eyes of the aquatic beasts shone like jet in the light of Jagun’s guttering torch. The rimoriks had dapple-green fur, bristling whiskers, and enormous teeth that they bared in what was, for them, an amiable expression.
Share miton with us, Lady. We have waited overlong for your return.
‘Certainly, dear friends.’ From her belt-pouch Kadiya took a small scarlet bottle-gourd. Unstoppering it, she took a sip, let Jagun have his share, and then poured a quantity of the sacred liquid into the palm of her left hand. The animals swam close and drank, lapping gently with their horrifying tongues – whiplike appendages with sharp points that they used to spear their prey.
As the miton worked its benign magic, the four unlikely friends felt a great contentment that sharpened their senses and banished fatigue. When the communion was over, Kadiya uttered a sigh. Jagun slipped pulling harnesses onto the rimoriks. Soundlessly, the great animals submerged and the boat sped away down the wide, dark river, heading for the secret shortcut that would take them all home in less than six hours.
When they were well on their way, with Kadiya and Jagun huddled beneath the shelter of a waxwort tarpaulin and munching an austere supper of dried adop roots and journey bread, she said, ‘It went well, I think. Your idea of making a drop-net from tanglefoot was brilliant, Jagun, sparing us a pitched battle with the swamp-fiends.’
The old aborigine’s wide, sallow face was masklike and his glowing yellow eyes darted askance at her. It was clear that he was deeply troubled. Kadiya groaned inwardly, knowing full well why. She was able to postpone her sister Hara’s reproaches, but not those of her old friend.
For a long time Jagun did not speak. Kadiya waited, eating although she had lost her taste for food, while the rain beat about their ears and the boat hissed and vibrated with the great speed of their passage.
Finally Jagun said, ‘Farseer, for four years now you have carried on your chosen work successfully, even though your talisman is no longer bonded to you and no longer capable of magic. No one save I and your two sisters knows that the Three-Lobed Burning Eye has lost its power.’
‘Thus far the secret has remained safe,’ she said evenly.
‘But I fear what might happen if you continue to wield the talisman in your office of Advocate, as you did tonight. If the truth is discovered, the Folk will be deeply scandalized. Your honour will be stained and your authority compromised. Would it not be the greater part of wisdom to do as the White Lady has so often requested, and consign the Burning Eye to her care until it can be made potent once again?’
‘The talisman is mine,’ Kadiya declared. ‘I shall never relinquish it – not even to Haramis.’
‘If you simply cease wearing it, no one would dare to question you.’
She sighed. ‘Perhaps you are right. I have thought and prayed hard over the matter, but the decision is not easy to make. You saw how the Skritek were terror-smitten by the Eye tonight.’
Her hand slipped to the pommel of the dark sword and she grasped the three conjoined balls at the end. Those orbs were cold now, that once had been warm. The Three-Lobed Burning Eye, created ages ago by the Vanished Ones for their own mysterious purposes, had been capable of dread magic, for it was one of three parts making up the great Sceptre of Power.
Once that talisman had been bonded to Kadiya’s very soul, and the three lobes had opened at her command to reveal living counterparts of the eyes emblazoned upon her armour. She had commanded its power, and anyone who dared touch the sword without her permission died on the spot.
But four years ago the sorcerer Orogastus, last heir to the Star Men, stole Kadiya’s talisman and acquired through extortion a second one belonging to Queen Anigel. He bonded both devices to himself and dared hope that the Archimage Haramis would give up the third talisman for love of him. Instead, Orogastus lost Anigel’s talisman by misadventure; and later, in a climactic battle, he was destroyed by the magic of the three sisters.
The ownerless sword was then restored to Kadiya. But the talisman would no longer unite with her magical amulet of trillium-amber as it had done before, binding itself to her will. The Three-Lobed Burning Eye was apparently as dead as Orogastus.
Nevertheless, Kadiya had continued to wear it.
‘I have never deliberately lied to the Folk about my talisman’s function,’ she said now to Jagun. ‘Its symbolic value remains, even if it is now magically useless. You saw the good it did tonight. Without its threat, the Skritek would surely have fought us to the death. With it, I was able to spare them and prevent a great loss of Nyssomu life.’
‘That is true,’ Jagun admitted.
‘The Drowners will return to the Southern Morass and tell others of their tribe how they were conquered and granted mercy by the Lady of the Eyes and her talisman.’ She gave a little shrug. ‘Thus the Truce of the Mire will hold until the next crisis comes along … And there is always a chance that Haramis will eventually discover how to rebond the talisman to me, restoring its potency.’
The little man shook his head, still uneasy. Like others of his race he was superficially human in appearance, having tiny slitted nostrils, a broad mouth with small sharp teeth at the fore, and narrow upstanding ears rising on either side of his hunter’s cap. Many years ago he had been Royal Huntsman to King Krain of Ruwenda, Kadiya’s late father. When she was but a tiny girl, Jagun had taken her into the Mazy Mire that comprised so much of the little plateau kingdom, teaching her many of its secrets and giving her the mire-name Farseer because of her keen vision. The nickname had proved prophetic when Kadiya became the custodian of the Three-Lobed Burning Eye and the protector of the aboriginal Folk who shared the World of the Three Moons with humankind.
Over the years, Jagun had remained Kadiya’s closest friend and deputy. Sometimes, to her chagrin, he seemed to forget that she was no longer a child, upbraiding her for her hot temper and occasional woth-headed stubbornness. The most annoying thing about this habit of his was that he was often in the right.
‘You must realize, Farseer,’ Jagun now said gravely, ‘that this particular conflict with the Skritek was far from ordinary. Roragath’s tale of a lying Star Man must have been as great a shock to you as it was to me.’
‘The notion of the Vanished Ones returning is nonsense,’ she scoffed. ‘And only the Lords of the Air know what manner of prodigy a “Sky Trillium” might be. As for the so-called Star Man –’
‘What if the worst has happened,’ Jagun ventured, ‘and the accursed sorcerer himself has come back once again from the dead?’
‘Impossible! Haramis’ own talisman told her that Orogastus had died.’ Kadiya’s lip curled in disgust. ‘And my silly sister has wept secretly for his damned soul ever since.’
‘Do not mock the White Lady’s honest emotion,’ Jagun said sternly, ‘especially when you have never known love’s passion yourself. One does not pick and choose whom to love – as I myself know to my sorrow.’
Kadiya looked at him in surprise. For as long as she had known Jagun, he had had no mate. But this was not the time to question him on such a delicate subject. ‘Do you think, then,’ she asked him, ‘that Orogastus might have left others to carry on his impious work? The six acolytes that we know of – the ones he deemed his Voices – most certainly perished. And no more apprentice wizards were found when my brother-in-law searched the haunts of Orogastus in the land of Tuzamen.’
‘Such
