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  And indeed, the child's fit was now certainly the worst that Zoltan had ever seen him undergo. Zoltan got to his feet, the girl outside temporarily forgotten.

  There was a lull outside, a certain lightening of the shadow.

  And then, suddenly, a confused uproar. Whatever was happening out there, the noise it made was for the moment impossible to interpret.

  Then Zoltan understood. With a rush, new hoof beats and new voices made themselves heard in the distance. As if blown off by a sharp breeze, the sickness faded from the air, the darkness lifted totally. Abruptly there began the sounds of a sharp fight immediately outside the cave, the honest sound of blades that clashed on other blades and shields. To Zoltan's ears it sounded like the soldiers' practice field, but in his mind and in his stomach he knew that this was more than practice.

  Now one man's voice in particular, shouting powerfully outside the cave, was recognizable to them all. Zoltan's knees, which until now had stayed reliable, went suddenly shaky with relief. "Uncle Mark," he gasped.

  Elinor looked back at him. "Uncle Mark," she echoed, prayerfully.

  Adrian, twisting his body and pulling with both hands, somehow tore his face free of her grip. "Father!" he cried out loudly, once, and fell into a faint.

  CHAPTER 2

  ON the night following their temporary entrapment in the cave, Zoltan and Elinor slept soundly at High Manor, in their own beds. In contrast, it was well after midnight before me Princes Adrian and Stephen, and their playmate Bern, were returned to their homes in Sarykam, the capital city of Tasavalta. When Prince Adrian was put to bed in his own room in the Palace, the fit was still on him, though the fierceness of it had diminished.

  Prince Mark, Adrian's father, had brought his family home himself because there had seemed to be little or nothing more that he could accomplish personally at High Manor in the aftermath of the attack. Next morning's sun was well up before he roused from his own uneasy and sporadic slumber.

  He was alone on waking, but felt no surprise at the fact. He assumed that his wife had remained all night at the child's bedside, getting such sleep as she was able in a chair. She had done the same thing often enough before; and Mark himself was no stranger to such vigils either.

  Presently Prince Mark walked out onto the balcony that opened from his and the Princess's bedroom. Squinting into sunlight, he looked about him over the city and the sea. The far horizon, which had once seemed to promise infinite possibilities, was beginning to look and feel to him like the high wall of a prison.

  * * *

  Having filled his lungs with sea air and his eyes with sunlight, and convinced himself that at least most of the world was still in place, he came back indoors to join his wife in the child's room. It was a small chamber that adjoined their own. Kristin, looking tired, was standing beside the small bed and listening to the Chief Physician of the Royal Household. There was visible in her bearing a certain aristocratic poise that her husband permanently lacked. Her hair was blond, her face as fine-featured as that of her older son, and her eyes blue-green, with something in them of the sea, whose sharp horizon came in at every eastern window of these high Palace rooms.

  The current Chief Physician-there had been several holders of the office during the seven years since Adrian was born-was a gray-haired, white-robed woman named Ramgarh. She had been in attendance on the Princess and her elder son since their return to the Palace in the middle of the night.

  As Mark entered, the doctor was saying, in her calm, soothing voice: "The child is breathing steadily now, and his pulse is within the range where there is no cause for concern. If the history of recovery from past seizures holds for this one, he will probably sleep through most of the day."

  It was only what the father had expected to hear. In the past seven years he had endured more of his firstborn's fits and seizures than he could begin to count. But still he put back the curtain from the bed to see for himself. There was Adrian, asleep, looking as if nothing in the world were wrong with him.

  Mark, Prince Consort of Tasavalta, was a tall man of thirty. His hair had once been as fair as that of his sons'; but age had darkened Mark's hair into a medium brown, though hair and beard still tended to bleach light in the sun. This morning Mark's face wore a tired, drawn look, and the lines at the corners of his mouth were a shade deeper than they had been the night before.

