Not legitimate. That was it, Vincus was sure. The arrivals were impostors.

At first, Vincus was hesitant to bring up the matter to the druid. Vaananen, preoccupied with his rena garden, had little love for acrobats and dancers- they did not suit his austere western ways.

But finally, two nights before the festival was scheduled to begin, Vincus slipped through the druid's window. Vaananen did not stir. He crouched, as usual, in the rena garden, drawing a rairfglyph.

The rena garden had grown, Vincus noted. Vaana shy;nen had dismantled one of the wooden walls that kept the sand in place, and now it sprawled onto the floor, spreading like a creature with volition of its own. The druid had added another stone and a squat green barrel cactus to the stark, mysterious arrangement of objects in the sand, and two new glyphs adorned the far walled edge of the garden.

Then Vaananen noticed him, rose and turned, his meditations over.

"What have you brought me, Vincus?" he asked with a weary smile.

Vincus's dark hands flashed the first of four elabo shy;rate signs.

Vaananen laughed. "Impostors? Why, Vincus, all fortune-tellers are impostors."

Vincus shook his head, his fingers a blur.

Vaananen turned back to the garden. "You have tried hard," he announced. "Thank you."

Vincus shrugged, scratched beneath his silver col shy;lar. Perhaps he was wrong after all. He rose and turned toward the window, stepped to the sill…

And climbed out into the close Istarian night, leaving the druid to contemplate the cactus, the stone, the shifting shapes in the sand.

* * * * *

Vaananen might dismiss the suspicion, might laugh it away in his quiet meditation. But there was something different about the city-something strange and curiously out of line. Vincus was accus shy;tomed to watching the streets, to sensing with eye and ear and an insight more subtle than the senses when something had shifted, when something was not right.

And it was that feeling, that insight, that took him back to Balandar's library.

Always before, the library had been a place of peace for Vincus-a maze of sanctuary amid tower shy;ing shelves, with its powerful smells of mildew and old leather emanating from the long-neglected vol shy;umes. As a slave boy, illiterate at first, sold to the tower to repay his father's debts, he had taken books down from the high, obscure shelves to pore over at night after his master was abed. Slowly, his intelli shy;gence had matched the illuminated drawings in the margins of the ancient texts with the shapes of let shy;ters. It was like reading glyphs, this long process that had translated indecipherable scrawls into meaning, into things and ideas.

It had taken all of a year, but he had taught him shy;self to read in the shadowy, candlelit room.

Each time he returned he felt the same absorbing calm and quietude. This time he came as an intruder, a spy, gathering intelligence.

Silently, he thumbed through old Balandar's records. In a shabby old book the priest had kept account of the temple wineries for years, since before the Siege of Sorcery and long before Vincus himself had been born. He had dwelt upon this very book learning his letters and numbers: "claret" and "malmsey" were among the first words he could read.

Looking at the most recent records, those of the last several months, Vincus quickly tallied the num shy;ber of wine barrels brought from the warm north into the Kingpriest's cellar.

The expensive claret was the Kingpriest's favorite, reserved for only the highest clergy. One barrel^ month sufficed, and Vincus noted no change in the order. Nor in the malmsey, which the lesser clerics and the officers drank with a certain . . . license. Seven barrels this month, six the month before, and six before that.

Vincus nodded. A slight increase in the malmsey. Festival time.

The port, however, was the soldiers' wine. Rationed to the Istarian men at arms, it was issued in the barracks and taken afield. The Istarian soldier was naked without his wineskin.

Vincus smiled, adding the numbers.

Ten barrels, then eleven, and this month . . . twenty-two.

Vincus absently fingered his silver collar. There was a marked increase in the port wine, far beyond festival allowances, beyond common sense. It defi shy;nitely supported his suspicion.

Someone new was in the city. Unannounced, unaccounted for.

And port was the wine of soldiers.

Chapter 13

The first night of the Shinarion spangled the city with a gaudy light. In the quiet, less-traveled pockets of the city, marbled squares and opal windows shone with the borrowed glow of Lunitari, red and darkly bril shy;liant like candlelight on wine. But the lamps and the torches drowned the busy commons and thorough shy;fares with the flashy light of commerce, and like a respected matron who has drained the glass once too often, the elegant city burgeoned with a loud, inelegant life.

Yet those who had been here before knew other shy;wise-knew that this year was unlike any that had come before. This time the celebration was fevered, almost desperate, and the promised thousands of pil shy;grims, merchants, and performers had yet to arrive.

Nonetheless, the festival caroused from the center of the Marketplace, the beating heart of the trading, where jewelry, silks, and spices changed hands, to the booths by the gates of the city, where vendors and hucksters sold fireworks, knives, and the red glass bottles of godslight-the strange, everburning mixture of phosfire and salt, dangerous and volatile, that, if handled wisely and cautiously, would pro shy;vide steady light for weeks.

No one, however, expected wisdom and caution from a drunken reveler. Already Peter Bomberus, commander of the city militia, had been called to extinguish three fires by the city walls.

Two had been simple wooden lean-tos-the kind of makeshift dwellings that followed the festivals from Hylo to Balifor. But the third was different: a permanent dwelling, hard by the School of the Games, the dry wooden rafters and interiors ignit shy;ing almost by themselves-a careless spark from a torch, perhaps, or godslight discarded by a drunken reveler.

By the time the commander reached the building, black smoke billowed from a marble husk, and the red flames joined with the red lamps of the Istarian night to create a harsh, hellish light. Two hours of frenzied work had quenched the spreading, danger shy;ous fire, but the building still smoldered at mid shy;night, the woodwork inside glowing faintly as the interior slowly fell in upon itself. Reckless revelers tossed fireworks into the burst opal windows, and the racket resounded into the dark Istarian morning.

But Bomberus and his militia arrested no one. By the time the fireworks began, they were far away, bound toward the abandoned High Tower of Sor shy;cery, where yet another fire had erupted-a metal gate ablaze with phosfire.

On the road to the burning gates, passing through the cluttered Istarian thoroughfares and alleys, Bomberus saw the sights of the Shinarion-the dreamlike arenas of commerce and deception and curious, fraudulent magic.

In a perfumer's booth near the Banquet Hall, two Kharolian merchants stood smugly behind an array of uncorked, parti-colored vials and bottles. The smell of a dozen colognes and attars and oils mingled in the smoky city air, and, reflecting in the red godslight, a thin, transparent hand snaked out of the mouth of each vessel, wavering like a desert mirage, like the blurred air at the lip of a flame.

The hands gestured and beckoned as the militia shy;men passed, but Bomberus had instructed his troops well. On they trudged, past the hall, toward the Wel shy;coming Tower, where a game of chance spilled from a speculator's booth onto the cobbled street, and an odd company of gamblers crouched and knelt and sat on the thoroughfare. Dwarves from Thoradin, Ergothian merchants, and a kender from Hylo gath shy;ered around a circle scratched on the cobblestone, the kender's hands tied in front of him according to the house policy of any establishment frequented by the little folk, and the ten-sided Calantina dice flick shy;ered through torchlight according to some obscure Ergothian rules.