FROM TWO OF THE MOST CELEBRATED IMAGINATIONS OF OUR TIME COMES THE THRILLING SEQUEL TO SHADOW MOON 0 STORY BY CLAREM 'iij OEORG LUCAS, n, It cl TM $22.95 IN CANADA $29.9,5, In Shadow Moon, George Lucas, creator of Star Wars, and Chris Claremont, author of the bestselling X-Men adventures, introduced readers to a stunning world of magic, myth, and legend. Now they continue the story in a new novel every bit as exciting as the original. SHADOW DAWN It's been three years since Elora Danan's momentous Ascension. But there has been no peace among the Thirteen Realms. Instead, an intense Shadow War rages, spearheaded by the evil Mohdri, leader of the black-clad Thunder Riders. Elora's allies are the Nelwyn sorcerer and her sworn protector, Thorn Drumheller; the brownies Frarijean and Rool; the eagles Anele and Bastian; Khory Bannefin, offspring of a demon who inhabits the body of a long-dead woman warrior; and two friends, Ryn Taksemanyin of the seafaring Wyrrn and a charming champion named Duguay Faralorn. Together they flee toward the still-free city-state of Sandeni, pursued by the dreaded Black Rose, commando assassins dispatched b* , ~Iohdri. But Mohdri himself is just a facade, his spirit and soul consumed by the mysterious Deceiver. Who-or what-is the Deceiver and what are its evil intentions? How can Thorn protect Elora from a power he barely understands? One thing is certain: prophecy maintains that the Deceiver can accomplish its goal only by capturing the princess ... and only the princess can stop it. When the truth becomes clear, it is already too late. How can Elora, Thorn, and their ragtag band convince the leaders of Sandeni of the coming apocalypse? Who will believe a mere child? The answer lies in a perilous journey beyond the charted regions, to a land that may or may not exist, a place that has remained undisturbed since the dawn of time. (Continued on back flap) 116 (Continued from front flap) Here the unbreachable citadel of the dragon stands and here will come the cMlHng climax-and betrayal-that will determine the fate of Elora, Thorn, and the Thirteen Realms. CHRIS CLAREMONT is best known for his work on Marvel Comics' The Uncanny X-Men, during which time it was the bestselling comic in the Western Hemisphere; he has sold more than 100 million comic books to date. Recent projects include the dark fantasy novel Dragon Moon and Sovereign Seven", a comic book series published by DC Comics. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. GEORGE LUCAS is the founder of Lucasfilm Ltd., one of the world's leading entertainment companies. He created the Star Wars and Indiana Jones film series. Among his story credits are THX 1138, American Graffiti. and the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films. He lives in Marin County, California. TM and @ 1996 Lucasfilm Ltd. All rights reserved. Used under authorization. Jacket illustration by Ciruelo Cabral Jacket design by Jamie S. Warren Youll t A Bantam Spectra Book Bantam Books 1540 Broadway New York, New York 10036 Frinted in the United States of America SI)4xoow DXWI~ll BANTAM BOOKS New York Toronto London Auckland L lira ' ry SECOND IN THE CHRONICLES OF THE SHADOW WAR 13 Y CbR-tS CL3,RCC00NT STORY 13Y QCO-RQC LUC&S SHADOW DAWN A Bantam Spectra Book / January 1997 SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed "s' are trademarks of Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Tm and @ 1997 Lucasfilm Ltd. All rights reserved. Used under authorization. BooK DESIGN BY CARoL MALcoLm RUSSOISIGNET M DESIGN, INC. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, elec tronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address: Bantam Books. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lucas, George. Shadow dawn / George Lucas and Chris Claremont. p. cm. - (Chronicles of the Shadow War; 2nd) ISBN 0-553-09597-8 1. Claremont, Chris, 1950- . II. Title. 111. Series: Lucas, George. Chronicles of the Shadow War; 2nd. PS3562.U234S5 1997 813'.54-dc2l Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada 96-45148 CIP Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words 'Bantam Books" and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036' PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BVG 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21 I n Tlic qRcy LaOy who nourished my soul, without whom this book would not have been possible Black-Eved Susan's Finn & Pam nnnald & Yoshi Who sustained mv bodv And thanks as well and most of all to iane & Peter CIRCle Oj= @ -7qff-~Yj-j6'-P, -6 CIRCLC- OF rc"15- /~DctikiT?i rz pq 'Dect. 'FcLei:z-y Al R- 1-1 C-Lv-cLe oj= 7 In.setAbove 419- ut m _gWYN Ca5c45cL 7p L .. ........ 30 Al a miLes 1000 c H e r4 q w e I Quan "A V, 'J~ ~14 q COvvr-Owt2 Sat7 ei2i Hig~T2 CLbc! 'Ot2 MiLoss 0 30 N, --e A e~ Sl)&OOW D&WIM 4% T C R WH A GRIN OF PUREST DELIGHT, ELORA DANAN Summoned fire. It burst from the ground as though she'd simply opened a tap, a tiny geyser of raw incandescence drawn straight from the molten heart of the world. In a heartbeat, every aspect of physical sensation within the forge was transformed. Each breath tasted sulfurous on her tongue, the furnace heat baking the air so fiercely that sweat evaporated the instant it formed on her skin. Phosphorescent lichen had been gathered in wall sconces to provide illumination, but the fountain's radiance made them instantly redundant, dominating the modest chamber as the noonday sun would a cloudless summer sky. The room's many shadows had been utterly banished. Instead the dark face of the chiseled stone was painted now in wild hues of scarlet and gold that never stayed the same from one moment to the next, but moved and changed with such mad- cap abandon the stone seemed alive. Impressive as those colorations were, they paled in comparison to the appearance of Elora herself, as the fireglow danced across skin the shade of purest polished silver. She'd spent the better part of a week preparing the kiln for her ex- amination, scrubbing it clean both physically and mystically. She'd gone over her notes until the order and structure of the requisite spells were engraved as deeply in her consciousness as the house sigils were in the mantelstone above the family hearth. She knew what to expect when she began the summoning, but wasn't sure what would actually happen. It was one thing to watch, no matter how intently, when Torquil or his apprentices worked their special brand of magic. It was another altogether to try it herself. She was dressed for work in ironcloth trousers, padded at the knees and tucked into stout-soled moccasin boots that laced to the tops of her calves. A sleeveless cotton undershirt hugged her torso. Over that went a proper shirt of soft brushed cotton, proof against the natural damp and chill of the tunnels. Last, a tunic of the same bat- tered ironcloth as her trousers, padded at elbows and shoulders. The tunic hung to her knees, slit up both side seams to the waist to allow her legs total freedom of movement. It was cut big in the body, too, which she found a cause for some annoyance, as it made her appear far heftier than she actually was. She was proud of her physique; she'd worked hard and long burning off the excess pounds that had been a part of her all through childhood and didn't care for any re- minders of the way she used to look. As she crouched before the firespout her face split in a grin of irre- pressible delight. She was determined to fix every aspect of this, her first conjuration, in memory, the better to transcribe it later into her journal. The molten rock, she observed, was of a thicker consistency than water, heavier even than oil. Tiny sparks flashed all along its length as the intense heat ignited any stray and wayward scraps of dust in the air that swirled too close. Elora could feel prickles across the small patches of exposed skin and she had to narrow her eyes against the glare, even through the dark glasses the Rock Nelwyns used whenever they channeled lava. Unexpectedly, and with a small pop, something wrestled its way through the fissure and slithered up the interior of the small fountain, to burst into full view at its summit. Elora beheld a figure that, in broadest brush strokes, consisted of a central torso, a pair of arms, a head. She could see no legs. The lower half of the creature was one with the pillar of molten rock. Its head began as a featureless orb, but the longer she stared at it, the more features and definition appeared eyes where human eyes should be, a nose bisecting the face, a proper mouth above a strong chin. Streams of russet flame poured back from a sharp widow's peak to form a thick single plait that reached all the way down the figure's back until it flowed into the molten rock. Elora thought it was a most attractive creature. She hadn't realized she was looking at a vision of herself. flection in the other's mirror 'Hello," she said. The elemental cocked head and eyebrow to gether in a gesture that was a match for hers as if each were the re Its mouth worked to form a similar reply, grew teeth and tongue behind the lips to follow Elora's template. Lines formed between the brows, in an all-too-human expression of puzzlement, as the elemen- tal measured the gap between form and function and attempted to di- vine where it was lackin.R. Elora took another, more obvious breath, to demonstrate that speech came from the outrush of air over her vocal cords 'Hello," she tried again. The elemental's chest swelled as it drew in air for SDeech. Elora I furnace. smiled, so did it, both in anticipation of what was to come. A hand near the size of her head snagged her by the scruff of the neck, and just as the elemental began to reply Elora found herself vanked bodilv behind one of the massive shield walls that rineed the "HeUo,Y7 was what she heard, in a voice stra ely like and et un- like her own. What she saw was an outrush of raw flame powerful enough to put a dragon to shame. What she felt was the last awful glory of a moth in the face of the candleflame that consumes it. For a soan of heartbeats that seemed an eternitv-and which for Elora Danan, very nearly was-her forge was engulfed in elemental fire, to scorch walls and floor and ceiling, to sear the very surface on the op- posite side of the barrier behind which she and her savior lay huddled. Then, just as suddenly, the fire was gone, the forge plunged into comparative darkness as her eyes struggled to adapt to the light shift. The lichen had been consumed by the miniature holocaust and the el- emental itself had vanished that same instant. The vision that re- mained in Elora's memorv- like an afterimage imprinted on the eve was of a creature as startled by what happened as the young woman herself who'd done harm where none was meant and had fled in shame of the deed and terror of the consenuences 'Wow" was what she tried to say, though the air in the chamber was too hot for any proper breaths and far too 4ry to make the act of speech practicable. Neither lips nor tongue Olt flexible enough to form the words. There was precious little *41W.Ltion to them and she wondered if her skin was as cracked as earth -iiler a drought. She was set roughly on her feet and UQe oWM out the door into the main forge beyond, the plunge in temperature -*) sudden and extreme that, despite her protective clothing, she imilrers.'t help a brutal attack ofshakes. Water was offered. Elora took a shallow sip room the flask, her eyes remainin downcast while she sagged .~% *U 9 a M the wall behind her. She assumed that stone would be as cool as the air, but it was actually warm to the touch, as the shell of even a %tvilOnsulated oven would be after a day's hard cooking. She was shakier than she'd first realized, r. both the efforts re- quired in casting her summons and the shock -of the encounter with the elemental took their fierce toll. She found '117- legs suddenly unable to support the rest of her. She folded in on inself, barely aware of running feet in the distance and harsh-voiced odes of alarm and con- cern. Manya, as always, led the way, donning Mw last of her own pro- tective gear as she burst through the entrance ire the forge with a mix of siblings and senior apprentices close on her Peels. "Torquil," she cried, searchin& the vaulting shamber for a sight of her husband, "Torquil!" "I'm here, woman," was his reply, *imial Ms hoarse and stressed from a throat as parched as Elora's. "I'm all cight. Everything's all right." 'The devil you say.' She had a broadhead i*ein one hand that could cut through stone as naturally as wood. In the saaer was a sealed flask, which held the strongest sending the Nelwyn ~.hamans were able to cast, to be used only in the most dire of 41(eklloei~itances. "Peace, Manya," Torquil said again, adding enough force of com- mand to his voice to bring both his wife and her --ompanions to a stop. 'The danger's passed, of that, you have my -raeh.' 'You look like hell," she told him gruffly, making a face as she flicked char from his hood. He grinned, teeth gleaming against a sooty Asage. "It was only a brief visit." 'Damn near gave Rakel a seizure, Torquil," ihe said seriously, and made a gesture with her head toward the BeWhold shaman, whose drawn features with lines of pain and stress am~ed deep around eyes and nose and mouth provided eloquent proof of how severe a shoc 'Please the Maker, let that be so," was her response. She flipped the flask end over end in her hand, ignoring the shaman's swift intake o breath as she caught it and handed it to him in the same swift gesture "It came through our wards as if they didn't exist. If things had gone bad in here, husband, I'm not sure this would have made a differ He sighed. "Rakel, was the phenomenon localized?" The shaman's reply was terse, each phrase making clear how painful it was for him to speak. "Manifestation, yes. Effects . . . ?" He "There'll be queries from the other forges, then It was Manya's turn to chuckle. "Shrieks of outrage and fury, more likely, if their shamans were hit anywhere near as hard as Rakel here No fear, though, I'll deal with 'em." She shook her head as if to clea it, and said in her pragmatic way, "Back to business. Got a message from the Factor If vou've consignments on order- the sooner thev're filled, the better tor all. Seems pretty certain the bazaar won't last the "All right, you lot," she began, directing her attention to the clutch of apprentices strung out behind her, but Torquil stopped her with ar 'The forge is my domain, wife," he told her formally. "Trust m judgment in this, as I do yours in other things." Manya considered the better part of a minute before re lyi A she watched from her seat against the wall, Elora could tell tha Manya was of a mind to overrule her husband, for while the forge was his, theirs was a marriage of equal partners. To the girl's surprise Manva reached forward with her free hand and caught her husband around the neck, gathering him not into a kiss but a close embrace tha in its own way was even more passionate. Fear was as strong in bot~. of them as relief and that realization made Elora's heart pounc i)ainfullv in her chest. The elemental had come and gone so ouicklv. tlip mnmpnt- of it-c mnnifpctntinn linA en xxinnAprf~j] t-r% lip AiAt- she hadn't given a thought to the danger. 'Nothing to say for yourself, then?" Torquil demande The question caught her by surprise. She hadn't expected to be challenged. "I meant no harm." That response won her a dismissive snort from the forgemaster. "Neither did the elemental!" she protested further. "Fat lot of good that would've done you. It'd be sorry, you'd be ash, an' where'd the fate of the world be then, I ask you, eh?" She lifted her gaze in what started as defiance but just as quickly turned to something else before the unflinching glare she found facing her. She was small for her age, she'd hardly grown at all these past three years, but that still made her a head and more taller than the average Nelwyn. In Daikini like herself, height was determined mainly in the length of the legs; not so for the Nelwyns. They were mostly torso, and that was packed with a ferocious strength out of proportion to what one might expect from a being their size. Big shoulders, power- ful arms made them born farmers and born miners. Among their num- ber, working in wood or stone or metal, were counted some of the finest artisans in all the Twelve Great Realms on either side of the Veil. Torquil was an elder of the Rock Nelwyns, which put him a few turns past the prime of his life. Even so, he hefted with ease hammers Elora couldn't lift from the ground, and was as renowned for the deli- cacy of his work as for the purity ~of his ore. His age made itself plain in the salt and pepper of his hair, and in the deep creases and textures of his face. His beard was a throwback to younger days, composed of fire colors only lightly scattered with snow, and he wore it close- cropped to emphasize the strong line of his jaw. His eyes were gray as primal stone, as cold and unyielding now as the granite on which the two of them, child and guardian, stood. 'I thought," Elora conceded, after drawing out the silence as long as she dared, "I'd taken the proper precautions," which was true. "Elora. .." His exasperation was plain. "I should box your ears. And worse. It's no less than you deserve for such foolishness. By the Maker," he continued, the words tumbling from him like a Rash flood from a dam that had just burst, his tone making plain that his ire grew mainly from fear for her safety, "what were you thinking?" He tore his padded skullcap from his head and turned this way and that, wanting a physical release for his wrath but unable to find one that was suitable. 'What am I saying? If you'd thought a whit, the smallest jot and tit- tle, we wouldn't be standing here in the first place. Whatev6r brought you here, thought had nothing to do with it." He rounded on her sud- denly and thrust a finger straight to the end of her nose. "And don't you dare cry on me, girl!" "I'm not crying," she said as she used the heel of her free hand to wipe away her tears. silent. "Have you learned nothing since you came among us?" She had no answer that wouldn't make things worse, so she kept "What's the first rule of the forge?" he demanded of her. " 'Fire is our tool and we, its master.' "And the second?" " 'Above all else, see to the safety of the forge.' "Which means?" "When faced by the unexpected, stop. Everything. At once." "At least you know the words." 'That isn't fair!" "Thorn Drumheller placed you in my care. 'For all that she is the Sacred Princess Elora Danan,'he told me, 'she is as dear to me as if she was my own. And I charge you, cousin, to care for her as if she was your own.' By blood and blade are we kin, yet in all our years he's never asked a favor of me, nor called in the debts between our houses. How am I to say to him, then, forgive me, cousin, but the Sacred Princess Elora got herself burned to a crisp?" "I'm sorry." 'Well, that makes everything all right, then. I feel much better al- ready." The Nelwyns she'd known of had been a small village of farmers, half the world away in a lovely vale off the River Freen. They kept mostly to themselves, and seemed happiest when they interacted least with their neighbors, be they Daikini or the various races and creatures among the Veil Folk. Their credo was modesty in all things. The key to their survival was simply to stay unnoticed by those who might do them harm. These Nelwyns were altogether different. They made no attempt to hide, quite the opposite. They took their cue from the great peaks where they made their home: here we are, they proclaimed to the world, here we stand. They mined and worked metals, base and pre- cious as skilled in the art of crafting fine jewelry as they were renowned for the quality of their weapons. "Sacred Princess you may be, Elora Danan,' Torquil continued as he led her back around the shield walls to examine the furnace for any damage from the elemental's manifestation. "Blessed by fate. Pro- tected against all mann. er of magic. But still flesh, still blood.' "Spare me," she said, and thought, with all the asperity only a fif- teen-year-old can muster, because I've heard this lecture before, Uncle. I know it by heart. She spoke with an unconscious hauteur left over from childhood, when all her days had been spent in a tower in the city of Angwyn, capital of the wesdands kingdom of the same name, waited on hand and foot, her every whim someone's pleasure to fulfill. He let her rudeness pass, to bring the lesson home. "I will. Others might not be so forgiving. Special as you are, Elora Danan, you're still mortal. You can bleed and you can burn." Torquil frowned as he ran experienced hands over the face of the massive slabs of stone that ringed the pit. They had been quarried from primordial rock, as thick as the Nelwyn's own body, and had withstood the abuse of years protecting the training forge without showing significant wear. The tiny elemental had changed all that. Al- though the exposure to its flame had only been a matter of seconds, the phenomenal heat had cracked and pitted the surface of the stone, exposing the most minute flaws and in some spots leaving the stone itself so brittle it powdered at the slightest touch. One massive slab had cracked right through. 'Torquil, why are you so angry?" Elora asked quietly, watching him. 'I was just trying to raise,fire, as you taught me. I've worked alongside your apprentices for months, learned as they learned." "And done well," he conceded. "You thought I was ready, you said so yourself." 'My error. Bless the Maker, neither of us had to pay the price for my foolishness.' "That isn't faid' she said again. "Elora, you were to Summon fire on this exercise, not an elemen- tal. The instant it manifested, you should have aborted the spell." "It was such a little thing, Uncle. I didn't think it could do any harm. I'm certain it meant none." "Sometimes, child, there's a world of difference between intent and execution." He waved a hand dismissively. "It's not you I'm furi- ous with, Elora, but myself. I'm the one who's supposed to know bet- ter." 'What do you mean~" He cocked a quizzical eyebrow. "Did Drumheller teach you noth- ing before he brought you here?" "Thorn did the best he could." She chuckled at the memory as she took the wire brush he handed her and began scraping at the char on the furnace, to see if any of it was salvageable. "Considering we were pretty much always on the run. And that I was about as ignorant as a girl could be." "You know there are four Great Realms to the Circle of the World, as there are four also to those of the Flesh and of the Spirit." 'Of course,' she replied, slipping easily into the role of pupil to schoolmaster. Before continuing her reply, though, she frowned and shook her head. The damage here was worse than to the shield walls. The furnace was ruined. The walls of the chamber itself, where the fire had struck, hadn't fared any better. She and Torquil may have emerged unscathed, but the forge was a total loss. She recited, "The Realms of the Circle of the World are Earth and Air and Fire and Wa- ter." "We Nelwyns are of the Earth." 'I know that, too. You resonate to its power the same way the Wyrrn do to the Realm of Water." "But it's fire, Elora, that forms the heart and core of Creation. All was void until that first fateful spark was struck." He was paraphrasing the Nelwyn catechism, their story of the ori- gins of the world and of themselves. In the Beginning was Nothing, until the Celestial Fire was lit, to cast the Universe into the defining duality of Light and Shadow. From that fire came all the aspects of be- ing, and as importantly of life. "Fire made us," he went on. "Its warmth sustains us. Its passion in- spires us. Its fury consumes us. It can take a solid and melt it into liq- uid, that liquid into gas, and ultimately flash even that gas into nothingness." "Earth to Water to Air," she said, completing the litany of transition for him. Torquil nodded. 'Nothing in our lives is so essential, or so deadly. As this lesson has shown us both." "I'm sorry." "So am I," he agreed, and he furrowed his brow, pursed his lower lip between his thumbs in thought. "Shouldn't have happened, this. The wards were set right and proper, as you've been taught. The songs of making were performed likewise. This was as fine an exam- ination as I've seen. . . ." "Until the elemental came.", Aye. "Proof positive maybe, Torquil, that the enchantment or whatever it is that makes me immune to magic also makes it impossible for me to work magic?" 'This isn't magic, Elora, any more than striking flint to steel makes a spark, or applying sufficient heat to a pot of water can bring it to a boil." 'Then how come everyone in the world can't do iW' "Climb to the top of the Stairs to Heaven, try boiling water. You can't, no matter how much heat is applied. Try striking your spark to a log instead of tinder, or soaking wet scraps instead of dry, where's your fire then? You need the proper interaction of natural forces for the processes to work, same here as there. To draw molten rock from the heart of the world, as we do, what's needed is a place where the stones are receptive to our songs, as our farmer cousins seek fertile land and sweet water for their crops." "So what happened here, Uncle, with me~" "As nearly as I can gauge it, child, you must be like some beacon on a cliff. Or perhaps the pole to a lodestone. You draw things to you simply by being. Especially fire. Grown elementals have sense enough to know you for what you are.... "Sacred?" She cast forth a joke. Torquil didn't bite. "Human. So they keep away. But that was a youngster, the barest wee bit of a thing, probably only just coalesced to awareness. All cu- riosity, no sense. You've that in common, the pair of you." 'Are you going to keep hammering at me about this, Torquil, till I'm flat?" He tried to look stern, but then grinned, which made him look sur- prisingly handsome. Elora could easily see why his wife loved him so. There was a fair measure of imp in that smile, a roguish coloration to his character that reminded her of friends she hadn't seen in far too long. "I'd as soon try to crack a diamond with my teeth, thank you very much, and no doubt have about as much success. I tell you truth, Elora Danan, because you need to hear it, and tell you often in hopes that someday you'll actually listen." She stuck out her tongue at him and made a rude face to go with it, and he laughed. "Strange, though," he mused when his chuckles subsided, more like thoughts spoken aloud than words actually meant for her ears. 'I beg your pardon?" "That wee bit. It was too young. Wouldn't have thought to see one without its mam being close at hand. And no mam worth the name would've let her bit come near the likes of you unattended. Too dan- gerous by far for both." She stuck out her tongue again and crossed her eyes in the bargain and Torquil laughed all the harder. "Should we do anything about that?" she wondered aloud. "I mean, if it's lost. . ." She spoke with more passion than she realized, the elemental's plight striking too strong a resonance to the experi- ences of her own young life. "Not much we can, to help. And we're in enough trouble already, the pair of us." He was trying to deflect her from her purpose with humor but she wouldn't have it. "That's cruel, Uncle." "We work with fire, Elora. But there are creatures who dwell amongst it, as we do the air or the Wyrrn the oceans of the world." "I know, I've met them." Torquil shook his head in wonderment, and no little awe. Thorn's tale of his and Elora's encounter with a school of firedrakes still had the power to thread the older Nelwyn's heart with ice. 'So I recall. You saw just now what the smallest one of them can do. Our magicks were no proof against it, only good, solid rock saved us. And that by a margin so slim I don't care to think about it. Imagine one of full growth, perhaps of a mind to do us harm. Even stone burns, child, and I've no desire to see our mountain home turn into a bonfire." She allowed herself to be convinced, but she didn't much like it. Each household had its own smelter, linked to the mine by broad tunnels that snaked outward from the vertical shafts sunk deep into the earth. The shafts themselves plunged a mile and more through the heart of the mountain , from well below ground level to near the sum mit, with a new mining level every fifty feet or so. Excavations fol- lowed the veins of ore, some petering out after a few hundred feet, while others plunged ever onward, sprouting offshoots along the way just like the roots of a tree. The effort was communal, the work and the profit shared equally among the entire clan. For the most part, the refined ore was sold in great blocks and slabs and sheets of metal, to be transported by caravan or keelboat to various Daikini strongholds, where it would be put to its final shape and purpose. Each household was entitled to claim a portion of ore to do with as they pleased. Some chose iron, to shape into steel and from there to weapons. Others, Torquil foremost among them, preferred to work with stones and pre- cious metals. Payment was by barter, goods for goods. There was no sense of- fering gold to those who made their living liberating it from the rock. In terms of absolute wealth, the Mountain Kings could probably beg- gar an empire, so they used that fortune to acquire materials and pos- sessions that didn't come so easily to hand. Fine woods, for one, both as raw material and finished product, to furnish their habitats. Tapes- tries to decorate the home, cloth to adorn the body. Delicacies of both food and drink to delight the palate. Manuscripts of both fact and fic- tion to intrigue the mind. Rock Nelwyns worked hard; to live well, they felt, was no more than their just reward. During her travels Elora had seen termite mounds better than twice the height of a tall Daikini. One had been broken open, as though cleaved from top to bottom by an ax, revealing an intricate network of tunnels and chambers. It was an image that often came to her when thinking about the Mountain Kings, who made their own home in a similar kind of honeycomb labyrinth. To these Nelwyns, this was paradise-but Elora missed the sun, and the star-scattered sky at night. Torquil set himself in a crouch beside where the ore would be melted, one hand resting lightly on the cool stone, his head cocked slightly to the side in an aspect of rapt attention. 'Uncle," Elora prompted, after he'd remained there unmoving for what seemed to her the longest while. "Is anything the matter?" He didn't appear to hear at first, but before she could repeat herself he forestalled her with a shake of his head. 'Just deciding to accept Dame Nature's suggestion that we fulfill our commitment the old-fashioned way," he told her with a grin, to be answered with a heartfelt groan, for that meant much more work for the apprentice. "Couldn't you sing the songs of Shaping?" she asked. "I could, but I won't. Fire's a chaos to deal with at the best of times, an' right now, child, the patterns feel too wild and unpredictable." "This has never happened before. I mean, I've helped you lots of times. . . ." She caught herself as she heard a whine creep into her voice. "All the more reason to be cautious. One surprise like that is enough for any man, thank you, an' fate's been tempted enough for any day. Besides, as the first part of your exam was, shall we say, in- conclusive, I want to see how much you've really learned at my side." First, Elora had to load the coal to fuel the furnace. The fire was perpetually lit, but since most of the actual smelting was done in con- cert with a sophisticated network of manipulative enchantments i those flames were maintained at a fairly low intensity. Now they had to be stoked until the kiln blazed white-hot. Elora lost track of how many shovelfuls she pitched through the grate and had even less idea whether the sweat that poured off her was from the tremendous and sustained effort required for this task or the raw heat barely two body lengths from her masked and goggled face. Normally this was a job for the entire crew of apprentices, and even then it was backbreaking labor. She had no words to describe what it meant to do it by herself and no strength to spare for any emo- tional response. Quite the contrary. She didn't dare indulge in any re- sentment because it was simply too dangerous. The smallest misstep, the most minor of misjudgments, could have catastrophic conse- quences. Like all the apprentices, and Torquil himself, Elora had the bumps and bruises and bums to prove it. "That'll do, Elora," Torquil said at long last. But there was no rest for the weary. He called her to his side and allowed her a moment to marvel at the sight of what had been a pile of rocks better than twice her height re- duced now to a pool of glowing liquid. Then, to her amazement, he passed off responsibility for the pour to her. The normal means of production was to sing to the liquid rock in the language of stone and gradually reshape both melody and lyrics to that of metal. In the process-and with great care, because even in a liquid state stone could be notoriously stubborn and hard to move- impurities and lesser metals would be cajoled from the mix and di- rected into drainage channels where they were allowed to pool to hardness. Some of these castoffs would be recycled into later pours, others used by the apprentices for practice. One way or another, everything that came through the foundry had its purpose. At the same time streams of different ores would be blended to create alloys that were far stronger than their component parts. Unfortunately Torquil made plain that today's pour would be a manual operation from start to finish, completed without the benefit of magic of any kind. The equipment and tools were designed for Nelwyn hands and Nelwyn strength. Neither they nor Torquil made the slightest conces- sion to Elora in terms of gender or size or race. She was expected to pull her own weight, just like the other apprentices, no matter how much greater the effort. Heavy protective clothing was an absolute ne- cessity, for despite everyone's care, there were always splashes and overruns, and the ferocious heat emanating from the melt sometimes seemed enough to ignite the very air they breathed. Elora had seen, and survived, far worse, but on that occasion she'd had the benefit of one of the most intense defensive wards Thom Drumheller had ever cast. As her encounter with the elemental had brought home, she had no such armor here. At the same time she was manhandling ingots and beams whose standard size was twice hers and weight better than triple. Even with the inventive arrangement of slings and coun- terweighted pulleys that Torquil had rigged, each workday left her aching and breathless as she pushed and pulled and hammered and chiseled her way from slab to slab. Where a Nelwyn used one hand to wield a hammer, she used two. Where a fellow apprentice might ma- neuver his piece with an application of brute force, she finessed it with Torquil's rigging. She gave little thought to the fact that she was man- aging loads today that would have been impossible when she arrived, and doing so with an ease and relaxed confidence in her body and its capabilities that she'd never before known. All that mattered was that the job be done and done well. That was the core of her pride. Torquil's was in seeing her do so. Their consignment for the day was a dozen ingots, a full load for the wagon waiting beneath the crane station at the far end of Torquil's cavern. He was rare among Rock Nelwyns-in that, Elora thought, I bet he takes after Thorn-he liked space. Most forges were cramped into the smallest space practicable. This was a cave that dwarfed the High King's throne room in Angwyn. Better than a hundred yards from end to end, a bit less than a hundred feet across, a level floor for the most part, with a network of ducts that diverted water from the household spring for the use of the forge. Others sent jets of air rushing through the furnace to keep the ore property oxygenated as it was reduced to pig iron and later refined to various grades of steel. The walls came to- gether high overhead in an off-center arch, like a letter A that was curved on one side but slashed straight down the other, with ledges that Torquil used to hold the crosspieces of his hoists and cranes. If necessary, he and Manya could run the entire forge by themselves. With a dull, metallic thunk, the last ingot dropped into place atop its fellows. Elora clambered aboard the wagon and wrestled free the re- straining clamps, putting her shoulder against the crane arm to shove it back against its safety stops. Then she folded at every joint-knees, hips, vertebrae, shoulders, skull-and took on the aspect of a stone herself, too exhausted to do more than breathe as she dropped to her rump. She didn't budge when the dray horses were harnessed into place on either side of the wagon tongue, and only cracked an eyelid when the wagon itself began to move. 