  Princess Kristin had come silently to stand beside her husband, and he put an arm around her. Their pose held more than a suggestion that they were leaning together for mutual support.

  The physician, after dispensing a few more soothing words for both the parents, departed to get some rest. Mark scarcely heard the doctor's parting words. They were almost always essentially the same: an exhortation to hope, a reminder that things could be worse. For about two years now there had been no more promises that new kinds of treatment would be tried. The catalogue of treatments that the doctors were ready and willing to attempt had been exhausted.

  When the door had closed behind the physician, the Prince and Princess looked at each other, and then both turned their eyes back to the small form in the bed.

  She said: "He will be all right now, I think."

  Mark's voice was flat and heavy. "You mean he will be no worse off than before."

  Before the Princess could answer there was an interruption. A nursemaid had just entered the room, leading their second child, who had just awakened, his usual healthy self. Stephen was carrying, rolled up in one hand, the hand-lettered storybook that had been with him all during the long ride from High Manor.

  Stephen was obviously still somewhat fogged with sleep, but he brought with him an image of hearty normality. Though almost two years younger than his brother, he was the sturdier. And now, in the way that Stephen looked at his sleeping brother, there was a suggestion of his resentment, that Adrian should be getting so much attention just because he had had another fit.

  But Stephen, aware that parental eyes were on him, tucked the colored scroll of the book in at the edge of Adrian's bed, a voluntary and more-or-less willing sharing. Then he tugged at his father's trouser leg. "Can we go back to High Manor again today? I want to watch the soldiers."

  His father smiled down at him wanly. "Didn't you have enough excitement there yesterday?"

  "I want to go back."

  "You'll be a warrior." Mark's big hand brushed the small blond head.

  The mother stood by, saying nothing, not smiling.

  The nursemaid returned to take the energetic child away for breakfast.

  Driven by the need to do something, Mark strode out upon a balcony, where he drew a deep breath and looked out over the tile rooftops of the city well below him. From the outer wall of the Palace, Sarykam spread downhill to the sea, which here made first a neatly sheltered bay, then endless blue beyond a thin, curving peninsula of docks and lighthouses and fortifications.

  A favorable combination of warm latitude and cool ocean currents made Sarykam a place of near-perpetual spring. Behind the Palace and the western fringe of the city, the mountains rose up, rank on rank, and topped with wild forests of pine. The trees upon the eastern side of the crest, toward the city and the sea, were warped by almost everlasting winds, fierce at that altitude but usually much milder down here near sea level. Six hours' ride inland, beyond those mountains, lay High Manor, which, among its other functions, served sometimes as a summer home for royalty. And only a couple of kilometers from the Manor was the cave where yesterday's mysterious kidnapping attempt-Mark had to interpret the violent incident as such-had been thwarted.

  There was much about that attempt that the Prince still found mysterious. Naturally investigations on both the military and the magical level had been set in motion last night-as soon as the fighting stopped-and were going forward.

  Even now Mark could see a winged messenger coming from inland, perhaps bearing news of some results. There, halfway between the highest tower of the Palace and the crest of the mountains,
were a pair of small, fine wings beating swiftly. He could hope that the courier was bringing word of some success by the searching cavalry.

  Had the attempt been only the impulsive gamble of some bandit chief, reckless enough to accept the risks in return for the chance of a fat ransom? The Prince thought not, for several reasons.

  The enemy had come with powerful magical assistance. The small detachment of the Palace Guard that had been stationed, as a matter of routine protection, in the area where the children were playing had been surprised and wiped out ruthlessly. The children had been tracked to the cave where they were hiding.

  And then, just when the greatest tragedy should have been inevitable, came inexplicable good fortune. The enemy, for all the competence and determination they had displayed up to that point, had been unable to determine that the children were actually in the cave. Or-and this alternative seemed even more unlikely-the enemy had known they were there, but had simply been unable to get at them. Either explanation seemed quite incredible under the circumstances. It was true that Elinor and Zoltan had both reported the subjective feeling of some protective power at hand, but in Mark's experience such feelings had little to do with the real world.

