Nepanthe smiled and shook her head. "I don't think this's the place. Or the time. They might think you're serious."

"Money here. Look. Self, being talker of first water, spins web of words. In this assemblage famous law of averages declares must exist one case of fool headedness. Probably twenty-three. Hai! More. Why not? Think big. Self, being student primus of way of spider, pounce. Ensnare very gently, unlike spider, and, also unlike same, drain very slow."

Elana, too, shook her head. "Hasn't changed a bit. Not at all. Nepanthe, you've got to tell me all about it. What have you been doing? How's Ethrian? Do you know how much trouble it was to find you? Valther used half his spies. Had them looking everywhere. And there you were in the Siluro quarter all the time. Why didn't you keep in touch?"

At that moment the Marshall, Bragi Ragnarson, spied them. He spared Nepanthe an answer.

"Mocker!" he thundered, startling half the hall into silence. He abandoned the lords he had been attending. "Yah! Lard Bottom!" He threw a haymaker. The fat man ducked and responded with a blur of a kick that swept the big man's feet from beneath him.

Absolute silence gripped the hall. Nearly three hundred men, plus servants and women, stared.

Mocker extended a hand. And shook his head as he helped the Marshall rise. "Self, must confess to one puzzlement. One only, and small. But is persistent as buzzing of mosquito."

"What's that?" Ragnarson, standing six-five, towered over the fat man.

"This one tiny quandary. Friend Bear, ever clumsy, unable to defend self from one-armed child of three, is ever chosen bygreat ones to defend same from foes of mighty competence. Is poser. Sorcery? Emboggles mind of self."

"Could be. But you've got to admit I'm lucky."

"Truth told." He said it sourly, and didn't expand. Luck, Mocker believed, was his nemesis. The spiteful hag had taken a dislike to him the moment of his birth.... But his day was coming. The good fortune was piling up. When it broke loose....

In truth, luck had less to do with his misfortunes than did compulsive gambling and an ironhard refusal to make his way up any socially acceptable means.

This crude little brown man, from the worst slum of the Siluro ghetto, had had more fortunes rush through his fingers than most of the lords present. Once he had actually laid hands on the fabled treasure of Ilkazar.

He wouldn't invest. He refused. Someday, he knew, the dice would fall his way.

The fat man's old friend, with whom, in younger days, he had enjoyed adventures that would've frightened their present companions bald, guided him onto the raised platform from which his approach had been spotted. Mocker began shaking. A moment's clowning, down there, was embarrassing enough. But to be dragged before the multitudes....

He barely noticed the half dozen men who shared the dais with the Marshall. One eyed him as would a man who spotted someone he thinks he recognizes after decades.

"Quiet!" Ragnarson called. "A little quiet here!"

While the amused-to-disgusted chatter died, Mocker consid-ered his friend's apparel. So rich. Fur-edged cape. Blouse of silk. Hose that must cost more than he scrounged in a month.... He remembered when this man had worn bearskins.

Once silence gained a hold, Ragnarson announced, "Ladies and gentlemen, I want to introduce somebody. A man I tracked down at considerable inconvenience and expense because he's the critical element that has been missing from our Victory Day celebrations. He was one of the unspoken heroes who guided us up the road to Baxendala, one of the men whose quiet pain and sacrifice made victory possible." Ragnarson held Mocker's hand high. "Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the world's foremost authority."

Puzzled, the ambassador from Altea asked, "Authority on what?"

Ragnarson grinned, punched Mocker's arm. "Everything."

Mocker had never been one to remain embarrassed long. Especially by public acclaim. He had forever been his own greatest booster. But here, because he had a predisposition to expect it, he suspected he was being mocked. He flashed his friend a look of appeal.

Which, despite years of separation, Ragnarson read. Softly, he replied, "No. I didn't bring you here for that. This's a homecoming. A debut. Here's an audience. Take them."

The wicked old grin seared the fat man's face. He turned tothe crowd, fearing them no more. They would be his toys.

Boldly, insolently, he examined the people nearest the dais. Themerry mayhem in his eyes sparkled so that each of them

recognized it. Most perked to a higher level of gaiety ere he

spoke a word.

He founded the speech on the passage from the epic, and spoke with such joy, such laughter edging his voice, that hardly anyone resented being roasted.

The years had taught him something. He was no longer indiscreet. Though his tongue rolled inspiredly, in a high, mad babble that made the chandeliers rattle with the responding laughter, he retained sufficient command of his inspiration that, while he accused men of every dark deed under the sun, he never indicted anyone for something whispered to be true.

In the Siluro quarter, where dwelt the quiet little men who performed the drudgework of civil service and the mercantile establishments, there were a few secrets about the mighty.

He finished with a prophecy not unlike that of the poet. Punctuation, hellfire and brimstone.

And envoi, "Choice is clear. Recant. Renounce high living. Shed sybaritic ways. Place all burden of sin on one able to bear up under curse of same." He paused to meet eyes, including those of the sleek blonde twice. Then, softly, seriously, "Self, would volunteer for job."

Bragi slapped his back. People who remembered Mocker now, from the war, came to greet him and, if possible, swap a few lies about the old days. Others, including that svelte blonde, came to praise his performance.

Mocker was disappointed by the blonde. There was a message in her eyes, and nothing he could do.

"Oh, my," he muttered. "That this obesity should live to see day...." But he wasn't distraught. This was his happiest eveningin a decade. He wallowed in it, savoring every instant.

But he didn't stop observing. He soon concluded that there were skunks in paradise. The millennium hadn't arrived.

Three hard men in fighting leathers stood in the shadows behind the dais. He knew them as well as he knew Ragnarson. Haaken Blackfang, Bragi's foster brother, a bear of a man, a deadly fighter, bigger than his brother. Reskird Kildragon, another relic of the old days, and another grim fighter, who sprang like a wolf when Bragi commanded. And Rolf Preshka, that steel-eyed Iwa Skolovdan whose enmity meant certain death, whose devotion to Bragi's wife bordered on the morbid, and should have been a danger to her husband-except that Preshka was almost as devoted to him.

And, yes, there were more of the old comrades, in the out-of-the-ways, the shadows and alcoves of balconies and doors. Turran of Ravenkrak, Nepanthe's brother, white of hair now but none the less deadly. And their brother Valther, impetuous with blade and heart, possessed of a mind as convolute as that of a god. Jarl Ahring. Dahl Haas. Thorn Altenkirk. They were all there, the old, cold ones who had survived, who had been the real heroes of the civil war. And among them were a few new faces, men he knew would be as devoted to their commander-otherwise they would be on the dance floor with the peacocks.

All was not well.

He had known that since climbing to the dais. Two of the occupants of seats of honor were envoys from Hammad al Nakir. From their oldest enemy, El Murid. From that hungry giant of a nation directly south of Kavelin, behind the Kapenrung Mountains. It had taken the combined might of a dozen kingdoms to contain that fanatic religious state in the two-decades-gone, half-forgotten dust-up remembered as the El Murid Wars.