“But the Margrave!” Carys’s whisper scattered the returning cats.
“I saw him once, remember? Since then I’ve felt . . . as if he knows me.” He looked up. “We’re not the only ones looking for the Coronet. He’s using us to find it for him. One of us, whether we know it or not, is telling him everything. He’s so deep inside one of our minds that even Galen can’t find him.”
They were silent. Then Marco said, “Unless Galen is the spy himself.”
SOLON SLIPPED; the Sekoi grabbed him quickly. A glissade of coins slithered underfoot, an avalanche of tiny shining circles, catching the moons.
It had been hard to find a way down. They had to thread a maze of aisles and galleries, stoop through tunnels of ancient mirrorwort. Down here it was darker, and the snow was beginning to freeze, crunching underfoot and making the hoard glimmer with weird light. Gold was a landscape around them; Galen glanced up at the towering mountains of it, the hills and valleys, whole revenues of treasure, cold and shining.
“What a fortune it is,” Solon marveled.
Galen snorted. “And how many hungry bellies it could feed.”
The Sekoi paused. “I think this path may be the one.” But it still seemed hesitant. Then it turned abruptly. “I have to ask you one more thing.”
“What?” Galen said, wary.
The creature’s eyes were evasive. “There is something ... unusual at the heart of the Hoard. Something that will amaze you.” It bit its thumbnail. “Keepers, I want you to swear you will never tell anyone what you see.”
“AH, BUT THIS CROW THING!” Marco ignored Raffi’s anger. “I mean, what is it? What can it make him do? You don’t really know anything about it, do you?”
“It’s a gift from the Makers!”
“Ha! So was the Margrave!”
“It can’t be Galen!” Raffi was white with fury. “It’s impossible!”
“Calm down!” Carys said quietly. “When have you sensed these warnings? Try to remember. Exactly when?”
He held his head in both hands. “By the river. At the Circling. Just outside here—it was certain then. And in the vortex. That night in the cellar.”
The bow flickered; Carys glanced at him for one startled instant.
At once Marco’s foot shot out; he slammed her back against the wall and she screamed in fury. The bolt splintered stone and suddenly they were both struggling for the bow, Raffi leaping up in horror, until Carys was shoved away and Marco had the bow under one arm and his knife hard against her neck.
“See how you like it,” he growled.
Carys dragged muddy hair from her face. She looked white and breathless, but her voice was concentrated with suppressed excitement.
“Neither of us was in the cellar,” she said.
THE PATH WAS A TRAIL OF GOLD. Coins had been trodden deep in the mud, one on another. On each side rose a hillock of spilling metal, and as the moons drifted through the snow-cloud Galen saw in the very heart of the Hoard a great golden reliquary, carved and encrusted with gems. It stood on a platform; the Sekoi led them up to it without a word, and under the moons each of them had seven shadows, a hidden company that seemed to follow stealthily at their heels.
Solon’s scarred fingers reached for the handrail; above him the Sekoi reached down to help. Galen hauled himself after them, the snow falling in his eyes. At the top the Archkeeper stared, then crumpled to his knees.
“Dear God,” was all he could say.
The reliquary was a coffin, sealed with glass.
In it lay a man.
A small man, thin and wiry. He had brown hair and a clipped brown beard and his clothes were of Makercloth, incorruptible and perfect. He had been dead for three hundred years, but he looked as if at any second he might open his eyes and speak to them.
Galen stood still, catching his breath as if struck with a sharp pain.
At the heart of the Great Hoard they had found the body of Kest.
And Flain’s Coronet lay between his hands.
27
Each man on this world has seven shadows.
Poems of Anjar Kar
THEY BOTH STARED AT HER.
“Think about it!” Ignoring the knife, Carys turned on Raffi. “Marco was on the next street! I was miles away. So was the Sekoi. The only ones in the cellar with you were Solon and Galen! It has to be one of them!”
“Not Galen!” Raffi snapped.
“And not Solon!” Marco lowered the knife. He looked stunned and winded, as if someone had punched him in the stomach. “They tortured him. I saw them drag him back into the cell. I saw him bleed. They were going to hang us.”
“No, they weren’t!” Carys shook her head, impatient. “It was a setup, all of it. Solon was the bait—they wanted him to be rescued. Work it out!” She looked at his face and her voice softened. “Marco, the Margrave must have heard the rumors about the Crow—they’d be in every intelligence return. So they set up bait—a keeper, someone whose mind is so broken they can control him. Maybe more than one, in different places. Public places, where everyone can see. And when Galen rescued Solon, the Margrave let it happen. We took the Margrave with us, to all our places. To Sarres. To the Great Hoard.” She shook her head desperately. “We were so stupid! It’s the oldest trick in the book. And because Solon was such a harmless, kindly old man . . .”
“No!” Marco twisted away.
She grabbed his sleeve. “Believe it. It’s true. I know how they work.”
“Not Solon.” His voice was an agony. Raffi looked away, feeling sick and miserable, but Carys was relentless. “Solon! And we’ve led him straight to the Coronet.”
“He wouldn’t.”
“He’s down there, isn’t he? And if he puts it on . . .” She whirled on Raffi, her face white in the falling snow. “My God, Raffi! If he puts it on, the Margrave will control the weather-net, the moons, who knows what! We may have given him the greatest weapon in the world.”
IT WAS A CIRCLE OF DULL GOLD, frail and perfect. On the inside were minute letters, strange and unreadable. Galen reached out and brushed the scattered snow off the glass. “So this is your ransom,” he whispered.
The Sekoi was staring at the dead face of the Maker. “Indeed. I had always known he was here, but how strange it is to see him. The one who caused all our anguish. Who ruined a world, and then repented.”
“How did he come here?”
The Sekoi shrugged. “I’m not of the Council. They might know. Alone of the Makers only Kest truly died. When the others had gone my people must have brought his body here. But I know nothing of how, or from where.”
Solon had not moved. When he uncovered his face they caught the wet glint of tears. Galen bent over him. “Come,” he said gruffly. “We need to hurry.”
But the Archkeeper seemed struck to the heart. His astonishment was deeply personal, a grief that Galen felt rising from somewhere endlessly deep inside him, a great pit, a terrible darkness.
“After all this time,” he muttered. “To see him again.”
He bowed his head, then staggered up unsteadily and looked around. For a second he seemed hardly to know where he was.
“All right?” Galen asked.
“Yes, my son.” The Archkeeper wiped his face with his sleeve. “The shock.”
“We need to open the glass.” Galen put both hands on it and pushed, then sent a line of energy rippling around its edges feverishly.
“How does it work?”
The Sekoi bit its nails. “I don’t know.”
“I’ll break it if I have to,” Galen growled. But to his astonishment he felt the glass melt. Suddenly there was no lid. Tiny flakes of snow fluttered onto Kest’s hair.