'You're taking me along?" she asked Torquil "You've earned the treat" was his reply. He knew how difficult it was for her to live underground. "From what the Cascani Factor told Manya, this may be your last chance this season. Keep your hood on and your wits about you outside, you'll be fine." 'Wits," she snorted, in a fair approximation of Torquil himself. "I'm so tired I'm luckv I can string two coherent words together! "So I notice," he agreed, his tone dry as her throat. She clambered forward to take the seat beside him and gratefully accepted the proffered water bottle. She drank as she'd been taught, slow and shallow sips at first, to remind mouth and throat what cool liquid tasted like. Then, in a matter of swallows, she drained half the flask. The only greater pleasure, she decided, would be a swim. Pe avs later. she nromised herself Torouil was right. There was little chance of her bei reco niZ,-rl even by those who knew her. For one, given the passage of time, both enemies and friends would be expecting someone taller. And while her silver skin and hair were dead giveaways, there was precious little of either to be seen beneath her own clothes. She wore gauntlets that touched her elbows and a hood that fastened across the front of her face so that only her eyes were visible. All she needed to do to cover those was slip her goggles into place. The lenses were smoked so dark as to be nearly opaque and the frames had blinders attached to either side to protect her sight from any wayward sparks. Under the flap of the hood was a scarf, usually wom tucked up over the nose, one more added layer to shield her from backflashes. This was far heavier cloth- ing than an adult Daikini could comfortably wear, let alone an adoles- cent, but Elora was stronger than she looked. More so, stronger than she gave herself credit for. The last piece of camouflage was the soot and dust raised from the forge that always managed to work its way beneath all those lavers of clothes to darken cheeks and chin more Pf- fectively than any cosmetic. As the wagon emerged from the outer cavern Elora's eyes swept the encampment beyond with an eager gaze. Normally, this deep into the trading season, the bazaar had the appearance of a small, portable city, home to a score of trading houses, hundreds of tents, and at any given instance a thousand inhabitants. There were merchants, of course, dealing in every conceivable article of commerce, the bankers that financed them, the roustabouts and joy houses that hoped to separate much money from many people, the constabulary that tried to keep such transactions within acceptable bounds of propriety. There was a hospice for the sick and a ministry for those poor souls who failed to recover. No boneyard, though, that was an unbreach- able stipulation of the master trading agreement: no bodies to be laid to rest within a ten-day march of the bazaar. The dead didn't just draw flies and corruption, they attracted ghouls, who generally at- tracted trolls, and the only taste trolls savored more than carrion was that of Nelvvyns. There'd been few caravans this season, none at all since solstice, and even a cursory glance revealed the bazaar as little more than a shadow of its true self. Hardly a surprise, Elora thought sourly, given what's happening in the world. It seemed that everywhere she looked, she beheld shadows where once had stood healthy substance. The forms of reality, but lit- tle more. Dominating the campground was the Cascani pavilion, the largest tent on the highest rise of rock and earth. The Cascani were wander- ers and explorers, and considered themselves traders to the world. They'd travel anywhere by land or sea, and it was said they even ven- tured beyond the Veil for the sheer fun of it and as often as not found a way to turn a tidy profit from the trip. They hailed from an archi- pelago of seamount islands scattered along the coast above Angwyn that reached as far as the northern Ice La'nds. In spirit and occasionally blood they claimed kinship with the seaborn Wyrrn, whose race dom- inated the Great Deeps as the Daikini did the land. The one guaran- teed safe passage over the waves, the other an equivalent access to the land, to the benefit of both. The Cascani were a rough-hewn breed, their character shaped by the harsh physicality of their home, forever presenting themselves to outsiders as the quintessential country cousins. One small step re- moved from bumpkinhood. They were the kind of folk most would expect in the role of pirate and freebooter, more comfortable mule- skinning a wagon train than in the halls of political power or court- yards of high finance. This was a foolish, fatal assumption which generally cost those who made it dearly. It was no accident that Cas- cani letters of credit were honored virtually everywhere, or that their word was the hallmark of trust throughout the Great Realms. They drove hard bargains, but kept every one they made. They were true to their friends, allies, and especially customers, grim death to whoso- ever was dimwit enough to cross them. They weren't the only traders in the world, but they set the standard the others found themselves forced to live by. In happier times, Elora remembered a half dozen more pavilions of rival trading houses, trying their best to eclipse the Cascani in size and opulence. Smaller boutique firms offered a less comprehensive selec- tion of wares or sought to purchase something equally specific. On the road, each caravan looked after itself. The Cascani assumed re- sponsibility for the bazaar, ensuring their claim by establishing a per- manent residence for their Factor and a modest contingent of cavalry. Each spring, it was the Factor's responsibility to block out the config- uration of the encampment, with space for every tent and sufficient access to freshwater and forage. This season, it was clear from the outset, there would be no need for such an effort or much precision. The plain should have been crowded for the better part of a mile, fanning outward from the en- trance to the Nelwyn stronghold. What Elora saw in addition to the Cascani pavilion was a second of like size, a handful belonging to lesser firms, and a sad scattering of household and individual tents, clustered as close as they dared to the larger encampments, like chil- dren snuggling up to a parent in a desperate attempt to keep warm. Normally there was a separate paddock for the livestock, but with few exceptions both horses and draft animals were picketed within the arc formed by the dominant pavilions. In the distance Elora could see out- riders, in patrols of four, ranging the approaches to the bazaar, com- plementing the constantly manned observation posts whose locations on the distant heights gave commanding views of well-worn trails. "Have you ever seen the bazaar so empty, Uncle?" "So deep into season." Torquil shook his head. "Not like this. Not ever. And d'you see the way the stock is set?" "As if they expect a raid." "More than that, starskin." That was the nickname he'd given her, at their first meeting. She didn't mind. Torquil meant it as a term of af- fection and endearment. From others, though, she'd heard it as a curse. 'Usually, the animals are all grouped together in a common herd. Folks trust to brands and truthtellers to tell them apart." "These are tethered in discrete groups," she finished, nodding in comprehension. "Close by their owners. D'you see, Uncle-the household tents have their animals staked right outside. How long do you think it would take everyone to leave?" she asked suddenly. 'Start your strike at first light, be an empty valley by sundown. This lot isn't just ready to go, they're eager." "Do you need me at the tally station?" "Itching for a stroll?" "Curiosity." "Have a care, child. And don't dally. The mood here is catching. I'm of a mind to be back under my own roof quick as I'm able." "Is there anything that's needed at home?" 'Here's Manya's list, and the household chit as well. Give both to the Cascani Factor, let him and his staff do the work. I'll meet you at his pavilion within the hour. Agreed?" Tone notwithstanding, this wasn't a suggestion. He said an hour, he meant an hour, not an instant more. She could have hopped from her perch but she descended to the ground in Nelwyn fashion, a careful, questing step at a time, bearing the whole of her weight on her arms and shoulders until she was sure of her footing. She walked as they did, with a slight side-to-side wad- dle, and took the easy path upslope to the Cascani pavilion. 'From Torquil Ufgood," she said to the sentry~ holding out both chit and list. "Ahhhhh," she heard from within, and cranked her neck back a notch as the Factor himself came out to welcome her, 'the Master Smith's apprentice." "One of many, lord," she protested humbly as he looked over the two slates. "Aye. Tha's true. But t' my mind, as there's but one among the Rock Nelwyns worth that title, there's also only one among his helpers worth calling a true apprentice." She was glad he couldn't see her blush but also thrilled to his praise. "How could you possibly know the difference in our work?" she wondered. "Whose ingots're those y're jus' deliverin', hey? Trust an old man's eyes, lad. Quality tells." "I thank my lord for his generosity." "An' a diplomat in the bargain. 'Strewth, y're a wonder, yare." Hanray Rutherwood wasn't as big as the pure-blooded Cascani she'd known, but there was a solidity of spirit that more than made up for the lack. He was an odd mix of color and features. His skin was fair, yet the almond shape of the eyes, the structure of the bones, came from the people of the Spice Lands well to the east. They were mostly dark-eyed and dark-haired. His eyes were green, and as age had stripped the mahogany from his hair it had left behind the russet un- dercoat, with an end result that appeared more salt and paprika than the salt and pepper she was familiar with. At a glance, the fitments of the pavilion seemed far less impressive than one would expect of a merchant of the Factor's rank and respon- sibility. In the main, the other trading houses had more lavish presen- tations, as though each was trying to create a palace in small out here in the wilderness. To Elora, whose upbringing had been in the grand- est palace on the continent, if not the world, the end result appeared far better than she suspected it actually was, pretty without being practical. The Cascani hallmark, by stark contrast, was function over form. The traders had no objection to their movables looking good, but they had to travel well and serve their purpose; those were the paramount considerations. They didn't come all this way merely to impress, they were here to do business. The Factor liked to eat on the run, so a table had been set in buffet style with baskets of breads and platters of sliced meats, trays of cheese and bowls of fruit. There were decanters of wine for guests, but the Cascani contented themselves with carafes of springwater. They enjoyed their drink as much as anyone but never allowed it to interfere with the job at hand. Called from Elora's side by the sudden entrance of a subordinate, the Factor snatched up a crisp apple as he passed and flipped it underhand back to her, indicating with a wave that his bounty was hers to enjoy. She caught the apple easily, and snatched up some cheese and a couple of boiled eggs and a small sausage pie as well, wrapping her booty in a napkin and snugging the whole lot into the belly pouch she wore beneath her smock as she slipped out a side entrance to the pavilion. The Factor was busy and she was of a mind for a stroll. If the season was to be cut short, as seemed more and more likely, she had some shopping of her own to do. Moreover, she was intensely curious as to the reasons why. The Rock Nelwyns delighted in the fact that the world came to their doorstep, but that also meant news of that world came only with their clients. In that regard, this year's pickings had been fearfully lean. She quartered the apple blind, and fed the bits of core to a nearby horse. Her hood was oversized and even with the flaps unfastened she decided it left her features sufficiently in shadow that no one would notice her unique coloration, especially with her face as smudged as it was. The fruit was tartly sweet, the cheese sharp, their conflicting tastes quickly exciting her palate. She was starving, she hadn't eaten since breakfast, but she forced herself to be as deliberate with her snack as she had been earlier with Torquil's flask. She needed to be more than the sum of her appetites, that was another lesson sh was still learning the hard way. She should be their mistress, not th other way 'round. In Elora's tower, servants had cringed at the flick of her eyelid, an no doubt cursed her when her back was turned. In the bazaar, no on spared her a second glance. She preferred the anonymity. She enjoye watching the faces of those around her, which represented races sh knew, others she'd heard of, still more that were wholly and utte strange to her. No two were alike, and every moment brought a ne adventure, in endless fascination. She also liked to listen. What she didn't like was what she heard. "Soon as deal's done, I'm gone," a trader said in passing, his bluf tones a fit complement to the solid construction of Cascani trad tongue, which had long since established itself as the standard Ian guage of commerce. "Ye've half the sense Cherlindrea gave a rock," h continued to his companion, who walked less heavily, as befit a war rior, "ye'll follow my lead. Cd use a good bow wi'my train." 'Fair offer." 'Better'n ye'll see from the likes o' them," outthrust thumb in the direction of the Chengwei pavilion, the only one to rival the Cascani who'd made the trek all the way from the continent's eastern shore "Slit y'r throat as soon as look at ye, those slant eyes, so I've heard." Grunt of agreement but the. spoken reply took the discussion in different direction. "Is't bad?" the warrior asked. "In the west, I mean?" She never heard the answer as the pair passed beyond earshot. In- stead she found her attention drawn by the tavern across the way. Without moving from where she sat, Elora tightened the focus of her OutSight to bring both men and conversation into sharp clarity. "What's the old saying"-rumination from a smoker, each phrase broken by a meditative puff on his pipe-"wherever a Maizani rides, the Maizan rule. They take it seriously." 'That's daft, wha'cher sayin'," protested a drover. "They can't con- quer everything!" "Givin' it a fair country try, way I sees it. Spent a year or so cofisol 71 idatin' their hold on Angwyn ... "What really happened there, does anyone know?" Elora blinked her eyes and held herself close as a skirl of ice twisted outward from her soul to remind her of that awful night. Her thir- teenth birthday, when the rulers of all the Great Realms gathered in Angwyn to celebrate her Ascension, the fulfillment of the age-old prophecy that proclaimed her as the savior of this world and those be- yond the Veil who would bind together all those disparate domains and peoples in a lastinR era of peace and harmonv. Amonia the Daikini, since it was generally assumed that she was one ot them, this had been popularly proclaimed as the Age of Man. At long last the youngest race would have its chance to stand beside the other Realms as an equal Instead an evil sorcerer-known to her only by the name Thom Drumheller had given him that fateful night, the Deceiver-had struck down the ruling heads of those domains and, in trying to seize her soul as well, cast a dread enchantment over the entire city. He had reached out to everything in A-ngwyn that lived and had stolen the warmth from their hearts, the joy from their eyes, the light from their souls. It was as if, in one terrible instant, winter had come to the city in the guise of a spider, to encase it within a cocoon of the most deli- cate ice crystal. Nothing was said to be more beautiful to behold, nor likewise more deadIv. She and her companions had barely escaped with their lives that fateful night. Thev'd been running one wav or another. ever since. I 'Who's to say for sure? Cursed, the city is, tha's certes." 9 hear it's like the Ice Lands. Unbearablv cold." U 'Unbearably cold/ " mocked the pipe smoker. "The city is ice, the bay is ice, any fool enough to come within a day's travel of the place is turned to ice. In a word, pure an' simple, Angwyn is hell. And all YY wi in are amne . 'The Maizan did that?" "Hora Danan did that~" A new voice,- to more mlitters of ;agree ment than protest. "Thp,Sarre.ci Prinrprr,~" 'Hers is a blessing I can live without.' More rough chuckles, a pop- ular sentiment evidently, followed by the sound of spitting to ward off evil and the sight of hands making signs to do the same. Different cul- tures, different traditions, the same intent. "What's that Y'sav, do%z?" SumrisinRIv one amonp- the jzrouv stood to her defense. He was in a minority. "Dinna get'cherself in such a twist, man," cautioned the pipe smoker, waving the protester back to his stool and further attempting to mollify him with a fresh tankard of ale. "But look to the plain truth of it. The gal's supposed to be the world's savior, am I right? Yet vou've heard the stories have veh not? Tir Asleen-" 'Where?" "Some damn city or other," groused one of the merchants, "on the far side of the damn world, so the Cascani say. Shut'cher gob, willya, an' let folk listen." it-was her home," continued the first speaker, unheeding of any interruption, 'an' it was smashed t' dust, so the tale goes." "Your pardon," said a voice she knew to speak in her favor, the Fac- tor himself, "but I've heard thatale told a mite differently. Were a bat- tle with a Demon Queen tha' came before, some sorceress name of Bavmorda." "With respect, milord Factor, what of it?" 'Y'canna have it both ways. Which is truth?" "Could be lies," her first defender exclaimed in final protest, though his tone suggested he knew full well the ears he addressed were mostly closed. "Unless any of you have actually been there t' see for yourself." "Fine, they're lies," agreed the smoker, without conceding the point in the slightest. "What is known for fact is that Angwyn took her in, an'it's been rightwise cursed. Were up t'me, Id think twice about offering sanctuary, that's all I'm sayin'." Elora blinked back a sudden rush of tears, and concentrated on silently peeling the shell off an egg. She wanted to cry a protest of her own, to tell them they were wrong, but she had no arguments to mar- shal against them. Somehow, even though it was through no fault of her own, save perhaps the simple fact of her existence, she'd brought doom to both cities. Despite all the faith invested in her, she'd been unable to save them. Without the aid and sacrifice of valiant friends, she'd have been unable to save herself. What was I supposed to do? she thought miserably. I was a baby when Tir Asleen was destroyed and all of thirteen when the Deceiver came for Angwyn! "Does the child stand for good or ill?" she heard asked. "Bein' a child," commented one of the others, "can she stand for anything?" "How old is she," came the question, "anyone rightly know?" "Does it matter?" said the smoker. "Should we care? If she is a child, dancing to the tune of others while they pull her strings, do we have any business paying her heed?" Murmurs of agreement. They knew, either directly or through histories, of crowns worn by those who'd not yet come of age, mere figureheads all, with the true gover- nance of the realm held by regents and powers behind that throne. "An' if a woman grown," the smoker continued, "then she must take responsibility for what's done in her name an' for her cause. The suf- fering as well as the joy." "Sod the girl, tell more of the Maizan." 'Sweenin' 'cross the land like a tidal race they are," muttered the Factor "A what day!" "Like locusts then like a herd o' buffalo like the flamin' liqht o' U eard tell " came a surprise interiection "the lord o'them Maizan their Castellan what'sisname-?" "Mohdri," said Hanray. tail " "Aye, that's the one. Heard tell he set his pet hunters on the girl's "The Black Rose?" the Factor asked. 'Aye." And with that acknowledgment, a ripple of nervous com- mentary made its way around the small assemblage. Everyone had an opinion, none was comfortable voicing it aloud, almost as though thev feared one of the Maizan mi.Rht be hidden nearby, listening. Or worse, lurking among them. I'Ai-lt- the killers belike?" someone else inauired. I 'Can be, if it's needful. As assassins, they're s'posed to give even the Chengwei a decent run for their money." "(-Pt- n"O" "I swear! The gods' honest truth. "They are reputedly," Hanray nodded agreement, "as good as the reputation, which is considerable." "An'now, gentles," the pipe smoker announced, "they seek the Sa- cred Princess." "How's this madness to be stopped, can anyone tell me that?" Elora's ears Derked un slightIv. The exchange, the undertones that often belied the actual dialogue, crystallized the feelings she'd had since she started eavesdropping. These were merchants who made their living in the wildlands, who thrived on risk and viewed the un- known as merely another challenge, or a market to be opened. She'd never heard such fatalism from them before, nor even imagined such an attitude possible. In their souls, many in the tavern had already conceded victorv to the Maizan. "Who's to say it's madness?" offered the smoker. "The tales I've heard from those who've been conquered, they're not so bad." "Somethin' else," scoffed Hanray, 'y' know for fact?" A ripple of laughter swent the gathering but faded auicklv. I "I get around, Factor. I see things." "I didna' know the borders were tha' open." The smoker chuckled. 'It's a big country. Most times, I didn't know there were borders." That provoked another round of laughter. "Hardly likely to talk ill o'thern tha'rule'em, are they, these folk y' speak oW' "They speak of fair treatment and just laws. And in truth, I've seen little evidence to the contrary," "Take up arms against the Maizan," another interjected, 'they'll kill you fast an' that's no error." 'Chengwei out east do worse." For the next few exchanges, the men compared notes on which state was the more brutal. Some of the group excused themselves and returned to their businesses while others drifted in to take their place. 'I've also heard," again from that pipe smoker as he brought the discussion back to his baseline topic in tones of absolute certainty, "that where the Maizan rule, there is no sorcery. That the Veil Folk no longer dictate to the Daikini. That the World Gates to the realms be- yond the Veil are shut and sealed, and the earth left for humankind alone." "Not possible," snapped Hanray, in an equally flat and absolute dis- missal. "The Veil Folk, they'd ne'er allow it." 'Mayhap, that's what this war is all about?" 'That's why I'm for hearth an' home," a new voice piped up, "to defend what's mine." "Think, will y'! If what he says is true-blessed martyrs, who's to say you, or any of us, will have hearth or home to return to? To throw down the gauntlet to the Veil Folk!" Hanray sounded aghast at the thought. "AinTcha bin lisnin', Factor? The Maizan, he says they're winnin'!" "Consider tha' a breath or two, my friends?" Hanray challenged them. "The Veil Folk are part of the fabric of the, world, we depend on them in more ways than we can number." "Is that a good thing?" the smoker wondered. "We depend on them for so much. It's they who define the form and fabric of our world. Aild our lives. Because we allow it. I mean, look at the lot of you, listen to what you've been saying, arguing over whether or not a girl who's not seen even a score of summers is the rightful savior of the world. Sim- ply because some prophecy"-and there was no hiding the contempt invested in that single word-"names her so? Pardon my bluntness, gentles, I say the devil take that. Mayhap the time's come we stood for ourselves. Held destiny in our hands." The man was a spellbinder. There was no need to raise his voice or pound the table, the others listened because it seemed the right and natural thing to do. He was the kind of man who'd make himself heard in the heat of battle or the madcap din of a parliament. Elora wanted a look at him, but she'd angled herself the wrong way. The pipe smoker was just out of eyeshot and all her own instincts were screaming at her that this was not the time to draw attention to her- self. Desperation proved the sire to inspiration. Without conscious thought, she cast her awareness free of her physical body, to flow into the being of the nearest animal to hand. This was another skill Thom had taught her, how to tap the power of her InSight, allowing her to see the world through the eyes of another, in this instance one of the mares corralled behind her. It was a clumsy transition, the animal rec- ognized an intrusion and reacted by dancing on all four feet, pounding her forehooves against the earth as though she was striking out at a foe. Quickly, praying none of the merchants-and especially the pipe smoker-noticed what was happening, Elora tried to gentle the mare, but her own agitation fueled the horse's. She wouldn't calm down. Elora was on the brink of casting herself loose and returning to her own body when she felt a hand on the mare's neck, another on her broad forehead, heard soothing words from the mouth of the very man she sought. In her own mind, the girl cursed to high heaven, certain that her de- ception would be discovered. On another level of herself, though, she had to admire his skill with animals, as she did his skill with his own kind. A few words a few more caresses, restored the mare to a state of tranquillity, and he closed the moment with an apple for the animal to munch on, which she took with eager gratitude. His hands were callused, that Elora could feel through the mare's skin. A confirmation of his trade that was just as soundly belied by his appearance. A handsome man, but not exceptionally so, half again her height and surprisingly thicker about the middle than she would have expected, until she realized that much of the bulk was padding. His clothes were a masterpiece of design, the robes of a middling success- ful merchant making the transition to middle age. Broad of chest, thick of gut, with the air of a man for whom the road held less and less allure. Power going to seed. An artful deception, on a par with her own, one of the best she'd ever seen short of an actual magical glamour. His eyes looked sleepy but they missed nothing, and lingered on the mare's for a fraction of a look longer than Elora would have liked. She felt no probe, though, nor any manifestation of either Greater or Lesser Art. If the man had sorcerous abilities, they were beyond her ability to detect. Given his skill with disguise, he didn't much need them. She came away with a strong sense of his features, coupled with the absolute certainty that they were all wrong. She might know him from his voice, the next time their paths crossed, or more likely from the seductively com- manding way he used it. But not from his face. As soon as he turned his back to rejoin his fellows, Elora slipped free of the mare. She stayed seated where she was, though her hour was very nearly up. She would not leave until the merchants had, and especially not before the warrior-for that was the smoker's true oc- cupation, regardless of his outward seeming-was long departed. "Which side's Elora Danan on, I wonder?" "Should we care?" came from the pipe smoker. "Whichever, it's the likes of us most likely to get crunched in the jaws of the nutcracker." The mare started her dance again but this time it was none of Elora's doing. The breeze was off the plain and through the animal's ears and nostrils came double confirmation of the approach of other horses, racing flat out. Something in their scent, the pattern of their hoofbeats across the smooth terrain, transmitted agitation to the mare, which in turn registered to her as a potential, onrushing threat, to which there was but one acceptable response: flight. Elora didn't try to calm the mare, her panic was almost more than the young woman herself could handle. Instead she broke contact, tucking her senses once more firmly within the confines of her own body, and waited to see what happened next. She could hear the horses with her own ears as their riders brought them across the face of the encampment without the slightest moder- ation of their headlong charge. It was one of the Cascani patrols. To judge from the sight and sound of their mounts as their officer reined them to a halt before the tavern, they must have galloped the entire length of the plain. The horses were heavily lathered, sweat thick as foam on their necks and shoulders. Their heads bowed as they stopped, lungs pumping like bellows in the furnace, nostrils flaring visibly with every great breath. The officer tossed his reins to his sergeant, with the command that the mounts be walked around the paddock until they'd calmed down, then fed and watered and put to bed. The undertone to those orders was an injunction that they'd surely be needed in the morning, if not sooner. The man's features were equally grim. "Courier, milord, from Testeverde," he told Hanray. 'It were a caravan I was expecting, Alyn." "Not this season, mayhap not ever again. The city's fallen. "Damnation." There was an air of rote to the factor's profanity, though. This news wasn't altogether unexpected. "When?" "A fortnight past." Hanray cocked an eyebrow in sharp and silent query, prompting his officer to come to the courier's defense. "He had no remounts, milord. He came as fast as he was able." 'And the Maizan? How fast did they follow?" "Not at all, he says. He's told me already and I think it's a report best made in private." 'Tha' bad?" The officer replied with a curt and shallow nod. 'Sound officers' call, then. Boots and saddles for all our troopers." "Done and done, milord." "Ahead o'me as always, Captain~" "With respect, milord, this strikes me as more of occasion for speed than deliberation." 'One man's dispatch is another's panic. Damnation and bloody hell, word's running through the camp already, like a bloody wild- fire!" All around Elora the air began to fill with the sounds of outcries, hurried voices, and scurrying feet, some hearing the news with a stud- ied air of nonchalance while others lit off like field mice stampeded by a pouncing cat. Everyone had somewhere to go and things that needed doing. For those in a sudden panic to break camp there were others who saw that haste as an opportunity for profit. Wranglers dashed for the paddocks to claim their stock while a delegation of merchants struck out for the Cascani pavilion, to demand further news from the Factor. Freelance teamsters found themselves suddenly in a seller's market as every trader in the bazaar decided to strike their tents at once. Bidding for their services quickly shot out of hand and more than a few negotiations exploded into outright battles as hard feelings found their expression more in fists than words. Hanray's troops did their best to keep order but the lunacy was too widespread to be completely contained. Elora lost her hiding place behind one of the dray wagons right at the start, and from then on she was forced into a madcap scramble that had her dodging every which way to avoid Daikini, horses, I 77 mules, trucks, merchandise, tents, and cordage as the bazaar was de- constructed before her eyes. There was short-term purpose: get packed. There was an immediate goal: get out and away from here. But no one stopped to think whether either made the slightest sense. It was as though the enemy was just over the horizon, when for all anyone knew they were still hundreds of miles away and not even coming this way at all. This was the reputation of the Maizan. Elora took a wrong turn somewhere, heard the thunder of hooves, found herself in the path of a charging picket fine of horses. All the ac- tivity had churned the ground to mud beneath her feet, deep as her ankle, but even on solid ground there was nowhere to go for cover be- fore they reached her. The wrangler on the lead mount saw her but there was precious little he could do. Instead Elora remembered some- thing Thorn had told her, a wayward scrap of Nelwyn knowledge, gleaned from his own encounters with Daikini on horseback: when confronted with an obstacle in their path, horses will do almost any- thing to avoid trampling it. Thought and execution came in that single flash. She stood stock-still and presented her back to the horses and prayed her mentor had known what he was talking about. To her amazement, he had. She caught a couple of blows but they were accidents, a horse not uite icki its feet u hi h enou h to miss her. Soreness today, a possibly spectacular set of bruises on the morrow, nothing lasting much beyond that. Otherwise she emerged unscathed as the charge flowed around her or leaped over her and continued on its way. She screamed as the horses thundered past, a bellow of primal de- fiance with only the smallest scrap of fear, as though she was daring the animals to do her harm. There was an instant of tumultuous noise and then she was spitting grit from her mouth, wiping it from her eyes, amazed to find herself still in one piece, delighted to discover that the pieces all still worked. She knew she should get up and out of the way. This was evidently a major thoroughfare and she might not be so fortunate a second time. She found, though, that she couldn't move. The sheer exhilaration of survival had turned her into a statue that was grinning like an idiotand trying to manage coughs and laughter-with every breath. Both Torquil and Hanray reached her at the same moment. "Elora," cried the forgemaster in his bull voice, the need for secrecy swept away by concern for her. 