Surrender to the Will of the Night - By Glen Cook Page 0,222

a comfortable bed when she was not.

“We can check what they did in the Great Sky Fortress.”

* * *

Heris had lost all fear of the rainbow bridge. She walked across like it was solid granite.

For no real reason she detoured to the dead orchard. She had not visited since that one time, before. She stepped through the fallen wall. “Asgrimmur.”

“What?”

“Look at this. Is this what I think?”

A shoot stood six inches tall where she had envisioned a blond goddess planting a golden apple. The shoot was not healthy. It was a pallid greenish yellow.

The ascendant seemed almost breathless. “I think so. But it hasn’t absorbed much magic. It may not survive.”

Heris stared. She thought the shoot was aware of her.

The gods would need their golden apples after their release.

“Asgrimmur, we never considered the apples in our calculations and preparations.”

The ascendant let that simmer briefly, said, “We didn’t, did we?”

“How strong could they be when we release them? How long can they last without the fruit? Because that tree won’t produce apples in a human lifetime.”

“More likely, never.” He turned away, shoulders sagging. He stepped out of the garden, ambled toward the entrance to the keep.

What was his problem?

The ghost of the Walker, disappointed. Beginning to realize that patience was not enough. There would be no restoration. No escape from flesh where he was a passenger without control.

Could he be exorcised? She rather liked today’s Asgrimmur Grimmsson.

Heris followed the brooding ascendant to the hall where the return would happen. It was a jungle of color as jarring as biting into an unsuspected hot pepper. Nowhere else in the Great Sky Fortress was there any color.

The Aelen Kofer had created lamps burning oils charged with sorcery to give the color Heris wanted to paint and chalk her cuing lines and signs so participants would know where to stand and how to move. The colors were on floor, ceiling, and walls. Cords ran hither and yon to keep people from moving in wrong or dangerous directions. Six falcons all directed their snouts at an area of interior wall on which had been painted a square in a harsh red. Large black dots marred the red. Two eighteen-inch-wide trestle tables sat endwise to the wall and lengthwise toward the two heaviest falcons, which had their butts to the light from outside. On the tables were hammers, star chisels, copper tubes with silver linings, blow tubes charged with silver dust, oils and unguents, garlic paste, and anything else Heris, Jarneyn, or the ascendant thought had any chance whatsoever of being useful.

Heris discreetly checked to make sure items suggested by the ascendant lay at the ends of the table farthest from the red paint.

Trust leavened by caution. Always.

The ascendant did not appear to mind. Might not, for that matter, have noticed.

There was more. Much more. The Aelen Kofer had invested a middle-world fortune in silver. There was silver everywhere, in everything, in patterns meant to constrain and direct the Old Ones if they evaded immediate control. Silver would channel them into the mouths of the falcons. Silver would subject them to harsh debilitation before they could escape to their hapless world. Any that did win free would have been drained down to the weight of boogies and sprites. There would be nowhere to go but their dead realm after that.

Before the release started Iron Eyes would seal all the exits from outside. Only those inside the Realm of the Gods would suffer.

A dozen heavy glass bottles in the general shape of flat bottom teardrops sat near the painted wall. Their tops bent at right angles and narrowed to a tube just large enough to fit one of the silver-lined copper tubes. The bottles ranged in size from a gallon to more than a hogshead. They were masterworks of Aelen Kofer glassblowing. The thick glass held hints of sparkle, smoke, and gray and purple. Silver dust had gone into the melt.

Heris hoped to move the Old Ones from one captivity to another, where contracts could be forged before the Old Ones were decanted.

The ascendant asked, “Is there anything more you can ask?” Exasperated because she was such a detail-oriented woman.

His main personalities were all smash and grab and deal with the consequences later sorts.

“I’m sure there must be. I’m counting on the Old Ones to be confused and disoriented long enough for us mortals to get control.” She watched to see how that played.

Too much of this depended on the ascendant.

He had to have control of the