, the question wasn't about the keeps I control. It asked specifically about the holding of Ricolf the Red. When you take the question and the answer together, there's only one conclusion you can reach."

"We seem to have found another one," Hilmic Barrelstaves said, tipping back his drinking jack and pouring the last swallow's worth of ale down his throat. He waved the jack around to show he wanted a refill.