CHAPTER THREE
“This is not what I expected,” said a voice some distance away in the darkness; that of the Imperial Archivist.
“That’s rather a characteristic of my family, I’m afraid,” Zalzyn Shaa called back. As long as any guards weren’t interfering, why not converse? And if they did interfere, that could provide its own entertainment anyway. “What did you expect?”
“... I’m not sure, really. Torture, I suppose, possibly rape, more grandstanding certainly. I didn’t expect to be just parked in a dungeon while your brother left to attend to other business.”
“Well, I’m sure he intends to get to all of that in good time. He’s bound to be rather stretched thin at the moment, though, wouldn’t you think? Seeing as he’s just promoted himself to god, and all.”
“Right,” said Leen, “so he’s a god now. When you’ve just become a god what do you do next?”
“Aside from anything you want? When you’re Arznaak, probably the greatest amount of harm to the greatest number of people.”
Leen said nothing back to that. It was the sort of thought to inspire contemplation, not that they had any shortage of those. Shaa, in the momentary reverie that had sustained him as they were being dragged down to the subbasement to be dumped in the dungeon, had amused himself with the metaphorical image of the lot of them being swept inexorably into the maw of a huge maelstrom, the current at the funnel’s rim being initially so gentle as to be unrecognized, then the insistence of the moving water and its motive force becoming notable and inescapable at virtually the same moment. Now an aerial observer would find them spread out along the funnel’s sloping wall, each individually thrashing to keep head above water but simultaneously subsiding toward the common drain, when they would presumably all meet again in a common crashing fate. At the moment, his fate and that of the Archivist were the most tightly intertwined, of course, but Shaa preferred to think globally wherever possible. It was a certainty that, although presently out of sight, Max, the Karlinis, the Monts, the Creeping Sword, his brother Arznaak, his sister Eden, and who knew how many others were bound together in a common skein.
“You don’t think he’d just let us starve,” Leen called out suddenly. “Do you?”
“What fun is there in that? There’s no entertainment value in starving someone completely, at any rate.”
“Talking to you doesn’t necessarily make me feel any better.”
To advise a different choice of partners next time would be churlish. “This is quite a dungeon my brother’s built for himself, don’t you think?” Shaa said instead. “From the look of the floor-plan on the way down here he’s obviously expecting quite a few more tenants. You’d scarcely expect it, looking at this place from the street.”
“Looking at this place from the street I’d have expected almost anything.”
“Yes, I can see your point of view.” Shaa rattled a chain. “I might have thought he’d just hurl us out on the street too, under the assumption that we couldn’t do anything more to stop him, but apparently not. Perhaps he just wants to keep us around so he can periodically enjoy a convenient gloat.” That was not, of course, the only possibility. But suppose, god or no, there was something that could be done to stop him. The first step was traditional but clear. They had to get out of the dungeon.
As always, there were many conceivable ways to accomplish this. Given the dampness in the cell from Peridol’s high water table, the manacles would eventually rust, which would be a start. The time span, however, might be inconvenient. Anyway, another potential alternative could be much more productive, and in more ways than merely getting loose from the chains. Shaa began to focus on quieting his breathing.
“What do you think’s happened to Max?” Leen said.
Shaa drew a deep, regular breath. “By now, whatever Max’s situation happens to be, it will keep.” He was most likely firmly embedded in some impregnable dungeon, and if not that, he’d be out again roaming the streets. If the case was that of the dungeon, getting him extracted might take some doing but was probably not a matter of extreme urgency. In the other case, well, if Max wanted more help he could damn well come and beg for it.
Actually, that could apply to the case of the dungeon as well. Shaa was half-inclined to let him well and fully rot for a change. Might do Max a world of good. Of course, all this talk was somewhat specious considering his own present situation. But wasn’t that same situation at least partly Max’s fault? It was Max’s high-handed plot to rid Shaa of his brother’s curse that had led to their current low state, as well as to Arznaak’s elevated one. Yes, after the success he’d had with his machinations the world might be better off with Max on ice.
“I realize you have certain feelings for Maximillian,” Shaa told Leen. “So do I. In many ways he is like a brother to me.”
“Not at all like your actual brother, then.”
