The man who came in, accompanied by another half-pentecount of the lord protector's Rams, was hugely fat, his thighs rubbing against each other beneath his sumptuous silk robes so that he swayed when he walked like an overpacked donkey. His head and eyebrows were shaved and he wore on his chest a gold medallion in the shape of a flaming eye. He paused when he reached the foot of the throne and looked at Olin with casual suspicion, like someone who had spent most of his life making quick decisions on court precedent and disliked seeing anyone he could not quickly put into an appropriate list in his head.

"Pay no attention to my… counselor," Ludis Drakava told the fat man. "Read me your letter again."

The envoy bowed his huge, shiny head, and held up a beribboned scroll of vellum, then began to recite its contents in the high tones of a child. "From Sulepis Bishakh am-Xis III, Elect of Nushash, the Golden One, Master of the Great Tent and the Falcon Throne, Lord of All Places and Hap¬penings, may He live forever, to Ludis Drakava, Lord Protector of Hierosol and the Kracian Territories.

"It has come to Our attention that you hold prisoner one Olin Eddon, king of the northern country called Southmarch. We, in our divine wisdom, would like to speak with this man and have him as Our guest. Should you send him to Us, or arrange for him to return with Favored Bazilis, Our mes¬senger, We will reward you handsomely and also look kindly on you in the fu¬ture. It could even be that, should Hierosol someday find itself part of Our living kingdom (as is the manifest wish of the great god Nushash) that you,

Ludis Drakava, will receive a guaranteeof safely and high position for your¬self in Our glorious empire.

"Should you refuse to give him to Us, though, you will incur Our gravest

displeasure."

"And it is signed by His sacred hand, and stamped with the great Seal of the Son of the Sun," the eunuch finished, letting the vellum roll closed with.1 flourish. "Do you have an answer for my immortal master, Lord Protector?"

"I will give you one by morning, never fear," said Ludis. "You may go now."

The huge man looked at him sternly, as at a child who seeks to shirk re¬sponsibility, but allowed himself to be led out again by the soldiers.

Soon the throne room was empty again of all save Olin and Ludis and the bodyguards. "So, will you give him what he wants?" Olin asked.

Ludis Drakava laughed hard again. His cheeks were red, his eyes only a little less so. He had been drinking for much of the afternoon, it seemed. "He is readying his fleet, the Autarch-that poisonous, eunuch-loving child. He will be coming soon. The only question is, why does he want you?"

The northern king shrugged. "How could I know? They say this Sulepis is even more of a madman than his father Parnad was."

"Yes, but why you? In fact, how did it come to his attention that you are my… guest?"

"It's hardly a secret." Olin smiled in an ugly way. "You have made sure that all of Eion knows I am your prisoner."

"Yes. But it is also interesting this should come so soon after you spoke with that Xixian girl. Could your innocent meeting have been an oppor¬tunity for you to… send a message?"

"Are you mad?" Olin took a step toward the Green Chair. The two huge guards unfolded their arms and stared at him. He stopped, fists clenched. "Why would I want to put myself into such a madman's hands? I have fought him and his father for years-I would be fighting them now, if you and cursed Hesper had not conspired to take me prisoner in Jellon." He slapped his hands together in frustration. "Besides, I spoke to that girl only a few days ago-how could any message go back and forth to Xis so swiftly?"

The lord protector inclined his head. "All that you say seems reasonable." He seemed satisfied merely to have angered Olin. "But that does not mean it is true. These are unreasonable times, as you should well know, with your own castle attacked by changelings and goblins." He looked up, fixing Olin

with his reddened eyes. "Let me tell you this-you belong to Ludis. I bought you, and I will keep you. If I sell you, I alone will profit. And if the Autarch of Xix somehow manages to knock down the citadel walls, I will make sure with my last breath that he does not get you. Not alive, anyway." The master of Hierosol waved his hand. "You may go back to your cham¬bers now to read your books and flirt with the chambermaids, Eddon." He clapped his hands and the prisoner's guards appeared from outside the throne room door. "Take him out."

The minutely carved roof of the cavern that shielded Funderling Town was renowned throughout Eion. In better times people actually traveled up from distant countries like Perikal and the Devonisian islands just to see the fantastical forest of stone, the loving work of at least a dozen generations of Funderlings.

The ceiling of the House of the Stonecutters' Guild was not so famous, and certainly nowhere near so large, but was in its own way just as stupe¬fying a piece of art. In a natural concavity on the underside of Southmarch Castle's foundation slab a combination of limestone, cloudy quartz, beams of ancient black ironwood and the Funderlings' own matchless skills had been crafted into something the gods themselves might envy.

Chert had seen it many times, of course-his grandfather had been part of the team which had performed its last major repairs-but even so it never failed to impress him. Staring up at it from his lonely position at the ceremonial Outcrop, the ceiling seemed a window through quartz crystal and limestone clouds to some distant part of heaven, but those clouds were braced with great spars of ironwood far too thick and workmanlike to be merely ornamental. It was only when the viewer's eyes adjusted to the darkness (which grew paradoxically greater as the empty space ascended) that he saw the robed and masked figure surrounded by smaller robed and veiled figures, all seated upside down at the apex, glaring down from the vault, and he realized that the view was not that of someone looking up, but looking down into the depths of the earth-a great tunnel leading downward into the J'ezh'kral Pit, domain of the Lord of the Hot, Wet Stone-Kernios, as the big folk called him.

But of course, the true cleverness of the room was beneath the viewer's feet-something Chert had time to appreciate now as he waited for the

noisy reaction to His last words to die down. The Magisters'semicircle of benches and the four stone chairs they faced sat around the edge of a huge mirror of silvered mica, so that everything above was reflected below. Chert and the others seemed to be sitting around the rim of the great Pit itself, looking down into the very eyes of their god. To approach the Highwar-dens was to seem to walk on nothing above the living depths of Creation.

It was disconcerting at the best of times. Tonight, with the whole Guild joined together to judge Chert's actions, it was downright frightening.

"You did what?" His own brother, Nodule, was predictably leading the charge against him. "You cannot imagine the shame I feel, that one of our family…"

"Please, Magister," said Cinnabar. "No one here has even determined that anything wrong's been done, let alone that Chert has brought shame to the Blue Quartz family."

"To the entire Quartz clan!" cried Bloodstone, Magister of the Smoke Quartz branch. Fat and bulging-eyed, he was an ally of Nodule's and quick to join Chert's brother in most things-including, it seemed, in being hor¬rified by what Chert had done. He was not alone: the Magisters of the Black, Milk, and Rose Quartz families had also been grumbling all through Chert's appearance at the Outcrop.

Nice to see my family hurrying to my aid. Chert could only hope that the silence of the other members of the large Quartz clan augured more open minds.