The Qar lived in Northmarch?

So I am told. It was long before my time. There are certain places of power, and people are drawn to them, places like… Here another strange concept bounced uselessly in Barrick's head, a shadowy image of light the subtle gold of a falcon's eye gleaming from deep underwater, all muddled with something that was bright, piercing blue and as tangled and twined as a grapevine. In the old days all the Children of Stone lived there in peace, and their roads ran beneath the ground in all directions-some say as far as the castle where you were born… Gyir's words suddenly changed, insofar as Barrick was able to tell, the voice in his head growing suddenly cautious, withdrawn. But all that does not matter. The simple tale is this-we are skirting Jikuyin's lair as widely as we can.

But what about those… things that the bird said would be hunting us-Night Men and Longskulls…?

Gyir was dismissive. / do not fear the Longskulls, not if I am armed. And no Dreamless, I think, would be willing servants tojikuyin-surely the world has not changed so much. They have their own lands and their own purposes…

The Dreamless-Barrick shivered at the name. Will we have to cross their lands, too? he asked.

At some point, all who go to Qul-na-Qar, the great knife of the People, the city of black towers, must cross their lands. For a moment, there was something al¬most like kindness in Gyir's thoughts-almost, but not quite. But don't fear, boy. Many survive the journey. He considered for a moment; when he spoke again, his thoughts were somber. Of course, none of your kind has yet tried it.

A Little Hard Work

The three children Oneyna birthed were Zmeos, the Horned Serpent, his

brother Khors Moonlord, and their sister Zuriyal, who was called Merciless. And for long no one knew these three existed. But Sveros was a

tyrannical ruler, and his true sons Perin, Erivor, and Kernios made

compact to dethrone him. They fought courageously against him and threw

him down, and then returned him to the Void of Unbeing.

— from The Beginnings of Things The Book of the Trigon

THE SKIES OVER HIEROSOL were bright on this mild winter day, clouds piled high and white as the snowfall on the distant sum¬mit of Mount Sarissa and its neighbors. The thousand sails in the huge Harbor of Nektarios seemed a reflection of those clouds, as if the bay were a great green mirror.

The small inspector's boat that had tied up beside the much larger trad¬ing vessel now cast free, the rowers ferrying the petty official back to the the harbor master's office in the labyrinth of buildings behind the high east¬ern harbor wall where all legitimate business of the mighty port was trans¬acted (and a great deal of its shadier workings, too). The trading ship, having duly submitted to the official's inspection-a rather cursory one, noted Daikonas Vo-was now free to move toward its designated harbor slip.

Vo did not think much of the harbor master's defenses against smug¬gling, and thought it likely that the lackey's visit had been more about the

ceremonial exchange of bribes for permits than any actual search for con-traband, but he could not help admiring the city's fortifications. Hierosol's eastern peninsula, which contained most of the anchorage, was as formida-ble as its reputation suggested, the seawalls ten times the height of a man, studded with gunports and bristling with cannon like the quills of a por¬cupine. On the far side of the Kulloan Strait stood the Finger, a narrow strip of land with its own heavy fortifications. Modern planners, reexamining the walls in this new age of cannonfire, had realized that if a determined attack should overthrow the much more thinly defended areas along the Finger, the heart of Hierosol would then be vulnerable to the citadel's own guns. Thus, they had mounted smaller guns in those forts on the western side of the isthmus facing the city-cannons which could reach the middle of the strait, well within the compass of the eastern guns, but could not themselves reach the eastern wall.

Vo respected that in his cold way, as he respected most types of careful planning. If, as rumors suggested, Autarch Sulepis truly intended a conquest of Hierosol, Xis' ancient rival, the Golden One would have hard work laid out before him.

Still, it would be interesting-a problem well worth the time and trou¬ble, even without the rich reward of plunder, not to mention the choke hold a successful conqueror of Hierosol would gain on vast Lake Strivothos, the still mighty (and wealthy) kingdom of Syan, and the rest of the interior of Eion. Perhaps, Vo mused, after his own project was successfully con¬cluded he might find himself moving higher in the circles of the autarch's advisers. Yes, it would be a grand entertainment to devote adequate time and attention to cracking open Hierosol's mighty walls like a nut, exposing all the frail, human flesh within to the mercies of the autarch's armies, es¬pecially Vo's own comrades, the White Hounds. If such a day came the Hounds would bloody their muzzles well, there was no doubt about that. Vo did not think particularly highly of the cleverness of his fellow Perikalese mercenaries but he had a deep respect for their essential hunger for combat. They were well-named: you could kennel them for years, but when you let them out, they struck like red Nature.

As he thought about it he could almost smell blood in the salty air, and for a moment the seagulls' shrill cries seemed the lamentation of bereaved women. Daikonas Vo felt a thrill of anticipation, like a child being taken to the fair.

•**

His belongings in a seabag slung across his shoulder, Vo gave the trading ship's captain a farewell nod as he stepped onto the gangplank. The captain, flush with the pride of a man about to unload a full cargo hold, returned the gesture with magisterial condescension.

The merchant captain had proved to be a garrulous fool, and for that Vo was grateful. During their conversations on the eight-day crossing from Xis to Hierosol he had told Vo so much about his fellow captain Axamis Dorza that he had saved Vo days of work, without ever once wondering why this low-level servant of the palace (for so Daikonas Vo had presented himself) should be asking all those questions. In ordinary circumstances Vo would have found it hard to resist killing the captain and throwing him overboard- the man talked with his mouth full as he ate, for one thing, and dribbled bits of food onto his beard and clothes, and he had an even more annoying habit of saying, "I swear it, by the red-hot doors of the house of Nushash!" a dozen times or so in every conversation-but Vo was not going to com¬plicate his mission. The memory of the autarch's cousin spewing blood and writhing helplessly on the floor was very much with him.

Daikonas Vo did not know whether he believed in the gods or not. He certainly did not much care whether they existed-if they did, their inter¬est and involvement in human life was so capricious as to be, ultimately, no different in effect than pure chance. What he did believe in was Daikonas Vo: his own subtle pleasures and displeasures made up the whole of his cos¬mos. He did not want that cosmos to come to an early end. A world with¬out Daikonas Vo at the center of it could not exist.

Very few people looked at him as he made his way along the busy har¬bor front, and those who did scarcely seemed able to see him, as though he were not fully visible. That was in part because of his outward appearance, which, because of his Perikalese ancestry, was similar to many of the folk he passed. He was also slight in build, or at least appeared that way, not short, but certainly not tall. Mostly, though, eyes slid off him because Daikonas Vo wanted it that way. He had discovered the trick of stillness when he was young, when first his father and then later his mother's other male friends had stormed through the house, drunk and angry, or his mother had played out her own shrieking madness; the trick had been to become so calm, so invisible, that all the rage blew past him like a thunder¬storm while he lay sheltered in the secret cove of his own silence.