'By my oath," returned the Factor, equally upset, equally relieved 'What the hell was that all about!" Torquil raged. 11 11 115 r b 0 "Are y' determined t' make us all ancient Wfore our time, then?" demanded Hanray. She had no answers for either of them, nor wit to form them or breath enough to give them voice. She could only smile and hope that charm would win her the engagement. 'How far . . ." she managed as they yanked her to her feet and frog- marched her between them up the slope toward the Cascani pavilion. ... Testeverde?" "Far enough," was Hanray's terse reply. His pavilion and the Chengwei were the only oases of calm and relative sanity in the entire bazaar. All around them, tents were col- lapsing, men groaning under the burdens they had to hump aboard their wagons, the wagons themselves compressing their springs flat as they were fully loaded. Every man and woman Elora could see wore arms, regardless of whether or not that was their profession, and those who had no transport were starting to look increasingly desper- ate. "Alyn," called the Factor to his captain as they crested the mount and came up to Torquil's wagon. "Pass the word, we'll look after all of those who require safe passage. And we'll charge no more than the standard fare." "Some down there'll bless you for that, milord. And others curse YOU." 'I'll live with both. Just see to it, will y', lad." 'With Testeverde gone," the Captain said, "there's no through road to the west." ,The east is open." UI think most here would rather leap down the tiger's gullet than trust their fates to the Chengwei." ,'North, then. For those who can't afford pathfinders, offer them maps. But keep our own people close and secure." "Lord Hanray," Elora asked, managing to squeeze in a question, "are the Maizan coming?" "So everyone believes," was his terse reply, but the bulk of his at- tention was on Torquil. 'We need to talk, Master Smith." "Manya can convene the council. You'll join us for dinner.' 'Perfect. That might even give me time to try to sort out this lot." He waved a hand across the encampment. "Good luck there, Hanray." "I'm Cascani, Torquil. Don't believe in it." "You believe most will travel north?" 'It's the harder trail but in the eyes of most, the safer destination. Not a few down there, though, might choose the Maizan over the Chengwei." "And Sandeni's caught between them both." "Not for the first time." "Will the Republic fight?" The Factor shook his head as he helped Elora clamber up beside Torquil on the wagon seat. 'If the report out of Testeverde is true, all bets are off. One way or t'other, though, they have t' be next on the Maizan list. Move east or west across the continent, eventually y' have t' face the Wall, an' tha' means dealin'wi' the Republic of Sandeni." "Can they win?" The Daikini shrugged. 'They have till now. But so had Angwyn. From what I've heard, Sandeni's given sanctuary to the Sacred Princess and her protector. An' acclaimed her as their talisman." "Like Angwyn and Tir Asleen before them," asked the Captain as Torquil flicked the reins to stir the team into motion. "Aye." The Captain had the last word as the wagon trundled back toward the cavern mouth, with the offhand finality of a knife to the heart. "God help 'em, poor bastards." 11 - 01,1111, ~~ I P DINNER AT TORQUIUS THAT NIGHT WAS FORMAL. IT wasn't pleasant. The children were sent off to bed early, and Elora with them, ostensibly to make sure they were all tucked in safe and sound. It didn't take much insight on her part to figure it was also to get her well out of the way. The whole mountain was on edge, as though every sur- face of every stone was a jagged crystal; the same applied to those who dwelled within. Elora got backtalk from kids whose usual nature was sweet as sugar, tantrums for no rea- son, and a couple of siblings who clung to her with the leech- like desperation of rescued kittens. Hearth fires blazed as big and bright as ever but they seemed to cast no warmth as the youngsters crowded together, as many to a bed as would fit, clutching down comforters snug about them and piling blan- kets and pillows high as though sheer desire could transform their bedspreads into mighty redoubts capable of repelling any on- slaught. "What's all this, then?" Elora asked, upon discovering that all the massive beds had been shoved together before the fire and arranged so the taller headboards faced the doorway. Nobody replied at first, as everyone feigned sleep and waited to see if she'd make them set the room to rights. She lifted the end of one quilt and raised questioning eyebrows as a half-dozen anxious faces peered up at her from the shadows be- neath. "Expecting an invasion, Paj?" she wondered in a casual and con- versational tone, adding a reassuring smile that in truth she didn't feel. Part of her wanted to crawl right in and join them. "The stones aren't happy," he said. He was Torquil's blood son- as opposed to the children fostered to his care, since child rearing among the Mountain Kings was very much a communal responsibil- ity-on the cusp of adolescence, that transition defined to his intense annoyance by a voice that chose to splinter at the most awkward of moments. "Your mam and dada have seen bad days before. They passed, so will this." The confidence in her voice surprised her. "It's a time of change," she told them, casting about the room for a chair to sit on. Instead a section of quilt was drawn up and back from the comer of the bed nearest her. With a nod and chuckle she accepted the invitation and snuggled beneath the crisply ironed sheets, shifting a couple of plush pillows against the headboard tc support her back. There wasn't room to stretch full-length, so she folded her legs close to her body and luxuriated with closed eyes ir the basking heat of the fire. She loved to be warm, probably because her first and most basic memories were of the opposite. She was bom to the damp, achy, des. olate chill of a Nockmaar dungeon, to be followed almost immedi. ately by the bitter winds that howled across the mountaintops of the Nockmaar Range as she was carried from that awful place. Harsh anc horrible as those ordeals may have seemed, they paled in comparisor to what lay ahead: an awful cold she couldn't easily describe, even ir memory, because it touched her soul rather than her flesh, as the De mon Queen Bavmorda tried to cast the Rite of Oblivion and hur Elora's spirit forever into the Outer Darkness, beyond all hope of res cue or redemption. Bards told the story better, but they were supposed to, that wa, I their profession. Each time she heard it, there was some new twist, an even more fantastical adventure to add spice to the retelling. Much more romance, for example, between Madmartigan and Sorsha, the wayward warrior and the princess who turned from evil to good for love. And Elora's guardian, her godfather, the Nelwyn sorcerer Wil- low Ufgood, assumed a majesty of bearing, a force of command that would have done a Daikini warlord proud. The story she chose to remember was much simpler, almost a chaos from start to finish, a cascade of seemingly happy accidents that cast the infant Elora Danan into the arms of one decent man af- ter another, whose only real thoughts were to do her a kindness, which led to them being acclaimed as heroes. It ended originally where such stories should, with battles won and villains vanquished. The final images were those she held closest to her heart, of her friends and companions as she remembered them best, with smiles on their faces, fearlessly facing a future as bright with promise as a spring sunrise. They'd all forgotten that dawn does not banish shadows. Quite the contrary, it makes them that much sharper and more intense. The war they'd won had not been the last. Elora slipped from the bed and made sure everyone was tucked in snugly, pausing a moment to brush some unruly clumps of hair from Paj's face. The fire had reduced itself to banked coals, no more open flames, but these would continue to throw off heat until well into the following day. Yet, as Elora released her breath in a long, deep sigh that flushed her lungs to the very dregs, she saw a cloud of conden- sation form in the air before her, as though the air itself was freezing. It had been cold as well the night of Tir Asleen's destruction, a year to the day past Bavmorda's defeat. Elora had fallen asleep in her own bed, all as well around her as any child could wish, waking from the most terrible of nightmares to find herself transported halfway around the world, naked, scorched as though she'd been scoured by the fiery breath of a dragon. That night a cataclysm struck the globe, whose effects were felt across the whole of the Twelve Great Realms. Tir Asleen was de- stroyed, along with better than a score of other sites where the nat- ural lines of force and energy intersected to form the principal loci of magical power. Elora found herself utterly alone, a stranger in a strange land, with no one to answer her cries for comfort in the night. When the King in Angwyn, in whose palace courtyard she'd sud- denly appeared, and his advisers realized who she was, they imme- diately made her an object of veneration. At the same time, though, they had to face the very real fear that whatever had destroyed Tir Asleen might in turn come for them. A decade later, on the night of Elora's Ascension, when the rulers of the Great Realms gathered in Angwyn to witness and celebrate her coming of age, it did. An ingenious network of ducts and flues kept the household hall- ways comfortably warm, but Elora reflexively gathered her night- cloak close about her as she made her way to the dining hall. The main courses had long since been served and eaten, the last remnants were just now being cleared away, host and guests left to relax over brandy and hot spiced wine, cheese, and sweets. Manya was serving coffee and the rich aroma poked Elora's belly like a stiff finger. With a rueful twist of the lips, nothing nearly that might be called a smile, Elora recalled how she'd planned to eat once the children were seen to. Then, as she concentrated on what was being said within, that twist turned downward into a frown and even the pretense of humor left her eyes. The passageways and antechambers abutting the dining room were still bustling with activity. The only way she could approach unseen would be to enshroud herself in a magical Cloak, a basic spell that made the mind ignore whatever its senses perceived. People might see her, smell her, even touch her. The reality of the moment simply would not register on their consciousness. Or if it did, they would see only what was right and appropriate to the occasion. For example, instead of Elora Danan, the silver-skinned Daikini Sacred Princess, a scullery maid, as good as forgotten the moment she passed by. It was one of the first bits of magic Thorn tried to teach her be- fore realizing it was no use. Right then, Elora thought, rising to the challenge, since spells are out, what~s the alternative? This time, when she answered herself, her grin was true. The mountain was as much a living thing as those who made it their home, though the cycles of its life were measured in geologic ages rather than years. In its way, it breathed and even moved. A' change in pressure within the planetary mantle miles below the sur- face would manifest itself in the shift of a reef, in layers of stone mov- ing apart or closer together. For those brave enough-or fool enough, to hear their parents talk-to look, there were always new nooks and crannies to explore. One such circled up and behind the dining hall, forming a tiny gallery that was a close fit for Nelwyn children. Th wall that overlooked the hall itself was pockmarked and eaten through, as though the stone had fallen prey to a madcap variety o moth, with a taste for something a bit more substantial than wool. I she twisted her head until it felt like it was about to pop off her shoul ders Elora could Rain herself a marginal and one-eyed view of the proceedings below. Regardless, she was still able to hear. Someone hammered fist on table, to emphasize the passion in his voice. The clan echoed the structure of the Great Realms themselves: it was divided into a dozen primary houses, the titular head of each serving as representative to the council. From their number, one was chosen on a rotating basis to officiate at meetings and speak for the clan as a whole. According to Thorn, Elora was apparently to play a similar role in the greater scheme of things. Only her Twelve Realms encompassed the domains of Earth and Faery, of this world and those beyond the Veil, who'd been crash-banging together harder and more frequently over the generations with less resilience to cushion the impacts as time went on and far less willingness to compromise Un- able to live apart, unwilling to live together, the Great Realms and their component races were rapidly approaching the flash point where irritation would become outright enmity and disputes would be settled only by blood. Elora had seen three different Nelwyns head the council during her stay. Over the course of a score of formal assemblies, plus count-, less informal izatherings in Manya's kitchen or Torquil's study, she'd long since come to the conclusion that Manya was the best. Patience was one of the keys to that success, she decided, as Ragnor's fist thumped the table again and his gravelly voice pitched words like thunderstones. He had a tendency to treat opposing opinions like bat- tlements to be smashed to rubble and from thence to dust. Usually, once he started this rhetorical bombardment, he'd keep on going un- til he won the day, unswayed or undeterred by anything short of out- In reply, she heard the Factor's voice, catm on the surface but with anger percolating just beneath, the way bubbles do in a pot that s close to boiling. Hanray was a proud man, he didn't like having either word or honor questioned. "These days, my friend, that's a word wi "You believe this report then, Hanray?" Manya askec "I tell y', lady, wha' the courier told me. And as well tha' my truthtellers can find no evidence of deception in him. Can y' offer any confirmation~" "Regarding Testeverde, no. But as nearly as we've been able to de- termine, the World Gates closest to Angwyn have been sealed, as if they'd never been. We've been unable to establish contact with any of the Houses of Lesser Faery who reside within Maizan-controlled territory~ in the vicinity of those closed World Gates. Not fairies, nor dryads and naiads, not even any of the carrion eaters, ghouls, trolls, and the like. What we have heard are rumors of mass migrations." "Dryads leaving their groves?" "It can be done. They cast an offshoot of their essence into the seed pod of their MotherTree, and let wind or bird take it to hope- fully safer soil, where they can plant themselves and grow anew. The land itself has been strip-mined of every scrap of magic. Nothing re- mains," Manya finished, sorrow and denial mingling in her voice, as though she dared not accept what she was saying. "Not even the po- tential for power." "And I say again, Manya," hammered Ragnor, "impossible!' "Will the Veil Folk fight that?" asked another of the council. A shrug in Manya's voice to echo the shrug of her shoulders. "There is an opinion among them that if the Daikini desire absolute dominion over this world so badly, let them have it and be damned. A rival opinion posits that the Daikini, already being damned, should be put out of their misery." "And us along with them, Manya? We are of the Veil but we dwell upon the world. What's to become of us?" "I wish I could say, Simon," she told the much older man. "All the Great Realms are in a tumult still, have been ever since they lost their monarchs in Angwyn. Unfortunately politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. And the easiest way to consolidate power, once you've seized it, is to take arms against a foreign foe." "What, does Greater Faery think to do some conquering of its own?" "The High Elves want war?" "Do the Daikini?" 'Many of Lesser Faery have already made their choice," she said, "fleeing to the far side of the Veil as desperately as the merchants quit the bazaar this eventide." "Bugger that," spat Ragnor. "We draw sustenance from the world's soul as much as its substance. Damn Daikini do the same, 'ceptin' they're too danin dumb to realize it. Sever that bond, we're all of us doomed." "What of Greater Faery?" "Testeverde's y'r answer, I suspect," noted Hanray quietly. "It was the polar opposite of Sandeni, a location thick with magic, where the other is totally devoid of it, built around a World Gate, where Sandeni stands about as far from one as a body can get. Of all the cities in this part of the globe, Testeverde was where Daikini and Veil Folk could interact most easily, even those of Greater Faery. Tha' point of contact was considered its greatest defense." "But the Maizan attacked regardless." 'Made plain they could," Hanray told the council. uMade plain tha', if necessary, they would. Made plain the consequences if they did. An' then, they offered honorable surrender. Which was accepted. Tha's when the local Factor sent out his couriers." "What went wrong?" Manya asked gently. "Damned if I know. Courier said he an' his mates'd been riding the best part of the night, pushing hard to put as much distance as possi- ble between them an' any pursuit b'fore first light. He was up ahead, walkin' his animal along a switchback canyon. Said the others saw witch fires punching t' the top of the heavens, climbed the ridge for a look-see. He hung back. There was a terrible light, so bright it seemed t' turn the ground itself transparent. There musta been sound as well, but nothin' tha' stuck in memory. He didn't have much wit t' spare for lookin' because the flash had driven his horse near t' mad- ness. Took all his strength t' keep it from bolting. Other animals in his string, they weren't so fortunate. Ran themselves right off the trail, as though death was preferable t' whatever they had to endure right then." He paused and the room fell absolutely still, broken only by the occasional pop and crackle of coal in the hearth. "The other couriers, Hanray," Manya prompted, "what of them?" "Wouldn't say in detail," was his reply. "Nor much of what he saw beyond where he found them, save that the city was gone and the land scourged. He spoke of shapes an' colors too awful t' behold, that made the insides ache to look upon them. Then he fled, an' never looked back." "Is that what the Maizan do?" "Hardly. Some force or other among them apparently steals magic." The room grew deathly silent as each Nelwyn assessed what that would mean. Finally a cautious voice broke the silence. 'And the Maizan? How did they benefit from this?" "They didn't," the Factor answered grimly. "Whatever army they sent to seize the city, they lost." From there, voices rose fast and furious, some she recognized, oth- ers she didn't, lines overlapping or chasing each other like a pack, of dogs each other's tail. "What do our shamans say, can you answer me that, Manya?" "Something as big as that should have made some impact." "It did not," she said. "That isn't quite true," Elora heard quietly from behind where she couldn't see, as Torquil spoke in the most casual and conversational of tones, responding to his wife in terms meant for the young woman's ears alone. With an effort, she wriggled free of her hiding place. "You're supposed to be in bed," he noted amiably. "The stones have been twitchy," she said. "I told you that days ago, as if the substance of the very earth had changed." Hastily, she tugged herself into a semblance of order and decorum, drawing her cloak all the way across her body so she was completely enclosed. She stood straight to her full height, but Torquil was loung- ing across the way on an outcrop of rock, so he retained the advan- tage on her. "But why," she continued, "could I sense something that the shamans didn't?" 'Or couldn't. That, lass, is a question." In the distance they could both hear the heated voices of the coun- cil, batting opinions back and forth as though they were playing ten- nis with thunderstones. 'You sayin', then, we should take a stand with the Daikini against the Maizan?' "Look what's happened to those who've tried already." "Who's to say they'll even want our help?" "Can you see us standin' against a charge of armored horses? Ride us down, they would, trample us to bits, without even knowin~ we was even there!" 'We chose long ago to live apart and alone, from the other races as much as from our fellow clans," Manya said quietly, stilling the ar- guments battling before her. "Now we behold the price. There are precious few who know us well enough, or care enough, to stand by W our side. None to ask our aid, and none from whom we can ask the same in return." "So what're you sayin', Manya," challenged Ragnor, "that we're done?" "She's wrong," Elora said. "Thorn Drumheller offered help from the start, without being asked." 'That he did," agreed Torquil. "They need to be told." "Trust Manya, child. She'll make the point." "Why can't I-?" "It's better all concerned remain ignorant of your presence. "Why?" "Clan business. You're an honored guest. . . "But I'm not 'clan/ " she finished, to a nod of acknowledgment from Torquil. 'Terrific," she growled, waving her hands beneath her cloak in a moderately helpless gesture. She wanted them free, to help her express herself better, but they got tangled in the overlapping lay- ers of cloth. 'I'm supposed to be the solution here, Torquil. But how can I do that if nobody'll let me?" "Do you have a clue what needs doing, Sacred Princess?" She had no answer, and instead vented her frustration against an increasingly common target. "Damn Drumheller, damn him!" "He did what he thought was best, Elora." "He dumped me, Torquil. He left me behind! Without a word of explanation." "You were ill." "I got better!" 'He had responsibilities. And I think you needed what we have to offer. A stable environment, a place to learn and grow among-" 'A family," she finished for him, and couldn't help the edge that turned those words into a slash keen enough to draw blood. "There is that, yes. Is it so bad a thing to have?" "Torquil, it's something I've wanted my whole life," she cried, "more than anything. But kind as you are, generous as you've all been, I'm not. You just said so. Not clan, not family, not really. I have no family, Master Smith. My mother died in Bavmorda's dungeon, I don't know who my father was. All my life I've been passed from hand to hand and mostly brought doom and disaster to everyone who ever offered me a kindness. Sometimes I think I'm better off alone!" "That's not true." "Then why did Thorn leave me?" As the echo of her cry faded she became aware of a burning in the back of her throat from vocal cords pushed past their limits, and of a sudden silence in the dining hall be- yond. "I told you, he felt it was for the best." Her reply was an obscenity that took them both aback, both the word itself and the uncontrolled ferocity of its utterance. Elora knew this, too, had been heard by the others and her face flushed argent rose with shame. Before anything more could be said-ignoring the hand that Torquil reached out to catch her arm, and the look of sym- pathetic anguish on his face as he snared a flash of her pain instead- she bulled past him, letting her feet take her as fast as she was able to the sanctuary of her own room. With every step along the way, a terrible hollowness grew within her, right beneath her breastbone, as though heart and soul were be- ing scooped right out of her. Each beat of her pulse summoned forth another image, of someone loved and someone lost, from the nurse who'd given her life to smuggle her out of Nockmaar, to the wan- dering warrior Madmartigan and his beloved Sorsha who'd fought beside Thorn to save her. All the folk of Tir Asleen and later of Angwyn, too many of them faces she'd seen only in passing, that had still become indelibly imprinted in the vaults of her memory. There were countless more, she knew,'who'd fallen before Maizan steel, or perished from disease, from hunger, from the savage collapse of the world that had sustained them all their fives. Everyone said she was supposed to put a stop to that. No one told her how. She was sobbing when she pitched herself full length on her bed, caught up in grief so primal she had to give it physical release or else be utterly consumed. So she struck at her pillows, punch after punch after punch, hammering at the plush down with more force than she'd use to shape raw steel on an anvil, thankful that the outburst was so extreme that it left her no lasting recollection of whose images appeared to serve as objects of her fury. Too much passion, too much intensity, far beyond what her body was willing to sustain for long. The sobs quickly became simple tears, the pounding arm too heavy to lift, red rage gave way to more co- herent thoughts, which in turn toppled into a deep and blessedly dreamless sleep. When she awoke, she wondered if this was what it was like to have a hangover. None of the pieces of her body seemed to fit to- gether and all felt as clumsy as her thoughts, which had never come with more reluctance. Her cheeks were stiff with dried tears and her mouth tasted foul as she struggled to make herself comfortable amidst a wild tangle of bedclothes. She wasn't happy with her conduct, she was ashamed of the way she'd lost her temper with Torquil, thankful that the worst of the out- burst had occurred in the solitude of her room. She hadn't behaved so badly since Angwyn, and thought she'd grown beyond such rot- ten behavior. "Old habits die hard," she told herself in the merest whisper. With her next breath, she smelled smoke. She followed her nose, and poked an eye out through a crack on her pillow pile to behold the tiny fire elemental crouched on the foot- board of her bed. It balanced sinuously on a stalk of molten fire that rose up through the core of the thick timber planking. That was the source of the smell, as the heat of the creature's body charred the wood. Elora leaned her head over the side of the mattress, to see where the creature emerged from the bed, linked to a similar hole in the slate floor by the thinnest thread of iridescence. The elemental had refined its imitation of human shape since their last encounter and Elora had the disconcerting sense of looking at her own self in miniature. The main difference was that her tiny double possessed a truly boneless grace that no being with a skeleton could ever hope to match. Its body didn't bend at the joints so much as flow through a succession of gentle curves and its facsimile of hair, pos- sessing a length and texture that made Elora groan with envy, stirred as though the liquid mass was imbued with a life and sentience of its own. The elemental looked at her with an expression of such pro- found earnestness that Elora had to stifle a chuckle in response. It re- minded her too much of a puppy trying its level best to look grown- up. She saw the elemental's chest rise as it drew in a breath. "NoP she cried, raising a hand before the creature in a desperate attempt to stop it before it could speak and torch the entire room. It was between her and the door, and there was nothing in reach even marginally capable of surviving that intense a blast of flame. "Help,' was what it said, in a very small and tinny voice, but Elora didn't hear. The elemental's voice had been drowned out by a yelp from the girl that represented a healthy mix of startlement and pain as her palm was fractionally scored by its breath. The noise was mainly surprise. The actual experience wasn't so bad, like being stabbed by the hot tip of a just-extinguished match. Elora blew on her palm to ease the pain, then gathered herself to her knees at the midpoint of the bed, using her other hand to pull her hair out of her eyes and into some rude semblance of order. The elemental watched her wide-eyed, with a stricken expression on its features. Whatever its intent, it wasn't to do Elora harm. "What did you say?" Elora asked. 'Help," it tried again, and the young woman saw what had hap- pened before. The outrush of breath needed to project that single word brought forth in addition a modest gout of superheated air, laced with flame. 'Offer or request?" Even as she spoke, the submissive curves of the elemental's body provided the answer. It was a plea, as heartfelt and desperate as any Elora had seen. "Help help help help help," it repeated in a wild torrent of words, as if this was the only one it knew and it wanted to use it to best advantage. Wouldn't have thought to see one without its mam being close at hand, Elora remembered Torquil telling her. And no main worth the name would've let her bit come near the likes of you unattended. Too dangerous by far for both. As quickly as she could, Elora exchanged nightgown for a fresh undershirt and shorts of cotton, 'followed that with a pullover shirt, a wool tunic, and her buckskins. Thick socks and her boots took care of her feet, gloves she tucked through her belt, making sure at the same time that both of her traveling pouches were securely at- tached. She gathered her hair into a thick ponytail and fastened it in place with a chased silver barrette. Lastly she grabbed her journey cloak, patterned wool that felt like it weighed almost as much as she did herself. The weave was as tight as looms could manage, to proof it against both wind and water. The cloak itself was so long she had to wrap it one full turn across her torso before anchoring it over her left shoulder with a brooch the width of her fist. She was out the door and well on her way before she gave a~ny thought to what she was doing, or where the elemental was leading her. It seared a tiny rivulet through the rock ahead of her, sometimes along the floor, sometimes the walls, sometimes the ceiling, always remaining close enough to the surface for Elora to follow its trail. She tried to keep track of the route herself, but soon discovered that she dared not take her eyes off her guide. The signs it left her lasted barely a heartbeat and the elemental never looked back to make sure she was there. The foundries were sited mainly for convenience to the mines and the bazaar. The community itself was a fair distance removed, one entire peak over in fact, linked by an intricate labyrinth of tun- nels. Some were wide enough to allow a wagon to pass-that was how goods were transported-but most of the rest were scaled down to Nelwyn proportions. Hurrying along channels she'd never seen before, sometimes twisting through narrow spaces she was sure were designed to break her bones, sometimes crawling on hands and (thankfully) padded knees, Elora soon found herself without room to stand up- right, much less the opportunity to draw a proper breath. She quickly left the familiar confines of the Nelwyn community and de- scended through the mine itself, into a darkness so profound that she had only the brief and transitory flash of the elemental's passage to show her whatever perils lay ahead. She tried to reach the ele- mental with her InSight, at the very least to persuade the creature to slow down, only to discover that it had no true consciousness in any terms she could relate to. No thought, no mind, no awareness of anything beyond a fundamental terror, bonded to an equally basic certainty that Elora was the only entity capable of putting things to right. Again, as her skull glanced off a nasty outcropping of rock, she blessed the common sense she'd learned from Thorn and Torquil that had prompted her to bring and wear her skullcap so that its padding would absorb the shock of every collision. She had no idea where she was, save that she stood well within a mountain. She sus- pected she'd traveled as far beyond the mine as it was from the Nel- wyn community and had the further sense that without the elemental she'd be hard-pressed to find her way safely home. None of the tunnels she'd passed through were artificial, she'd been scrambling and slipping through natural cracks in the fabric of the rock itself, and drew analogies to the gullies and arroyos and valleys scattered across the surface. It stood to reason they'd find their echoes in the land below. The elemental finally came to a halt, flitting back and forth be- neath her feet like a firefly trapped in a jar, casting enough light to illuminate the hollow in which Elora stood. There was nothing pretty about the rock jumbled close about her. The weight of eons had compressed all delicacy from its substance, so that what re- mained was harder than anything she'd touched before. The seams between the strata were so tight there wasn't even a trace of water, and the air possessed a mustiness that told her it hadn't been stirred by any movement in the longest time. "What is this place?" she muttered, more to herself than her com- panion. She felt a sudden twinge of apprehension at the thought the elemental might reply, even a single spoken word might warm the air enough to make it difficult for her to breathe. The mountain groaned. Elora felt it initially as a tremble beneath her feet, and her heart skipped a beat or three as panic labeled the sensation as the begin- nings of an earthquake. Those were hard enough to face in the open. She had no desire to meet one with the whole of the world sitting atop her head. Then came a basso tearing sound that transmitted it- self directly from rock to bones, making her bare her teeth in sudden, silent, sympathetic pain as phantom spikeblossoms bloomed along the currents of her marrow, from one end of her to the other. She'd beheld a thunderstorm from a mountaintop and always believed that to be the most majestic noise in nature, painting it in her imagination with the vision of a god striking out with his hammer, crushing ut- terly whatever it struck. That was air, this was earth. There was no comparison. The shock left her weak in the knees, but fortunately there was too