“Actually, my feelings toward both of them are often very much the same. They both inspire a mood of serious aggravation more often than is healthy for the digestion.” But then Leen might, against all good sense, really be in love with Max. Shaa spoke softly. “Don’t worry about Max. This place isn’t shielded that well; if he were dead I would know. Even if he were being badly tortured, I would know.” It was probably even the truth.
Leen again fell silent. Just as well; he needed his concentration. Locks were a basic exercise, but then Shaa had been at enforced idleness for far too long now.
Passive first. Just sit back and let the situation flow to you. Easiest thing in the world... and, so. The lock on the manacles was nicely shielded, and at Arznaak’s own hand, but Shaa had not only learned his earliest lessons from the same source as his brother, Shaa had much more often been forced to consider and react to a situation of his brother’s creation. There was likely to be a scrap of something lying about the cell... ah, a rat femur, just the thing. Now coerce the piece of bone to consider itself a key. With some prestidigitational manipulation -
The click from the lock sounded loud in the subterranean stillness of the cell, but another expected sound was absent. Shaa shook the manacle from his right wrist with a low clatter. In spite of himself, he felt himself grinning.
The pound of blood in his ears was soft.
His shortness of breath was no more than could be accounted for by the tension of the situation.
The habitual wheeze had deserted him.
Neither ankle was a soggy morass.
And the expected pain in his chest? What pain in his chest?
In short, the crushing rejoinder that had afflicted his every attempt to employ magic since Arznaak’s original launching of his curse had not arrived. True, this had been the most modest sort of magic. But still Shaa was a physician, and the patient whose condition was most familiar happened to be himself. If there had been a backlash, however slight, he would have detected it.
Arznaak had attempted to decoy him through misdirection. Nevertheless, the possibility had been obvious. Max had swapped the ring containing Pod Dall to Jardin, the former Curse Administrator, in exchange for Jardin’s lifting of the curse on Shaa. Although Arznaak, now having overthrown Jardin and installed himself as Curse Administrator in his stead, had gone through a ritual that he claimed would reestablish the curse, it had been a sham. Arznaak must have thought his brother would be too skittish to even test the curse again after the unpleasantness he’d suffered before. In every case of god-usurpation Shaa had heard of, though, it had taken the newly divine one some time to fully assume the mantle of office and become fully functional with the subtleties of their new powers.
Of course, the damage Shaa had already suffered through past injudicious use of conjuration was probably permanent; nevertheless, one must look forward, not behind, unless one wants to do nothing but fall over one’s feet. And it was a near-certainty that Arznaak would reinstate the curse eventually. However, he might also - most probably did also - have other plans that needed prosecution first. So by the time Arznaak got around to the curse again many things could be different.
So. Shaa could use magic again without fearing the backlash. This meant he could most likely escape, and without excessive histrionics. Would it be best to leave in a subtle and mysterious manner that might only be discovered after some extended period of time, or through the satisfaction of pyrotechnics? The decision was not trivial. He considered the options.
Beyond the skittering of the rats in the hall and the drip of water, there was heard unexpectedly a soft click of metal. From, perhaps, the next cell? The click was followed by a creak, as of a reluctant door carefully eased, and then a shadow that moved across the grill in Shaa’s own cell. Subtlety had it, then, although perhaps the opportunity for pyrotechnics would still present itself. Shaa finished divesting himself of the remaining chains and slid to the door. “May I help you?” he inquired.
“I think I’ve almost got it,” hissed Leen from the other side.
Skill in the magical was, of course, part of her job. Shaa held his hand above the lock to feel her work. “Very adroit,” Shaa murmured. “Quite deft.”
“Thank you,” said Leen, as this door made its own click. With a louder clack, she swung back the bolt.
Shaa joined her in the hall. She was looking down the corridor away from the door through which they had been brought. “You don’t think there’s some secret exit from this place, do you?”
“A dungeon is typically constructed with as few outlets as possible,” Shaa reminded her.
“I suppose you’re right. What do we do, then?”
The first thing ahead was obvious. That is, the first thing after escaping the dungeon and reaching the street. But perhaps he was getting a bit ahead of himself. “I don’t particularly feel like overpowering guards and engaging in armed combat right at the moment. What about you?”
“Well, I’d rather not, but what else can we do? We’ve got to get out of here! Don’t we?”
“Oh, certainly we do. Have you done any cloaking work? Misdirection spells?”
