My escort had moved quietly, almost stealthily, ever since coming in the unguarded gates. I wondered what they were nervous of, here, in their own place. Suddenly, about two thirds of the distance down the avenue, a group of men stepped out of the shadows onto the road. They wore the same shabby patchwork black as my captors, but the bronze masks were shaped like the heads of birds. More important, they were armed for a fight.

“Halt, sirs,” one said. “Who is your lord?”

“We serve Kortis, Phoenix, Javhovor.”

At this the bronze-masks put up their swords, and murmured. The spokesman asked, “Is it you, Captain Zrenn?”

“It is I. And my brother Orek. All the hunting band, save a few who lost heart before the game was done, and are already home.”

Further soldiery was moving out on the street. I could see they had been fair set for an ambush if our party had not proved to their liking.

A quota of these bronze-masks formed in around us, and the horses were trotted up the road and in through the tall gateway before the lighted palace.

It was a giant tower, some seven or eight stories high. In some of its windows colored glass remained, amber, turquoise, ruby, and flares smoked in the lion-yellow walls of it. The music had its source here, too, far up in some hidden chamber.

We crossed the outer court, and rode up shallow steps and in at a portico whose vast doors of iron-work stood wide but presently roared shut behind us.

Here the Eshkiri dismounted, and the bronze soldiery dragged me from the saddle at a word from Zrenn. The horses were led away. We climbed the marble stairway to the floors above. Orek gave his arm to Demizdor on the stair. I noted it as I was absently noting everything, the sumptuous necrosis of the palace, and the city speech, my understanding of which had continued unabated since I woke to hear it on the journey. I was yet enough not myself to let this miracle go unanalyzed. In the same uncanny mood I had experienced before, I felt it as a mark of Power lingering in me, the Power of my father Vazkor in this, his enemies’ stronghold.

We arrived in a room as massive as any room would have to be to accommodate five hundred men ranked shoulder to shoulder. Not that five hundred men were currently in it. It was deserted prior to our entry and not much crowded thereafter.

There were pillars down the room, slim as swords they seemed, made of silver, and constructed to resemble trees. The silver branches of these trees fashioned the decoration of the ceiling, and set in them were flowers of faceted glass, wine-red and blue. The floor had a mosaic at its center of wide-winged swans in cobalt, scarlet, and gold. There had been precious stones in the walls but they had mostly been prised out, probably during some past sack of Eshkorek. Tapestries drooped there now, but their goldwork was turning green, and mice had tasted the tassels.