IN the distant haze where sky met sea, islands rose out of the sound like teeth marking the horizon. The water gleamed, as still and smooth as burnished metal; seen from the height of the ridge, the swells were lost under the glare of the sun. The carter and the guardsmen paused on the path to wipe their brows against the terrible heat.

He had no shelter and no water to slake his thirst, and anyway over the numberless days of his captivity he had grown accustomed to the sun's hammer. Today was especially hot and humid although he had an idea that it ought to be cooler, but he couldn't remember why, and there was no wind at all, only the expectation of wind and a pressure in his ears as though someone were squeezing the air all around them. The heavens to the west and north were hazy along the ocean but clear above, while thunderous clouds had piled up and up in a black mass to the east and south.

'Don't like the look of that," said Heric to his fellows, nodding to the east. "Must be a mighty tempest. Hsst! I've never seen clouds like those, not in all my life."

'Let's get on," said Ulf the carter. "I don't like being exposed up on this ridge."

'Dragonback, the townsfolk call it!" snickered Heric. "No doubt some girl or other does creep up here on a dark night with her lover to make dragonback! I'd do it!"

Ulf sighed. "The folk in Osna village weren't too friendly, neither. I didn't see no girls making eyes at us. I wish we was going back to Lavas Holding and rid of this stinking creature."

'Soon enough," said Heric. "We've a few holdings and villages yet to ride through before we're safe home."

Ulf snorted, scratching his nose, then spat on the dirt. He was not an unkind man, but he clung to his superstitions. "If we get safe home! Those clouds look ugly to me. These locals aren't any too happy to see us, neither. They're too worried about bad weather and a poor harvest to mind that foul creature."

'It's him what ruined their harvests with untimely rain and cold snaps! Brought about by his sin!"

'Maybe so." Ulf shrugged. The other three guardsmen yawned; they followed Heric's orders and ate their food but otherwise hadn't any enthusiasm for the job. "But enough's enough, that's what I say."

'Get on!" said Heric irritably. He had a willow switch and with this he slapped his mount's croup to get it moving.

Ulf had a softer hand on the oxen. The cart lurched forward and they creaked down the path at a steady clop. A scatter of buildings lay beyond the tail of the ridge, arranged around a roofless church and a stone tower, which was still intact. For a bit they lost sight of the ruins as the path reached the base of the ridge, wound through a tumble of boulders and then, turning to loam, struck through a quiet forest, but soon they emerged into overgrown fields and trudged up past broken gates to take shelter for the night in the tower. Ulf watered the oxen at a stream and set them to graze, and the horses were given their oats and let wander within what remained of the fence that had once kept livestock within the compound.

Before building a fire for their supper, they rolled the wagon up along one side of the church, offering a bit of shelter if it stormed. From here he could stare at the curving ridgeline or out over a stony beach onto the sound. The water was so still that it seemed like solid ground, where a man might walk for leagues and leagues on its surface out into the wild lands beyond the guardian islands. Out there, strange creatures traveled and wept, or so he remembered. There were fish with the faces of men and men with claws in their hands who raced across the sea on ships as sleek and effortless as dragons.

Memory came in flashes as sharp and as brief as lightning.

That window, half obscured by a rosebush run wild, opened into the scriptorium. The monastery boasted a precious Book of Unities bound between covers plated with gold and encrusted with jewels.

'I know this place," he whispered. He saw in his mind's eye an old man leaning on a stick, dressed in monk's robes. But he was dead, wasn't he? Hadn't they all died? The storm had come in off the sea and slaughtered them all and burned and destroyed their home as it would sweep in again.

'Shut him up, will you?" demanded Heric. "All that babbling about dead dead dead makes me want to hit him across the face, and I will!"