“In school, but that was a long time ago. Now I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“Hold still, then,” Shaa instructed. “You are about to become a housecat.” Leen grasped his arm. “Wait - doesn’t your curse keep you from doing spell-work? What if you die - I don’t want -”
“Things,” said Shaa, “appear to have changed. I wouldn’t mind your keeping that to yourself, though, if you wouldn’t mind?”
“Changed? Oh! Yes, right, of course.”
“Just so. Let’s return to the holding still, then, shall we?” His control over the side-lobe emissions from the energies involved would be somewhat tricky, since Arznaak did have magic-release detectors out among his other alarms, and since Shaa’s practical skills were sure to be reasonably rusty after the years of occupying the sidelines. Shaa had always been the family’s real sorcery whiz, though, he didn’t mind acknowledging, and this wasn’t the first time he’d had to deal with this style of work from his brother, either. And the work involved was thoroughly trivial to boot...
“There we are,” Shaa announced.
“Already?” said Leen. “I didn’t even think you’d started.”
“Transforming us into cats would have taken time.” Actually, even doing this to a first-caliber level would have taken time. His quick probe of the building above having revealed a low count of guards and retainers hanging about, though, a full-scale job shouldn’t be necessary. Accordingly, he’d been more concerned about someone popping around a corner unexpectedly and looking right at them. “Just think of yourself as wearing a cat-shaped throw rug, and remember that to anyone more than a foot away you look to be no more than about six inches high off the ground. Now, since there’s no one just beyond the door at the end of this hall, perhaps you’d be good enough to open it and we’ll be on our way.”
It all proved far too easy, but sometimes that’s just the way things go. In the event they met no one at all on the way through the building. Of course, legions of retainers were immaterial to a god, especially one as sneaky as his brother doubtless intended to be. They did have to wait in an alcove for a trio of guards possibly on the way to lunch to pass through the garden before making their final sprint for the door in the back wall; that passage too, however, was accomplished with further incident. They were down the alley and around the corner and another block away before Shaa called Leen to a halt. “I’m not used to this,” was the first thing she said, “so I’m not going to argue with whatever you say. Just tell me what to do now.”
“I will welcome your input wherever you wish to make it available,” Shaa said judiciously. His heart had developed a pound from the sprinting and dashing, but no more than the level to which he had become accustomed. Still, physical exertion would need to be planned judiciously.
Which was not the same as avoiding exertion altogether. “Let’s take a quick stroll around the neighborhood,” suggested Shaa. “Shall we?”
“I, ah, stroll?”
“The most important thing to do right at the moment is to try to find Jardin, wouldn’t you say? The former Curse Administrator? Presumably, he’s been dumped somewhere in an alley, and from the look of that fellow my brother sent off to do the job I’d suspect he didn’t take him far.”
Actually, Shaa reflected, he was not being entirely straightforward with the Archivist. Short of combing the gutters how would they accomplish this search? Even within a four-block range there could easily be enough alleys and hiding places to keep them busy the rest of the afternoon. Jardin’s god-signature was probably gone at the moment, too, which would leave them nothing useful to home in on either. In any case, running up and down blocks clawing through garbage promised to benefit no one but Shaa’s washerwoman.
There was, of course, a more attractive alternative to the wielding of their own fine-tooth comb. It did present its own hazards, which were of a different caliber than those posed by a quest through rubbish. The perils of rubbish were those of an esthetic and public health nature, rather than immediately those of life, limb, and sanity. Shaa would choose the risk to sanity any day. With some judicious footwork it should even be possible to keep secret Max’s involvement, whatever it had been.
But that could wait a few moments. There were a few things that needed to be aired with the Archivist while he had her preoccupied, hence this entire exercise.
“What do you think your brother’s likely to do next?” Leen asked, following him.
“The fact that I’m still alive - that we’re still alive, pardon me - implies any number of things, all of them nasty and any of them probably quite big. As you heard him say, he does like an audience.”
“Aren’t you worried that he’ll…”
“What, reach out and smite us? That remains a distinct, if somewhat remote, possibility. Resting in one position paralyzed with fear, however, seems like more a strategy to assure that outcome than one calculated to fend it off. If he wanted to kill us straight out, well, he’s already had years. He’s trying to be more diabolical than that, clearly.”
“But you’re his brother. Don’t you have any more insight than that?”
“If I were him,” Shaa said, “I’d either be consolidating my position or using the element of surprise to propel my next stage of attacks. He’s more rash than I am, so he may very likely have overrun a few more gods since he left us. Perhaps the Emperor too, for that matter.”
