"Fall in love with you. Sweet Ista."
She jerked back. She had heard that endearment before, but not on those lips. "Don't call me that."
"Bitter Ista?" His brows climbed. "Cranky Ista? Cross, ill-tempered, cantankerous Ista?"
She snorted; he relaxed, and his lips quirked again. "Well, I can no doubt learn to adjust my vocabulary."
"Lord Illvin, be serious."
"Certainly," he said at once. "As you command, Royina." He bowed slightly. "I am old enough to have many regrets. I've made my share of mistakes, some"—he grimaced—"hideous indeed, as you well know. But it was the little, easy things—the kisses I did not give, and the love I did not speak, because there was no time, no place—and then, no chance... Surprisingly sharp sorrows those are, for their size. I think all our chances grow narrow, tonight. So I shall reduce my regrets— however brief—by one, at least..."
He leaned closer. Fascinated, she did not retreat. Somehow, that long arm had found its way around her aching shoulders. He folded her in. He was quite tall, she reflected; if she didn't bend her head back, she was going to end up with her nose squashed to his breastbone. She looked up.
His lips tasted of soot, and salt sweat, and the longest day of her life. Well, and horsemeat, but at least it was fresh horsemeat. His dark eyes glittered between narrowed lids as her arms found their way around that ridged torso and pressed him inward. What was it she had snarled to dy Cabon—mimicking above what is desired below... ?
Some minutes later—too many? too few?—he lifted his head again and set her a little from him, as though to look upon her without having to cross his eyes. His slight smile was altogether drained of irony now, though not of satisfaction. She blinked and stepped back.
Liss, sitting cross-legged against the parapet on the opposite side of the platform, was staring up with her mouth open. The two soldiers weren't even pretending to be watching Jokonans. Their riveted expressions were of men contemplating a daunting feat they had no desire to emulate, such as swallowing fire, or being the first to charge up a scaling ladder.
"Time," Illvin murmured, "is where you take it. It will not linger for you."
"That is so," whispered Ista.
She had to give his dalliance this much credit; the stones seemed suddenly a much less attractive solution to her plight. That had been his intent, she had no doubt.
A dark violet splash of light sparked past her inner vision, and Ista's head turned to follow it. From somewhere below, an outraged cry rang out. She sighed, too wearied to pursue the mystery. "I don't even want to look."
Illvin's head, too, had turned at the cry. By his lack of further craning, he also shared her surfeit of horrors. But then he looked back at her, his eyes narrowing. "You looked around before we heard anything," he noted.
"Yes. I see the sorcerous attacks as flashes of light in my inner vision. Like little bolts of lightning, flying from source to target, or like streaking fire-arrows. I can't tell what their effect will be just by seeing them, though; they all look much the same."
"Can you tell sorcerers from ordinary men just by looking? I can't."
"Oh, yes. Both Cattilara's demon and Foix's appear to me as shapes of shadow and light within the boundaries of their own souls, which, since they are both living persons, are bounded by their bodies. Foix's demon still retains the shape of a bear. Arhys's ragged soul trails him, as though it struggles to keep up."
"How far away can you tell if a person is a sorcerer?"
She shrugged. "As far as my eye can see, I suppose. No, farther than that: for my inner eye sees spirit shapes right through matter, if I pay attention, and concentrate, and perhaps close my outer eyes to reduce the confusion. Tents, walls, bodies, all are transparent to the gods, and to god-sight."
"What about a sorcerer's sight?"
"I am not sure. Foix seemed not to have much, before I shared mine, but his elemental is an inexperienced one."
"Huh." He stood a moment, looking increasingly abstracted. "Come over here." He took her hand and towed her to the western side of the tower, overlooking the walnut grove. "Do you suppose that you could give an exact tally of Joen's sorcerers, if you tried? In her camp, from here?"
Ista blinked. "I don't know. I could try."
The trees' feet were now wading in gray shadow, though their very tops still glowed golden green in the last of the light. Campfires twinkled through the leaves, and a suggestion of the pale squares of many tents. Men's voices carried enough to be heard up on the battlements, although not well enough to make out what they said in the Roknari tongue. On the far side of the grove, the cluster of big green tents, gaudy with pennants, began to glow like verdant lanterns from the lamps being set within them.
Ista took a long breath to try to compose her mind. She extended her perceptions, closing her eyes. If she could sense Joen or Sordso from here, could they sense her? And if Joen could sense her... she took another breath, banished the frightening thought, and determinedly uncurled her soul once more.
Upwards of five hundred faint soul-lights moved like fireflies among the trees, the Jokonan soldiers and camp followers busy about their ordinary tasks. A smattering of souls glowed with a stronger, much more violent and disrupted light. Yes, there were the threads, the snakes, wavering through the air from those scattered whorls to converge all in one dark, disturbing spot. Even as she watched, one line crossed another as their possessors moved in space, passing like two strands of insubstantial yarn that did not knot or tangle.
"Yes, I can see them," she told Illvin. "Some are snubbed up near to Joen, some are all spread out across the camp." Her lips moved as she made her count. "Six hug the command tents, twelve are arranged near the front of the grove, nearest to Porifors. Eighteen altogether."
She peeked, turned half around toward the river and the Jokonans' second camp investing the town, and closed her eyes once more. Then turned fully around, toward the bivouac of the third column that had set up along the ridge to the east of the castle, cutting the road to Oby and commanding the valley upstream. "All the sorcerers seem to be in the main camp near Joen. I see no ribbons reaching to the other two camps. Yes, of course. She would want all her sorcerers as close under her eye as possible."
She completed her turn and opened her eyes again. "Most of the sorcerers seem to be sheltered in tents. One is standing under a tree, looking this way." She could not see his physical body, through the leaves, but she could tell which tree it was.
"Hm," said Illvin, staring over her shoulder. "Can Foix tell which is which? What man is a sorcerer, what man is not?"
"Oh, yes. I mean, he can now. He saw the sorcery light with me when the cups broke—and again, standing on the wall when the rest of it began." She glanced warily back over her shoulder at Illvin's tense, closed expression. His eyes were tight with thought, some notion that did not seem to give him much pleasure. "What are you thinking?"
"I am thinking... that by your testimony Arhys appears to be immune to sorcery, but sorcerers do not appear to be immune to steel. As Cattilara proved upon poor Umerue. If Arhys could close with them, just them, and yet somehow avoid the other fifteen hundred Jokonans around Porifors..." He drew a breath, and wheeled. "Liss."
She jerked upright. "Lord Illvin?"
"Go and find my lord brother, and ask him to attend upon us here. Fetch Foix, too, if he is to be found."
She nodded, a bit wide-eyed, scrambled up, and scuffed rapidly down the tower's turning stairs. Illvin stared out over Prince Sordso and Princess Joen's camp as if memorizing every detail. Ista leaned uneasily by his side, studying that profile suddenly gone distant and cool.