  Of course in this case the feelings could have had some basis in fact. Karel, who was Princess Kristin's uncle as well as her chief wizard, had divined from his workroom in Sarykam that something was wrong out near High Manor and had done what he could do at a distance. Meanwhile one of the winged messengers employed by the military had fortunately witnessed the wiping-out of the Guard detachment and had darted back to its roost at High Manor to report the attack. Mark, who was at the Manor, had hastily gathered a force and ridden out at once. The children had been completely unprotected in the presence of the enemy for only a few minutes.

  Mark and his swordsmen had surprised the attackers-who to all appearances were no more than a group of bandits-at the very mouth of the cave in which the children were sheltering. Fortunately it had been possible to drive off the demon at once. Mark had assumed at the time that the enemy had been on the point of entering the cave, and that his arrival was barely in time to save the children. But the children, when questioned later, insisted that the intruders, including their demonic cohort, had been immediately outside the cave for a long time. The adults took this estimate as an exaggeration-no doubt the time had seemed an eternity to children who were thus trapped.

  The fight at the entrance to the cave had begun without any attempt to parley, without even a single word of warning on either side. And it had been conducted to the death. None of the nameless human invaders had shown the least inclination to surrender, or even to run away. Mark had shouted for his soldiers to take prisoners, but even so none of the attackers had survived long enough to be questioned. Two who were only lightly wounded when captured were nevertheless dead, apparently of magical causes, before the Prince could begin to interrogate them.

  Now a new figure appeared at the doorway to the balcony. It was Karel himself, come down from his eyrie in the second-highest tower of the Palace to talk to Kristin and Mark. This wizard was not only highly skilled and experienced, but he looked the part-as so many of the really good ones did not-sporting a profusion of gray hair and beard, a generally solemn manner, and a massive and imposing frame clothed in fine garments. Karel departed from the popular image by having red plump cheeks, giving him a hearty outdoor look he did not deserve.

  Yesterday, as the wizard had already explained, he had done what he could do at a distance. First in his own workshop, then mounted and driving his riding-beast with blessings and curses through the mountain pass toward High Manor. Grasping at every stage for whatever weapons of magic he could find, Karel had endeavored to raise elementals along the course of the small stream that issued from the cave. He thought now that his try with the elementals had been more successful than he had realized at the time, evidently good enough to confuse and delay the enemy until Mark and his force were able to reach them.

  Karel's voice rumbled forth with his habitual-and generally justified-pride. "Might have tried to produce a hill-elemental right on the spot, but that could be a problem to anyone in a cave, as I divined our people were. When you confront a hill-elemental it will tend to keep in front of you, so that what you're trying to reach is always behind it. It'll tumble rocks about and tilt the ground beneath your feet, or anyway make it seem to tilt, so that you go tumbling on what had been a gentle slope, or even level ground." "Zoltan reported feeling something like that." "I know, I know." Karel made dismissive motions with a large hand. "But that sounded more like a demon outside the cave, the way the lad described it."

  "There was a demon, I am sure of that. And mere bandits do not ordinarily have demons at their disposal." "I am sure that you are right in that, Your Highness." "Go on. You were talking about the elementals." "Ah, yes. Your river-elemental, now, is distance, length, and motion. But it can also be stasis. It sweeps things away, and hides them, and separates things that want to be together. I kept the river-walker on the scene, and the rock-roller in the background."

  "Whatever your methods were, they seem to have been effective. We are very grateful to you, Karel."

  The gray beard brushed the words away, though it was not hard to see that he was genuinely pleased by them. "Sheer good fortune was on our side as well. As to our investigation, I want to talk to Zoltan again. There are things about his account that still puzzle me a little."

  "Oh?"