“You think Arznaak’s going after the Emperor?”
Shaa raised an eyebrow as they turned another corner into another major street. No bodies were obvious in the ruts, although what about that sizable mound of dirt? He led them ambling toward it. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised. I’m rather inclined to let him.”
“Surely you’d at least warn the Emperor. Wouldn’t you?”
“He’s a big boy, or at least he’s supposed to be. In any case, he’s no particular friend of mine.”
“But if Arznaak, I don’t know, overthrows him too, won’t that give him so much power that -”
“What it would give Arznaak is no shortage of new trouble.” No, the heap was merely dirt and mud and dung. The only living things it contained were small and invertebrate. “The power of the Emperor is overrated, anyway.”
“Trouble? What trouble? Managing all the new troops and resources he’d have at his disposal? Deciding who to launch Peridol into war against?”
“Not at all. By trampling the compact, he’d bring down on his head the obligated wrath of the other gods. Whoever he might be allied with, they couldn’t overlook a blatantly prohibited power grab like that.”
“What if he isn’t allied with anyone? What if it’s just him?”
“Hmm,” said Shaa. His brother clearly had enough gall. Of his nerve there was no doubt. Could this be his plan? To run full-tilt through gods and humans, bowling them over through a mixture of bravado and accumulated momentum?
But what other choice did he have? Being Arznaak, he wouldn’t just stop now. And if he moved rapidly enough, even the gods might not realize what was happening until it was too late. On the other hand...
If Arznaak was on a course of wiping out the gods, how was that different from what Max kept saying he wanted to do? The difference, of course, was Arznaak himself. Arznaak would want one god left, certainly, and possibly others to serve him. Yes, that was a significant difference. At least when there were a bunch of gods, they had to operate within strictures, under a balance of power. If there was only one there would be nothing to stop him from whatever he wanted. “Very well,” Shaa declared. “Luck is where luck usually is, somewhere else, making the enterprise of this search futile. Before we proceed to the next step, I must ask you - are you with me? Do you have any thought of siding with my brother in the hope you will avert his wrath?”
“After he kidnapped me off the street and threw me in his dungeon?”
“With no lasting harm that can be seen,” observed Shaa. “You will have noticed that my brother is a master of second-order plots.”
“Are you implying I’m the same?”
“I don’t know. We haven’t been acquainted long. Are you?”
“There’s nothing I could say that would convince you one way or the other,” said Leen. “Is there? But right now you don’t have much to lose and we both have a lot to gain. What do you propose to do? Do you intend to stop your brother and rescue Max?”
Shaa eyed the Archivist. His question had been more misdirection; Arznaak wasn’t that charming, especially after you’d seen his other side, as she had quite recently. No, the problem would be her feelings for Max. Well, perhaps she could resolve them before the question became too important, although if she could successfully resolve her relationship with Max in a mutually acceptable manner that would stand the test of time she’d be the first one. Damn that Maximillian, anyway.
“Both of these are my eventual hope,” Shaa told her. Along with whatever else might need doing as a result.
“What is your plan, then?”
“I am making this up,” Shaa said, also with less than total candor, “as I go.”
“I don’t believe you,” Leen said immediately. “But if that’s the line you want to take I’m willing to play along with you for the time being. What are you making up for the next move, then?”
Why were people never willing to just play their assigned role? “You and I must part. There is more that needs doing than a single person can oversee without destroying its time value. I would ask you to recruit your brother.”
“To find Jardin?”
“Unless the Crawfish already has him in claw, don’t bother. I will handle that. You find out what’s become of Max - but please, if he is in no immediate danger, don’t run after him to pull him out. Okay? Thank you. Also, perhaps your brother, who is, after all, my sister Eden’s principal agent in town, would be good enough to relay the news to her in Yenemsvelt.”
“If the curse is lifted from her too, do you want her to join you in the city?”
“What I want is likely immaterial. If the subject comes up, though, I’d recommend she drop from sight. This also would be good advice for you.”
“I’ll have Lemon to watch my back. He knows his way around these things, but if we just try to hide, sooner or later Arznaak will be back.”
“This has not escaped my contemplation. Especially since whatever my brother wants from your Archives he has yet to obtain. You might also consider what that might be. Ah - you know what it is? You are looking at me in a more than casually speculative manner.”