little room for her to collapse. Her body folded until she found herself wedged tight against the rock. There she rested until breath and wits came back to her. She placed bare hands flat on stone, and forehead as well, and in that passive, receptive state, she heard the cries. Wails of fear and torment. Rage at what had been done, was be- ing done, would be done. Passion enchained, bound tight by spells so dark the stygian cavity where Elora lurked might as well be lit by the noonday sun, so fetid that an abattoir would smell sweet by com- parison. She blinked, and realized she'd bared her teeth again, only this time in a snarl. A stir of air tickled her cheek and with it a strand of heat, a scent of sweat. Elora levered herself up on an outcrop of rock, then another, found a side channel barely sufficient to admit her. She shimmied herself inside without allowing a thought of what might happen should she get stuck. She made her awkward way along and the gallery's orientation rolled from vertical to horizontal. At the same time she also refused to consider stripping herself of any of her gear. Every piece had its purpose and she wasn't willing to risk doing without. Suddenly the stone beneath her fingertips lost all definition. For the barest instant it skibbled, as though every particle had become a separate entity like grains of sand on a beach, and each of those su- percharged with energy. It crackled to the touch, the same as fur on a long-haired cat would when stroked. She snatched her hands away as best she could, and rubbed them together. They'd gone numb, she initially thought with cold, yet the skin felt coated with some oily substance that struck her as unutterably foul. She could hear chanting, so distorted by the breaks and hollows and twisting byways of the rock that she couldn't place its direction or its distance. Whatever the ceremony being performed, the moun- tain clearly wasn't happy. If the earth's reaction was anything like hers, this was no place to be. Withdrawal, unfortunately, wasn't an option. Even if retreat was possible, she doubted the hollow would prove a place of safety. The only route open to her was to forge ahead. She sensed a distant thrum, a gathering of forces, and stretched her- self to full extension, ignoring the pain of her back where it joined her pelvic girdle as she pulled her knees up flat to the rock on either side of her as far as she was able, fighting for purchase with toes and nails, hooking them into the most subtle flaws in the stone and praying nothing would slip loose. There was a rumble in the distance, a grinding of stone on stone that quickly became a monstrous tearing sound, the tectonic spasm gathering force and volume as it rushed toward her. Once more, memory served her ill with a vision of the terrible wave that had al- most drowned her and her companions in the Sunset Ocean during their flight from Angwyn. As then, she felt her senses battered and overwhelmed by a noise and an unstoppable power that beggared her comprehension. She heard herself scream, not the high-pitched shriek of a girl but a bellow that began from the deepest point of her gut and met the mountain's fury like an emplaced spearpoint would a foe's onrushing charge. The battle was joined and ended in a single instant. As the earth shook, Elora Danan found herself propelled forcefully into open space. It was an utterly graceless landing, the kind of belly flop that would have raised an impressive splash in water. Since this was rock, it merely drove every scrap of air from her lungs and bestrew her vi- sion with all manner of garishly colored dots and slashes and swirls. The chanting was louder, taking form on a multitude of levels, both as sounds cohering into words and as expressions of sorcerous energy. The elemental glowed beneath Elora's nose, heedless of the gim- let glare she cast its way. It had drawn itself into a little ball, a marble with a vaguely human face, shining as faintly as possible for fear of being seen. Elora knew this was as far as the little creature would go. The oily quality to the stone she'd felt in the gallery had trans- ferred itself to the very air, leaving her with the unpleasant feeling that she'd been coated all over with slime. Whether clothes or skin, she was slippery to the touch, and that forced her to move with ex- aggerated care, in case the slickness applied equally to the soles of her shoes and the rocks she walked on. She wasn't so much worried about falling but rather, like the elemental, she didn't want to be de- tected. The closer she came to the source of the chanting, the more in- tense that concern grew. Even when he saw she had no talent for the Arts Arcane, Thom continued teaching her all he'd learned himself, of magic, of sorcery, even of necromancy. He taught her to recognize spells and enchantments the way a hunter might "read" a trail, and all the ways he knew to counteract them. She confessed more than once that she didn't see the sense of it; she couldn't battle any sort of mage on his terms any more than she could face a warrior like Khory Ban- nefin with a sword. He'd smiled, as though she'd just stumbled over some great, tran- scendent truth. "That's the point," he told her gently, though she didn't really understand. Neither had he, in the beginning. "You don't face someone like Khory with a sword, you find another way to win. You don't fight a magus with magic, because you can't. But you can use your knowledge to pick his own apart, to assess its strengths and flaws the way Torquil might a rock face to determine where best to cut. Like expects like, Elora. Warriors fight with blades, because that's how they're taught. Sorcerers the same, with spells. You find another way, you blindside them-the way the Deceiver did at Angwyn- and the day is yours." There was a definite beat to the incantation, built around what she recognized as the form of a standard spell of Binding: one and two and three and FOUR and one and two and three and FOUR.... The culmination of each verse was a fraction louder than the one before, and the speed of recitation increased as well, like an engine slowly but steadily building in force and momentum to craft chains that were barbed and unbreakable. It wasn't the spell alone that frightened Elora, but whatever being it was designed to restrain. She snaked herself carefully up a slanting tier of rock, her mouth working of its own accord to expel the taste of each breath. There was nothing organic about it, but still she had the unshakable sense that something was dead and rotting around her, and to her horror, she wondered if it might be the mountain itself. Beyond was a cavern of modest size, average for a Nelwyn forge. Some work had been done to regularize the floor and provide a com- paratively flat and even surface. Similarly a pool had been opened at one end, filled to the brim with liquid firegold. At first, Elora thought it was no more than molten rock, but then a gleaming, sinuous shape broke the surface and she bit down hard on a gloved fist to smother a gasp of shock and recognition. The grotto was hot as any working forge, but in that instant Elora felt herself flooded by an arctic chill that left her shaking. Three years ago was when she'd seen them last, on a ridge in Cherlindrea's Grove, half a continent to the west, when the Deceiver had cast them loose to consume the forest that could not be burned. They were firedrakes. For most of the inhabitants of the Great Realms on either side of the Veil, these were creatures out of legend. Some stories labeled them as one of the core forces of the cosmos, who made their homes in the molten hearts of the stars themselves, while others held it was they who burned holes in the velvet fabric of the sky that allowed the light of heaven to fall upon the waking world. They were kin to dragons or kin to demons, no one knew for sure. The one constant thread through every story was that they were beings of raw and un- tamed passion, whose quicksilver spirits were a match for their pro- tean substance. If they were intelligent, their minds raced along paths neither Daikini nor Veil Folk could easily follow, and those who tried were quite often driven mad by the encounter. They were powerful beyond measure, so much so that only the most absolute and all-encompassing of wards could have even a hope of restraining them. Without exception, they were considered the bear best left sleeping in its den, to be ever avoided and never dis- turbed. Yet some mage had taken this whole clutch captive and even now was working further magicks on them. She saw five figures, four cloaked in robes as well as shadows, moving in ritual unison a fair distance behind their companion, who stood at the very edge of the pool. He was the celebrant of this ob- scene rite. As Elora watched he swept a spearlike pole through the depths of the molten pond and up into the air. From the angle where she lay, it appeared that the man was etching sigils on the surface of the wall before him, but Elora knew different. Each swipe of the javelin's needle point seemed to leave its mark on her nerve endings as symbols of raw fire were cut into the fabric of the very air, a Nel- wyn body length outward from the rock. The celebrant was masked beneath a fantastical demon's head helm of leather and iron, accented with gems and sprouting a double curve of ram's horns from each temple. The mask's face would be a horror to behold, she knew, designed to confuse whatever entity was being Summoned into believing it stood before one of its own. At a glance, the gems themselves might be mistaken for rubies, since they glowed with the dark radiance of rich wine, but here again Elora knew better. These were bloodstars, she remembered from what Thorn had taught her on the road, mystically charged crystals that fo- cused and amplified the user's magical talent. In their natural state they most resembled diamonds and were often mistaken for them. They could be energized, and their malefic power unleashed, only by the execution of a blood sacrifice. Elora tasted a metallic liquid on her tongue and found teeth marks leaking blood from the pad beneath her thumb. Using the tip of the pinkie of her other hand, she daubed a set of sigils of her own on the rock beneath her in small, precise strokes. If she was the beacon Torquil described, the combination of the summoning sigil and her own blood to mark it should bring the elemental back to her. The others in their prison wouldn't hear the Call and the celebrants were too caught up in their own frenzy to notice something this small and focused. Or so she hoped. A heartbeat later the elemental came in an- swer to her Call, spreading its essence along the tracings Elora had drawn until the entire design began to glow. "I should have known you from the start," she said softly, but there was no reason why. She'd never seen a young firedrake much less a newborn, and at this stage of their existence it seemed decep- tively like the lesser elementals she and the Rock Nelwyn had often encountered. Quickly, but without hurry~ for this was not a time for carelessness, she covered the sigil with her right hand. Then she took a breath so deep she thought her ribs might burst. The infant's warmth spread throughout her body, casting tendrils of itself along the threads of her nervous system. At the same time Elora released an aspect of her own spirit, flowing into the firedrake as it did into her, until the two of them shared a conjoined corporeality. Thinking became an effort. The firedrake simply wasn't old enough. This was still a creature of instinct, for whom desires were instantly gratified or as quickly forgotten. Almost nothing could be stored or remembered, and it lived totally and absolutely in the pres- ent and for the moment. That it had returned to her, and with a de- finitive purpose, was all the more remarkable. She'd be of no use to anyone if she let its nature overwhelm her own, but that added a regrettable delay to her actions, as every thought and response had first to be processed through her human consciousness and then manifested through her elemental being. As the infant slithered through the rock Elora understood the anguish that drove it to seek her out, and the pain that was surging ever more forcefully through the heart of the mountains themselves. The other firedrakes were screaming, hurling themselves with furious and futile desveration a2ainst the bindings that imprisoned them, wriggling themselves into a frenzy as they tried to avoid the spear noint that was claimine their lives and power with ever-increasing frequency. Elora had seen World Gates before, the doorways that allowed transit through the Veil that separated the Realm of the World from that of the Spirit, allowing those who inhabited the Realm of the Flesh to pass from one to the other. So far as she had been taught, which she was beginning to suspect was precious little, they could only be located at the intersection points of arcane energy that the Cascani called lev lines. Sut)t)osedlv there were none of those near the Rock Nelwyn holdings. Yet here was a sorcerer buildine one out of thin air. That has to be why he's using firedrakes, she thought. What else in na- ture could be powetful enough to form a Gate and then maintain it? She'd given little consideration to what was actually happening here, the purpose behind the enslavement or Me nrearaKes ancl Me Gate that was being constructed. She really didn't care. These were creatures she knew, to whom she had offered friendship and received it in return. They were in danger and there was no question in either mind or soul that the threat to them was evil. Nor was there the sliRhtest doubt that she would try to save them. The uestion was in the ce of such a formidable foe how? From that need came an inspiration. The four chanters were responsible for maintaining the bindings about the pool. They also helped sustain the Gate. The closer the spell came to completion, the more effort and concentration would be demanded of them. That made them vulnerable. Using her InSight, Elora cajoled the infant firedrake to do as she asked, wrapping her wits tight about them both as she came up right beneath the chanters. Through its eyes, she saw the scene, noted how the acolytes' footsteps struck the rock like hammers, each one sending streamers of malefic energy outward through the very fabric of the mountain. If there was a flaw in the substance of the rock, they would find it and, once found, make it a fraction worse, until the so- lidity of the mountain was reduced to a cruel deception. The stone that the Rock Nelwyn depended on for their protection would in- stead guarantee their destruction. The infant firedrake had the power to incinerate the quartet. A part of Elora yearned to yield to that temptation, but so sharp and sudden a disruption of the spell would be as catastrophic for Elora and the infant both and very likely the adult firedrakes as well. Frus- trating as it seemed to her, subtlety was the better way. So she asked the firedrake to overcome its instinctual fear and prick one with a needle of white-hot flame, straight through his boot to the sole of his foot. The fastest possible jab, here and gone so quickly it could hardly be noticed. In response, the acolyte fell the merest fraction out of sync with his fellows. She struck again, one of the others, and then the next. A succes- sion of random pokes that barely registered on their conscious aware- ness, just enough to tease the nerve endings and put all four fractionally off stride. When she slid back into the comforting mass of the basal rock and felt the rhythms thundering from above, she couldn't help a grin. She'd broken their pattern, and they hadn't noticed. In and of itself, this didn't change a thing. The bindings still held, apparently as firm as ever, renewed with every repetition of the chant. Only now those repetitions carried within them the tiniest flaw, which with every cycle became increasingly pronounced. And, glory of glories, with the Summoning building to its own crescendo and the chief celebrant caught up in the equally demanding rhythm of his own responsibilities, he hadn't yet realized that anything was wrong. Such good fortune wouldn't last, of course. Moreover, the mo- ment the flaw was noticed, it would also be recognized that this was no accident. Even if Elora went undiscovered, the chamber would im- mediately be laced thick with protective wards so tight she'd never break back in. Or worse, she might find herself trapped outside her body, with no way of returning home. Back to the pool she flashed, to strike at it with even more care and accuracy than she used against the chanters. She couldn't afford to let the other firedrakes even suspect what was happening, because . their panic they'd be sure to reveal her activities to the celebrant. The hardest part for her was to force herself to take her time, to work as fast as she was able but always stay within the rhythm of the deed, which meant ignoring the thrashing cries of the firedrakes in their increasingly futile attempts to evade the celebrant's lance. Para- doxically, as their numbers lessened and the survivors gained more room to maneuver, his accuracy improved to match. Each stab found its target, each wriggling eel of flame found its life force added to the construct overhead. The little creature Elora had bonded herself to was no less affected by the ongoing massacre, which forced her to devote a portion of concentration, that she could ill afford to spare to restrain it from hurling itself against the wards in a wasted attempt to blunderbuss a hole in the prison they formed. To those whose senses are acute enough to perceive them, wards initially appear as solid objects, walls or globes of shimmering translucence that can range from nearly invisible to wholly opaque. That appearance is dangerously misleading. In reality, they're a wo-, ven lattice of energy, whose strength derives from the density of the 'thread" count and the complexity of the weave. A coarsely loomed network is surprisingly porous, while its opposite is virtually un- breachable, depending on the strength of will of the sorcerer who casts and maintains it. These wards were near solid, which was why Elora struck at the chanters first. That attack established a flaw in the maintenance ma- trix. As the surface strata of the ward structure were wom away by the constant assault of the imprisoned firedrakes, the layers that re- placed them incorporated that flaw into the core structure of the en- Elora scooted right up to the field and began to weave the most minute strands of the in nt's essence into those imperfect threads This close, she had no effective buffers against what was happening above. Each stab of the lance struck an equivalent sympathetic reso nance in her-like what I did to the chanters. she thought ironicallv. onh worse-in a succession of razor cuts that drew no blood, did no phys- ical damage, but hurt nonetheless. She ignored the pain, choosing to focus on the task and the goal. Her stitching finished, she gathered her strength into herself and smiled wickedly, for this was something she alone could do and no one else in the world or the Realms. For reasons she or Thorn had yet to divine, she was immune to magic; spells rolled off her like water off a duck. And wards had no power to hold her. She sent a minute charge of her essence along the string of fire she had laid, and-poof-the section of ward she had attacked shriveled at its touch. She poured a dollop more of self into the infant as it hurled itself into the breach, combining her strength with its form to keep the way clear while calling out to the others that the route to freedom was open. The firedrakes rushed her in a stampede, the brute force of buf- falo mixed in with the slip-wriggle sensation of being caught in a salmon run as more bodies than Elora could count hurtled past, en- veloping her in a radiant tide of cascading firegold. There was no way to hide what was happening; the chanters knew instantly that their containment had been ruptured and struck back with all their own considerable strength. Strands of energy tried to leap the gap across her body, to restitch the lattice closed. She grew as many hands as needed from the substa nce of her elemental to ash them in mid-Eight, flexing her eldritch muscles at the same time to force the opening even wider. Those natural gifts weren't enough. She had strength, she had knowledge, she had courage; they had more. First one, then a second, then a third strand made a successful leap, to form the beginnings of a cocoon she suspected she could not easily break, and she knew she'd soon have to run herself. She never got the chance. Without the slightest warning, Elora's material body folded in on itself in its hiding place above the grotto with a hoarse cry that couldn't be bitten back as the barbed and gleaming point of the cel- ebrant's lance punched straight through the slim form of her fire- drake. The shock of contact was so blinding, it broke her hold on the wards. Before she knew what was happening Elora found herself be- ing scooped up through the now empty pool and into open air. Like so many others before it, the infant tried to wriggle free, to no avail. Elora could offer no help. This was primarily a physical assault, her special gifts were useless against it. "Bless my damned soul," she heard the celebrant say in wonder- ment as he held the infant firedrake aloft like a trophy, "what've we got ourselves here?" The small creature spat flame at him but the celebrant merely laughed as its flame skittered harmlessly off his vestments. With the firedrake, Elora struggled to reassert a measure of control, to redefine the input of its senses in terms she could comprehend. First and fore- most, that meant manifesting eyes to see with, but the image that loomed before them when she did was one she outright refused to believe. The celebrant of this unholy rite was a Nelwyn. In that same flash of time he realized he held far more than a sim- ple elemental. 'Well well well," he repeated, "what have we here?" "Carig," called one of his acolytes, and to her horror Elora recog- nized them as Nelwyns, too, "the 'drakes are away." "No matter. They've served their purpose an' this'un I'm thinkin', best of all." "But they're sure to come back!" 'If thou'rt so concerned, Samel, thou'd best maintain the wards. They can't fry what they can't touch, remember. 'Course," he said to the infant and Elora, in a more quietly conspiratorial tone, "wouldn't be any call for such an upset if he'd done his job square. That was a neat little scheme, I'll grant thee that, shoulda spotted it myself. Serves me right for depending on lesser souls. Serve them right if I let 'em burn." Who are you? Elora demanded wordlessly, although she knew he could not hear. Why are you doing this, how can you betray your own kind? "Think themselves safe, they do, snugabed in their rock holes, in their rock spells. Be a revelation when that selfsame rock crushes 'em, bums 'em, makes of them and their precious community naught but a memory. So sure they was, that a Gate could be built only where the laws of nature permit. Branded me outcast for sayin' different, that with the proper alignment o' forces y' could generate a Gate ma- trix any damn place. Manya, she believed, say that right off. Took one look at my calculations, knew I was right, had me banished straight-because, she said, the means o' sustaining my construct were an abomination." He smiled, and Elora beheld in his eyes an expression she'd never seen before, a hunger that was insatiable mated to a spirit more dead than ashes. They were eyes whose gaze might have given even Bav- morda pause, possessing a cruelty she could not comprehend. 'The plan," he continued, "is to corrupt the fabric of the moun- tains. The opening of this Gate will breach the pool here an' the wards like a broken dam. The Ancient One I Summon will drive the firedrakes before it. They'll follow the paths of least resistance, through the flaws an' fissures my folk bin opening in the rock, an' tear into the mine an' the community beyond like a flash flood. They'll burn, those who cast me out, an' their precious mountains with them. And all will assume that they'd brought this doom upon themselves. None will look past the obvious to note the true purpose of the exercise, none will realize till it's far too late what dread power now haunts the waking world. 'That's the idea," he said, with a mad smile to his tone. Suddenly a flick of the wrist launched his spear. The haft exploded as it struck, casting forth a shower of metal that struck only the frame of the World Gate, acting as a fixative to seal all the sigils firmly in place. The elemental howled, and Elora with it, as their merged body was shaped and twisted to fit the mold laid down for it and then sat- urated in a substance that dulled both flesh and spirit. In less time than a single human heartbeat, the'elemental grew cold as dead stone and as its fires dimmed, so, too, faded the link between Elora and her own body. At a moment when she needed her thoughts to race, they staggered, fell, found themselves drowning in tar. The Gate was complete. The Summoning had begun. Elora heard music. It was the only word that came to mind even though the sounds she applied it to had no connection to any com- position she'd ever heard. The melody swept out of the darkness be- yond the World Gate and wormed its way into a dark place she never knew existed within her soul, drawing forth a vision of herself that spun and pranced and preened before her with a delight that made her ache to embrace the cause. This was the Elora of her dreams, when she took the duckling she saw every day in the mirror and imagined herself a swan, with a lush beauty she knew she'd never possess, with skin the warm and pale hue it was meant to be and hair the color of sungold. It was the kind of face and body that drew men's eyes, one fit for a proper Princess, the Elora that should have been in a world that never was. As she watched, ever more entranced, the vision of herself began to dance. There were no physical limitations or inhibitions to this Elora, nor the slightest restraint. It embodied all the whimsical license of the elemental, where conception and execution were as one, and the wild grace of the human girl herself. With every movement the dance grew more complex, more passionate, more enticing. The im- ages within her mind's eye splintered. She didn't know where she was anymore-trapped on the Gate in the form of the infant fire- drake, trapped in her human body, slumped and helpless where she'd left it, or prancing with madcap abandon in the air before the Gate, drawing forth whatever lurked within. She didn't know where she belonged, but as the illusion became tangible, the lines blurring between what was real and what was not, she felt the links with her true body dissolve. Another shape was emerging from the darkness, reaching out for the Gate from across an abyss. Elora had a sense of something taller and broader than she, and the sense that here was a masculine ideal to match her feminine. She stayed on her side of the boundary, it on the other, so close she thought she might touch it with just a little stretch of her arm, yet somehow it managed to stay far beyond the limits of her sight. Its every move seemed a match for hers and as the dance progressed it became clear that this newcomer was taking the lead, initiating steps that Elora willingly, eagerly followed. The culmination of their duet would be when it revealed its face to her. When that happened, she knew she was done. How can this be happening? she cried to herself. No spell can hold me! A moment later she provided her own answer, one part of her mind holding fast to rationality even as the rest of her was overwhelmed. It isn't me that's being held, not altogether. I bound myself to the firedrake, I'm trapped by the bindings that hold it prisoner! The music called to her, the dance tried to sweep her away, and she found too much of herself too eager to yield. "No," Elora said, a statement as implacable as it was still-voiced. "I deny this, I deny you!" She called for help, with every fiber of her being. Something broke open, deep inside herself. There was a rush of heat, so intense it should have consumed her utterly, reduced her to ash before she was even aware of her doom. Flesh rippled, stretched, grew, arms reaching forth to encompass horizons yet undreamed of, body rearing up to embrace the stars. She was giddy with disorienta- tion, as though she'd been spun like a top and suddenly cast loose to stagger drunkenly about while her wits and perceptions went haring off along pathways of their own. Then, as they had before, in Angwyn, the mountains answered her. Far beneath Elora's feet, fire stirred, flashing solid stone to incan- descent gas in a passing instant before shunting that expanding bub- ble of pressure into cracks and fissures within the world's crust. Massive plates of primordial rock that had remained still for eons shifted, throwing off powerful shock waves that shook the cavern so hard that all the Nelwyns, celebrant and acolytes, were thrown from their feet. Stone cracked, boulders fell, the necessity of maintaining the Summoning spell hurriedly cast aside in favor of simple survival. The fixative crazed, its surface marred by scores of spiderweb cracks as the frame of the World Gate was twisted past the limit of its tolerances. Neither dancer paid the slightest heed. With a fierce effort, Elora wrenched a portion of will back from her vision self, and in the process drew the newcomer's gaze toward her. She didn't dare look, she saved herself by throwing herself com- pletely back into the substance of the firedrake, flooding it with her own absolute need to escape. The creature ignited like a newborn star, but nothing happened. Despite all the damage done to the Gate, all the passion and will and desire they could manifest, the pair of them could not break free. Carig would not let them. Elora had never seen such hatred, it made her own emotions seem like such puny, half-formed things. All the strengths and virtues she admired in Torquil, as in Thom, were present in Carig as well. Only they had twisted in upon themselves, laced through with a feral rage reminiscent of an animal gone mad, until all the light had been squeezed out of them, or crushed, or simply smashed to bits. His soul was shadow, his desire to make the world pay for the harms and in- sults he believed had been done him. Pain would beget pain, and his joy would be to bring forth greater horror. In her own body this would have been a hard and brutal fight, with no guarantee of her success. Sharing forms with the infant fire- drake, she was shackled by too many limitations. She lacked the skill to finesse an escape, the strength to smash her way free, the time to think of what next to try. Through all of that, she gave hardly any thought to herself. It was the tiny firedrake she grieved for. The ache within her heart was that she was unable to save it. Carig staggered, the expression of rage on his face taking on a measure of confusion as one hand plucked aimlessly at something be- hind his back. He couldn't reach the first arrow that struck him. He was turning as the second hit home, its shaft ablaze from the scorch- ing ambient temperature of the grotto. The narrow, armor-piercing head buried itself into the breast of his smock, the impact driving him back a step. The renegade Nelwyn stared stupidly at the flames ris- ing right beneath his bearded chin before reflexes acted of their own accord to slap the arrow aside. He wasn't hurt, his ironcloth smock had seen to that, but he had been distracted. For Elora, that was all the opportunity she needed. The firedrake erupted from the apex of the Gate with a fiery joy that shattered its hold and set every other sigil blazing in its turn as the other firedrakes regained their true form. Simultaneously Elora cast her own essence through the firedrake into every particle of the Gate's substance, to make herself one with it. The Gate was a cre- ation of magic, held in place by spells, the core nature of her being could not be leashed by magic. Two contrary absolutes. A paradox that could not be resolved. The Gate was the one to buckle. With a hoarse yell, Elora found herself back in her body, the force of her reentry propelling her up off the slab on which she lay to butt the crown of her head full into the belly of a Daikini looming over her. He went down in a breathless whoosh of air, she following, the pair tumbling together to the bottom of the slope. As they fell she recognized him as the pipe smoker from the bazaar, the one she'd de- cided was a warrior in disguise. There was nothing of the merchant about him here. He was dressed for war in burgundy leather, broadsword on his hip, quiver of arrows slung across his back, bow in hand with another shaft nocked for firing. They landed awk- wardly, more or less side by side, though he managed to retain hold of his bow. His nose and lip were bloody and she thought that with- out the services of a qualified physician, and a very good cosmetic shapernaker, his profile would never be the same again. "Blessed be!" he exclaimed, at his first full sight of the World Gate. Elora didn't look, she didn't dare. The entity Carig had Summoned was too close. Breaking the sigils might not stop its manifestation, shattering the Gate itself might not either. Her great terror was that if she looked it in the eye, if it reached out its hand, she would take it. Embrace damnation, joyously. 'Forget about that," she screamed at her savior as the frame of the grotto twisted around them like a box of paper being crushed, "we've got to go!" She'd forgotten about Carig. Even as a fresh temblor calved the rock on which they lay and dropped a piece close beside her the size of a modest house-she heard a scream that started in terror, spiraled to something beyond, was suddenly cut off, and knew that at least one among the acolytes had paid the price for his crimes-she was yanked off her back and thrown against a wall hard enough to stun. She struck at the Nelwyn with hands and feet as he held her one- handed in place, but her best efforts only made Carig laugh. She might as well have been hitting a man made of steel. The Daikini lay stunned atop a swiftly growing pool of blood. Carig hadn't been as gentle with him as with Elora, taking just a sin- gle blow to smash his face. 'I should have guessed," Carig said, using his free hand to peel off her skullcap and reveal silver hair above silver skin. "I should have known. Thou!" The malice in that single word struck her like a spray of acid poison, but she didn't flinch. Instead she bared her teeth and struggled all the harder, which only made him laugh out loud. "Poor little Princess," he told her as he shook loose a tanglefoot web to bind her tight. 