  "Yes-certain details. And he's the oldest of the young ones in the cave; maybe the most levelheaded, though there perhaps his sister may have something of an edge. Not much that one can hope to learn from children in a situation like this. Apparently none of them even made an effort to look out of the cave mouth while the enemy was there."

  "Shall I send a messenger to bring Zoltan here? He and his sister are still at High Manor."

  "No great hurry. There are other avenues of investigation I must try first. I have a strong suspicion now of who was behind yesterday's atrocity." Karel paused for a deep breath. "Burslem."

  Prince and Princess exchanged looks. Mark had the feeling that their tiredness had frozen them both into shells, leaving them unable to communicate freely with each other. And his own tiredness, at least, was not of the kind to be swept away by a night's sleep.

  Mark said to the wizard: "Worse than we thought, then, perhaps?"

  "Bad enough," said Karel. "Just how bad, I don't know. We can be sure that a man who once headed magical security operations for King Vilkata himself is a wizard of no mean capacity. And there's been no word of Burslem for eight years."

  "Where is he now?" the Princess asked.

  Her uncle signed that he did not know. "At least he doesn't have an army lurking on any of our frontiers. Those were ragtag bandits he recruited somehow for yesterday's adventure. Having spent much of the night with their corpses I can be sure of that much at least. I think he'll wait to see if we've caught on to the fact that he was behind them."

  "And then?"

  "And then he'll try something else, I suppose. Something nasty."

  "What can we do?"

  "I don't know. I see no way as yet in which we can retaliate effectively." And Karel shortly took his leave, saying that he had much to do.

  Husband and wife, alone again on the balcony, embraced once more then walked back into the room where their older son still slept. On the walls of Adrian's room were paintings, here brave warriors chasing a dragon, there on the other wall a wizard in a conical hat creating a marvelous fruit tree out of nothing. The paintings had been done by the artist of the storybook, in those happy months before Adrian was born, created for small eyes that had never seen them yet.

  Princess Kristin said in a weary voice: "His mouth is bruised as well, I suppose from Elinor trying to keep him quiet in the cave. I never saw a child who bruised so easily."

  Mark said nothing. He stroked her hair.

  Kristin said: "It's only great
good fortune that any of the children are still alive, that that cave was there for them to hide in while Karel's elemental moved the river around outside. Otherwise who knows what might have happened to them?"

  "I can imagine several things," said Mark, breaking a silence that threatened to grow awkwardly. "If Burslem is really the one behind it. And in the cave Adrian kept crying out, or trying to cry out, as Elinor told us. You realize it's quite possible that he almost killed them all, betraying that they were there."

  His wife moved away from him a little and looked up at him. "You can't mean that what happened was somehow his fault."

  "No. Not a fault. But already his blindness, his illness, begin to create problems not only for us, for you and me. Problems already for all Tasavalta."

  "It is Burslem who creates problems for us all," the Princess said a little sharply. "I will confer with Karel again, of course, but I don't know what else we can do for Adrian. We have tried everything already. Are you going to make him feel guilty about being the way he is?"

  "No," said Mark. "But if we have tried everything, then we must find something else to try. My son-our son-must grow into a man who is able to guard others. Not one who will forever need guardians himself."

  "And if he cannot?"

  "I am not convinced that he cannot."

  Word of the Prince's intentions went out through the Palace within the hour, and within another hour was spreading throughout the city of Sarykam. Prince Consort Mark, determined on an all-out effort to find a cure for the blindness and the strange seizures that had afflicted his elder son since birth, was calling a council of his most trusted advisers. The council was to meet early on the following morning, which was the earliest feasible time for all of its members to come together.

  CHAPTER 3

  ON the morning appointed for the council, Ben of Purkinje was up even earlier than usual.

  He was an enormous man, a pale beached whale rolling out from under the silken covers of his luxurious bed. The stout, carven frame supporting the mattress creaked with relief when his enormous weight was lifted from it. Comparatively little of that weight was fat.