He walked over to the door, unbarred it, and sprang into the hallway, ready to cut down the guard before the fellow could draw his own blade. To his vast relief, the man slumped against the wall, snoring. Another door at the end of the short hallway was barred on the outside. Abivard opened it. Out came Denak, and with her a broad-shouldered man a few years older than Abivard.

"Your Majesty," Abivard said. He started to go down on his belly.

"No time for that, not now," Sharbaraz snapped. His eyes flashed with excitement at getting out of his prison. "Unless I escape this stronghold, I'm no one's majesty. We'll deal with ceremony when we can."

He hurried past the drugged guard and out into Pradtak's bedchamber. Denak paused for a moment in the hallway. She kicked the guard in the belly, as hard as she could. He grunted and twisted but did not wake. Abivard stared at her. She glared back. "I'd do it to all three of them if I could-I'd do worse," she said, and burst into tears.

"Come," Tanshar said urgently. "We haven't time to waste, as his Majesty reminded us." Abivard went into the bedchamber. Denak followed him, still sobbing. When Tanshar saw her tears, he exclaimed, "My lady, you must be brave now. If they see you weeping, we fail."

"I-know." Denak bit her lip. She wiped her eyes on the brocaded silk of her robe, shuddered, and at last nodded to Tanshar. "Do what you must. I will not give away the illusion."

"Good," Tanshar said. Things were still moving too fast for Abivard to follow all that was going on, and they did not slow down. Tanshar beckoned to Sharbaraz. "Your Majesty, I need your aid now. Take Pradtak's hands in yours."

"As you say." Sharbaraz bent by the unconscious dihqan. Tanshar sprinkled both men with reddish powder-"Ground bloodstone," he explained-and began to chant. Abivard knew the sorcery was possible-any hope of escape from Nalgis Crag stronghold would have been impossible without it-but seeing it performed still raised awe in him. Before his eyes, Sharbaraz took on Pradtak's semblance, clothes and all, and the other way round.

When the change was complete, Abivard and Sharbaraz-who-seemed-Pradtak dragged the changed Pradtak into the cell that had held Sharbaraz, then barred the door. Tanshar said to Denak, "Now, my lady, to give you the appearance of the guard here, and then we're away."

Her eyes grew so wide, white showed all around her pupils. "I knew it would come to that, but how can I bear it?" she said. "Will I also see myself in his guise?"

"Lady, you will not." Sharbaraz held out a hand, looked at it. "To my own eyes, I remain myself." He sounded like Pradtak, though.

"That is the way of it," Tanshar agreed. "Your own essence remains undisturbed, and to you the change will be invisible."

Denak nodded jerkily. "I will do it, then, but must I touch him?"

Tanshar shook his head. "The ritual here is rather different, for the two of you will not exchange appearances; rather, you will borrow his. Stand there close by him, if you would."

Even that seemed more than Denak wanted, but she obeyed. Tanshar set a crystal disk between her and the guard; when he let go of it, it hung in the air by itself. He chanted again, to a different rhythm this time, and invoked the name of the Prophet Shivini, the lady, again and again. The crystal glowed for perhaps half a minute. When it faded, there might have been two guards, identical twins, in the hallway.

"Let me get away from him," Denak said, and her voice came out a man's harsh rasp.

Abivard closed the outer door to the hallway on the unconscious guard and barred it, again from the outside. He was grinning from ear to ear; things had gone better than he had dared hope. "Won't they be confused?" he said happily.

"Not only will they be confused, in fact, they'll stay confused for-how long will the spells of seeming last, Tanshar?"

"A few days, if no magic is brought to bear against them." Tanshar sounded exhausted. "If a sorcerer should challenge them, though, he'll pierce them as an embroidery needle pierces silk. All the more reason to get away as fast as we can."

"Oh, I don't know," Sharbaraz said with Pradtak's voice. "When the dihqan stops looking like me and becomes himself again, they may still think him me, and using sorcery to try to escape. A lovely coil you've wound." He laughed with the joy of a man who has not laughed in a long time. "But the wise Tanshar is right-we should not test the magic overmuch." He trotted toward the outer door to the bedchamber.

"Your Majesty, uh, husband of mine for the moment-remember, you limp," Denak said. "Forget that and you may yet give the game away."

Sharbaraz bowed. "Lady, you are right," he said, though Denak's semblance was anything but ladylike. "I shall remember." He snatched up Pradtak's stick from where it lay on the floor and gave a convincing impression of a man with a bad ankle. "And now-away."

Sharbaraz made sure to close the newly installed bar outside Pradtak's bedchamber. Abivard nodded approvingly: now that the bedchamber was in effect the outer portion of the women's quarters, no dihqan would leave it open, lest the women somehow depart without his knowledge.

"Where now?" Sharbaraz asked in a low voice as the bar thudded home.

"The stables," Abivard answered, just as quietly. "Here, walk beside me and make as if you're leading me and not the other way round. Tanshar, Denak, you come behind: You're our retainers, after all."

Pradtak's household accepted the escaping fugitives as what they seemed. Once reminded, Sharbaraz kept up his limp quite well. He gave friendly greetings to Pradtak's kinsfolk and retainers; if he didn't address any of them by name, that was no flaw in a brief conversation-and he made sure all the conversations were brief.

At the stables, though, one of the grooms seeing to Abivard's horses looked up in surprise. "You seldom come here without bow and spear for the chase, lord," he said. "You are riding to hunt, not so?"

Abivard froze, cursing himself for a fool. All that careful planning, to be undone by a moment's carelessness! But Sharbaraz said calmly, "No, we're for the village of Gayy, east of here. Lord Abivard was asking about the qanat network there because it stretches so far from the Hyuja River, and he was hoping to do the same along the Vek Rud. My thought was that showing him would be easier than talking at him. What say you?"

"Me? The groom looked startled, then grinned. "Lord, of making qanats I know nothing, so I have little to say." He looked to Abivard. "You'll want your animal and your councilor's resaddled, then?"

"Yes, and we'll take the packhorses, as well," Abivard answered, vastly relieved Sharbaraz's wits were quicker than his own, and also vastly impressed at Sharbaraz's intimate knowledge of Pradtak's domain. He went on, "I may want to spend the night at, uh, Gayy and look over the qanats some more in the morning."

"The town has a sarai, lord," the groom said in mild reproof. Abivard folded his arms across his chest. The groom looked an appeal to the man he thought to be Pradtak.

"However it pleases him," Sharbaraz said, just as Pradtak would have. Abivard had all he could do to keep from laughing.

The groom nodded in resignation and turned to Denak. "You'll be one of the gentlemen who rode in at night a ways back. I'm sorry, sir, but I've not seen you much since, and I've forgotten which of those horses was yours." He pointed down to three stalls at the end of the stable.

Before Denak could answer-or panic and not answer-Sharbaraz came to the rescue again. "It was the bay gelding with the scar on his flank, not so?"

"Yes, lord," Denak said in her sorcerously assumed man's voice.

The groom sent Sharbaraz a glance full of admiration. "Lord, no one will ever say you haven't an eye for horses." Sharbaraz made the image of Pradtak preen.