The guests roared. 'Jolly old Simja! What next?' cried an Ipulian count.
Thasha and her friends did not laugh. They all knew the dog. It belonged to the sorcerer, Arunis.
'That cur's woken, I'd bet my beard,' hissed Fiffengurt. 'I reckon Arunis sent it to remind us that he's watching our every move.'
'It never speaks, though,' said Pazel. 'Arunis said it hadn't woken yet — as if he expected it to, one day. But it's a nasty little brute, woken or not. We'd never have been taken prisoner back in the Crab Fens if it weren't for that dog.'
'There are woken beasts cropping up everywhere,' said Neeps. 'Do you know what the tailors who dressed us this morning were gossiping about, Mr Fiffengurt? A rabbit. A little brown hare who screamed "Mercy! Mama! Mercy!" as it ran, until the hounds caught up and killed it. And I swear I heard one of those messenger birds talking back to his rider.'
'And two woken rats on the Chathrand,' said Pazel. 'And Ott's falcon, Niriviel. Five animals in three months. Five more than I'd met in my lifetime to this point.'
'Or I in mine,' said Hercol, 'except for Ott's bird. That poor creature I have known for years.'
'Something's happening to the world,' said Thasha with conviction, 'and all these wakings are a part of it. And so is Arunis.'
Pazel looked at Hercol with alarm. 'Could he literally be causing it all?'
'No,' said Hercol. 'He is mighty, but not so mighty that he can light the flame of reason in creatures from one end of Alifros to another. If that were the case he should hardly need such servants as a prancing dog, or a washed-up smuggler like Mr Druffle. Besides, why should he wish for beasts to wake? Arunis dreams of enslaving this world, and nothing is so inimical to slavery as a thinking mind.'
'I'm a part of it too,' said Thasha, 'and the Nilstone is a part of me.'
'You're drunk,' said Neeps.
Thasha shook her head, then turned and glanced over her shoulder. 'He's close, you know.'
The others were startled. Neeps, feigning a stone in his shoe, stepped to one side of the procession and bent down. A moment later he caught up with them. 'She's right,' he said. 'Arunis is very close. Uskins is with him, looking scared out of his mind. And Dr Chadfallow's between them, talking.'
'Damn him,' whispered Pazel.
The remark did not escape Hercol. 'The doctor did not choose his walking companions,' he said. 'Rose provided a list to the Mistress of Ceremonies, and she decided who should stand with whom.'
'That doesn't mean he has to talk.'
'Nor does talk mean he is betraying us.'
'Let's not argue about the doctor,' said Fiffengurt. 'He's lost your trust, and that's the end of that. You've got a mighty task before you as well today, Pathkendle.'
'One you ought to let me help with,' said Neeps sulkily.
'Those debates are behind us,' said Hercol. 'Look: we are almost to the shrine.'
Indeed they were climbing the last little rise. The broad, whitewashed structure loomed before them, and the jade-green dome of the Declarion shone brilliant in the sun. On the broad stairs hundreds of figures, in robes of white and black, waited in silence.
'Thasha,' whispered Pazel with sudden urgency. 'Let me hear your vows.'
She looked at him blankly.
'You know,' said Pazel. 'Your vows.'
'Oh. My vows.' She pushed a drooping orchid from her face. Then, leaning close, she rasped out a string of wet Mzithrini words. The smell of brandy notwithstanding, Pazel was relieved.
'Almost,' he said. 'But for the love of Rin don't leave out the r in uspris. You want to call Falmurqat "my prince," not "my little duckling." '
'Hercol Stanapeth,' said a sudden voice behind them.
It was the pale young man from the gardens again. Hercol turned and looked at him.
'Well, lad?'
Again, that shallow, ironic bow. Then the young man fell in beside them and pulled a small envelope from his pocket. 'A gentleman stopped me at the gate, sir, and bade me deliver this to your hand.'
The young man was looking at Thasha, who returned his gaze warily. Hercol snatched the envelope. It was sealed with oxblood wax, and bore no writing. Hercol made no move to open it.
'What is your name, lad, and who is this gentleman?'
'I am Greysan Fulbreech, sir. King's clerk, though my term of employment is coming to an end. As for the gentleman, I did not ask his name. He was well dressed, and he gave me a coin.' He was still looking at Thasha. 'This message, however, I would have delivered free of charge.'
Pazel was finding it hard not to dislike this clerk. 'I'm sure King Oshiram's keeping you very busy,' he said.
'I don't get a moment's rest,' said Fulbreech, not sparing him a glance.
'Then be on your way,' growled Fiffengurt, 'unless you've more to tell us?'
The young man looked at Fiffengurt, and for a moment his smooth demeanour failed him, as though he were struggling to reach some decision. At last he took a deep breath and nodded. 'I bear another message,' he said. 'Master Hercol, she on whose answer you wait has decided. This winter there shall be fire in the hearth.'
Fulbreech stole a last glance at Thasha, and left without another word.
Only Thasha, who had known Hercol all her life, saw the shock he disguised so well. A code, she thought, but who could be sending coded messages to Hercol? She did not bother to ask for an explanation, and was glad to see the tarboys keeping silent as well. Hercol would explain nothing until he judged the moment right.
But Fiffengurt could not restrain himself. 'What in the bower of the Blessed Tree was that all about?'
'Very little, maybe,' said Hercol. 'Or perhaps the whole fate of your Empire. How does the rhyme, go, Quartermaster? Arqual, Arqual, just and true? We shall see.'
He would say no more, but in his voice was a happiness Thasha had not heard in years. Then he opened the little envelope, glanced at the single line of writing it contained, and the joy vanished like a snuffed match.
He put the envelope in his pocket. 'Greetings from the Secret Fist,' he said. 'They are watching us. As if there could be any doubt.'
The Father stood atop a staircase of great stone ovals, before the central arch of the shrine. His arms were spread as if in welcome, or perhaps to hold back the procession. Here in the sunshine his great age was more apparent, and so was his unnatural vigour. His raiment was black, and the white beard against it was like a snowdrift on a hill of coal. In his right hand he clasped a sceptre: pure gold but for a crystal set at the top, within which some dark object glittered.
His aspirants stood below him, three to a side (Look at them, people whispered, they're sfvantskors, they can kill you with their eyes shut). Like their master they wore black, but their faces were young: faces of men and women barely out of their teens. Symbols for birthplace and tribe gleamed in red tattoos upon their necks. Those nearest the Father wore white masks — ghostly against the sable robes. A seventh knelt just before the Father with a silver knife across his lap.
On the steps below the aspirants stood rows of women — a hundred or more, old and young, light and dark. Below these stood as many men, holding strange glass pipes of many colours, each one dangling from a braided thong.
Like a wave about a sandcastle the crowd engulfed the shrine, blanketing the low hills on either side of the road. A hush had fallen over them: the old man's stillness had erased all sense of a carnival from the proceedings. Toil and wind, hard stone, cold seas: these were what they saw in his unblinking eyes.
'I am nameless,' he said, and his voice carried a surprising distance. 'My holy office is my fate: there is nothing more. I am Father-Resident of Babqri City, Master of the Citadel of Hing, Confessor to His Serene Majesty King Somolar. I am the sworn foe of things evil, for ever.