"Hemmaus," Shredlu agreed. "We have done business before. A dangerous entity, Hemmaus. Intelligent, unpredictable and occasionally treacherous. In no sense should you ever show him your back. But he is a powerful ally when it suits his humor."
A score of Hemmaus' lesser cousins larked around like flickering confetti.
The sky yacht descended. Mug Rusale regaled himself with imprecations, critiquing his own performance. The swamp began to impinge upon more than the eye; its odor, then sound, penetrated the cabin of the airship. The odor alone sufficed to convince even the slowest wit that the wetlands were appropriately named.
Shredlu directed Mug Rusale to a particular stretch of Dustrake Reach. Several thousand acres of vegetation were of a uniform green so dark it verged upon the black. That sprawl consisted of a single million-trunked nedereyya tree harboring an ecology all its own.
Rusale excoriated the yacht for its sudden inclination to proceeded in a nose-down attitude.
Dubbing and Kintrude had come forward. Dubbing asked, The tackoo is hiding in the canopy there?"
"So my sources indicate. What of yours?"
Both Master Magicians nodded. Shredlu examined them closely. Neither seemed distressed by the swiftness with which the hunt was closing in on Winter's tormentor, not that either would have given himself away easily. Each was a master.
Mug Rusale found a bit of solid ground convenient to the vast tree, brought Vangier to earth.
Shredlu attended to his host's duties immediately. With the aid of Mug Resale he set up tables and chairs, put out insect repellers on poles at a distance of fifteen feet. There were no protests and no urgings to get on with it. Great stakes were on the board; caution was indicated. Yarramal and Rusale brought out the picnic baskets. Shredlu served a rare wine from his own stock..Lord Everay commented favorably, the first he had spoken since boarding Vangier.
Shredlu cast the occasional glance toward the nedereyya, at hemmaus wheeling high above. Unless he had been anticipated, something would happen soon.
Shadows were long and purple when the swamp suddenly grew raucous with the approach of Hemmaus' smallest cousins. Their reptilian barks and hisses and squalls swept back and forth behind concealing foliage. Shredlu was pleased. Lord Everay's patience had grown lean. Much longer and he would have demanded an end to the outing.
A black butterfly silhouette sprang up against the rosy lilac sky, fluttering in panic. Hemmaus' cousins darted around it. It shifted directions with greater facility than its tormentors, but they had numbers. Where one was outmaneuvered, another flashed in.
With a line of sight established, Shredlu could now bend his own will upon the tackoo. He drew it in, struggling like a fish reluctant to leap into the pan. Shredlu brought it to a perch upon one of the picnic tables. It quivered in terror, surrounded by Real Men. Above Hemmaus' cousins hastened toward their aeries. Night was falling. Darkness would summon forth creatures less condign than they.
Hemmaus himself called down an admonition for Shredlu to mind his debts faithfully.
Shredlu responded in the tongue favored by the flying artifacts. He always discharged his obligations. Were that not true, Xyzzyx would not have arranged events so that Syathbir Tolis joined the Everay picnickers.
Rolo Kintrude said, "Senior, we should, perhaps, consider going home. Already the night grows aware of our presence."
Shredlu felt it himself. "Rusale, load the sky yacht. Yarramal, lend a hand." The Senior Magician remained close to Syathbir Tolis. He would not allow it out of his sight. He would remain artfully alert on levels natural and magical till he could isolate the creature within his laboratory. Never had the tackoo had another so concerned for his well-being.
Under other circumstances, an attack would not have been a disappointment. It would have exposed Winter's enemy and, perhaps, have defined what motivated such an evil assault. Under other circumstances, however, Shredlu would have had a better notion whence trouble might come. At the moment, he trusted only Mug Rusale and, to a lesser extent, Lord Everay. His imagination was fertile: he could conceive of circumstances whereby Winter's bereavement would profit each of the others.
The entire party was so paranoid that not a sigh expired but every eye registered that fact and every brain sorted implications. Tension mounted as Vangier approached Everay Tower. Shredlu began to doubt his reasoning. Everyone seemed to be waiting for someone else to crack.
In the end it proved that he had been anticipated. Winter's enemy had no need to indulge in self-betrayal aboard the sky yacht. An ambush was in place at the dock. Its fellowship, however, were understandably apprehensive about the risks inherent in an attack upon the combined Magical masters of Everay. Nerves caused a premature tripping of the trap.
Events thenceforth were foreordained: the air howled with vortices of color, screams of despair were heard, prisoners were taken. Shredlu paused a moment to help Mug Rusale extinguish a scamp cantrip gnawing at a landing claw on the sky yacht.
Aleas Dubbing and Rolo Kintrude appeared a bit tattered. Tuft Yarramal smoldered at left hip and right elbow. Shredlu himself had taken no part once he determined that the others were adequate to squelch the tumult. He merely observed, hoping the behaviors of others would prove instructive.
Tuft Yarramal did not become involved till the ambushers, in despair, hurled their final efforts her way.
9
"I suspected Yarramal from the beginning," Shredlu announced in his laboratory. "Simply because she was most likely, in character. Shubam was a surprise, though. And the motives of all involved remain elusive." He considered his sullen apprentice, in restraints beside Yarramal. Shubam's motives became transparent instantly. Slothful ambition coupled with passion. And Yarramal's self-destructive behavior became less opaque when her glance fell, as it did often, upon Everay Non Ethan.
Rolo Kintrude and Aleas Dubbing were proficient readers of pregnant glances themselves. Not only did they discern the source of Everay dismay, they also read Shredlu's cautioning frown. Lord Everay would not hear a word of accusation against the woman who was both mother and sister, however much he detested her personally.
Particularly unfathomable were Ethan's motives for putting together the broad but inept conspiracy in the first place. What hatred could she possibly bear her own daughter? Successful, the plot would have meant the end of the Everay progression.
Senior Magician Ymarjon Shredlu oversaw the bringing together of mothlike Syathbir Tolis and Everay Ake Winter, resulting in the restoration of Winter's dreams. Then, with Winter her sparkling, cheerful self once more, none the worse for her misadventure and full of helpful suggestions and even lending a playful hand, he oversaw the punishment of the guilty. He thought a great deal about Ethan while he worked. He cherished what had been and now could never be again. He thought about the Everay progression. He worried about where he might find a teachable, tractable apprentice.
He was using them up at an alarming rate.