"What are they?" Gathrid asked.
"We don't know. My best people have studied them. They might be alive, or magical. Or both. They won't hold still for a close examination. If you cage them, they die, and leave behind nothing you can dissect. Maybe we'll find out once we learn to decipher the underpeo-ple's writing."
"You can't read their records?"
"Only their pictographs. The exploration has been haphazard. We're like barbarians looting a temple. Like the Oldani and Hattori during the Sack of Sartain. We're probably missing the most interesting things simply because we don't recognize them." He stopped walking. "Earth. Air. Fire.
Water. And this. A fifth vision, perhaps? Greater than the others? But it was neutral. Always neutral. And now it's dead."
What was the man talking about? "You brought me here for a reason."
The Mindak resumed walking. "You asked. I came. We're here together. Chuchain and Suchara have moved us. We pawns can but go to our squares."
"A quote cribbed, no doubt, from Theis Rogala." Gathrid surprised himself with his boldness. He did not feel bold. He wondered if all self-assured men were just nervous, frightened boys hiding behind well-schooled facades.
"There is Purpose in our coming together," Ahlert told him. "The hourglasses have turned. The tides have shifted. I'm not the man I thought. I'm no general. I'm not much of a leader. I excel only at thaumaturgy. I'll tell you something, Swordbearer ... though you'll learn it for yourself, the way we all do. All ambition is self-delusion. It comes. You overreach. Then you find yourself in a death-struggle, just trying to hold onto what you had at the beginning."
Ahlert reminded Gathrid of his boyhood teacher. "Nieroda has challenged you," he said.
"Nieroda, the Toal, and men whom I believed were loyal captains. Because I showed so poorly in the west. No. I didn't fail there. I could've won. But I was too timid. And I didn't get the help I should have from Nieroda. It puzzled me then. I understand now.
"I was frightened of Yedon Hildreth. I thought I could handle him easier by stalling because he couldn't avoid politics. I didn't realize that I couldn't avoid them either. Then, too, there was what you did at Katich. It made me Doubt." He said the last word as though it were the name of some dread deity.
"That, too, is something you'll have to face to understand."
Self-revelation was not what Gathrid had expected. Argument or conflict, perhaps. Or a settlement of the debt of Kacalief. But not having his enemy talk to him like a brother. Nor his own willingness to listen.
"While they were enemies, they were reconciled," he said, quoting something he had heard from Plauen.
"Perhaps. Before foes with whom there can be no conciliation. But not forever." "Suchara would disapprove," Gathrid murmured. Ahlert smiled thinly, nodded. "Nieroda was another of my mistakes.
I believed I could master her, against all the evidence of history. No one, not even Bachesta herself, can control that daughter of Hell. I realize that now.''
"Her? Daughter?"
"You didn't know? I suppose not. There in the ruins of Anderle, you wouldn't. The memories have washed away. The books have been burned. Time is a cleansing rain. Yes. Nevenka Nieroda was female." "But the Toal ... And I slew ..." "The Toal are sexless. They never were human. They just possess the bodies of humans. But Nieroda was a Queen, in a land called Sommerlath, ten thousand years before the Immortal Twins were bom. She was the greatest witch who ever lived. So great she elevated herself to virtual demigod status." They walked a way in silence.
Ahlert was thoughtful. "A lot of people have tried. A lot more will. We all want to grasp the stars. Nieroda came closer than most. But like the rest of us, she overreached and drew back fingers webbed with damnation."
Overreaching had been Anyeck's flaw, Gathrid reflected. That last time she had gotten her hands on pure damnation. "You place your bet and take your chances."
"Exactly. Here we are."
"Here we are where?" They were among crumbling structures now. Gathrid had a feeling these were far older than they looked. There was no gnawing weather down here.
"What I call the House of the Eye." Ahlert stooped to pass through a low doorway. The cave dwellers had been small people.
There was a man inside. Gathrid rested a hand on Daubendiek's hilt.
"Magnolo Belfiglio," Ahlert said. "He lives with the Eye. He's the only one who can manipulate it.
He watches the west for me. Any news, Magnolo?"
"Nothing good, Grace. Nothing good. The Sixth Brigade has gone over. Gone over. That leaves the Imperial and the Ninth. The Ninth."
Belfiglio was incredibly old. And shaky. And confined to a wheeled chair. He was the first truly old person Gathrid had seen since entering Ventimiglia.
"The Western army is gone, then. I trust that Tracka and Marcagi have withdrawn."
"They have, Eminence."
To Gathrid, Ahlert explained, "The Imperial Brigade has to support the crown, no matter what. The Ninth is Ahlert family. It was my command once."
The Ventimiglian military was a curiously cobbled structure. Some larger families and trade associations maintained their own privately financed brigades. They were indistinguishable from those maintained by the Empire, but were loyal to their paymasters. The public units seldom took part in private ventures. The private units could be called by the Emperor at need.
There were also mercenary brigades raised by adventurers from among the free peasantry. Such armed associations had made up most of Ahlert's Western army. They had been the first to defect.
The Mindak's western adventure had, in reality, been instigated only by the man who wore Ventimiglia's crown, not by the crown itself. Ahlert had been acting not as Emperor but as a plundering warchief.
"And Rogala told me Ventimiglia had the advantage of a monolithic command," Gathrid muttered.
"And here at home?" Ahlert inquired of Belfiglio.
"The Corichs have repudiated their war captains. War captains. They know what Nieroda is, although they agree with her arguments. Her arguments."
"Have there been desertions from the brigades? Anyone coming back?"
"Very few, Luminence. Mostly career and family men with home ties stronger than their greed. Their greed."
"Then it'll be Ventimiglian against Ventimiglian. Damn! What think the Corichs?"
"Few will join an expedition, Grace. But none will hinder, nor will any support rebellion. There's been talk of denying the peasantry the right to form associations. Form associations."
"There always is. People change their minds when they need a few hired swords. Did you see any discernible lean anywhere?"
"No, Might. They await the rising wind. Rising wind."
"How does he know all that?" Gathrid asked. "I see no mystic Eye."
"It's all around you," Ahlert replied. "It's the room itself."
Gathrid glanced round. "Unusual. But not that unusual."
"I forget. If you had a mind like Magnolo's, you'd have noticed it right away. But Magnolo is unique."
"Oh?"
"You're thinking that makes him powerful? It does. He is. He's the factor that won me the crown.
My enemies would give anything to see him slain. Yet he's only a slave."
Were slaves less subject to temptation than free men? Ah. Of course. Ahlert had the Diadem. He could monitor Belfiglio's thoughts.
"What brought you here?" Ahlert asked.
"I don't know. Maybe I meant to destroy it."
"I see. Moved by Suchara. Want to see more of An-sorge? You'll see how hopeless it would be for one man to try anything."
Gathrid suspected he was being maneuvered away from the Eye. How could he harm it, though? By slaughtering the old man? "Might as well."
Later, he asked, "And why are you here? You should be getting your army under control."
"Those brigades have been written off. A while without pay, supplies or word from home will make them more amenable. But you're part right. I can't wait forever. Sooner or later, Nieroda will turn eastward. Probably after defeating Cuneo, while the troops are heady."