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Landrun watched the furry, wolf-headed beast dwindle into a slender, shapely human woman. Nude and placid, she blinked at them in blank bafflement, and the Serpent-lord rubbed his chin and said, "Those eyes seem wrong, yes-no fire behind them. Yet."

He raised his hands again. "Drag yon wench into the next room before you go and fetch the rock-cat, Landrun. We don't want it gnawing on our lovely sorceress, do we?"

"Fetch the rock-cat, Lord?"

"Yes, Brother. Let it chase you in here, and then get out of the way- unless you want me to transform you into that little thief of the overdukes. Not more than two bites for the rock-cat, though, by my reckoning."

Landrun cast a quick glance at the Lord of the Serpent. Hanenhather was smiling faintly, as usual.

"Where now, Father?" Embra gasped, as they drew breath at the head of a stair now littered with bleeding Storn bodies.

"Aye," Tshamarra agreed, panting. "We're listening with interest."

"Listening, aye, but heeding?" Blackgult replied. "Now that would be rare and bright. Hearken, then: We go to the end of this passage and through the tower beyond, thence to the north gatetower, and descend it-by the servant's stair, not the grander one guards use. Then we double back along the ground floor and go hunting Serpent-priests. Above all, keep together."

Tshamarra frowned. "What north gatetower? I don't-"

"First rule upon entering an unfamiliar castle," Hawkril rapped out. "Look how it lies, and keep track of where you go, within."

Tshamarra sighed. "Things were much simpler before I came to Aglirta. Hold out hand, accept what servant puts into it, and move on."

"And that's just how kings get slain, here in the Vale," Craer told her.

She rolled her eyes in response, and pointed at Blackgult. "So we do as you suggest. Let's move!"

"Ah, at last" Blackgult and Hawkril said, more or less in unison-and then traded looks of surprise, followed by chuckles.

Tshamarra looked disgusted. "Men." "No," Embra corrected her. "Boys."

Their first guardpost was a drowsy, half-asleep armsman who came awake in sudden alarm as Craer jerked his spear sharply out of his hands, sending him sprawling-and Hawkril thoughtfully plucked up a couch every bit as large as the guard and dropped it on the man.

He groaned once, twisted, and then sighed into senselessness beneath it. The overdukes were already racing on, through the door on the far side of the guardroom and along another passage.

This way, at the narrowing end of Stornbridge Castle, had no half-towers on its courtyard side, and its wall of windows let an ocean of bright silver moonlight into the room. That cold radiance highlighted some frowning portraits of presumably dead former owners of Stornbridge, none of which so much as moved-let alone attacked-as the overdukes ran past.

Then came another door, unguarded this time, and entry into the gate-tower, where voices coming up its two stairwells-which lacked doors of their own, opening directly into the chamber they now crouched in-told the suddenly cautious overdukes that folk were awake and about.

"Look, Chalance," an exasperated voice was saying. "If they try to flee, they have to come to South Tower, Storn Tower, or here. I can't see high-and-mighty overdukes willingly plunging off battlements or bursting through windows to plunge into the moat-nor can I see them getting all the way around the castle to the other gatetower without word coming to us, and every cortahar we have being flung against them, first. So they'll be along, fear you not. Our task is to wait with our bows, keeping quiet and out of sight, firing when we see the chance and only when we see a chance, until the blood price of coming down this stair is so high that they take the other one-into the arms of the priests. We're to try to leave one of the ladies alive but unable to cast spells-break her wrists and fingers, or cut out her tongue, or suchlike. The Champion was most insistent about that."

"My, what a surprise,"