'Poor mad soul," muttered Ulf, but the carter brought him a crust of bread to gnaw on and, quite unexpectedly, a skin of ale so rich that he had to sip at it and not gulp it down lest he spew it all back up. At first it unsettled his stomach, but then it warmed him enough that he could curl onto the hard bed of the wagon amidst the remains of dirty straw, shut his eyes, and doze as the guardsmen gossiped by their fire in the shelter of the deserted tower. He heard their voices. "Don't like the look of the sky."

'What, them clouds? Not enough wind to blow them over us." "Nay, look at the color of that sky. It's not natural. There's some terrible nasty storm coming, mark my word."

'What bitch's tits did you suckle from? You've been barkening to the madman's voice."

'Oh, shut up, Heric. What have you got against him anyway?" "He stole my girl!" "A filthy beast like that? Not likely."

'He was all cleaned up in a lord's tunic and bright jewels. Of course he stole her! Thief and cheat-"

Thief and cheat, he slipped into darkness and he dreamed. A noble youth sleeps in the midst of a heap of gold and gems with six companions surrounding him, but out of the shadows creep gnarled figures whose skin gleams like pewter, whispering and tapping, seeking.

Seeking, rivers of fire forge new paths deep within the Earth, and the world trembles.

The storm is upon them.

The Holy One bends her gray head as she watches the sun set. From her vantage point beside the stone crown, the farthest east of its kind, she watches the weaving plotted and planned in ancient days come to life once more in the hands of those who are now her enemies, not her allies.

She is so weary. A part of her hopes this night will be her last, that she is too old to endure the force of the storm. She does not weep, because she has lived too long and made too many difficult choices to weep any longer along the trail of years, a path down which she can never return or retrace her steps.

But there was one whom she loved unforeseeably, inexplicably. Sorcery exacts a cost, although humankind in their immense arrogance have not always understood this principle, and each gesture, each choice, will be counterbalanced by a consequence of equal weight. Yet affection drowns reason. Although she knew it for a foolish act, she reached onto the paths of the dead and expended more power than she ought because she wanted to make happy the one she loved like a daughter. Adica. She had no daughter of her own among the Horse people; that was forbidden. She loved too well where she should not have loved at all, and that act of love rebounded on her in a way she never anticipated or desired. By meddling in the paths of the dead she dislodged the stream of her own soul.

For so long death has been denied her. She witnessed the unfolding effects of her great undertaking, and all did not transpire as she hoped it would. She lived while her people slowly died off and diminished, as humankind migrated into their ancient homeland, stole or gelded their puras, and hunted down their daughters one by one. She wants to sleep, but she must stay wakeful in order to save her people, whom she doomed although she never meant to. She will stay awake one more night and then she will lie down and die and let others carry the burden she has carried for so long.

Be careful what you wish for "Now!" cries Stronghand, heeding the command of the WiseMothers. He leaps forward with ax raised high. The blade glints and where light flashes Lightning turns the sky white and in the place of thunder he hears a hoarse, gleeful battle cry as the ground begins to shake 'Ai, God! Ai, God! Get the horses!"

He shuddered awake, startled up by the earth shaking under him, and jerked to the end of his chains as he stared at the shadows of men chasing their mounts off into the forest to the north. Even the oxen tossed their heads and trotted away, spooked by that earthquake; Ulf, cursing, ran after them. Iron bit into his wrists and ankles, drawing blood, as he strained after them, but they had forgotten him.

Overhead, the sky was a sheet of lightning that veiled the stars, painting the heavens a color as loathsome as that of a corpse, life and soul drained from it. Along the shoreline the water had receded far out past the line of ebb tide, exposing the seabed and a line of sharp rocks along the curve of the ridge. Fish flopped in the shallows. He drew in breath, although the air felt like soup in his lungs.

A rumbling roar shook the ground and pitched the cart sideways so hard that it tumbled over onto one side and the post to which he was bound cracked and broke in half. The tower groaned as it leaned sideways and then in a roar collapsed entirely. Dust and grit rolled over him, choking him. He lay stunned, hearing the screams of panicked horses far away.

The wind dissipated the cloud with a sudden fierce blow that blasted the shroud of dust out over the sea.

