“So she’s still alive?” Fend asked.
“Was that one of your questions?”
“Yes, but it sounds as if it’s someone else’s problem now.”
“Earth and sky are being bent to find her,” Pavel said. “She must die.”
“Yes, well, I know that,” Fend replied. “But if, as you say she has been found—”
“And lost again.”
“Can you tell me where she is?”
“No.”
“There, then,” Fend said. “The others lost her—they can find her again.”
“You had the queen in your grasp and did not kill her,” Pavel said.
“Yes, yes,” Fend replied. “It seems someone is always reminding me of that. An old friend of mine showed up and put something of a damper on the whole business. But as I understand it, the queen is not as important as Anne.”
“She is important—and have no fear, she will die. Your failure there will cost you little. And you are correct in one thing—the daughter is everything, so far as your master is concerned.”
For the first time, Fend seemed surprised. “I wouldn’t call him a master—you know whom I serve?”
“He came to me once, long ago, and now I smell him on you.” The woman lifted her chin, as did Pavel, in grotesque parody. “Is the war begun?” the corpse asked.
“How is it you know so much concerning certain matters and nothing concerning others?”
“I know much of the large, but little of the small,” Pavel said, and chuckled at the word play. Behind him, the woman just stood there, but Anshar could see her eyes now, a startling violet color.
“I can see the sweep of the river, but not eddies and currents, not the ships upon it or the leaves following it seaward. Your words supply me with that. You say one thing, and I see those things connected to it—and thus I learn the small things. Now. Has the war begun yet?”
“Not yet,” he replied, “but soon, I’m told. A few more pieces are moving into place. Not really my focus, that.”
“What is your focus, Fend? What did you really come here to discover?”
“They say you are the mother of monsters, O Sarnwood Witch. Is it true?”
“The very earth is pregnant with monsters. What do you seek?”
Fend’s smile spread, and Anshar felt an involuntary chill. When Fend answered her, he felt another, deeper one.
6
The Eyes of Ash
It was only moments before smoke started boiling up through the stairwell and the crackling of flame rose over all other noises. The floor began to heat, and Leoff realized that if the malend were an oven, he was just where the bread ought to be.
He went to the window, wondering if the fall would break his leg, but jerked his head back when he saw two figures watching the malend burn, their faces ruddy in the light spilling from the door.
The brief glimpse he got wasn’t reassuring. One of them was nearly a giant, and Leoff could see the glint of steel in both their hands. They hadn’t searched the malend—they were letting the fire do it for them.
“Poor Gilmer,” he murmured. They had probably killed the little man in his sleep.
Which would probably be an easier fate than what lay in store for Leoff. It was already getting difficult to breathe. The flame was climbing for him, but the smoke would surely find him first.
He couldn’t go down; he couldn’t go out the window. That left only up, if he wanted to live even another few moments.
He found the ladder and climbed it to the next level. It was already smoky there, too, but not nearly so much as the level he had just left.
And it was dark, very dark. He could hear the gears working again, and something squeaking nearby. He must be in the machinery of the thing now.
He found the final ladder and went up it with trembling care. He had an image of getting a hand—or worse, his head—caught in an unseen cog.
The final floor wasn’t very smoky at all. He faintly made out a window and went to it hopefully. But they were still down there, and now the drop was ridiculous.
Trying to calm himself, Leoff felt around in the dark, and nearly shrieked when he touched something moving. He caught himself as he realized it was a vertical beam, turning—probably the central shaft that drove the pump.
Except that the shaft he’d seen on the first floor wasn’t rotating; it was moving up and down. The motion must be translated somehow on the floor just below.
That still didn’t seem right. The axis of the—what had Gilmer called it? The big veined spokes? Saglwic. Their axis would have to be horizontal, so that motion must be translated to this shaft.
Which meant that there was something still above him.
Groping carefully above, he found a great-toothed wheel of wood at the top of the shaft. It was rotating. A little more feeling about, and he discovered the second wheel, set above the first and at right angles, so that the teeth meshed at the bottom of the second wheel to turn the first. Leoff figured that the shaft turning the second wheel must be connected to the windwheel itself.
He found that and followed it, not sure what he was looking for. The smoke had discovered him again, as had the heat.
The shaft passed through a greasy hole in the wall only incrementally larger than the smoothed beam itself.
He began to understand what he was looking for.
“There must be some way to repair the saglwic— Yes!”
Below the shaft he found a latch, and lifting it allowed him to open a small square door. He cracked it open and peered out.
A pale moon sat on the horizon, and by its light he saw the spokes of the malend turning in the wind, and beyond that the waters of the canal, shining like silver. He saw no one below, but there were shadows enough to hide anything.
A shudder ran through the building, then another. Beams were collapsing below. The tower ought to stand, though, since it was made of stone.
A blast of hot air and a fist of flame followed the thought and came punching up through the ladder hole.
Saints, I don’t want to do this! he thought. But it’s this or burn.
Holding his breath, he followed the slow rhythm of the rotating spokes until he felt it with everything he had. The song of the malend came back to him, filled him up, and now he breathed in time with it.
He jumped on the downbeat. His legs jerked when he did it, and he nearly didn’t make it, but one hand caught the wooden latticework of the windsail. Without warning he found himself turning upside-down, but he managed to claw his other hand into the fabric. His stomach churned with fear and disorientation as the landscape retreated impossibly far below him. Then it was rushing back at him again, and he started climbing down the vane.
As it dipped near the ground, he hastened his pace, fearing to make another rotation, but it was still too far away. He clung tight as his perch swung up again, and oddly enough, his fear began to turn into a sort of exhilaration. His head was toward the axis now, and something seemed to be tugging at his feet, even when his feet were pointed toward the sky, as if the saints didn’t want him to fall. He went with the tug, climbing on even while upside-down, and when next the vane moved earthward, he was low enough to drop.
He hit the ground hard, but not breaking hard, and lay there in the grass for a moment.
But not for long. Keeping low, he moved away from the burning malend and toward the canal. He had almost reached it when a strong hand gripped his arm.
“Ssh!” a low voice commanded. “Quiet. It’s just me, Gilmer.”
Leoff closed his eyes and nodded, hoping his heart would not explode through his breastbone.
“Follow,” Gilmer said. “We’ve got to get away from here. The men who did this—”
“I saw them, on the other side of the malend.”
“Auy. Stupid, they are.”