All her life her world has been that safe little cage. Without it, she will do what birds do when they are frightened—fly. Fly and fly. She will fly up and up, and on and on, never daring to come down. And eventually she will exhaust herself and fall helpless from the sky.
Baze had known, then! Or suspected, at least. So had the Keeper. Perhaps it was all written in that book of prophecies. Perhaps there was no sanctuary. Perhaps she was destined to circle back at last, to perch on the twig she had left, obedience returning to the Keeper’s hand.
Never! They had slain her love, slain her child, thrust powers upon her that she did not want. Whatever the Gods had in store for the land of Thume, it could not be more cruel than what Thume had done to Thaile. She would not save them, would not play their evil game.
Would not become what the Keeper was.
Still the land unrolled before her, cloaked in night that could not mask her sorcerous vision. People and more people. She would go on, go on forever and when she came to the western seas, still she would go on, never returning.
And then she sensed an evil. It had been there all along, perhaps, but too strange for her mind to grasp, a discordant shadow upon the ambience. Now it was closer and she could no longer refuse to recognize it. It was inhuman, alien, somehow almost metallic. Intelligence without wisdom, desire without pity, a different sort of sorcery.
The dragons are rising. Yea, dragons! That was what that black cloud signified—dragons. She knew dragons. In the Defile she had been slain by a dragon, a thousand years ago. But these were hundreds of dragons, a great blaze questing. She sensed their excitement, their joy in this glimpse of freedom, their remorseless hunger for gold or any lesser metal. She also sensed their anger and resentment as they were herded to another’s purpose when they wanted to disperse and plunder the riches below them. Appalled and yet fascinated, she found herself being drawn to the dragons. Who or what had strength to constrain this mighty host?
Suddenly—danger! There was another entity in the night, another power in the ambience. Not inhuman, but more evil, enormous, and consciously evil. Dragons had no pity; they could not comprehend suffering, but this other could. It loomed over the ambience, a flickering beacon of darkness in the very center of the world. This was what drove the dragons, and now it had detected Thaile. Black tentacles of power reached out for her, querying, groping as a hand might grope in a sack. She sensed two great stony eyes peering around, looking for her—wondering, worried, dangerous eyes.
Unless a hawk catches her first, of course, Baze had said.
There was the hawk! There was the evil that had overthrown the wardens. Now it had caught a glimpse of Thaile. Not a proper glimpse, perhaps, just a hint. She had creaked a floorboard and the guard had raised his lantern. If the Covin was sure of what she was and where she was, it could snatch her from the sky and make her its own. Even she could not withstand so much massed power. The Keeper herself could not, or so she had said.
As the tiny songbird might seek to dodge the plunging falcon, Thaile swooped downward in panicky flight. She made herself small and elusive in ways that words would not describe. She flitted low over the world, seeking to hide her essence behind the great bulk of the Nefer Range—but mere rock would not block those stony eyes. She rushed south over Ilrane, barely taking thought to marvel at the towering crystal sky-trees, and there she began to feel success.
It was the dragons that saved her. If the usurper took his full attention away from the dragons, they would scatter and start to ravage and that was evidently not his plan—not yet. Even the massed power of the Covin could barely control so many. Now was not the time to go hunting wisps. Angrily the eyes turned away, the tentacles withdrew.
Saved!
Thaile stood in a garden. The house beside it was an odd affair of woods and colored stones, alien and impractical, but curiously beautiful. All around it were sleeping flowers and drowsy trees and small ponds of fish. Within slept a man and a woman and two children, golden-haired and golden-skinned. Elves, the gold-haired demons . . . they did not look very demonic. Apart from their coloring and their silly little ears, they looked quite like pixies.
There were other houses scattered around in the hills with people in them. By Thume standards the landscape was crowded, but it was rural compared to any other place she had seen Outside. A skytree towered heavenward very far off, its top glittering in the moonlight. Its base was below the horizon. She called up visions of the books she had browsed through. This was Ilrane, the land of the elves. Could Ilrane be the sanctuary she sought?
“No,” the Keeper said at her back. “There is no safety here.”
Thaile whirled and screamed aloud. “Go away!”
The familiar tall shadow leaned on its staff and made a cackling noise like a rattle of bones. “You are a pixie. You are a freak! No one will offer shelter to a pixie. Pixies no longer exist, remember?”
“Go away, or I smite you!”
”You will draw the usurper.”
“Then I will draw the usurper!” She gathered power . . .
”You have seen him,” the Keeper’s mocking whisper said. Eyes glinted within her cowl. “You know his evil now. He will bind you, bind you forever. With you to serve him, the last hope dies. All will be his, to destroy.”
“But you cannot bind me! Not that way! You have tried everything else, but that last obscenity is barred to you or you would use it. You cannot bind me to do what you will require of me—that which I will never do! Now be gone or I strike!” Thaile brandished power like a fiery sword and the Keeper faded away.
Now even Ilrane was sullied by memory. Thaile went also.
This time she was more careful. She was learning, mastering her skills, and she made sure that she remained unobserved. She headed west again, fascinated by the sinister song of dragons.
As the night drew to an end, so did the land. Only Westerwater lay ahead of her, cold and lifeless. Rosy dawn lit the peaks of the Mosweeps, icy ramparts soaring above the downy clouds, and she sank down again, to watch the sun rise and to rest. Eventually she will exhaust herself and fall helpless from the sky . . .
She sat on a snowy ledge above a pale abyss, hugging her knees and viewing the world of ice and white crags. It was cold, but it was clean. A sorceress could be quite comfortable where a mundane would freeze solid in seconds. She could see forever—see the dragons still questing northward, see the pillar of evil in the center. Probably she could even see Thume itself over the curve of the world if she tried, although she knew that Keef’s mighty sorcery would conceal the inhabitants from her.
Hunger? She made a juicy-sweet mango, and a silver knife to cut it. When she had eaten the pulp, she turned the pit into a diamond as big as a pixie’s ear, and tossed it away in the snow. There were only two problems a puissant sorceress could not solve, and the greater of those was death.
She remembered her few months with Leeb and the tears froze upon her cheeks. Keef and Is-an-Ok, Thraine and six or seven others since the world first turned, and now Thaile—she knew now she could evade the usurper as long as she was careful. Her power was great enough, greater than he would ever look for. She could go anywhere and do anything. But she could not call back Leeb, or her baby. She had nowhere to go and no one to love.
The second problem was loneliness. The sun shone on all Pandemia.
The world was hers and it was nothing.
3
Lord Umpily had just completed breakfast. The surroundings were somewhat bizarre—a filthy, cobweb-strewn stable littered with rubbish. Only a sickly gray light trickled through the little grimy windows, but better illumination might have spoiled his appetite. In the middle of this midden he sat at a damask-covered table laden with silver plate. The dishes contained scant remains of turbot, smoked sturgeon, roast venison, and an oyster-and-mussel omelette, but all of the excellent veal kidney pie had gone, and most of the warm, fresh loaf. He sipped at his goblet of porter, dabbed his lips with the crisp serviette, and reluctantly decided that he could eat no more. The surroundings might lack refinement, but he could not recall a more superb repast.