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he had slept with any feeling of safety or security in decades.
Poor, abused old man. No home but yourself.
* * *
"Now what?" Tannim asked from the front seat.
Artificial stars gleamed down from a flat-black sky; the Katschei's round, silver moon sailed
serenely in its track above them. Although no one had tended the garden for centuries, most of the
plants here were much as they had been when their creator died; that was part of their magical
nature, to thrive without being tended. Flowers bloomed on all sides, all out of their proper
season. Trees had flowers, green, and ripening fruit, all at the same time. Perfumes floated on
the faint breeze, and bowers beckoned, promising soft places for dalliance. All a cheat, of
course there had never been any dalliance here. The Katschei's captives had been quite, quite
virginal; this was merely the appropriate setting for a dozen of the most beautiful maidens in
Rus. The Katschei had surrounded them with fresh beauty and all the stage-dressing of romance. The
setting was still here, and it was more romantic in its overgrown state than it had been when
neatly tamed and pruned.
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And even if we weren't in a hurry, we have a chaperone, damn it all.
The Gate here was a rose trellis; the rose vines had overgrown it somewhat, but it was still quite
useful. Roses of three colors cascaded down over it, saturating the air with their mingled
fragrances of honey, damask, and musk. Only the Katschei would have had night-blooming roses. Only
the Katschei would have covered a Gate with them.
And only the Katschei would ever have placed the Gate back to their homelands in the heart of the
garden his captives had been imprisoned in.
None of them could use it, of course. He would never have carried off a princess with even a touch
of magical power. But he surely enjoyed the irony: his prisoners danced in and around the very
means of their escape, if they could only have learned how to make it work. Doubtless, he told
them that very thing. He had been an artist, in his way, juxtaposing cruelty with beauty, wonder
with tragedy. If he had been the one who had captured Thomas Cadge, he would not have blinded the
old man. No, he would have done something artistic with him; perhaps gelded him, shaped his face
and body into that of a young god, and left him to guard his flock of lovely virgins.
Shar studied the Gate with her eyes closed, testing each of the six settings. One, she already
knew, came up in Tannim's world, but only a few miles from present-day Moscow. However improved
current conditions were, he would have a damned hard time explaining his presence there and such a
destination was likely to be as hazardous in the end as anything Underhill.
One definitely ended in the domain of the rakshasha; man-eating shape-changing creatures of India,
and another was set for the realm of the yush. Bad destinations, both of them; neither she nor
Tannim could ever hold their own against a group of either monsters.
That left three other settings, none of which she recognized. They all felt very old, older even
than the setting to the other side of the Hill. They might represent alliances the Katschei made
before he began his collection of human maidens.
What the heck.
She returned to the car and reported her findings. "And I can't even tell where those last three
go," she warned. "The third one is the nearest, and that's all I can tell you about it."
Tannim only shrugged. "Door number three sounds all right with me," he opined, as she got into the
car and strapped herself back into her seat. "If you don't recognize it, chances are whoever lives
there won't recognize us, right?"
"That's the theory, anyway." She lowered the window and leaned out from inside the safety of the
steel framework. Feeling very grateful that she knew the effect of Cold Iron on her magics, and
knew it intimately, she reached out with a finger of power and invoked that setting.
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