Nervously, he said, "You were just joking there, weren't you, my friend?"

"What? Oh, aye." Van was more than bold enough against any human foe, but how could even the boldest man fight a forest? Eyeing the growing number of encroaching branches, he went on, "All this lovely greenery? In truth, it would be a dreadful shame to peel even one leaf off its stem."

For a long moment, nothing happened. But just when Gerin was about to grab for his sword and start slashing away at the aroused trees and bushes, everything returned to the way it had been. The sun played through breaks in the overhead canopy, the road widened out again, and the trees went back to being just trees. Whatever had been moving along with the wagon went away, or at least became altogether silent.

"Whew!" Van muttered under his breath. "Place must have decided I was just joking after all—which I was, of course." He added that last in a much louder voice.

"Of course you were," Gerin agreed heartily. Then his voice fell: "All the same, we'll spend tonight in one of the lodgings round Ikos, not in this wood. That will further prove we mean no harm to the powers here."

Van's eyes met his. The two men shared one thought: It will also keep anything in the forest that's still angry from coming down on us. The words hung unspoken in the air. Gerin didn't want to give any of those possibly angry things ideas they didn't have already.

* * *

The sun was low in the west behind Gerin and Van when they topped a rise and looked down into the valley wherein nested Biton's gleaming white marble shrine and, leading down from within it, the rift in the earth that led to the Sibyl's chamber.

"Last time we came this way, we camped in the woods," Van said. "As you say, though, better to pay the scot at one of the inns down there tonight." A little town had grown up in front of the Sibyl's shrine, catering to those who came to it seeking oracular guidance.

"Aye, you're right." Gerin sighed. He didn't like silver going without good cause. Come to that, he wasn't overfond of paying silver even with good cause. But he did not want to spend a night in these uncanny woods; they were liable to shelter worse things than ghosts. He twitched the reins and urged the horses forward.

When he'd visited Ikos before, the town in front of the shrine had been packed with Elabonians from both the northlands and south of the High Kirs, Sithonians, Kizzuwatnans, Trokmoi, Shanda nomads, and other folk as well. A big reason Gerin had preferred to camp in the woods then was that all the inns had bulged at the seams.

Now, as the wagon rolled into town, he found the dirt streets all but empty. Several of the inns had closed; a couple of them, by their dilapidated look, had been empty for years. The innkeepers who survived all rushed from their establishments and fell on him and Van with glad cries. Gerin hardly needed to haggle with them; they bid against one another until he got his lodging, supper, and a promise of breakfast for half what he'd expected to pay.

The taproom in the inn was all but deserted. Apart from Gerin and Van, only a couple of locals sat at the tables, drinking ale and telling stories they'd probably all heard a thousand times. The innkeeper brought ale and drinking jacks to his new guests. "And what would your pleasure for supper be?" he asked, bowing as low as if the Fox had been Hildor III, Emperor of Elabon.

"Not chicken," he and Van said, much as they had at Ricolf's.

"You've traveled some way, then, and spent nights in the open." The innkeeper pursed his lips to show he sympathized. "I killed a young pig this afternoon. I was going to smoke and salt down the flesh, but I do some lovely chops flavored with basil and thyme and wild mushrooms. It's a splendid dish, if I say so myself, and one I don't have the chance to prepare as often as I'd like these days. True, the cooking of it takes a while, but where have you gentlemen to go in the meantime?"

Gerin and Van looked at each other. They nodded. The Fox said, "Your trade has fallen off since the Trokmoi swarmed over the Niffet and the Empire shut the last passage up from the south."

"Good my sir, you have no idea." The innkeeper rolled his eyes. "Sometimes I think all of us left here make our living by taking in one another's washing. The shrine has fallen on hard times, that it has, and every one of us with it."

"Does the old Sibyl still live?" Gerin asked. "I'd not expected to find her breathing when I was last here five years ago. Now nothing would surprise me."

"No, Biton took her for his own last year," the innkeeper answered. "The god speaks through a younger woman now. 'Tis not that the quality of oracle has suffered that's cost us trade"—he made haste to reassure the Fox—"only that fewer folk now find their way hither."

"I understand." Gerin drained his jack dry. The innkeeper hastened to refill it. Gerin drank again, sighed with something close to contentment. "Good to relax here, away from the ghosts, away from robbers in the night, with only the worries that brought me here to carry on my shoulders."

"That my humble establishment is able to ease your burdens does my heart good," the innkeeper declared.

"To say nothing of your coin hoard," Gerin said dryly.

The innkeeper turned his head to one side and coughed, as if mention of money embarrassed him. Then he paused, plainly listening over again to what Gerin had said a moment before. "Robbers in the night, good my sir? So men begin to hold the ghosts at bay and the gods in contempt?"

"Men on the very road that leads here," the Fox said, and told of the free peasants who'd looked to arm themselves at his and Van's expense. "They didn't come on us, for which Dyaus be praised—and Biton, too, for watching over us—but they weren't out there in the darkness just for the journey. I heard them speak; I know what I'm talking about."

"Sometimes I think the whole world is guttering down toward darkness, like a candle on the last of its tallow," the innkeeper said sadly. "Even my dreams these days are full of monsters and pallid things from the underground darkness. At night in my bed I see them spreading over the land, and poor feeble men powerless to do aught against them."

Gerin started to nod: here was another man who shared his gloomy view of the world. Then he gave the innkeeper a sharp look. "I too have had dreams like that," he said.

"And I," Van put in. "I tell you the truth—I mislike the omen."

"Maybe the Sibyl will shed light on it." Gerin did his best to sound hopeful, but feared his best was none too good.

IV

The horses were curried till their coats gleamed and hitched to the wagon waiting when Gerin went out to the stables to reclaim them. He tipped the groom who'd cared for them, saying, "You did more here than was required of you."

"Lord, you're generous beyond my deserts," the fellow answered, but Gerin noticed he did not decline the proffered coin.

Every other time Gerin had visited the Sibyl's shrine, the area around the fenced forecourt had been packed with wagons, chariots, and men afoot, and with all the visitors passionately eager to put their questions to Biton's oracle as soon as possible. The only way to get in quickly—sometimes the only way to get in at all—was to pay off one of the god's eunuch priests.

The Fox had prepared himself for that eventuality. At his belt swung two medium-heavy pouches, one an offering for the temple, the other (though the word would not be used in public) a bribe for the priest who would conduct him to the shrine.

He soon discovered he was going to save himself some money. When he and Van came to the gate in the marble outwall, only three or four parties waited ahead of them. Just a few more rolled up behind the wagon. Instead of shouting, cursing chaos, the oracle-seekers formed a single neat line.