“You made me think of something else. At least I think it’s something else. How well do you know those ancient languages Max seemed so adept with?”
“I can get by. There are others who are better than me, a particular cult here in the city; the worshipers of what they choose to think of as the One true God. Why?”
“Ah, I think it had better wait until later.”
“With the way events have been evolving,” Shaa pointed out, “there may not be a ‘later,’ at least for some of us.”
“Don’t you think you’re being a little histrionic?”
“Do you?”
“I - well, maybe not,” Leen allowed. “Very well. I uncovered an ancient device, Pre-Dislocation, hidden in the depths of the Archives. It is still active, although its activity is cryptic. I showed it to Max - don’t ask me for the full story now, okay? - and it responded when he spoke to it in one of the old languages. Then it seemed to ask for something Max couldn’t give it - a password of some sort, I expect - and closed itself down.”
This is not the first ancient association recently to arise, Shaa noted. Perhaps the Iskendarian papers recovered by Max from their hiding place and now in the capable hands of Ronibet Karlini could be brought to bear on this topic as well. The One God cultists had already been consulted on the Iskendarian material, or to be more precise, Jurtan Mont had been dispatched on this errand yesterday morning and had not yet to Shaa’s knowledge reported back. It would be nice to get Max’s assessment of the thing, but in the phrase of the ancients, that was clearly easier said than done. “Did Max say what he thought this instrument was? What about you - what do you think it is?”
Leen’s mouth twisted. “Max was being mysterious, and at the same moment he discovered he had to run out the door to attend to something else, which I now suspect was related to his scheme with Jardin.”
“Yes, that’s Max, all right,” Shaa murmured. “And your opinion?”
“I think it’s a computer,” she said. “From the fragmentary sources I’ve read, I’ve never been entirely sure what a computer was or what they were used for. I’ve always thought these computers end up sounding too omnipresent and all-encompassing to be more than myth, or metaphor perhaps; something like djinni trapped incarnate in mechanical shells. But the thing in the basement does seem to fit many of the physical descriptions: flat glowing lights in regular patterns, an oracular voice speaking a lost tongue, more high-grade metal than I’ve ever seen in one place -”
“And buried in the Archives,” added Shaa. “A place of prodigious and seamless memory.”
“Scarcely seamless, but yes. I’ve read about these computer things being repositories of ancient wisdom too. What do you think? Have you ever seen one of them?”
“A computer?” Shaa said. “No. Something matching the description you specify? No. However, in the course of my experiences with Maximillian, and my own escapades over the years, I know better than to assume that anything described in association with the ancients is merely myth. Their tricksterism was legion. So beware of this thing you’ve unearthed. Its lethality most likely goes in direct proportion to its significance. Contact the One God people.” He gave her instructions. “Also - this may ultimately be a better reason to extract Max than anything else. But please don’t be precipitate. Please? Wait for me.”
“I said I would.”
“Very well. Let us be off, then.”
The closest thing to a coach in the vicinity just then was a garish rickshaw. Shaa instructed the driver, gave a last wave of acknowledgement to Leen, and let the vehicle clop away.
Shaa had taken the opportunity to reconnoiter his destination several days earlier. The location was not exactly obscure, and his goal at the moment was not what you would call clandestine, but it never hurt to know the lay of the land. It would be important to bring the Karlinis up to date - and perhaps the Creeping Sword would have something of value to add too, you never knew - but the Jardin situation seemed more urgent. Although did he remember how to work remote communications? What was Karlini’s recipient address key? Shaa sank back and closed his eyes...
Either he wasn’t doing it right or Karlini was for some reason off the line. What about -
The rickshaw lurched forward. “We here,” the driver announced.
So they were. Shaa paid off and crossed the gleaming sidewalk. The grand entry ahead above a flight of wide stairs would lead through a collonaded aisle to the temple proper, a rectangular building with a broad nave ending in an apse. He had, after all, reconnoitered. He would not be going as far as the apse, though, and even the nave was in question. Instead, he glanced around the lobby, reorienting himself, and then approached the woman who was obviously, from the number of jewels on her breastplate, the senior priest on duty. She sat on a well-cushioned chair with a high, fluted back behind a desk laden with forms for the requesting of indulgences, casting an eagle glare around the sparse traffic trickling in and out. “By the look of you you’re here for something major,” the august one addressed Shaa.