'Who's this, thy savior?" He lashed out side- ways with his foot in what seemed like the most casual of gestures, yet Elora knew he'd struck the fallen warrior hard enough to break ribs, complementing the blow with a disparaging snort. "Full marks for bravery, I suppose, an' skill, got to grant him that for making his way through the Nelwyn stronghold wi'out bein' detected. Hardly salvation, though. His colors mark him as Maizan, prob'ly seekin' t' make his name by bringin'you hog-tied to his castellan. 'Sorry, my lad, I have first claim on 'er." "You have nothing." "Beg t' differ, Sacred Highness. Pity, really. It's almost a shame to end thy story when it's only just begun. Hopes as high as thine, a soul as noble, should be destroyed slowly." "Sorry to disappoint you." "And most definitely, such a spirit should be broken with care." "Go to hell." "Dare I say, ladies first?" He stole a glance toward the Gate, which coated the grotto in a sickly radiance that washed away all color and flattened all the figures, so that everything appeared to be two- dimensional, without depth or reality. "For thy bride, most dread and puissant lord, I offer thee the heart and hope of the world!" "Never!" she cried, with all her strength. He cast the web but he was too late. In that same moment, cross- ing every mental finger because it had been years since last she tried this stunt, and even then only under Thorn's direct supervision, Elora Danan took a deep breath and cast her body backward, into the very fabric of the rock. WEN ELORA WAS VERY SMALL, THORN TOLD HER A story of a young girl who'd chased a brownie down one of its barrow holes. It was a tight fit because while Daikini are gi- ants compared to Nelwyns, Nelwyns have much the same re- lationship to brownies, the height of the greatest among the Wee Folk being measured in inches. However, what they lack in size, brownies have always made up for in raw cunning. Few are the races on either side of the Veil who can match them in that regard. There's nothing in the world, so their reputation goes, that's too big for them to steal, nor any foe so large they can't somehow cut him down to size. The girl had popped through the entrance only to find her- self in a sheer drop of quite some distance. You see, when a brownie enters his barrow, it's along paths and handholds set off to the side. Anyone else tumbles headlong into a pit that won't be easily escaped. Nothing bad happened to the girl, of ALL course-it wasn't that kind of story. She had a series of wonderful ad- ventures in a succession of fantastic lands, looked after all the way through by a pair of irreverent brownie companions who saw her safely home before her parents even became aware she was missing. That was the image that came to Elora, of falling down the brownie barrow, as she tumbled backward head over heels in a suc- cession of slow rolls down through the solid substance of the moun- tain. She'd sat attentively by Thorn's side as he explained to her what a demon had once told him, how everything in existence was com- posed of incredibly tiny dots of matter, bound together by interlock- ing, invisible strands of energy. This combination of forces was overlaid one upon the other like a lattice, on a larger and larger scale until they manifested themselves as the forms and shapes of the world she knew. From the faint quavers she heard at the back of his voice, though, Elora couldn't help wondering if he really believed all this. She certainly had a hard enough time comprehending it. He pointed to the stars in the sky and told her to imagine them as the foundation of creation, minute dots of brightness with incredibly vast spaces between them. Of course he was talking rubbish, she protested; anyone with half a brain and a single eye could see that solid was solid, period, exclamation point. End of story. He laughed at her in genuine amusement, and related that he'd said much the same himself. Then he took a picture from his own traveling pouch, a perfectly adequate forest scene he'd collected from somewhere or other as a gift, and held it before her, asking what she saw. She told him: a forest glade, a pond, trees, a mating pair of swans, a stag and doe. As she spoke he brought the painting ever closer and gradually her voice trailed off, for what appeared to be solid blocks of color at a distance discorporated before her eyes, un- til finally she beheld an almost incomprehensible jumble of small col- ored dots. The subtleties and gradations of hue that she had seen were illusions, tricks of the eye brought about by all those separate and individual dots blurring together in her vision. "It's a matter of perception, really," Thom said, "and I suspect, a matter of faith. Reality is because we believe in it." 'Bollocks," was her reply, which earned her a modest glare and a spoken reprimand at such an unladylike comment. The fact was, there were comparatively vast gaps in the fabric of what she preferred to think of as rock-solid matter, because Thorn could move through them. He'd taken her with him, more than once, and taught her the trick as well. She hadn't practiced much since for 62 fear of losing her concentration and finding herself trapped forever, like a fly in amber, only with the horrible thought that she might somehow remain alive and aware throughout that awful eternity. So, earlier tonight, when she cast her consciousness into the phys- icality of the infant firedrake, she also passed along a message to the mountains themselves, apprising them of her intent and asking their aid. Now, in addition, she prayed for safe passage. She let herself free-fall because that was the fastest and most ef- fective means that came to mind of getting clear of Carig's Gate. She didn't know all that much about them, she'd been running mostly on instinct the whole time. As a result she wasn't sure whether she'd disrupted the framing matrix, or if the temblors had shattered the lin- tels themselves, in time to prevent the emergence of the being Carig was Summoning. She refused to think of that entity, she thrust all recollection violently from the forefront of her mind, afraid that even the merest conception of it might reestablish the link between them. Impossibly, her body tingled with the energies it had wrapped about her, ached to complete the dance they'd begun, wondered about the shape of its face and the feel of its flesh against hers. Stop it, she cried in silence, taking refuge in the vehemence of her denial, even though she knew it was a lie. She thrust out arms and legs to regain some measure of control over her descent in much the same way she'd perform underwater, the main difference being the density of the medium. She had no idea how long she'd been falling, or how far, but she had only the one breath to draw on, which meant there was no time to waste in re- turning to the surface. Another tremor snapped past, sending ripples through the earth nearby. The movements appeared slow and lazy to her perceptions, which made the end result even more impressive. With due deliber- ation, strata were compressed and rock crushed to powder. Then, af- ter the wave had moved on and the dynamic pressure relaxed, the incredible weight of the world above once more settled down upon it and squashed the seams even more flat than before. Without warning, the structure of the crust around her collapsed, the state of the rock transformed in that blink of a moment from solid to molten liquid, and Elora found herself immersed in a current of fast-flowing lava. Somehow, though she remained blessedly impervi- ous to harm, she was tangible enough to be acted upon. She'd seen such floods on the surface, making their stately progress down volcanic slopes. Visually impressive but not a fero- cious danger provided a body could maintain a fair walking pace, and at some point manage to get out of its way. However, there was an- other product of such eruptions that Thom had shown her which was an altogether different magnitude of threat. Essentially, the molten rock superheated the air and water of the mass until it be- came a virtually frictionless surface. Instead of creeping, this type of flow took off at speeds a thoroughbred horse couldn't match, roaring down mountainsides with the force of a tidal wave, consuming everything in its path. This underworld river acted much the same, sweeping Elora help- lessly along with such violence that it was all she could do just to keep from drowning. She knew she couldn't stay, she could already feel the beginnings of a bum beneath her breastbone as her lungs protested the absence of a fresh breath of air. At the same time she also knew she'd only have one good chance at escape. The force of the current was too strong, it would take a supreme effort to work free, with no reserves left if she failed. The joy of no alternative, she thought, it so focuses the concentration. And, she hoped, the will. She sidled herself as close as possible to the edge of the flow and then, before she could think anymore about the cost of failure and thereby lose all her nerve, tried to throw herself clear. It was the strangest sensation, battling through total darkness, her imagination applying arbitrary values of color and sound to the un- worldly perceptions passed along by her InSight. The lava flow she painted in varying gradations of red, dull scarlet at the edges to gold- edged white in the center. The layers of rock likewise had their ap- propriate shades, much cooler in aspect and exhibiting considerably more variety. At the same time there was a tremendous roaring, akin to an entire ocean's worth of water plunging through an equally im- pressive cataract, highlighted by grumps and groans and tweaks and tears from the world about her. All her senses were involved-the stench of sulfur, the taste of pumice leavened by iron, a touch that struck an eerie chord with the memory of fingers struggling to grip a plate of ice-but she was well beyond the limit of what her mind would accept. Making her way to the boundary of the flow was comparatively easy, but try as she might she couldn't get any farther. She was caught in the geologic equivalent of a rapids, with no handholds on the bank she could use to pull herself free, or even simply anchor herself. Her final attempt almost brought her to disaster as the current folded her body over and in on itself, slamming her into the boundary wall where she was deflected back into midstream. Only quick reactions and the wit to tuck herself into a ball proved her salvation. A pyrrhic victory, she feared, as the burn within grew to match that without, and her temples throbbed with her brain's and heart's mutual need for oxygen. Brighter lights appeared within the body of the stream, but she gave them no thought at first, assuming them to be a product of on- going delirium as they moved around and past her with the lithe and careless ease of serpents. It wasn't until her infant companion put its version of her face in front of Elora's own, and stuck its tongue out at her to tickle her nose and thereby get her attention, that she realized who had joined her. As she watched, the firedrakes gamboled to the boundary and, arching along the whole length of their entrancingly sinuous bodies, with a kick of the tail end for good measure, slipped free. They al- most immediately returned, and here Elora finally got a tangible sense of the flow's velocity~ for even the briefest of excursions left the elementals far behind. The speed was a revelation. Elora never imag- ined it was possible to move so fast. She wished there were a way to harness the firedrakes so they could pull her free, but feared that doing so meant becoming more substantial, and along that road led catastrophe. Her only hope was to follow their example. She stopped swimming as a person, with arms and legs, and in- stead tucked all her limbs in a line along her body. The firedrakes moved with a sinuous undulation from top to toe and so did she. It was awkward at first, since she had a spine to deal with and they did not. She doubted they had a skeletal structure of any sort and in this instance envied them for it. Her lungs were frantic in their demand for air, triggering all manner of backbrain images of panic and doom and despair. She thrust them vehemently aside, she knew she was dying, she didn't need these herald pronouncements as confirmation. But in the past too many others had fought and sacrificed to save her, and more than a few had died. The least she could do was fight for herself as hard as they had. She flexed and rolled and couldn't help glorying in the sensations as she slipped with surprising ease through the folds and layers of the stream. Hello, she heard from that well-remembered chorus of melodious voices, caressing her with warmth and affection. In this cauldron she had neither air nor voice to speak with, she didn't know how to answer. They didn't appear to mind. Hello hello hello hello. With each greeting, a new shape slipped close beside her as each member of the school came forth to welcome her and, by extension, thank her for their rescue. Her hands stretched out of their own ac- cord, but the firedrakes wouldn't let her touch them. They treated this as some delightful new game, arching their bodies, twisting Just fractionally out of reach, then flicking so close she could feel crackles of energy from their flesh to hers. The infant took station right in front of her face, its tiny form trans- muting yet again into its version of her own. Then, with a suddenness that made Elora gasp, it went straight for her, passing through human flesh and bone as if both were as intangible as air. That must have been some signal for the others because they all leaped at her, through her, filling her for those brief moments of contact with the most deli- cious of flames. They moved, she followed, only now there seemed to be no skeleton to limit the possibilities of her movements. She understood where they were now, and where the firedrakes wished to lead her. This was the heart of the world, the fiery core that warmed and nurtured this globe from within as the sun did from the sky above. It spun with a life of its own, far faster than the shell that encased it, and sustained a blaze whose life span stretched far beyond Elora's ability to comprehend. She could apply numbers to the years but those numbers were meaningless to her. The essence was that here was another living thing, as finite in its way as she and as full of passion. She remembered the Nelwyn catechism: The flrst realm is Fire. It bums, the firedrakes cried, as though they'd sensed her thought. Perhaps they had, as their forms became more and more alike. We bum. All things bum. Their existence was as simple as it was primal and the image came to her of them as the sparks that ignited the first celestial fires. But who strikes those flames? she wondered, Follow us. Follow follow follow. And see! They broke from her, singly and in groups, to dive into the world's core. From her vantage point, Elora could somehow see them burst out the other side. The substance of her perceptions was stretching along with that of her body, right the way around the center until it seemed that the firedrakes were swimming in and out of her. That she was in small measure the heart and soul of things. ~M M Her eyes, such as they were by then, turned upward, and the thought came to her of the second verse: The second realm is Earth. Be- cause earth restrains fire and gives it purpose. From the interaction of those two come the final realms of the Circle of the World: Air and Water. For without the blend of all four primal elements, the second circle, that of the Flesh, has no hope of existence. Without her, according to prophecy, that circle-and the other two bound to it-has no hope of survival. This is wrong, she said, unaware that she spoke aloud and that her voice was much like the firedrakes', as was her body. I would love to stay, I'm happy here. But I cannot. Wrong, they cried, turning her own words into a protest. Here is safety. Here is family. Here is joy. It was true. It didn't matter. Her whole life she'd been in hiding. People who loved her were afraid for her, and some she knew afraid of her. Somehow that fear had transmitted itself to her like a sickness. She was too precious, too important, too young, too fragile; a whole host of reasons not to act, all of them sound and logical as they led her inexorably to disaster. She found the infant pacing her again, wearing her visage a final time, only the face Elora beheld wasn't entirely human, as though the reflection presented a version of Elora Danan that was defined more by spirit than flesh. She tried to fix the physical details in memory but the images dissolved like quicksil ' ver. They could be seen but not re- tained. Only the eyes held her, pools of cobalt gazing into her own with a gravitas and maturity the infant could not possibly possess. Nor Elora herself. And yet she knew, this face was hers. I must go, she said. And then, to anchor the decision, she spoke it to herself in her own voice. 'I must go." She popped out of the ground like a projectile, burped straight up well past the nearest treetops. Habit and momentum kept her wrig- gling right to the moment gravity reasserted its hold on her and brought her back down into water. She flailed like a soul accursed, forced suddenly to deal with the presence of arms and legs as she beat them every which way to no purpose whatsoever and decided after the fact that it was a modest miracle she didn't end up properly drowned. Fatigue helped, she was too exhausted to sustain so much activity. A residue of common sense prompted her to roll over on her back, at least long enough to gather in a brace of decent breaths. The air was wondrous sweet, the water deliciously cool, tempting her to stay immersed until she shriveled. The comer of her gaze revealed a bank not too far distant and she began to propel herself in that direction with clumsy paddles of the hands and feet. She'd have attempted something better but the weight of her waterlogged clothes was more than her muscles could overcome. She knew she'd reached shore when her head bumped into it. The ground fell into the pond along a gentle slope, which allowed her to lie still awhile and gradually recover. Her lungs pumped like a bel- lows, a faintish hah sound on the inbreath, a hoarse and flat-sided hunh when she exhaled. All her might was required to draw the air in, but letting it go felt like an anvil was dropping on her diaphragm as she excavated her lungs to their very dregs. Each pulse was so vi- olent she half feared she'd pop her ribs out through her skin, like a too wom piece of hide stretched too tight on its rack, finally giving way from the endless, unendurable strain. Her heart was going so fast she couldn't keep count of its beats and the phantom spikeblossoms that had taken root within her chest underground had decided to mi- grate north to her skull, refusing to take her hint that, since they'd traveled so far already, why not complete the journey and depart her body entirely? Yet, for all the upset, each breath was a victory, trumpeted in the loudest and most majestic of fanfares. I'm alive' she thought, and the realization made her as giddy as a firedrake. I'm alive! I'm alive! When at last her eyes were open and functioning as they should, she wondered if some kind of mist was occluding the surface of the pond, before realizing with raised eyebrows of genuine amazement that it was steam. Her body was throwing off as much heat as a well- stoked furnace and was acting on the cooler mountain springwater accordingly. A cockeyed glance down at herself reassured Elora that her clothes had survived their ordeal none the worse for wear. Ap- parently, the same could be said for her. She needed food, she'd never felt so hungry, but sleep refused to be denied. She tried to elbow herself all the way onshore but the best she could achieve was to heave her shoulders clear. That, she de- cided, would have to do. The sun didn't appear to have moved much across the sky when she awoke, but the chill stiffness of her limbs, the pressure of her bladder, told Elora that some considerable time had passed. At least the leaves are still green, she thought, and then giggled, un- less I've slept the year through, from one summer to the next. Doubtful, she decided upon inspection, since her hair hadn't grown, nor her nails. A day then, perhaps a few. She unlaced boots and trousers where she lay and slid herself out of them. Pulling them after proved to be a small struggle. Sodden as they were, saturated through and through with water, they were as heavy as she, if not more so. Her cloak, once she'd squirmed her way free, she was certain weighed more. She unfolded it to its fullest ex- panse on the ground and hoped it would dry out in less than her life- time. As for the rest, she checked the angle of the sun, found a fallen tree trunk whose broken limbs would support her clothes, and strip- ping to her skin, hung them out to dry. This was one practical ad- vantage of having a magician for a mentor: A housekeeping spell Thom cast about her possessions not only made her outfits proof against most extremes of weather but ensured they would keep their shape. Normally, leather wet as this would shrink to nothing as it dried. Not hers. That taken care of, she basked in the sun and rummaged through her pouches, another gift from Thorn, both for something fresh to wear and something good to eat. A sleeveless shift fulfilled the one ambition, but all she could find to satisfy the other were a couple of sandwiches and what remained of her pickings from the bazaar. Plus, thankfully, a flask of water to wash them down. Bread on a dry throat was bad enough, but sharp cheese was murder. She didn't eat it all, much as she wanted to stuff herself until she was sick. She had no real idea where she was, and caution prompted her to husband what resources she possessed. The sun was intense and she let its warmth and light fill her until she was sure she was glowing. In the two years she'd spent with Torquil, her trips outside had been few and far between, none of them beyond the confines of the valley that held the bazaar. She hadn't realized how easily she'd fallen into the rhythms of the Nel- wyns' lives, accepted their values and their limits. Their tunnels were their haven, where they were safe. Beyond lay danger, and doubly so for Elora herself if she were ever recognized. Also, theirs wasn't that hospitable a land, possessing little to make it attractive beyond its stark and primal beauty and the richness of its ore. A breeze stirred the trees, setting a grove of aspens across the pond to rustling with that shhhhhh sound she loved, and wafting the scent of a meadow of high-country honeysuckle over her. She'd al- ready concluded she was still in the highlands. The problem, she feared, was which highlands. The shape of the mountains, the lay of the land, told her she was nowhere close to the Rock Nelwyn cav- ems. Beyond that, she had no idea. She could be anywhere. Her clothes were still damp, so she decided to give her legs a stretch and some exercise with a brief stroll. She followed her ears, clambering up the jumble of rocks that formed a small waterfall at the head of the pond and making her way to the meadow beyond. The golden flowers cut a long slash along the field, the field interspersed with enough fallen logs and stumps to tell her that a terrible fire had raged here in the recent past. There were hills on every side, some with gentle slopes, a couple at her back formidable enough that she wouldn't attempt a climb without specialized equipment. With apologies to the flowers, Elora gathered a few handfuls of blossoms as she walked and idly began to braid them into a crown. It was a lazy afternoon, utterly without complications. While she knew she should be making plans for her survival-finding food and a place to sleep tonight-she relished the sudden and absolute lack of household obligations. The crown didn't fit quite right, she'd made it a tad too big, it kept slipping down irreverently over one eye. She had a mirror in her pouch, on impulse decided she wanted to see what she looked like, and quickened her step back to the pond. It was such a careless, carefree moment, one of a rare few in her life, that she didn't watch her step bounding off the rocks. She put her right foot into something viscous and yellow brown in color. It had the consistency of mud and gave off the most incredible stench. Momentum carried her a couple of steps farther on, which she managed as a succession of left-footed hops while she made a face and an even more horrid noise of dismay at the sludge that enveloped her past the ankle. She didn't want to touch it, but when sluicing her foot in the pond didn't wash the mess clean, she had to crouch over and scrub. Only when she was done did the smell fully register. Troll dung. It was a fresh pie. Just how much so became shockingly clear as a scabrous, dun-colored form rose from its hiding place in the brush and bushes. By sight, trolls were disgusting enough, with skin that looked baked and blistered-, as though the creature had been hosed down by a stream of flame. Hair sprouted from its body like a lawn i haphazardly planted, in tangled clumps and sprouts. Additionally, they seemed to attract filth. As a species, trolls possessed not even the slightest sense of personal hygiene. This one stood head and shoulders taller than Elora, broader in the shoulders, with long, lanky arms and legs. Beneath a heavy brow was a face more disgusting than fearsome, especially when it opened its mouth to reveal teeth so discolored and worn the mere sight of them turned the stomach. But Elora had seen folk ripped and torn by troll bites, and slashed by the equally jagged and hooked claws that tipped every finger and toe. The creatures were almost naturally septic and consequently there was a certainty of infection, which often proved as deadly as the initial attack. Worst of all, that description didn't even begin to take into account their smell. Like ghouls, trolls ate their fill of carrion, and at some point in their history the stench of rot grafted itself permanently into their bloodline. Unlike ghouls, however, trolls eat the dead by choice, because they are basically lazy. Deprived of that particular source of sustenance, a ghoul will starve. Trolls, however reluctantly, go hunt- ing. And despite their appearance, trolls are neither stupid nor are they poor hunters. This one stood between Elora and her clothes. She thought of div- ing into the pond, but she had little faith in her own ability to tread water for very long. Worse, now that the troll had identified her as prey, it wouldn't leave so long as s ' he remained in sight. Nor would it mind waiting until she drowned. She considered casting herself back into the ground, escaping the troll as she had Carig, but rejected the thought almost as quickly. Magic took a fearsome toll on the body, she could move faster and farther on her feet. She feinted for the pond, and when the troll followed her lead she broke for the treeline as fast as she was able. Behind her sounded a hollow halloowoowoo and then the crash of a body through thickets as it gave chase. Size and agility were her ad- vantages as she skated around every obstacle, but they were quickly negated by the troll's tremendous strength as it simply bulled its way through everything in its path. She put some distance between them at the start but time would soon take away that edge as the troll's en- durance overcame her sprinter's speed. She needed a weapon, and when nothing presented itself to her questing eyes, she began to search for somewhere to hide. She almost missed the barrow. It was framed by a guardian grove of oaks, so impressive a scat- tering of ancient trees that Elora's first instinct had been to take to their branches, an opening tucked between a tangle of massive roots of such a size they could have been tree trunks in their own right reaching outward from the base of the senior member of the copse. The angle and distance were all wrong. Realization and response came as one as she put a trunk between herself and the troll and piv- oted to stand her ground. It thundered around the tree, to discover that she'd danced back the other way, keeping the massive trunk be- tween them. It caught on quickly, though, matching her feint with a pretty good one of its own. It didn't seem to mind missing her, con- tent to use the momentary stalemate as an opportunity to catch its breath. As far as she could tell, the troll was actually enjoying the chase. Every element of its body language proclaimed its confidence in the eventual outcome of the hunt. Wonderful! she thought, as the absurdity of the situation struck her. Elora Danan, Sacred Princess, savior of the Great Realms, and today's lunch meat. While moving back and forth, Elora scooped up a handful of fair- sized pebbles. She tossed the stones behind and away from her, making an intentional clatter as she scattered them down the boulder-strewn slope. They sounded just like a running figure losing her footing and starting a minor avalanche. The troll fell for the deception and burst around the trunk to her right in the direction of the sound. She broke left. It caught her move- ment in its peripheral vision, but the lay of the ground wasn't con- ducive to that kind of sudden stop. It staggered, tripped, should have fallen, but did an incredible forward flip that twisted its body all the way around in midair and put it on both feet facing her. By then, she'd reached the branches above, though the audacity of the troll's acrobatics stopped her in her tracks, mouth forming a perfect 0 of as- tonishment and no little envy. She had to leap a body length into the air and then haul herself up onto the branch. The troll reached it from where it stood in a single bound. Elora hadn't waited. The branches of the trees had long ago grown in and around each other, forming a comprehensive canopy over the glade. The larger ones were broader across than her own body, which made it easy to run from one to the next. She changed levels as well, scampering monkeylike into the higher reaches of the tree. The troll eagerly accepted her challenge, supremely confident of its own ability to catch her no matter where she fled. That was when she let him have it, right in the chops, with a branch she'd bent nearly double, a strain so great she was sure her joints would pop, The branch whipped around with the force of a catapult. It swept the troll right off its perch and out of the tree en- tirely. The creature looked almost comical, seeming to hang sus- pended in the air for a brief moment before it began its fall, so stunned by the impact that its feline reflexes didn't begin to react to this new situation until just before it struck the ground. As Elora had planned, it landed on the slope and this time didn't stop tumbling un- til it reached the bottom of the arroyo. The troll regained its feet im- mediately, of course, and put all its formidable strength into the scramble back to the top. Elora dropped to the ground the moment her pursuer took flight, landing right in front of the barrow entrance. She cried an apology to the residents within and pitched herself forward just like the heroine of the story Thom had told her, arms extended full-length as though she was diving into a pool of water. Right then, she thought all her stratagems had gone for naught as her shoulder caught a comer of root just within the portal and she found herself stuck fast. The sound of the troll's hunting cry, the sight in her mind's eye of her being yanked unceremoniously backward into its grasp, was all the impe- tus she needed for a wrench of upper body, coupled with a tremen- dous heave of her legs, to pop her past the obstruction and completely through the entry passage. As she pitched into darkness her hands stabbed out to either side to try to find the safety lines strung along the paths the brownies used. One line held, the other crumbled in her grasp, and with a yelp of fright, she suddenly found herself dangling by three fingers over a pit big enough to swallow a full-grown Daikini with room to spare. She tried to close her fingers around the line, at the same time scrabbling for purchase with her other hand and toes. The troll's breath gusting through the entryway almost finished her as surely as its wildly flailing hand. The stench made her stomach heave, she barely managed to hold on to lunch and blessed the fates she hadn't had that much to eat. Fortunately brownies planned their barrows well, keeping in mind every kind of predator that might pit itself against them, be it snake, badger, mountain lion-or troll. The access was too narrow to admit the creature and the passage itself was longer than its arm, even at its fullest and most painful extension. The troll tried tearing at the portal to enlarge it, but again brownie engineering proved more than its match. The entrance was framed by the oak's roots. Any decent excavation would have to involve re- moving them. The troll may have had the wit to realize that, and the will to give it a try, but it didn't possess the tools. Its strength was of little use-this oak was too old, its body too massive-and the troll's claws would break in fairly short order against bark weathered to the consistency of metal. After a time, wherein it subjected Elora to an endless succession of cacophonous howls that left her as deafened as its breath had left her nauseated, there was no more scrabbling at the entry, no more shriek- ing, no more smell. The barrow lost even the pretense of light and the air took on a damp and earthen chill that made her wish for some- thing more substantial than her shift. Over the course of her impromptu incarceration, she'd succeeded in catching hold of the line with her other hand and finding an un- comfortable purchase on the narrow ledges that ringed the top of the pit. Like Thom, she possessed a wizard's NightSight, the ability to see in absolute darkness, but that proved no help whatsoever. Around her, along the track etched in the wall of the pit, were re- vealed the main tunnels of the barrow, a half dozen to her count: all had been intentionally blocked. Worse, when she looked down she saw that the floor of the pit had been filled with stakes, branches mostly, firmly emplaced in the ground, their tips sharpened to barbed and wicked points. She wouldn't be the first to fall victim to the trap, either. There was a collection of bones piled at the bottom, and a car- cass still impaled that would likely join them before the next spring. "That's very nasty," she said to herself, brow furrowing as she con- sidered the implications. She wasn't surprised at the pitfall. Brownies fought like demons to defend their homes and loved ones and were rarely inclined to show mercy to those who threatened them. For all that ferocity, however, they weren't by nature killers. Given the choice, they would much rather strip a foe of pride and dignity than of life. Actually, she thought-remembering the many occasions when she'd seen Rool and Franjean double-team some poor benighted soul, occasionally herself, more often Thorn-they don't just enjoy tormenting and humiliating their enemies, they pretty much love tormenting and humili- ating their friends. To the brownies, life was the greatest comedy ever staged, and their role in it to delightfully butcher every sacred cow that wandered across their path. The more pompous the pretension, the more de- light they took in cutting it down to size. This deadfall wasn't in character, it was the kind of snare a Daikini would set. And that disturbed her far more than the burrow's evident abandonment. Her fingers hurt, her arms hurt, her shoulders hurt, which she de- cided was a good thing. The moment to worry was when everything went numb. She put any concerns about the condition of the safety line firmly and irrevocably from her mind. If it held, it held. If not, there was precious little she could do about it. She couldn't stay where she was. The question was, how to. go? And which way~ Elora reached out with her InSight, praying for the response of a sympathetic thought anywhere within mindshot, a pair of eyes and ears she might briefly "borrow" to make certain the coast was clear. She made a sour face at the response. Nothing in the way of higher- order animal fife, she had to content herself with insects and small lizards. The bugs were the worst. Not only were their thought patterns rudimentary, their actions defined by the biological cues of scent and taste rather than any voluntary decision, but the construction of their bodies was frighteningly unlike anything Elora was used to. When she tried to gaze through their faceted eyes, it was akin to peering through a wildly distorted fun-house lens. More frighteningly, her at- tempts to meld perceptions so that she might properly interpret those images immediately stretched the link with her human consciousness nearly to the breaking point. The link was possible, she knew that even as she sprang desper- ately back to her own mind, as daredevil and potentially deadly a feat as her tumble down the barrow's entrance. She had the knowledge, she possessed the basic skill. What was lacking was practice. 