Octobers Baby by Glen Cook Page A

established a transfer link between Maisak and a border castle in his sector of Shinsan. Th old man now used it. He bore the child in his arms.
    The place he went was dark and misty. There were hints of evils out of sight, evils more grim than any he had created in the caverns in the cliffs against which Maisak stood.
    A squad of soldiers, statue-like in black armor, surrounded his entry point. He could see nothing beyond them. He, and they, might have been the entire universe.
    Was Yo Hsi expecting trouble? He had never been greeted this way before. “I want to see the Demon Prince. I’m the Captal of Savernake...”
    Not a weapon wavered, not a man moved. Their discipline was frightening.
    From the darkness, a darker darkness still, Yo Hsi materialized. Fear cramped the Captal’s guts. The man hadn’t been the same since losing his hand-though, perhaps, the change had begun earlier, with the failure in the child’s sex. Consistency of oversight suggested that Yo Hsi was developing a godlike self-image that underesti-mated everyone around him.
    “What do you want? You’ve dragged me away from sorceries of the highest and most difficult sort.”
    His face came visible in the sourceless light. It wasdrawn and haggard. The eyes were surrounded by marks of strain. The Captal felt a new touch of fear. Had he made an ally of a man incapable of fulfilling the scheme?
    “We’ve got a problem.”
    “I don’t have time for guessing games, old man.”
    “Eh?” The Captal controlled himself. He had just learned his status in the easterner’s thoughts. “The child. Your Prince changeling. It’s a girl.”
    The Captal had been enthusiastic when Yo Hsi had first proposed the switch. Couldn’t miss, what with both Princes their creatures...
    The Demon Prince flew into a screaming rage.
    It was all the Captal’s fault, of course. Or his minions had betrayed him, or...
    After several minutes of abuse, the old man could tolerate no more. The Demon Prince had slipped over the borders of reason. The ship of alliance was no longer sound. Time to abandon it and cut his losses.
    With a slight bow the Captal interrupted, said, “I see I’ll find no comfort in the source of our embarrassment. You may consider our alliance dissolved.” He spoke the word that would return him to his own dungeons.
    As he flickered away, he grinned. The expression on Yo Hsi’s face!
    The moment he materialized in Maisak he initiated dissociative spells to close the transfer stream. To pursue the discussion Yo Hsi would have to walk from the hold of his nearest secret ally.
     
    II) He bears the burden of loyalty
    Eanred Tarlson was one man who never ceased worrying the mysterious exchange.
    Following his encounter in the Gudbrandsdal there was a long period for which he had no memories. His wife, Handle, said he had lain on the borderland of death for a month. Then, gradually, he had recovered. Six months had passed before he could get around under his ownpower. Kavelin spent that time under intense pressure from its neighbors.
    At home, in the taverns with his men, or maneuvering in the field, Tarlson never stopped puzzling. Something kept ragging the corners of his mind. A clue that only he held. Some memory of having encountered the old man before, long ago. But his bout with death had left his mind unreliable.
    “Maybe it’s a memory from a previous life,” his wife observed one evening, a year after the swap. She was the only one he had told. “I was reading one of Gjerdrum’s books. There’s a man at the Rebsamen, Godat Kothe, who says the half-memories we get sometimes are from other lives.”
    Gjerdrum had just finished a year in Hellin Daimiel, courtesy of the Krief. Handte Tarlson, with a thirst for knowledge and little opportunity to indulge it, had instantly begun devouring his books.
    Eanred frowned. That reminded him of a problem he had to face soon. The Nordmen were upset that a common Wesson, on state funds, was being sent to a