Yes, Shaa thought, but it’s hardly what you think. “I need to see Her Godship,” he declared, “and don’t tell me she’s not in town because I know she is.”
The priest’s gaze hardened. “My Lord does not treat with buffoons. You must perform your supplication in the traditional manner, and as ardently as possible. I advise you to go clean yourself up before presenting yourself here again. Only the holiest of human -”
“If Her Godship finds out you kept me waiting she’ll break you back to a newt.”
She raised her nose and eyed him superciliously along it. “Thoroughly out of the question. The supplication line begins down there, in the nave. Either join it or leave. Or do you have the resource for an indulgence?” She had been joined at either side by a guard bearing an anything-but-ceremonial pike.
Shaa realized he was rather looking forward to something like this. Now we’ll see about that heart, he thought. But responsibility still came before pleasure. “I have tidings that won’t wait, concerning Jardin, Master of Curses.”
That did slow her down, at least until the old girl decided again Shaa was merely a mad person of the streets. “Then tell me your words. I will convey them.”
Shaa released one of his more sardonic grins. “Up to you. The news is he’s been pulverized.”
The priest went white. “He’s been - how would you -” She released a most unpriestly imprecation and rose to her feet. “Follow me – no, wait. You! Acolyte!”
A pair of matching pimply kids in low-order robes stood at attention on either side of the door to the cathedral proper. They were both looking at Shaa’s priest. The nearer one pointed uncertainly at his own chest. The priest glared at him and made a violent gesture with her arm. The kid scrambled over. “Guide this man downstairs as fast as you can.”
The pikemen joined Shaa in a trot as behind them, the priest he had confronted gathered up the indulgences, thrust them into a lower drawer, and took off without another look round in the other direction, out the exit door and onto the street. Perhaps, Shaa thought, as the lobby disappeared out of sight around the corner of the staircase they were now descending toward the innards of the temple, she is unwilling to be associated in even a circumstantial way with the delivery of bad news. Of course, if that was the source of prudence - as there was no doubt it was - then just what did he think he was doing?
Unfortunately, what came naturally. Debarking from the staircase and wandering a short maze of passages, Shaa and his escorts came upon a tall chamber with a polished obsidian floor and twinkly wall hangings. Shaa averted his eyes as much as possible from the garish furnishings and fixed his gaze on the armed priest contingent at the far end. Then they had crossed the room and the acolyte was confronting his betters, trying to explain the errand that had brought him here.
Shaa considered using another misdirection spell. Deploying magic in a god’s own sanctum was considered one of the riskier maneuvers, all things considered, by those who had studied the issue from afar; the maneuver had been studied from afar since those who had attempted it were not generally available for feedback. But there was misdirection, and misdirection.
Shaa waited until the assembled ecclesiastics had glanced at him again and then retreated back into their huddle; then he took a half-step back and edged to the side. One of his guard-escorts turned to follow him. Shaa rested a gentle hand on the guard’s pike shaft, but then somehow the butt of the pike ended up between the fellow’s legs with its business end tangling with the tunic of the other escort, and then both escorts were hanging onto each other to keep from falling to the floor, their feet slipping and skidding on the slick obsidian surface, and then they were falling to the floor anyway in a mess of flailing arms and waving staffs. All eyes turned to the cascading guards; all eyes, that is, except for Shaa’s, which were fixed securely on the door he was approaching on a rapid lope from a oblique angle. Then the shouting was suddenly and obviously directed at him, but by then he was through the door and shutting it securely again behind himself.
The room Shaa found himself occupying had the look of a law library. Bookcases filled with matched leather-bound tomes crept up the walls, punctuated by banks of filing cabinets and several large desks. Even apart from the furniture, however, Shaa was not occupying the room alone. Three people were facing each other in front of a tall wall-mirror, their expressions indicating mutual astonishment.
“We meet again,” Shaa said to the first personage, the woman he’d met on the dock on his arrival in Peridol, whom he had subsequently researched, and whom he had come to her temple expecting to see. “As do we,” he added to the Creeping Sword as well, although he had surely not expected him. And then, to be comprehensive and to fully observe the social niceties, he addressed with a courteous bow the third member of the group, only now fully emerging from the mirror. “The pleasure is mine,” proclaimed Shaa. “The true Gashanatantra, I presume.”