'Serve me right," she told herself over and over again, clocking her head back against the wall behind her, each gentle thump giving phys- ical emphasis to her spoken rebukes, "serve me right, serve me right." Thom had made himself plain from the start. "Talent is a wondrous thing, Elora Danan," he told her. "But it's only raw material. Much like the molten ore in Torquil's furnace. It has to be refined, then shaped into its ultimate form before it can serve its proper purpose as a tool. As you master the craft and art of iron, the same applies to that of sorcery."- "Except I'm not a sorcerer," she retorted sharply. It hadn't been one of her better moods, nor their better days. "Sorcery," he said with a gentle implacability that made her sud- denly think of Torquil, "at bedrock is the imposition of will on one power or entity by another. It is an exercise of might. The way given you to access magic-and make no mistake here, young lady, you can access magic-is different. In its own way, far more difficult. Even humbling. You must ask the powers involved, the entities involved, for help. Charm them, cajole them, inspire them, terrify them, what- ever; there must be a give-and-take, whereas a sorcerer need only take. The tools you are given to work with are not sigils or spells or wands or any of the paraphernalia the likes of me take for granted. You have to work with things that live, and have a free will of their own. So, for your own survival, you treat them with respect. You're bound to- gether, like the Circles of Creation. Your survival is theirs is yours." He'd given her a list of exercises, and the creatures he expected her to work with. She'd always felt she'd done her best. There was just so much to do around the forge and the home, she found it easier to let herself be distracted. She found a skink foraging through the empty tunnels, and her de- light at the discovery of something she could work with almost brought disaster to them both. She forgot, until it was nearly too late, how small the lizard's mind was compared with hers and in her ea- gemess to take control almost poured more energy into the tiny crea- ture than it could safely withstand. Her next approach was far more cautious, and attempted only af- ter she'd sung a gentle song of healing to ease the shock of that brief contact. The tunnels were empty, stripped bare, and not in any hurried or frantic evacuation either. Great care had been taken to leave nothing behind and then to seal the burrow by collapsing formidable stretches of passageway. Likewise, she discovered after exchanging her underground com- panion for one scampering among the grass and flowers above, the dryads who would normally inhabit the hearts of trees as ancient and venerable as these had also fled. That couldn't have been an easy de- cision on their part, Elora knew, because wood nymphs mated with their trees for life. Separation could only be accomplished with many spells and much preparation. She took heart from the fact that she'd found a lizard on the sur- face. None would have shown itself if the troll was still lurking. When she finally emerged from the barrow, the only sign of the troll was a lingering scent, the noisome residue of its presence. It was still dusk, the air suffused with a magnificent twilight that would last well into the evening. Her clothes and gear were gone, she discovered upon her return to the pond. She wasn't surprised. Trolls understood the concept of pos- sessions and, more important, the value of those possessions to their owners. More than one unfortunate wayfarer had met an untimely demise following the trail left by a stolen pack or garments. Find the troll, find her stuff. But what then? Her stomach growled, reminding her it had been a long and very active day. She'd lost her garland crown within a few steps of begin- ning her mad dash from the pool, but a breath of honeysuckle on the breeze led her quickly to where it fell. She plucked a brace of petals and sucked them dry, savoring the rich taste of their nectar. Tired as she was, she still moved with a lithe and near-boneless grace as she closed on the troll's den, so silent in every aspect she would put a ghost to shame. She recalled the sensation of her body melting and re-forming as she swam among the firedrakes and raised her hands before her to where she could see them. She took hold of a forearm, to find the flesh still firm to her touch, the bones comfort- ingly solid. She thought she looked the way she'd always been, at least since Angwyn, and yet she was -just as positive that. she'd changed. She'd always measured herself against her companions, and chafed in silent frustration because every time she came up wanting. Khory Bannefin was human, at least in form. Her soul, if the term even applied, was that of a demon, Ryn Taksemanyin was of the sea- dwelling Wyrm. He was poetry to watch, on land as in the water. Khory was a warrior, with a grace to her movements that came from years of study. She was very close to a match for Ryn. Elora had never been so gifted. Even though Ryn was extraordinarily patient with her as he demonstrated patterns of movement over and over again, Elora al- ways hated the way her body tripped her up short. No matter how much she desired, how hard she thought she tried, she never came close. Thom's kind and understanding explanation-that she was still a child who hadn't yet begun to properly grow, and moreover a child whose whole life to that point had been one of sloth and indul- gence-provided no comfort. She wanted results and in those days was used to having every desire instantly gratified. Perhaps, she thought amusedly, that, too, is one of the hurdles of my old life I had to overcome. Certainly one of the first things Torquil taught me. She looked across her shoulders from east to west, wondering which direction would take her back to the halls of the Rock Nel- wyns. She shuddered, just a little, with a flash of fear that if she un- dertook that journey, she'd find the Nelv,/yn stronghold as abandoned and desolate as this brownie barrow. The world felt no different to her, and she wondered if she would notice if all its magic was stripped away? I'm supposed to be bound to all the Realms, she worried. If the World Gates are sealed shut, if the Deceiver steals all that Power for himself, what happens then to me? Or is that maybe why I'm so important to the De- ceiver-because through me he can reach all the Realms? Am I the battering ram he'll use to force the Gates open again? Was that what Carig was doing with me? Only he didn't know it was me at first, he was genuinely surprised when he found out. She shook her head violently. Stop thinking like that, she demanded of herself. This isn't about you- not all of it anyway. If the Deceiver wins, what happens to everything? Maybe Carig was Summoning some force or other to fight him? From the way he talked, that would make sense. But it also sounded like he was ready to de- stroy his own people in the process. I've never heard ofany Nelwyn acting like that. She shook her head, only this time more gently and out of weari- ness. Folks always talk about fighting fire with fire, she thought. Can you defeat one evil with another? A question for Thom. Only there was no Thom at hand, and pre- cious few letters since he'd left her. Focus, she told herself sternly, deliberately quashing the surge of anger she felt at her so-called protector, on the task at hand. Troll dens were generally easy to find, you just had to be able to stand the awful stench. No rubbish tip could match it, nor any abat- toir she'd seen. In this instance, she found herself clambering over a jumbled pile of gigantic stones, ranging in size from a large Daikini to that large Daikini's equally large house. This reminded her of a construction of building blocks, that might originally have formed a most impressive tower until some malicious devil had yanked loose just the right one to bring the entire edifice crashing down. Here was the opposite of the brownie barrow. Instead of a single inviting entrance, she found a score of possibilities formed by the cracks and hollows where stone was piled awkwardly upon stone. The surface of the rock was dangerously smooth, with no easy hand- holds, and even in direct sunlight it would be difficult to see within to tell which way was safe. Elora descended one crevasse by stretching her legs to full exten- sion across the gap and bracing her back against the wall behind her, wishing all the while as she crabbed carefully downward that she wore something more substantial than a linen shift. Her skin burned by the time she reached bottom, though there was no sense of the wetness that would mean she'd drawn blood rather than given her- self some nasty scrapes. Regrettably, this seemed the only way out as well, not a route she'd care to take in a hurry, with an angry troll close on her heels. Her breath hissed with her first step and she picked a chunk of bone from the ball of her bare foot. Again, thankfully, no blood, but her heart sank with dismay as she beheld the cause of her discomfort. A Daikini, by the size of the skeleton, his bones long since picked clean and broken to bits so the trolls could suck out the marrow. Clothes and armor had been shredded in eagerness to get to the meat, there was nothing left of either that would be any use to her. Off in a comer, however, she caught the merest flash of reflection that led her to what must have been the slain warrior's primary weapon, a double-headed war ax. Short-handled, for use in close quarters, it ac- tually weighed less than the Nelwyn hammers she was used to and was better balanced. The haft ended in a five-edged spike extending out from between the blades, which allowed the ax to be used as a stabbing weapon as well. An empty keening coursed suddenly through the stones; it set Elora's hair so quickly and stiffly, on end she knew at once it was nothing to do with the wind. She'd never heard such a sound from any troll and couldn't help the pang her heart felt at the disturbingly human quality of the lament. Holding the ax before her, she made careful progress along the passage, thankful she had her MageSight to reveal the way as clearly as if she walked in sunlight, and was soon rewarded by a gradual widening of the path. Beyond was the den itself. The troll had its back to her, apparently so preoccupied that it wasn't the slightest bit aware of her approach. Elora had had little practice at this sort of thing, but Torquil spent the better part of two years teaching her to take phenomenally exact measurements solely by eye. Three long strides would take her to where the troll sat and one swing of the ax would finish the job. The deed had to be done at once, before she lost the element of surprise. Yet Elora hesitated. Something about the noise the troll was making, about the way it sat and rocked back and forth, struck resonances within her that could not be denied. That, and the same sense of primal desolation she felt within the brownie barrow and the glade. A perception of the world rolling upside down, like a boat capsizing, to pitch everything that wasn't nailed down over the side. A sudden certainty that here sat no true foe for her but one of the lost souls. The troll turned its head around and bared its fangs in a perfunc- tory snarl, and Elora caught sight of the bundle in its arms. For the longest moment troll and girl locked eyes. Then, unex- pectedly, it was the troll that looked away, putting its back once more to Elora, almost as if it was inviting her fatal blow. Every scrap of learning, every piece of societal imprinting, told Elora to take the proffered gift and strike. At the very least she'd be putting the poor creature out of its obvious misery. She'd be doing what it had as much as asked. She couldn't. This was no enemy, no threat-though at another time and place she conceded that it might very well be both-but a creature in need. Mercy she could give, but not murder. She set aside the ax and crossed around the periphery of the awk- wardly circular space, noting her clothes and gear piled haphazardly by a sleeping pallet. The troll had searched the pouches thoroughly~ finding them empty, of course, as would any who looked within save for Elora herself-and the pockets of her clothes as well, but it had done no damage. There were three babies, small and helpless as any newborn, and she didn't need any of the enhanced aspects of her senses to see how near death they all were. Elora crouched before the troll but the comforting hand she reached out was met by another ritual baring of the fangs, a warning to keep her distance. Is it so far gone, she wondered, that it can't see me for what 1 am? Daikinis have hunted trolls as long as our race can remember, just as they've fed on us. Much the same relationship, she recalled, as Ryn Takse- manyin described between the Wyrrn and their ancient rivals, the sharks. Or is that it just doesn't care anymore? "No problem," she said aloud, the troll taking no notice of her voice. "Maybe I'm here to care for us both!" Not a second thought about the impulse or where it came from. Conception begat execution in the same natural sequence as waking up meant getting out of bed. The first requirement was warmth. While summer would remain in the lowlands for another month or more, here on the high mead- ows night brought with it the first crisp hints of approaching fall. The cave was chill and dank and in their weakened state the trolls' fur af- forded little protection. Elora decided against a fire, since that was one of the weapons used to ward off these creatures. Instead she gathered up her travel- ing pouches and fished out a quartet of smooth, egg-shaped rocks each the size of a clenched fist. She set them in a square on the ground so their ends were touching. She'd cooked them in the forge in anticipation of just such a need and now spread her hands over them, letting her eyes drift out of focus as she cast forth a Call to the powers of the earth below, once more asking their aid. Next, she addressed the four stones directly, as Thom had taught her, crooning a song as ancient as the world itself, gently reminding them of what it had felt like to be flushed full with heat, taking that memory and fanning it brighter just as she would the embers of a faded hearth with her breath. She couldn't see her own eyes or the expression on her face, how the one sparkled and the other grinned ear to ear with inexpressible delight to feel energy crackle down the surface nerves just beneath her skin and burst out from her splayed fingertips to play with the rising energies of the stones themselves. As she began to glow, so did they, silver casting forth gold, and in a matter of moments the stones were merrily giving off the required amount of heat. Elora turned to the troll with a smile, reminding herself as she did so not to bare her teeth because that might be interpreted as a chal- lenge. She wondered if trolls responded to eye blinks the way cats did, as a gesture of peace and friendship, deciding she'd hold off on that for a while, most probably would be pushing her luck a bit too far. The troll was staring at the stones, at her, at the stones, at her, only its eyes moving, back and forth, one to the other, the rest of its body still as a statue. There was a recognizable expression on its face, of utter confusion. Something utterly strange and wholly beyond its comprehension was happening. By rights, it should be terrified, yet it wasn't. Somewhere in that mind all Daikini assumed was irre- deemably bestial was the capacity to accept the event, without fear or question, and marvel at it as well. Elora had tied up the hem of her shift on one side to improvise a pocket, into which she'd stuffed the remaining honeysuckle blos- soms. She pulled out a handful and sucked a petal dry, then another in demonstration to the troll of what she was doing. She offered it a blossom of its own. It made a face, as if to say, What, you think I'm stu- pid or something?-snatched the flower from Elora's hand, and pro- ceeded to duplicate Elora's actions with an eager ease that suggested it knew full well how tasty honeysuckle could be. Elora left the flowers in reach and returned to her hearthstones. From one pouch came a metal flask, a small pot, and a pair of mugs, from the other a selection of plants and herbs, together with some cubes of dried bouillon. One mug for her, one for the troll, as she quickly mixed what she hoped would prove a hearty broth. Her own preference was for spices, hot enough to provoke tears, but she kept this soup fairly bland, as the smell of the den had so totally over- whelmed her own nose and tongue that neither seemed to work any longer as a sensory organ. When the mixture had simmered awhile, Elora hazarded a sip. She'd gotten the heat just right, the broth warm enough to send a glow surging right out through her body but not so blistering that the merest swallow burned the tongue. She mimed the act of drinking from the cup for the troll's benefit, then held out some soup. There was a good minute of puzzlement as the troll thoroughly examined the mug, carefully gauging its temperature before concluding appar- ently that comfortable to the touch meant comfortable to taste. Next, it tested the cup itself with lips and teeth to determine it if could be eaten as well. At last, its copy of Elora so picture-perfect the girl had to choke back a laugh, the troll tossed back mug and head and swal- lowed the whole of its contents. The broth was evidently to its liking, for it let forth a low trill- another sound Elora had never heard before from these creatures- and allowed another level of wariness to fall away from its features. Elora refilled the cup, only not so full, and indicated that the troll try to feed its baby. The troll caught on at once but tried to pour the con- tents down its child's throat in the same all-encompassing gulp it had used, which left the little thing sputtering and choking and howling its distress at being nearly drowned. Its agitation transferred totally to its parent and came close to undoing all the bridges that Elora had so patiently and laboriously built between them. This was no perfunc- tory baring of teeth, but a full-fledged snarl with a squalling growl to match. Elora held her ground and kept what fear she felt at the sudden turn of events well hidden from her face. Her response to the chal- _4wae_~, lenge was to pour herself another mug of soup and savor each and every swallow. A duckwalk sidestep took her to the other two babies, tucked snug about with rags and brush and scraps of flower to form a kind of nest. She gathered one close to her breast, in a pose that echoed the troll's, dipped a finger in the broth, and touched it to the baby's lips. Immediately, the little creature began to suck, finding strength within itself to cry out demands for more as Elora returned to the cup again and again until she felt secure enough to raise the lip of the mug itself to the baby's mouth. As the baby fed, Elora was ever conscious of the troll's eyes observing every move, cause and effect. When the one baby burped to announce it was full, she turned her attention to the other. She felt a touch on her bare arm, found that the troll had sidled up beside her so silently Elora hadn't been the slightest bit aware. A last bundle was handed to her by the mother, the troll's way of acknowl- edging that Elora could do what it could not. There was no sense of time passing. The cave was so well hid- den within the rock pile that no outside light penetrated, which meant Elora could only guess what was day and what night. She was kept so busy caring for the trolls that she soon lost track of which was which, or how many had passed. Their condition was as desperate as their need, demanding so total a commitment that she simply stopped thinking about any other obligations, She fed the trolls when they were hungry-which turned out to be quite often, once they set out on the road to recovery-and kept them warm while they slept, which was whenever they weren't eating. More than once she blessed the time Thom had spent making her travel- ing pouches. To the eye, they appeared to be ordinary leather bags, albeit well tanned and tooled, that were slung from loops threaded through a stout leather belt. The magic of them was that the avail- able space within bore absolutely no relationship to their exterior di- mensions. Whatever fit through the opening of the bag would fit inside and another aspect of the spell brought immediately to hand whatever Elora required when she reached inside. Food remained fresh and nothing ever spilled. Indeed, since Elora was of the habit of absently depositing items into the pouches, she had no real idea of what they contained. "This is no fit place for you," she told the troll without the slight- est hope of being understood. "It may appear safe but the hunting's gone, can't you see? When you and the babies are better, you've got to move on. There must be other trolls," she continued, "somewhere. You'll have to find them, if that's the way of your kind"-for in truth she had no idea-'just as I have to find my friends." Finally came the day when Elora was woken from her own sleep by the sensations of three rambunctious little terrors using her as an all-purpose play toy, chasing themselves over her with madcap aban- don in a game of hide-and-seek that was their way of learning the rudiments of hunting. That night, the troll returned with fresh kill and the three babies leaped on the carcass with an eager abandon that told Elora they'd take no more broth. She was offered a bloody haunch but demurred, preferring to finish her soup and record her observations of all that had happened here in her journal. Afterward, when the babies de- manded attention, she was invited once more to join the family group. This time, however, it was the troll who offered lessons, in grooming, as it meticulously worked its fingers through the scalp of one baby, picking loose whatever grubs and scabby little bugs she found there and sharing them with the baby, squashing them be- tween its teeth with a satisfying crunch. Elora did the same, only she gave all her bounty to the babies. There was a curious formality to the troll's behavior, a solemnity of stance and manner that told Elora they were nearing the end of their time together. No troll had ever accepted a Daikini into its den, no Daikini had ever faced a troll he hadn't tried his level best to kill., Circumstance had sent the pair of them skating far out on a sheet of glistening ice, without a clue to where it was safe, and offered a way back that could only be traveled together. Old patterns, Elora mused, would have doomed at least one of us. So maybe all this change isn't such a bad thing after all. The problem was, she wasn't sure she believed a word of it. The next morning, when she awoke, Elora was alone in the cave. N_'PIMI,ITI,IIIIC-IIII 4 WH A WILD WAR. WHOOP SHE HOPED WOULD BE heard all the way to the summit of the Stairs to Heaven, Elora Danan leaped from the top of the rock pile. Her original notion was to enter the pool in a nice dive, but she changed her mind the instant she kicked off into the air, folding her body into as tight a ball as she could manage, knees tucked under chin and arms wrapped around legs to hold them in place. She struck the water like a thunderstone shot from a catapult and was rewarded by an appropriately spectacular splash. She broke surface in time to see her poor shift float gently after her to settle on the water with far more propriety. Her clothes, evidently, had more of a sense of dignity than the Sa- cred Princess who wore them. - She dove again, twisting and rolling through the pond as though born to it, in her best imitation of Ryn. The sun was I- near zenith, on the morning side of noon, and she was thankful that the warmest part of the day lay ahead. Plenty of time to scrub her clothes clean as well as her body. Both were in desperate need. To wash, she planted herself beneath the waterfall and for the first few minutes simply let the spray pummel her silly. It was mountain water, just the liquid side of ice, and after the initial shock left her gasping, she stoked the inner fires of her body to counteract the cold. She had soap aplenty, but decided in a moment of madness that her hair would have to go. It'll be easier to take care of short, she told herself quite sensibly. Then, in an unexpected but sensible coda: and easier to disguise. Every- thing else seems to be changing why not me, too? So, with awkward but enthusiastic swipes of her knife, she re- duced her childhood pride and joy to a very serviceable cut barely the length of her pinkie. Her polished metal mirror revealed the result, a shorter fringe than many boys her age wore and not attractive to her eyes in the slightest. Of course, the sight of her newly shorn scalp turned all her deter- mination to dust and she very nearly burst into tears, wondering if there was some spell or power she might call upon to restore the lot. That was when she decided to launch herself off the top of the rock pile. She thought of throwing away the shift, despairing of ever re- moving the taint left by the troll's den even if she managed to scrub it outwardly clean. But the very thought seemed churlish to her, after the yeoman service the garment had performed. In addition, she wanted the shift as a reminder of what she'd done here, of how the hand of friendship had been accepted between two species who'd never offered each other anything but hatred and terror in the past. Elora treated herself to a final swim, working the last of the kinks from her muscles with a set of fast laps across the width of the pond, and when she once more reached the shore where she'd stashed her clothes, she gladly took the towel Rool held out to her. She was so wrapped up in herself, the moment didn't properly register. When it did, she let out a screech that easily topped her pre- vious outcry as startlement kicked her desperately away from the bank and toward deep water. The towel flew up into the air as she toppled, but unlike her it never struck the water. A pair of claws descended from a set of golden wings whose span matched Elora's height with the better part of a foot to spare and snatched it up before it began to fall. She had that barest sight of an eagle, a moment to recognize it as Bastian, the sound of his bubbling laughter in her mind, before her body slapped itself noisily beneath the surface. Shock drove all sense from her head, and she forgot to close her mouth and nose. When she pitched herself back into the air, broaching with a forceful leap that would have done Ryn proud, the physical glory of the moment was imme- diately undercut by her collapse to hands and knees with a succession of watery sneezes and choking coughs that appeared to stumble all over each other in their eagerness to get out. She felt the backwash of Bastian's wings scooping the air to brake his descent, followed by the touch of the towel across her back as the eagle let it fall. Her heartbeat slowed and she found once more the ability to take a full and unbroken breath. Likewise, her vision gradually sharpened to reveal a small man-form standing before her in woodland attire. Rool was beside himself with laughter, clutching hands to his sides as though the force of each guffaw would pop his rib cage, rolling on his back because he no longer had strength enough or desire to keep his feet. "Very"-she gasped, and had to take a few more breaths before she could finish the sentence-". . . funny." "Yes, it is, actually," Rool agreed, even more uproariously. "Very!" "Pest." She kept her lines short, she, didn't trust her voice to handle con- structions of more complexity. "Elora Danan, I am so hurt! Say not so, I beg you!" "I'm going to be sick now." She didn't recall blinking, but in that brief segment of time Rool shifted position well back out of reach. "Don't you dare!" he cried. "Fair warning." 'That isn't funny!" 'Neither is the way I feel!" And with that, she sprawled full-length on her belly. 'Life is tough." She cocked a baleful eye in the brownie's general direction and stuck out her tongue at him for good -measure. Rool stood barely half as high as her knee, a perfectly formed fig- ure of a man whose weathered features were matched to a body as lithe and limber as any youth's. For all the mirth of minutes past, his was a sober soul, as unassuming and practical as his outward ap- pearance. He wore two swords, wickedly hooked blades carved from the fangs of a Death Dog he'd slain, and who in the process had very nearly slain him, leaving a cruel network of scars across his chest and a pale slash that ran from chin over right cheek to well beyond his hairline. His hair was chestnut, though the summer sun had given it more of a tawny cast, and he'd pulled it into a thick queue fastened at the nape of his neck with a forged silver knot. His eyes strangely were a match, flecked with gold in summer, a dark and mysterious brown when snow fell. When Elora first met him, he wore the head of a mouse as a hood and its skin as a cloak, the rest of him covered by a loincloth and an intricate crazy quilt of painted tattoos, but he'd roamed the greater part of the world since then-a journey no sane brownie would contemplate in his most horrific nightmares-and expanded his wardrobe along with his horizons. His preference remained for leather, a taste Elora had adopted for herself, finely tanned hides that fit him so well they might have been a second skin, as comfortable to wear as cloth yet far more hardy. His trousers were tucked into knee- high boots whose soles were firm enough for walking while allow- ing him the freedom of movement to climb. There was a shirt of finely woven cotton, and over it a high-collared jerkin of long-sleeved leather, most notable for big bellows pockets at either hip. Rool, and his companion Franjean, were thieves by profession as well as nature (since all brownies are, to some extent or other, packrats) and the pockets were useful places to stash both tools and loot. Topping his ensemble was an ankle-length coat of oiled canvas, also constructed with pockets aplenty, slit to the backside to allow easy riding on the back of an eagle. The air might be summer hot on the ground but at the altitudes Bastian soared and the speeds he favored such protec- tion was a necessity. It had been far too long since she'd seen her friends. She wanted to hug the brownie until he begged for mercy, but he was too small. Instead she contented herself by padding her towel on one shoulder for Bastian to use as a perch. When the great eagle landed, balancing himself with such precision that his cruelly pointed claws didn't even prick her skin, she worked her fingers beneath his thick coat of feath- ers to scratch his chest where he loved it best. In return, Bastian turned his head around to stroke her cheekbones with his beak, the same gesture of greeting and affection he used with his mate, Anele. "How'd you find me?" Elora asked as Bastian hopped from her shoulder to a nearby log and she began rummaging through her clothes for something to wear. When no answer was forthcoming, she cast about for Rool, spying him close by the bulrushes, his arm draped with strands of her hair. He was examining shore and shal- lows in as intent a search as she'd ever seen, making sure to gather every shom lock. 'Rool?" she called, donning her shift. 'What're you doing?" 'What dyou think else, child, but savin'you from your own folly. As always." She rolled her eyes, in the mistaken assumption that he was mak- ing more fun, until a flash of his own gaze back toward her made her reconsider. "I don't understand," she said as she hunkered close by him to of- fer help. "A blinding revelation, if ever there was." 'Don't be mean." "Don't be stupid." He shook a handful of tufts at her. "This is a part of you," he told her. "Find the right sorcerer, there are spells aplenty to give him influence over your body. P'rhaps even control. Claim the flesh, you maybe gain access to the soul. You want to wake up one morning, find yourself marching clump-clump quick- step back into the Deceiver's arms?" "I thought I'm supposed to be immune to spells." 'Look in a mirror, starskin." She didn't have to. She knew full well what she looked like, the strain was in remembering what had been before. The words came easily to mind: hair like spun gold shot through with streaks of au- tumnal fire, skin as fair with the flush of ripe apples on her cheeks, eyes the rich blue of cornflowers. Plump baby, plump girl, easy to laugh in the cradle, easy to pout when she came of age to walk. Dis- turbingly, though, when she tried to match descriptions to the images of memory, nothing would fit. It was like gazing on a stranger. The moon had been at its zenith the night of her Ascension, and as its radiance leached all color from the scene, casting every aspect of the ceremony of her Ascension in shades of absolute light and shadow, so did the Deceiver steal away the same from her. The gold was stripped from Elora's hair, the warmth from her skin, leaving a figure that might have been cast of purest silver. Over the years since, more than one person she met had to touch her to believe she was composed of flesh and blood rather than some form of animate metal. Only her eyes flashed color, and even they had paled to the blue of forged steel. She'd heard the events of that awful night retold so many times in stories, around Highlander cookfires and Nelwyn tables and bazaar ale houses, of how the gods had reached out that fateful night and laid their mark on the Sacred Princess Elora Danan. What no one seemed sure of was whether this was a sign of good. fortune or ill, though she wasn't apparently alone in coming to suspect more and more the latter. She was immune to magic, that had been proven time and again. No spell appeared to have a lasting effect on her. Save this one. Where the Deceiver was concerned, she had no spe- cial defenses. The only consolation was that in return she seemed able to hurt her foe where others could not. Unfortunately the shape he'd settled on, when she finally slipped through his grasp, was that of the Castellan Mohdri, leader of the Maizan Thunder Riders. It was hard to do your enemy damage when he rode in command of the most formidable fighting force the Daikini world had ever seen. 'Point taken," Elora conceded grudgingly. "At long last," was Rool's riposte. "Spare me." 'Earn it." Like Thorn, she'd learned the hard way when to engage the brownies in verbal combat and when the wiser course was to con- cede the field. In this instance, she backed off to where she'd left her clothes. She decided to leave her legs bare, the better to cope with the heat of the day. If more cover was required, against brush or bugs, she'd sling on her leggings. Above the waist, she chose a cotton shirt be- neath her buckskin tunic. Her boots ended at the bottom of her thighs, tied above and below the knee to keep them from slipping, with the joint itself well padded in case she either fell or had to do some crawling. She kept one weapon visible, her short-sword, which she tucked into her belt behind her. A much smaller dirk was hidden deep within the folds of her cloak. Lastly, she slipped a dagger into its boot sheath. "Where's my hair?" she asked Rool when the brownie returned to her side. "You have your places to hide things, I have mine." U16__ ___ 30kagir-1- 'Just don't use it for anything mean." To her amazement, he looked genuinely shocked. 'Elora Danan," he protested. "I would never-!" His distress was so genuine and so intense that she couldn't help tumbling down beside him in the soft grass, to gaze at him with a hand outheld in comfort. "I know you wouldn't, Rool. I'm sorry. But what brought you here?" she asked, gambling on changing the mood by changing the subject. "How did you find me?" "The one is so obvious it doesn't inerit an answer. The other-?" He paused for thought. "Brownies know when strangers enter their burrows." "All brownies? All burrows? Even the ones that have been aban- doned?" "Well..." He temporized. 'You let out a pretty wild crywhen you dropped into that lava stream. Shot Drumheller from his sleep like a shaft from a longbow." 'How is he?" "Cranky, all things considered. He doesn't get much sleep lately." "Why aren't you looking after him?" "We do our best. He's stubborn." The flash of his eyes, the way his mouth twisted at the memories, told her their best represented a considerable effort, and the brownies weren't at all pleased with their ongoing lack of success. "Mostly, he's well." A last, grudging conces- sion. As evident was Rool's belief that condition wouldn't last. "He sent you." "As fast as Bastian could fly. Figured if he could hear your cry, so could the Deceiver." "Has he been in contact with Torquil?" she demanded urgently, happiness at this reunion quickly giving way to conc~rn for her fos- ter home. "Does he have any news of the Rock Nelwyns?" "Scared the demon out of everyone, you did. Made Franjean jeal- ous. It was the sort of thing he'd have liked to do himself. Proper lit- de frightener, he is." "I'm serious." "As am I, in my way." "One of their own was trying to open a World Gate." "I believe they know that, lass. From the telling, shaman to shaman, them to Drumheller, they had themselves a wild night of things. But they survived. Their mountain's whole. They'll be glad to have you back safe as well." "What are you talking about?" "We're to escort you home, Elora Danan. Back to Torquil." "Bollocks!" "What's that chy' say?" "Bollocks.1' 'I know the word, where'd you learn it?" "It's common enough among drovers." 'You're not a drover, you're the Sacred Princess!" "BOLLOCKS!" "Will you stop saying that!" Rool sounded well and truly scandal- ized, which Elora hadn't thought was possible. "I'm not going back." To emphasize the point, she rolled to her feet in a single smooth motion, gathering up the last remaining piece of her kit, her cloak, and slinging it across her body. The suddenness of her action startled Bastian aloft and he beat the air with his great wings to establish both altitude and control. Elora immediately set forth in the longest strides she could manage and put a fair distance between herself and the oth- ers before they recovered enough to come after her. Bastian swept low overhead. She ignored him, leaving it to the ea- gle to avoid any collision, which he did quite artfully. As he passed by, Rool leaped from his perch on Bastian's shoulders to Elora's, quickly anchoring himself amidst the folds of her cloak. "This is foolishness, girl," the brownie said in her ear. She said nothing and maintained a steady stride around the pond to the stream that flowed out from it. There were no obvious trails but the bank was mainly clear of brush and obstructions, so she chose to follow it. "Stop being so willful!" Rool told her. "Why?" "Because you'll get yourself into trouble!" 'I mean, why must I go back?" "You're safe there, Elora." "I'm not, you know. But that isn't the point." "You have a point?" 'If it hadn't been for this, I'd have left anyway, with the Cascani actor if he'dve had me, or one of the other merchants." 'That's daft, girl." "So you say. My whole life in Angwyn, Rool, I was a puppet in a dollhouse, a bright and shining object to be trotted out for state oc- casions and otherwise put out on display. I was their holy talisman, they would do whatever was necessary to keep me safe and secure in their possession, and if that meant making me a prisoner in a gilded cage, so be it. God forbid I should be allowed to take an inter- est in the affairs of that state, to grab hold of the reins of my own life and take it in what directions I might choose. "Who knows, if Id been properly taught, Angwyn might have es- caped its doom." "What's done is done, Elora. You can't blame yourself!" "Can't I? Tir Asleen, destroyed because of me. Angwyn, cursed because of me. And how many more cities conquered since, how many people slain?" "That's the Deceiver's doing, child." "It's me he wants, Rool." 'Why else dyou think Drumheller wants you where you're safe?" "Trust me, there's no such place. Even if there was, it'd be wrong. Don't you see, it's the same as in Angwyn, only the set dressings have been changed. Thom's making the same mistake. Before, I was a pampered pet; now I'm an apprentice at Torquil's forge. "Five years ago my every whim was catered to and my security guaranteed by a corps of Vizards culled from the finest families in Angwyn. Today I help Torquil's wife mind the house and baby-sit the kids. I was fat, I got muscles. But I'm never without supervision, and I'm never allowed out. Wherein is there any substantial difference, Rool? "When comes the moment I take a hand in my own destiny?" "You don't know the dangers." "I think I do. More, I know the price this war's exacting. Harmony is the Nelwyn way, yet I saw a Nelwyn openly betray everything his people believe in to bring forth some power so ancient Carig didn't even have a name for it. He was working against his own commu- nity, Rool. They were to be the blood sacrifice that sealed the bargain with this creature." "Impossible." "I was part of the Summoning spell, I had a taste of its dimensions. Don't tell me what's not possible. So are brownies abandoning their burrow. And dryads their glade." I "There's no sustenance for them." Rool was temporizing, but there was neither heart nor heat to his arguments. "Food aplenty for the body, aye, but for their spirit, naught but starvation. The magic has left the land. Franjean and 1, we might survive here but we'd not prosper. This isn't good land any longer for the likes of us." "Exactly. And what happens, my friend, when you can say that about the whole entire world?" She stopped and turned her head around to face him, unaware that her body had settled into a spread-legged fighting stance that left her totally balanced. "I'm not a talisman, Rool. Nor some standard fit only to be waved as an inspiration to battle. I'm alive. I'm a person. If this fight's be- cause of me, if I am to be anything like what the legends and prophe- cies foretell, I can't stand passively by and watch others shed their blood on my behalf. I'm sorry, Rool, I'm not worthy to die for. Not yet." "Where will you go then, Highness?" "To Thom." 'Make my fortune sure selling tickets to that scrap." 'Feel free, my friend, and to bet on the outcome if you've a mind." 'You don't know where he is." 'I'll find him. Though it would be easier, were some kind soul to show the way. Less likelihood of accidentally walking into a Maizan camp, that's sure." "You bargain like a Cascani." "I've been taking lessons. Who knows, maybe I can learn to be a sneak thief like you?" That pronouncement won her a disparaging snort, which she an- swered with a grin that promised their conversation was far from fin- ished. Though she never raised her pace beyond a steady walk, Elora made fair progress along the stream as it wound its way through the hollows at the base of this gathering of hills and baby mountains. Be- fore half the afternoon had passed, trees and meadow gave way to bracken and heather and the ground grew perilously uneven, scarred at random intervals by channels created from rain running off the slopes above. That same water left the ground largely saturated, not quite solid underfoot, not quite marshland either. Elora had to pick her way with care or run the risk of a sprain or, worse, a broken bone. She could handle either but she'd rather not have to. Bastian provided eyes, scouting out the path ahead. As the sun coursed below the western horizon Elora used InSight to join her per- ceptions to the eagle's in a search for somewhere decent to spend the night. Fortune smiled on someone else that evening. The best that could be arranged was a moderately dry plot where Elora improvised a lean-to with her cloak, taking the opportunity to bless its unwieldy size and bulk as fervently as on other occasions she'd complained about it to high heaven. Bastian scrounged some stout, short branches that she used as tent poles. The sharp angle between roof and floor left no room to crouch, much less stand upright, but the fi- nal result allowed for some decent snuggling. There was no convenient fuel for a fire but Elora didn't mind. In this bleak and open country, flames and smoke were too glaring a set of signposts for any pursuers. Better to once more lay hands on her firestones-and call on them for warmth. Being a quiet sort of magic, no more really than an enhancement of nature, it could be easily hid- den from questing scanspells. I Rool made a sour face when she passed him a mug of leftover soup. "Tastes of troll," he groused. Then: 'Smells of troll." And finally, what she knew had been coming all along: 'So do you." 'Stepped in dung right after I arrived," she related, memory mak- ing the moment far lighter than it felt at the time. She even chuckled at the sight of herself hobble-hopping into the pond. "There was a den up under the rock pile, a ways beyond the waterfall." "And ... ?" the brownie prompted. "It chased me into the burrow. It took my stuff. I went after." "No blood smell." "No, Rool, I didn't kill it. The.troll had babies. They were hungry and sick. That was why she attacked, she was afraid for her young." "With good reason. Only good troll's a dead one." "I've heard the same said about brownies." "And I, about Daikinis," he flared right back at her. "You are daft, to follow a troll to its den." "It needed help." "And if you found a Night Heron with a broken wing, I suppose you'd nurse it, too? Or better yet, a Death Dog!" That brought a chirruping cough of protest from Bastian, who up till then had contented himself with the field mice and plump voles he'd claimed for his own dinner. To make his point, the eagle bal- anced with fine delicacy on one wickedly sharp set of claws, wh1le holding his limp and lifeless prey in the other. A snap of the beak sev- ered the corpse neatly in half and Elora tried not to hear the crunch of tiny bones as Bastian chewed and swallowed. The point was deftly made: where herons and hounds were concerned, the eagle of- fered neither quarter nor mercy. 1- "They're not the same," Elora explained patiently, trying to work out the concepts in her own head even as she spoke them aloud. It was quite an effort, to find explanations for acts she'd committed solely on instinct, and truth be told, she still wasn't altogether sure what impulse had prompted her. Her only comfort was the eerie cer- tainty that she had done right. "But if there existed the same spark, the same ... potential ... for decency and kindness in those creatures as I sensed from that troll"- she took a breath-"yes, I think I would offer the help. Remember Angwyn, Rool. You were there in my tower. You saw. A rookery of Night Herons, yet none of them ever did me harm." 'Doing the Deceiver's bidding, most likely." He spat, to put a pe- riod to his opinion. She shrugged. "Quite likely. But I don't care." "Madness. The whole world's gone so totally daft nothing makes sense anymore!" "Can't argue with that. Thom's in Sandeni, yes?" The suddenness of the question caught the brownie off guard. Rool nodded before he could catch himself. 'Which is where?" He gestured downstream with his chin. "Off thereaway. That was very neatly done, Elora Danan. I didn't even see it coming." 'Told you I was getting better. To the north of here, then." "And a bit east, aye. This water'll lead us." "That's a relief, anyway. I was half-afraid to discover myself on the opposite side of the world or something." 'Were that so, we'd be near Tir Asleen." "Do you miss it, Rool? The lands of home?" "Do you, lass?" She shrugged. "How can you miss what you hardly remember? Angwyn should have more of a claim on me, considering how long I lived there. But to be honest, none of those places feel exactly ... right. Is that strange, to think that home is somewhere I've never been?" She didn't give him the opportunity to answer that question but posed a more practical one instead: 'And how far to Sandeni?" The brownie looked to Bastian for the answer. 'Longer for Daikinis afoot," was the eagle's reply, "than myself aloft. Quicker for Daikinis than brownie." 'Some great thumping bloody help you are," groused Rool as he re- turned his attention to Elora. "But it'll be a fair walk, sure, an' that's a fact." "The Maizan are riding out of the west," she said thoughtfully, and drew her body tighter, wriggling a touch or two closer to her heated stones, hooding her eyes beneath their lids to hide her grow- ing apprehension. "Which puts us between them and the city, am I right~" 'Too right by half, my girl," Rool agreed unhappily. He sat with his back mainly to Elora, eyes sweeping the darkness beyond the open wedge of their lean-to. If she'd taken the effort to look for her- self, Elora would have seen Bastian striking the same vigilant posture outside. She would sleep the night through. They would not, as each alternated a stint of sentry duty. "I'm not a girl," was her rote protest. "I do think, though, I am in a whole lot of trouble. And, my friend," she continued, in a tone that the brownie hadn't heard from her before (as he hadn't been around for the two years she'd been growing into it), "it is Thorn Drum- heller's fault." "Blame him for all the faults of the world, do you?" Rool's tone made plain what he thought of that. "No," was Elora's flatly rational reply. "I blame him for leaving me vulnerable. I can't defend myself without the proper tools. Without the proper knowledge, Rool." "Defending you is our job, Elora Danan." "Then where is he? Where were you?" Rool didn't even try to meet her eyes. "Told him," he said, staring out into the misty midnight darkness. "Me, Franjean, the eagles, talked ourselves stupid. But he wanted you safe. That meant, he figured, sending you away, keeping you distant. He had to establish himself in Sandeni; that meant taking risks, mak- ing enemies. His thought, an' you can't fault his courage, child, nor his love for you, nor his devotion to your cause-F 'Have I ever?" "Nah." That came forth as a sigh. "Anyroad, he hoped, if he made himself a target, too big, too important, to resist, you'd get lost an forgotten on the sidelines." "You believe the Deceiver would fall for that?" 'Think it through, Elora Danan. Polar forces you two may be-, bu you're not head-to-head in battle yet.- Maybe not for a while. Have to work through surrogates. He uses the Maizan, while you've got us. I the Deceiver was all-powerful, we'd have lost an age ago. So, we con fuse his cat's-paws, best we can, until you're a match for him." "So tell me, 0 small sage, how's that ever going to happen if I spend all my time in hiding? I'm sorry, Rool, but those cat's-paws you mentioned, they flushed me out. I'm in the open now, I can't go back." Bastian had stalked beneath the shelter during the conversation, and when Elora was finished, he leaned forward and bopped the lit- de man on the crown of his head with the knob of his beak. Rool was of a good height for a brownie, but the eagle topped him with con- siderable room to spare and used that stature to good advantage. True to form, Rool squawked, so Bastian clocked him again. "Told you so," the eagle said, with rare enjoyment. "You never did!" "Our bet. My win. You pay." 'Under protest! This isn't what we wagered on at all!" "You'd rather feel the tip of my beak again?" 'Threats, is it?" Bastian shook his head, and even if his face wasn't shaped to muster a smile, his voice did it for him, as broad as could be, 'Not in the slightest. I'm merely considering removing a dishon- orable little wretch who refuses to pay debts freely-I might even say, eagerly~entered into from the collective food chain of Dame Nature." Rool hunched his head deep between his shoulders, taking a stance that dared the eagle to try. Their confrontation was so serious to the outward eye that Elora had a sudden burst of unease that these two old friends might actually come to blows. Then Rool growled, "Who you calling 'little,' featherhead?" 'Excuse me?" Elora prompted. "All fledglings have to leave the nest sometime," Bastian said quite companionably. "They fly or they drop, but we don't carry them back." "That's hard, Bastian." "We don't abandon our chicks, Elora Danan. We protect them as best we can. But the air is our element. The nest is home, but never a sanctuary; our wings are that. Whatever the reason for leaving your nest, you've chosen to fly, and I salute you for it." 'You disagree, Rool?" Elora asked the brownie, with an expression of such dangerous innocence he considered a fair while before offer- ing his reply. "You're not a bird, and I've come to trust Drumheller's instincts." "Bravo for him," she said. "But I have to learn some of my own." Unbidden then came the thought, which she didn't bother hiding from either of her companions, if it isn't already too late. They breakfasted with the dawn and were packed and on their way before the sun cleared the distant peaks. Elora started at a mili- tary pace that she'd learned from, of all people, Ryn Taksemanyin, a long-legged stride that made the miles pass at a surprisingly natural rate. Though where one of the sea-dwelling Wyrm had mastered such a ground-pounding cadence she had no idea, nor was Ryn, or- dinarily the most talkative and gregarious of souls, at all forthcoming himself on the subject. She continued to follow the stream because it was the most com- fortable route, again using Bastian high overhead as her pathfinder and lookout. Whatever moved within the eagle's eyeshot, she'd know about it. "What do you know of the Realms Beyond?" she asked Rool. He was riding her left shoulder, snugged deep into the folds of her cloak with a spare blade thrust through her brooch as a companion to Elora's own fibula spike that held it fastened in place. "I'm a brownie," he said, and she didn't need a sight of him to know he'd spoken with an all-encompassing yet dismissive shrug. "Who know all," she chided gently, "but never tell." "That's our reputation, right,enough." "Covers a multitude of sins, that does," she agreed, "especially on those occasions when you don't know anything." She heard him snort, a sound that carried with it a fair portion of admiration. "You are learning," he conceded. "Don't think Franjean'll like that. Nor Drumheller, neither," he finished with a grin, but her thoughts were too somber for these volleys of humor to have any lasting ef- fect. "I'm serious, I'm afraid," Elora said a while later. "How much d you know?" "We watch the way the world works." "So you told Thorn. Is the world all there is?" He looked sharply at her. "What makes you ask such a thing?" he demanded. Now it was Elora's turn to shrug. "Too many things I don't have definitions for, I suppose. Or explanations. How do you describe what isn't there?" 'Isn't that why the gods gave us speech?" She looked back over her shoulder. "Nothing's there, Elora," Rool told her. "Are you sure, Rool?" "If there was, Bastian would see. He's good like that." She nodded, but plainly wasn't convinced as she picked up the pace again. 'You ever have the feeling, Rool, that you were being stalked?" 'Every time I see a cat. Or worse, don't see one. Stalked by what?" 'I wish I knew.' Then, in the same rushed breath: "I'm glad I don't. If I call its name, I think I make it easier for it to find me. As- suming there's an 'it' that's looking." Rool nodded agreement. Learning the true name of an arcane be- ing, or a person, was the most effective means a sorcerer could use to gain power Over them, but that knowledge could be a double-edged sword. There were some beings so powerful that no wards were proof against them. Worse, merely saying their name aloud might be all the invocation necessary to attract their attention. The conse- quences of such foolishness were often deadly. "I keep drifting back in my head to the grotto and Carig's World Gate," Elora said softly, following a fair pause wherein she let her mind go still as she worked up the courage to confront her experi- ences of that fateful night. She remained vaguely aware of her sur- roundings as they passed but otherwise ignored the landscape as she would the background noise of a crowd. She spoke in a halting, mus- ing tone, guardedly giving voice to her memories only after carefully vetting them to make certain they were safe. It was a kind of caution at didn't come naturally to her, or easily. "It's like floating on what you think is a still pond, only there's an undercurrent you're not aware of. It doesn't seem that strong but it never goes away. You have to actively fight it just to hold your place and whenever you relax it takes hold of you again. Pulling you where it wants you to go. "That ceremony's the same. It keeps calling to me. In that mem- ory, I'm the only light but I illuminate nothing. The Gate frames nothing but darkness. Nothing to see, nothing to touch. I'm there to function as a beacon, for whatever Carig was Summoning. Just think- ing about it makes me want to dance again. I can't fix the music in ,my head but my feet know the steps. Does nothing for you, my story?-" she asked him sharply, glaring along her shoulder at his un- characteristically hawklike mien. I "What you're talkin', Elora Danan, should be spoken to a sage. Franjean an' me, we're hunters." "Great warriors, so I've heard." She took her cue from him and of- fered banter as a bulwark to a growing anxiety. "Captured Nelwyns and Daikinis in our time, we have. And shared a tree with a captive princess." "Anyway, sage would know, maybe, what you're asking," he told her, returning to the original subject. "Can we contact one?" "Where've you been, girl-?" He started to exclaim, then realized how absurd that sounded in the circumstances. "The burrows are closin' all across the continent. Maybe across the world entire." "But surely, farther east, we could find one?" "The burrows are closed," he repeated. "All of them?" she persisted. "To us." He nodded. "To you. More'n a few among the Veil Folk name you 'Cherlindrea's Bane.' Some have even branded you with a death mark. No appeal, no mercy." He was speaking to deaf ears, she'd stopped listening after the first two words. "You and Franjean, you can't go home," she said, mingling such sorrow and sympathy in her voice that the brownie couldn't help but respond with his bravest smile. "In victory, Elora Danan, when we've won this war, that's when we'll return. An' if, in pride an' foolishness, they'll not have us, then the hell with 'em, we'll stay with you. More fun anyways. " She gave him a kiss atop his head, right where the eagle had bopped him, and quickened her pace. There was still fear deep within her eyes but also determination, backed by a force of will whose strength would surprise her. -1 A. -P T C R ...... . . BIG MOUNTAINS GAVE WAY TO SMALL ONES, WHICH in turn gave way to rolling hills. Soggy moor grew firm un- derfoot, then came more meadows banked by spectacular forests that abruptly ended in the first stretch of cultivated land Elora had seen in years. Technically, by this point, the stream had grown into a river. It was still fordable in places and not terribly wide, mainly because its course took it over rock more than soil. However, its current was still severe enough to gouge out the earth around those stones, thereby creating some treacherous rills and sinkholes, not to mention very wicked currents. The land close by its steep-sided banks bore evidence of the occasional flood. Soon, Elora knew, she'd have to choose which side to journey on, and live with that decision until she found a ferry or a boat. Both she and Rool heard a keening cry from so far on high that the eagle who uttered it couldn't easily be spotted among the big belly puffballs of cumulus that dotted the afternoon sky. To the watching eye, Elora looked casual, just a slip of a thing, Z gangly collection of limbs that didn't fit quite so well together as the5 had a month before. "What?" Rool prompted. She completed a slow pivot, turning right the way around, he gaze lingering a fraction back along the way they'd come before re turning at last to the road ahead, sweeping the surrounding heights as she did. Every sense was preternaturally alert, from the feel of min gled grains of dirt and stone through both socks and the soles of her boots, to the faintest shrush of a breeze ruffling the topmost branches overhead and the burbling rill of the stream as it rushed beneath the bridge, to the taste of fruit starting to hang heavy on untended or- chards. As for smells, they were as rich and varied as they were fun- damentally wrong for such a setting. The scent of burned things, wood and plaster, cloth and flesh, mixed with the metallic flavor of blood. Death had visited this place, and not so long ago. Elora let out her breath in an outrushing sigh, a little nonplussed to discover she'd been holding it so long a while that her chest ached, her surprise deepening with the discovery that she held an ax. "My-oh-my," she said, taking the measure of the tension across her body as she did of the weapon itself. "What do we have here?" "You drew as you turned," Rool told her. "Reached into your pouch and there it was." 'Comforting to know my gear always seems to know what I need." She worked her hand on the hilt to make the grip that much more comfortable, but did not return the ax to its scabbard. It was the one she'd found outside the troll's den and taken off the slain Daikini war- rior. As she did with so many things she gathered up along the road, she'd simply stuffed it into a traveling pouch and forgotten all about it. "What can you see?" Rool asked quietly, meaning through the ea- gle's eyes. A blink of the eye was all it took for InSight to join Elora's con- sciousness with Bastian's. With another, she was back in hers-elf, shaken by what lay ahead. Rool, bless him, didn't ask for details. "Go around, maybe?" he suggested, but Elora shook her head. "Can't." That had been her hope as well until Bastian's perspective dashed it stillbom. "Why not?" 'There's a natural flow to the trail, that's why the village was built here, this is the only way. Bastian can't see any other path through the hills. They either dead-end in some blind canyon or other, or wind back on themselves so a body spends more time going sideways than ahead. And while the summits aren't ferociously high, the slopes are murder, without an easy climb to the lot." 'What did you both see, Elora?" "Someone got real mad here, Rool. And then they got even." With that, she crossed the bridge, to discover in part the reason why. Gibbets had been erected along the road at the far end of the struc- ture, three on either side, with a crow cage hanging from each. Thank- fully, their contents had long since yielded up their lives. Elora didn't need a close examination to tell what they were. A family of trolls, by the tatters of skin left on their collapsed and vermin-savaged bones, who in the ancient way of their kind had attempted to make a home beneath the bridge. Or perhaps, since this looked to be a natural ford, they'd been here all along, with a den tucked into the bank. The reason for their being didn't matter, their mere presence sealed their fate. Trolls were here, they were in the way, they were removed. Hung like scarecrows, to scare away others of their kind. "Is that all we can do, Rool? Hate and murder?" "You're asking me? You're the Daikini, Elora Danan." "I'm not very proud of that right now." "Would you be so charitable if it was your lambs been stolen, or your baby grabbed for dinner?" "You tell me. Those are naiads in the last two cages, and I think the pens hung up top inside, they were made for something smaller." Water nymphs could be as changeable as the streams they called their home; the more wild the environment, the more wild the naiad who protected it. Two of them meant either siblings or a mating pair. One had died curled up in as tight a ball as possible, while the other's arm was stretched to full extension in a desperate attempt to reach across the gulf between the cages. InSight had given Elora a spectacular overhead view of the setting, a modestly sized village numbering a couple of dozen houses whose construction mixed wood and stone, arrayed in scattered clusters along the slopes that reached up from this bank of the stream. They were solid, substantial structures that, in more than a few cases, were designed to be extensions of the hillside on which they rested. Elora suspected additional rooms had been hollowed out of the earth be- hind them. Each cluster of homes was arranged so that it formed a substantial defensive position, with interlocking fields of fire. Very much like other frontier communities she'd seen on her travels, and that Thom had told her of. An altogether sensible scheme. It hadn't saved them. The first house she came to proved the pattern for the rest. After the first cluster she lost all desire to see more. The assault had been as brutal as it was thorough, the stout stone walls breached by a massive succession of hammer blows, the rooms within consumed by balls of dragonfire. The heat of those magical flames was so intense, espe- cially concentrated in so small and enclosed a space, that the inside walls crumbled to powder at Elora's touch, reminding her of Torquil's training forge after their encounter with the infant firedrake. For all within the outer chambers, death came as a moment of blazing agony before oblivion. They were the lucky ones. Farther in, Elora found slaughter enough to sicken the most hardened of butchers. The sun was still a presence overhead but not for much longer as it lowered toward the western ridges. This was the heat of the day but all she could do was tremble as a dank draft wound its clammy way about her head. She seemed to have lost all sensation in the outer parts of her body, while her inner self had never felt more delicate, al- most as if she was at war with ' herself. Her mouth was dry, yet her skin felt slick and queasy on her frame, as though it had been coated underneath by a layer of slime. She forced herself to breathe in a reg- ular rhythm, keeping it slow but shallow, to counteract the growing queasiness in her belly. She wanted to be sick. She didn't dare. Strangely she also found she couldn't cry. "No sign of siege engines," she remarked to Rool as he strode in her direction, "nothing powerful enough to make these holes anyway. Nor any residue of spells." "No need for either when you can whistle up a crew of ogres to do your dirty work." "I don't believe it. Ogres are like bears, territorial and solitary. One might claim this land, two at the most, but then they'd be more inter- ested in fighting each other than any settlers. And even if you're right, attacking a village like this isn't their way." "Who's the one been sayin' the old ways are changing?" "That isn't funny, Rool." "Signs are plain, Elora. Ogres and elves, working in concert. Ogres breach the walls, elves conjure the dragonfire. Ogres get to make a meal of whatever doesn't get too badly cooked." Elora swallowed convulsively, her eyes blinking rapidly in a vain attempt to generate tears. She'd suspected the truth from the mo- ment she stepped across the scorched and broken threshold. Hearing it from Rool's lips, in the brownie's matter-of-fact tone, struck her like a blow to the belly. Ghouls ate carrion, as did trolls for the most part. Ogres, however, liked their food fresh, preferably alive, and had a reputation as loathsome as their appetite. What made them all the more horrific was their physical resemblance to Daikini, and the fact that they possessed a keen intelligence. Ghouls and trolls could be thought of as mostly animal by nature; ogres seemed uncomfortably human. 'What do the elves get?" she asked at last. "No more Daikini," he said. 'Here'bouts, anyroad." Rool held up an arrow as long as he was tall. Its barbed head was marked with stains of dried copper. 'Folk here didn't go quiet," he said. "They put up a fair fight for their homes, made their killers pay." 'How dearly?" "Can't say for sure. Attackers took away their wounded an' their dead, but there's blood on the ground all about here. And the after- taste of dying." "Good." He gave her a sharp and searching look. "What's that you're holding, Elora Danan?" It was a mess, a poor semblance of the stuffed toy it once had been. In one of the back bedrooms, snugged beneath the surface of the hill where the householders intended their safest and final refuge, she'd found a set of shelves, below which lay' a collection of dolls and other toys. Some were hard, carved and painted wood, while others were stuffed cloth. All had been hand-carved or stitched. All had been sav- aged. UI think this was the child's favorite," she said, as her legs slowly gave way at the knees and she sat back on her heels. Reflexively, she set her ax by her side, never allowing her hand to stray far from its hilt. She spoke haltingly, finding it difficult to translate what she'd seen into words. "The poor dear must have thought it would keep her safe, same as I believed my bear would me." When Elora was barely a year old, Thorn Drumheller had come to her on the night before the Cataclysm that destroyed her home and changed the shape of the world entire. He'd thought it a dream, be- cause he'd ridden to her on the back of a dragon. Only much later did he discover that the dragon had been as real as the moment. He'd made her a stuffed bear for her birthday, and when he left it with her he charged it to keep her safe from any and all harm. It was the kind of wish any parent might make, but since he was a sorcerer it turned out to be the kind of wish that came true. Somehow, when the night exploded into flame, she had emerged unscathed, with her bear held so tightly in her infant arms that even grown men couldn't pry it loose. "There was nothing you could do, Elora," Rool told her, laying a hand on hers where she clutched the child's doll. 'I know, Rool. Doesn't make this hurt any the less. It shouldn't have happened at all! For as long as anyone can remember, there's been peace between the Realms!" "Uneasy peace. Imperfect peace. There've always been outlaws." "This was a deliberate massacre, Rool. Nothing was taken here ex- cept lives, and those as brutally as possible." She took a deep, shud- dering breath in an attempt to master her emotions, to tame her rising fury. "I didn't tell you what else Bastian saw. Lining the road down- stream of the town. Heads on pikes. Scores of them." "What's the old saying, 'turnabout is fair play.' "Rool!" she snapped at him in horror. 'It's a warning, Elora, meant to be as plain to Daikini as those crow cages were for trolls and naiads and the like." Then his tone gentled slightly and turned a bit more sad. "Yours aren't the only kind with a claim to this land, you know. If Daikini won't share with the Veil Folk, why should any of the Veil Folk share in return?" "Is that the future for us all then? We slaughter each other until the last one left standing claims title to whatever's left. Assuming it's even worth having? Can't we be better than that?" "I think, Royal Highness, that's where you're meant to fit in." "Well, right now I don't feel very up to the job." Abruptly she sniffed, a furrow of concentration appearing between her brows as she cocked her head a little to one side and muttered a quiet curse. In that same brief span of time she gathered her ax once more into her hand. The doll was set aside, with a last loving finger- stroke caress farewell. The river wound around a modest headland, a knob of rock on which had been constructed the town's most impressive building, rearing a full three stories above the road that passed beside it. The tower was stone, intended to provide a place of refuge and defense from any attack. There was smoke rising from its chimney. The sky high overhead was still blue but the valley itself was mostly shadow, peaks behind Elora splashed with light that mixed gold and rose, while those ahead had lost much of their definition. The evening breeze flowed the length of the valley, from darkness to- ward light, the tower to her, and she chose not to think about the other scents mixed in with that of wood smoke. Torches, as well as the cookfire itself, illuminated the interior of the modest keep, but no- body inside stepped out or passed by any of the narrow embrasures that passed for windows. She had no idea who might be present, or how many. Rool, however, was certain that she wanted no part of them. 'Hook around the backside of these ridges," he suggested to Elora and Bastian, tracing their route with a stick onto the dirt. "Bypass the tower to catch up with the road on the far end of town. Then walk straight through the night, get ourselves as far away from here as fast as possible." "Suppose they come after~" 'Run." "I don't see the sense of it." "What, you'd rather they catch us? Or would you prefer simply hiding~" "Of that, I mean," and Elora gestured toward the tower with her chin from where she lay beside a jumble of stones atop the ridgeline, so flat to the ground only eyes and forehead were visible. She'd black- ened her face with soot from one of the burned houses to dull her ar- gent skin and draped her cloak across her head to hide her hair. It was a simple camouflage, but effective. Even Bastian had a hard time marking her position amidst the gathering dusk. "They raze the town, murder the inhabitants, carry off their own dead and wounded ...... "Classic hit-and-run tactics," said Rool. "Whatever. I defer to superior experience." Franjean would have preened at the compliment, Rool merely made a grimace of dismissal. 'So who is it got themselves left behind?" Elora continued. "Or chose to stay? And why?" "I have no great love for cats, Elora Danan," Rool told her, catching her drift and not liking it in the slightest, "but I caution you to re- member what happened to the curious ones." "Isn't that why they have nine lives?" 'Bully for them. You're no cat." 'So help me out, Rool. The breeze is in our favor, what can you tel me about the scents from inside?" "What do you need me for? Can't you use your precious InSight t merge with some beastie or other within the tower for a look-see?" 'Already thought of. Already tried. The interior's barren. Birds vermin, bugs, the lot. What's alive has long since fled. What remain isn't alive. There are wards up as well. I push too hard, I run the ris of tripping over one. Which none of us want." The brownie nodded grim but heartfelt agreement. "Two ogres," he said, flat-toned, pushing his tongue out across hi lips, sluicing them clean of the foul taste of those monstrous creatures "One of Lesser Faery, two of Greater." "High Elves," Elora sounded shocked. "On this side of the Veil?" 'They don't cross over often and they don't much like it when the) do, but they can survive as easily here as the likes of you or I can ir their domains. They talk like they'd die before admitting it but all ou races are bound by common threads. That's why the Great Realms ar( always portrayed as a sequence of circles." 'Is that'hunter' knowledge?" Elora asked innocently. 'Franj ean and I, we watch the way the world works," he said, as he had often before, as if the phrase was a sufficient answer in and of it self. "I wonder what they're doing?" "None of our damn business. An' even if it was, a single ogre is rea son enough for us to keep our distance, much less a pair. Let's go." She remained where she was, totally focused on the tower, chew ing absently on a square of dried beef. "Heed me, Elora Danan," the brownie repeated. "Let us go!" 'Something else is down there," she said in so still and offhand a tone she might well have been talking to herself. "It's none of our concern. What's done here is done. If we interfere, all we'll do is add our own corpses to the boneyard." "I can't turn my back." "On what?" "My instincts." Rool was so upset, at her obstinacy as much as at the situation, that he spoke with far more heat than he'd intended, his words emerging almost as a snarl. "Spare me," he lashed out at her. "Cloistered as you've been your whole life when have you ever needed instincts? Or had much chance to develop any~" "I know what I know." Her voice quavered ever so slightly but she held her emotions on tight rein. That was the only indication of how deeply his insult had cut her. "I feel what I feel. And I'll no more ignore it than I will deny you as my friend. No matter how foolish that may sound." She gave him no opportunity to reply. Before she'd finished speak- ing she'd levered herself up and over the ridgeline, spilling her cloak to its full extension and draping it over herself as she made her way in a cautious sideways crab scuttle down the slope toward the tower. Rool sprang after her but her long legs were more than he could catch. For all that she had no training in the arts of the hunt or war, her innate common sense proved more than adequate to the task at hand. She took advantage of the lay of the land, the dark weave of her cloak making her a shadow among shadows as she slipped from cover to cover. 'What have you done?" Bastian cried, using mindspeech to make himself heard by both brownie and girl. "The hell with that," Rool howled back at him, the same way. 'What is she doing?" "Shut up, the pair of you!" came Elora's commanding response, with such intensity that both eagle and brownie were instantly cowed. "If you won't help, the least you can do is not make things worse for me. I can't concentrate with you shrieking inside my skull." 'What do you plan?" Rool asked, ruthlessly quelling his anxiety. 'The lights are on the second floor." "Doesn't mean anything. Stay clear of the ground floor. Ogres like the dark and they don't like heights. Odds are that's where you'll find one or both, Can't magic yourself inside, either, those three of Faery would be sure to sense it." 'Come down from above, then?" He snorted derisively. "You plan on climbing near forty feet?" "The walls aren't so smooth, Rool. There are handholds." "Daft daft daft. Child, is there no end to your foolishness? Give this up, I beg you, while there's still time." "Bastian," she called with mindspeech, "I've attached a line to something that should stand in for a grapnel. Can you fly it to the top of the tower?" "Say no," Rool cried. 'Refuse her, for all our sakes.' "I've circled the tower twice, Rool," the eagle said. 'In this, I side with Elora. There is more within than you could sense. I think they have a prisoner." "If it's no one we know, why should we care?" "If you have to ask," Elora replied primly, "why bother to explain~" The eagle's wings set up a furious backwash as Bastian swooped down to catch the proffered rope and carry it to its destination. Elora crouched in a huddle against the base of the tower, where cut stone merged with the natural substance of the modest bluff on which it stood. She didn't feel anywhere near as confident as she made herself sound. Her heart pounded, her skin was chill with sweat, from top to toe she felt taut as a full-drawn bow. She didn't want to be here. She'd love more than anything to ac- cede to Rool's wishes and scamper pell-mell for safety. She knew she'd never be able to live with herself if she did. She put weight on the rope to test how well it was anchored. No slippage. That was good. She'd have to walk the wall, taking consum- mate care to make no sound of footsteps. At the same time her arms and shoulders would bear the total strain of her climb. She donned a pair of buckskin gloves, took a breath in a vain at- tempt to settle stomach and nerves, and lifted herself off the ground. In fairly short order, she reached the parapet, sliding over it and onto the roof with smooth silence only a cat could best appreciate. She folded herself down by the seam where floor met wall and stayed very small and still, eyes open wide as they stared into the even deeper darkness of the stairwell. There were flickers of light and color from the illuminations farther below, and a mix of sounds that grated on her soul, not so much because of what was being said but from the underlying emotions. She'd never felt hatred in such a measure, nor so eager an anticipation to inflict pain and suffering on another. Quietly she divested herself of her cloak and took her ax once more in hand, keeping her back flat to the wall as she crept down the curved steps. The darkness was no problem for her MageSight, which al- lowed her to see the room as clear as broad daylight. All these aspects of myself I take for granted, she thought suddenly, MageSight, InSight, the ability to speak to the creatures and forces of the world, and to understand them in return-what happens to them once theDe- ceiver steals away the magic that sustains them? She made a face at how automatically she had fallen into the trap of assuming that his ultimate triumph was foreordained. It was the tone she'd heard from so many others in talking about the Maizan and their leader, she'd simply followed their lead and assumed it for her own. If that's how I feel, she told herself acidly, why even bother with a fight? Might as well give in and get things over with. The Deceiver surely wouldn't mind. She thrust the thoughts from her, to deal with another time, and picked her way across the floor with consummate care, trusting her feet to avoid any squeaky planks. The tower had been ransacked as thoroughly as the town beyond had been destroyed. All that could be smashed, had been, the wreck- age strewn about in helter-skelter fashion. From the top of this landing she had a moderate view of the next level. No need for MageSight here, torches and a roaring blaze in the hearth cast more than enough light. Unfortunately for Elora, she couldn't find all that much to see. She plucked her mirror from its pouch and lay herself flat to the floor, dangling the polished rectangle over the lip of the floor. Four figures came immediately to view. Two were of Greater Faery, as Rool had told her, tall and lean in the manner of their race, whose outward delicacy of form and feature masked a strength of body that far surpassed the most formidable of Daikini. Their faces possessed an unearthly beauty that would never be mistaken for hu- man, as though the concept itself had been pared to its purest essence. The High Elves, who made up the whole of Greater Faery, carried themselves with a natural hauteur that derived from their opinion of themselves as the greatest of the Realms that composed the Circle of the Flesh. In these two, that aristocratic mien manifested itself as a cruel contempt for the figure that lay bound before them. The irony, Elora could see plainly on their faces, was that they were no less dis- dainful of the denizen of Lesser Faery who stood with them as their ally. As glorious as the two elves appeared, the goblin was their oppo- site. They dressed in fabric so sheer it might have been painted on their bodies. The goblin wore rags, stripped joyously from the corpses of the slain. Goblins were half as tall as Daikini, and were often mis- taken because of size and manner for lost children, casting malefic glamours to make them appear to be exceptionally angelic in appear- ance. Only close up did they reveal the truth about themselves, faces so hideous that even trolls didn't suffer by comparison. Mouths stuffed more full than any shark's with teeth, and claws atop every finger and toe. They liked to braid their hair with shards of stone and crystal, honed to razor sharpness, so that they could flay a face to the bone with a sweeping turn of the head. j, This one couldn't hold its glamour, or possibly wasn't trying very hard, as its countenance tumbled wildly from angel to monster and back again, sometimes presenting itself as a mixture of both. The pris- oner endured both presentations without changing his own expres- sion of defiance. He was bent back upon himself over an anvil, bound wrists to ankles so that his body was arched like a bow, with lines about his throat so that the only way he could draw breath was to hold that murderous position. Any attempt to ease the extreme pres- sure on his spine would strangle him. He was naked save for a loincloth and Elora could see he hadn't had an easy time of his captivity. Part of his face was swollen, one eye almost completely shut, and he was covered with a generous scatter- ing of bruises and abrasions, painted with filth and blood. Some of the cuts were fresh, the goblin's doing, as it casually flicked a hand across a stretch of skin to draw forth more. 'First he fry," the goblin cackled, 'then he die!" "At the proper time," one of the elves chided her, 'in the proper manner." The goblin made a foul noise. "His sacrifice will place our seal on this land and cast it for all time beyond the Veil. You may toy with him all you wish, so long as you do not disfigure him or inflict any mortal harm. Defy us in this, and his ordeal will pale in comparison to your own." For all the expression on the High Elf's face, he might have been or- dering toast for breakfast, yet the goblin cringed as though he'd used a lash to lay her open to the bone. Elora had seen and heard enough. This had to be stopped, she had no idea how. She was just asking herself where the ogres had gotten to when a hand the size of her head rose into view before her to close on her arm and yank her from her perch. It let her go as she fell. There was no chance of recovery before she crashed onto the steps, taking the impact mainly across her shoulders, the edge of a step catching her right in the gap between two vertebrae and making a portion of her body go tingly and stiff. Momentum kept her going, but she managed to kick herself forward so that she landed on the floor, close by the anvil where the Daikini lay bound. It wasn't, a gracious entrance, she ended up sprawled on her belly, with more shooting stars before her eyes than she'd ever seen in the heavens. The ogre closed its massive hand about her head and yanked her up while the goblin waggled her claws in eager anticipation. Neither creature was a great intellect, they hadn't a clue whom they'd just captured. The High Elves, however, recognized her in- stantly. One cried, "Kill her!" The other, 'No!" That's when Rool started shooting from the embrasure where Bas- tian had dropped him. It's easy to scoff at brownie arrows, for those shafts are as diminutive as their archers. No one, however, sneers at their poisons, which can be so formidable that the merest pinprick can render a full-grown Daikini quite unconscious. Moreover, in extreme circumstances, brownies can imbue their arrows with a portion of their own life force, which in turn allows them to strike with the force of thunderstones. Where an ogre was concerned, especially when a squeeze of the hand could crush Elora's skull like a grape, Rool took no chances. Faster than any eye could follow, three shafts were nocked and re- leased, backed by all the fury the brownie hunter could muster. They left streaks of fire in their wake as they shot across the room. One struck the ogre at the top of his spine, one in the middle, one at the base, and in that instant his great body seemed no more than a rag doll as Rool's terrible rage swept him the rest of the way to the far wall. He was dead before he struck. That selfsame moment Elora used her own mastery over fire to smother every flame in the room. Torch, candles, hearth, all went out, right down to the palest coal in the firebox, leaving the room suddenly as black as the deepest Nelwyn mine. She lunged forward, arms rising to block the goblin's attack with her elbows, Elora moving in too close for the smaller creature to lash at her with its spiked hair. She brought her leg forward in as hard a kick as she could manage and shoved the goblin aside, throwing herself toward the prisoner. The ropes were thick but the knife she yanked from its boot sheath was sharp and parted them with ease. She wasn't gentle about the rescue. As soon as she could, she hauled the Daikini from the anvil and along the floor to tuck him into the woodbox built into the wall beside the hearth. He made no sound, for which she was grateful, even though it was a rough and bumpy trip. She prayed that didn't mean she was too late and the Daikini dead. MageSight was her salvation. She could see. The others, even though their eyesight was generally far superior to Daikini's, couldn't make the transition from light to darkness as readily as she. For a few precious moments their blindness was absolute. She stuffed the handle of her knife into the prisoner's hand, closed his fingers about it, then pitched herself back into the fray toward where her ax had fallen. The goblin snagged a foot in passing, drop- ping Elora in an ungainly sprawl that left her limbs tangled or pinned beneath her in a way that prevented a quick recovery. The girl sensed the swish of air as the goblin snapped her head around, hissed in pain as some of the shards sliced through clothes to skin. The goblin's in- tent was to stab Elora right through from behind but she never got the chance as another of Rool's arrows hammered her to the wall. With a hoarse cry, the prisoner reared out of his hidey-hole to plunge the blade she'd left him hilt-deep in the goblin's breast. Elora lunged once more for the ax, heard a tumult to the side, yelped in startlement as a pair of struggling bodies descended on her. The two High Elves were at each other's throat, one as intent on slay- ing Elora as his companion was in stopping him. Sadly, her defender was the inferior of the pair at a knife fight. Even as the girl caught up her ax, the other elf's bone dagger brought their battle to an end. The victor was off balance as he turned toward her, poorly placed to parry her attack as she brought the ax around like a mallet, swinging with both hands off her shoulder to strike across the leading edge of his face. She didn't want him dead, she had far too many questions, and so hit him with the flat of the blade. He bounced once off the floor and didn't move again. Elora was on her knees, lungs pumping as hard as her heart, the be- ginnings of a grin on her face as the realization dawned that she and her friends had won. She'd quite forgotten about the last ogre. It didn't bother with the stairs, nor was it the slightest bit fazed by the stone flooring. One breath, all was well. The next, two massive fists punched their way into view, filling the air with pieces of shat- tered rock of all sizes that sprayed the room as shrapnel. Its roar sounded loud enough to smash the tower itself to bits, and a single sideswipe of its arm was enough to blast the anvil off its mountings and right through the tower's wall. Panic nearly drove Elora up the stairs to the parapet, but she couldn't abandon the life she'd just fought so hard to save. The ogre levered one leg free of the hole it made, pivoting its massive body to keep her in view, marking her as the paramount threat. Rool had not yet responded to its attack and Elora suddenly feared that he might have been hurt by all the flying masonry. The ogre grinned, flashing huge teeth in anticipation of how she'd taste. All she could think of then was the back room she'd seen under the hill, and what this creature, or another of his kind, had left behind. A stillness settled over her in that moment, a calm such as she had never known. She had lost none of her fear, she'd simply set it aside for the duration. She held the haft easily in her two hands, the ax itself at the ready, cocked over her shoulder, her body centered on the balls of her feet. Come what may, the ogre would know it had been in a fight. Bastian got to him first, swooping down the stairway from the roof with his distinctive hunting cry, so loud and piercing in this confined space that it actually hurt to hear it. Even the ogre was distracted. It turned toward the sound but Bastian was too quick for it, and the monster never saw the claws that stripped it of its sight. It screamed, arms flailing in a vain attempt to catch and crush its tormentor. Bastian was already moving clear, with an incredible twist of wings and body, but there was too little room to maneuver. The eagle swerved to avoid a wall, wings beating hard to maintain altitude, generating such a backwash of air that the ogre had no trouble following it to him. A slap caught Bastian square across the breast, only the tips of the ogre's fingers but more than sufficient to leave the eagle stunned and help- less before it. One hand marked the eagle's position by touch, the other rose clenched into a fist to hammer it to a pulp. With a cry of her own, Elora sprang forward, sweeping the ax around to hook the back of the ogre's knee. She heaved with all her might and tumbled the creature onto its back, but she knew that wouldn't be enough. She didn't consider what had to be done, she merely did it. Mus- cles conditioned by hours upon hours of pounding iron into steel brought the ax up and over her head, and as the ogre hit the floor she brought its gleaming, well-honed edge down onto its neck. Now she knew the battle was truly over, well and truly won. No grin, though, as she released her hold on the ax. There was too much yet to do. "Rool," she cried, exertion making her voice sound more husky than normal. 'Damn you, brownie, answer when I call-Rool!" She denied the silence, rushed instead to Bastian's side, to discover that the eagle had suffered no lasting damage. Bruised, he was, but not broken. The Daikini prisoner wasn't so fortunate. His knife blow to the goblin's heart had taken the last of his strength. When Elora tried to find a pulse, his skin was so cold beneath her touch that she was sure he'd perished. To her surprise, though, she found a heartbeat and the ghost of a breath. Lastly she approached the High Elf. I 'Take care, Royal Highness," Rool cautioned. There was blood o the brownie's face and tunic, but no weakness to the way he hel himself, or to the bow drawn and leveled at the elf. Hearing the honorific, the elf spat. "He's some piece of work, this one is," Rool continued. "He doesn't look so well, Rool." "He's dying." 'You have slain me," the elf said, his voice thready, "Cherlindrea Bane." "Don't call me that," Elora replied sharply, before demanding Rool, "What are you talking about, I hardly touched him." "You drew blood." "So what if I di& It couldn't have been more than a scratch." "That blade is forged steel, Elora, anathema to such as he." "Truly," the elf told her, "you are the destroyer." "No!" "You are the Deceiver, who promises salvation yet will bring abou the end of us." "No!" "Compared to such as you, Bavmorda was a blessing." With each phrase, the light in his eyes grew more faint. Those las words took his last breath. Elora didn't seem to notice. She stood before him, just beyond hi reach, glaring at him with such furious intensity that it was as if sh could bring him back to life by sheer force of will so he could hear he one last denial. So she could make him believe it. Rool lowered his bow, cast about for a way off the step he wa standing on, to cross over to the elf and close his eyes. Elora was ther first, and when she had seen to that elf she did the same for his com panion, offering a quiet thanks for his sacrifice on her behalf. "I told you," Rool said when she found his gaze. He'd allowed him self to slump into the seam formed where step met wall and stifled monstrous yawn as his body began to demand payback for the strai he'd put on it. 'He called me the Deceiver. And that other thing, about Bav morda-!" "Her rule was harsh, Elora Danan, but there was a structure to he world. Rules that ensured a measure of survival and, for some, pros perity. It wasn't pleasant, but it was dependable. By comparison, th world we now inhabit is nothing but a chaos." "We're trying to make things better, Rool!" "I know. So did that poor soul." And he indicated the other elf, ly- ing at Elora's feet. "This is so wrong," she said fiercely. "This is not what I thought things were supposed to be. This is not how the world should be!" "But it's how it is." She took a deep breath. "And it is what we have to deal with. No good complaining about a lousy pour, Torquil said. One way or an- other, find a way to make it right." "Rare wisdom, for a Nelwyn." Rool's small attempt at wit won him a ghost of a grin from Elora, that faded as she turned full circle to survey the carnage. 'I've never fought like this before, Rool," she said. "I've never. . "I know that, too, child." "I want to be sick." She stood in the center of the room, wishing the darkness could blind her as powerfully as any ordinary Daikini. The floor was awash with the ogre's blood, she could smell its bitter scent on her own skin and clothes. She felt an aching hollowness deep inside, an awful sense of loss had been with her since she'd entered the first of the ruined homesteads. This combat hadn't lessened it in the slightest. By one reckoning, the scales of this massacre had been somewhat balanced, the dead a little bit avenged. Yet to Elora, these deaths didn't offset the others. She picked her way with care around the bodies to gather Bastian gently into her arms, taking the greatest care to make sure his wings were properly folded against his body, grateful to see that they moved easily, without strain or break. She held out her left arm so he could use it as a resting post, and felt his claws close about her forearm while the rest of him sagged against her breast. For all the size and power of the great golden eagle, it was always a marvel to her how compara- tively little he weighed, thanks to his hollow-boned skeleton. On the way out she picked up Rool as well, before making her way down the final flight of steps to the ground floor and from there out into open air. Neither brownie nor eagle asked what her MageSight revealed to her in that close and fetid space, nor did she volunteer the information. She found a resting place for them on a hump of rock upslope of the tower and the road that passed it by, then returned inside for the prisoner. A last trip was to collect her cloak and what could be found of the Daikini's belongings. "Do we carry him?" Rool asked, when she rejoined them. ~M "He won't last an hour. "What then? Wait till it's no longer an issue?" "I can try to help." She began by making the man as comfortable as possible, scroung- ing bedding from the ruins to improvise a pallet on the bluff, with enough left over for Bastian and Rool as well. True to form, the brownie insisted that he was fine and needed no such special treat- ment. Elora pointedly ignored him and continued on about her busi- ness. Once more her cloak did double duty as the covering of a lean-to, although this time there were proper poles to serve as the frame. Again she set out her stones and sang warmth back into them, tucking them close about the Daikini and Bastian to combat the growing evening chill. "Summer's fading fast," she noted conversationally as she set out kindling for a fire. "Even in highlands, I wouldn't have expected a chill like this for another month or so, at least.y' "Speaking from experience, are you?" 'You're not the only one who watches the way the world works, I'll have you know. And listens to what folks say. Traders and drovers have been complaining the whole of this season's bazaar. Late spring, cool summer, less forage than they're used to, less game as well. Everyone talked about the weather, almost as much as about the Maizan. Nobody wanted to travel either. A lot of those who came did so because they felt they had no choice. They couldn't wait to be away, and didn't expect ever to be back. Why are they so scared, Rool?" "You ask a brownie about Daikini?" 'The only Daikini available doesn't appear much in the mood for conversation." She made broth for herself and Rool and the Daikini, found meat in her pouch for Bastian. She didn't feel terribly hungry, though, and sat cross-legged across the fire from the Daikini, staring intently at him. "You're going to do something foolish, aren't you?" She offered Rool a lopsided quirk of the mouth that made him shake his head in dismay. "Elora, Elora," he repeated. "I can't do spells." "Bless Cherlindrea for that godsend." "But I've learned from Thom and Torquil to draw forth the inborn power of all natural things. If I can remind stones of what it was like to be warm, why not a body of when it was whole and healthy?" "A rock is not a person. Its essence is simple, as is the task required of ic, "I can't think of any other way to help him, Rool." "Not everybody can be helped, Elora. Sometimes you have to let go. She nodded her head one way, then the other, agreeing with him yet at the same time objecting passionately. This time passion won out. She sat close by the Daikini, letting an uncharacteristic calmness Bow out from the center of her being to wrap herself in a blanket of serenity. The fire blazed high, sending a whirlwind cascade of sparks skyward, its behavior a stark contrast to her own, becoming increas- ingly wild as she grew more calm. Her skin gleamed in its light, as ideal a reflecting surface as the polished metal she resembled, painted in flickering shades of scarlet and rose. To Elora, there was no longer any sensation of being apart from the earth on which she sat. Her flesh and the world were growing one, the heat of blood rushing through her veins resonating in kind with the heat of the lava that raced beneath the planetary crust. Gradually, wondrously, the world's strength became her own. Without a physical move, she reached out to the Daikini, seeking to establish a similar rhythm with him. His heartbeat was signifi- cantly faster, yet the force of each pulsation was fading markedly. No wound was mortal in and of itself but the cumulative effect was deadly. Too many insults to the body, too many demands on re- sources already stretched thin. So she offered him a measure of hers. She made her pulsebeat his, had her own heart bear the load of pumping his blood. At the same time she tempered his breathing so that each came more slowly and deeply. With his basic condition sta- bilized, she turned to each of his wounds in turn, reminding the tom flesh of what it was like to be whole. What the man's body would have done in days, given the chance, she charmed it into accomplish- ing over the passage of this single night. The energy to sustain the ef- fort came from her, as the strength she required was drawn from the earth itself. The healing was easier for her than for Thorn, because his essence was linked to the earth, while hers was to the primal fire at its core. The forces she could manifest were more intense and volatile, they re-