The ground hadn't done shifting. It pitched and yawed as though it were alive and when he was able to lift his pounding head, he saw the great Dragonback Ridge splinter as sheets of rock cascaded onto the waters of the sound. It buckled. The noise of its shattering deafened him. The booming and crashing hurt his ears so badly that it brought tears to his eyes. It moved.

The dragon's tail lashed sideways, snapping trees. As its flank heaved up, dirt roared into the sound and buried the old shoreline. Where it lifted a claw and set it down, the earth shook. Atop a slender neck, its head lifted into the heavens. It slewed round its vast body, bent its neck, and lowered its head down to the ground not a stone's toss from his cage where he lay trapped by his chains. He struggled to his knees to face it.

It had scales the color of gold, so bright that he squinted. Its eyes had the luster of pearls. A single tear of blood squeezed from a cut on its belly, splashed, then coursed down through the furrows made by its claws to gush over him. That viscous liquid burned right through his rags, down to his heart.

My heart is the Rose. Any heart is the Rose of Healing that knows compassion and lets it bloom.

He stared in shock at the creature's beauty as it blinked, examining him in return, then huffed a cloud of steam, reared its head up, and opened its vast wings. Their span shadowed the entire monastery. It bunched its haunches, waited a breath, ten breaths, a hundred breaths.

He heard the gale coming before he felt it; he heard it cutting through the forest, downing trees, a wailing wind out of the southeast.

The wind hit. The dragon leaped.

The gale whipped over him. The dragon's shadow passed, the weight of its draft battering him down. The sea raged out beyond the shore. God have mercy on any soul caught out in this storm, but every soul on Earth was caught in this storm whether they willed it or no, whether they huddled in shelter or braced themselves against it out in the open. The stars had gone out. All he could see above was a swirling haze mixed of dust and ash and wind and blowing foliage and trailing sparks from the vast net of the weaving that Adica had made and that was now at long last finished.

Someone would have to pick up the pieces.

The roar of the sea filled his ears and a huge wave swept over him although no wave could ever possibly wash so high up on the ground. He rolled in surf, caught under water, pinioned by the chains.

He drowned.

On the northeastern shore of the Middle Sea where the center jewel in the Crown of Stars blazes in glory, the Earth opens up to engulf the crown in a pillar of molten fire. Across the land the Crown of Stars and the spell woven through it tangles and collapses in on itself. A shadow emerges out of the air to materialize up against the knife edge cliffs that abut this shoreline of the Middle Sea.

All down the western shoreline of the great boot ofAosta the ridge of volcanoes shakes into life. Lava surges out of the earth. Cracks yawn in once quiet fields. Mud and ash bury slopes and towns and streams.

The ocean churns as all the water displaced by the returning land floods outward, heading for distant coasts. Where the tidal wave hits, the shoreline is utterly drowned.

The Earth groans. Along the northern sea the mouths of rivers run dry as the land jolts a finger's span upward to counterbalance the abrupt weight that has slammed into the Middle Sea. In places, rivers run backward. Ports are left high and dry.

Everywhere the ground shakes. The windstorm that raked across the broad lands dissipates in wilderness where there are only dumb, uncomprehending beasts to sniff at its last gasping residue.

Deep in the earth, goblins race through ancient labyrinths, seeking their lost halls.

Out in the ocean, the merfolk circle, diving deep to escape the maelstrom above.

Out on the steppe lands, the Horse people hunker down in hollows that offer them some protection against the howling wind. The magic of the Holy One shelters them even as it drains the life right out of her.

Those who were most harmed in ancient days ride out the storm, for they have the least to lose now. It is humankind who suffer most. Maybe Liat'at'dano knew all along that this would be the case; maybe she planned it this way, harming the two greatest threats to her people-the Cursed Ones and her human allies.

Maybe the WiseMothers suspected humankind would take the brunt of the backlash. Maybe they had no choice, knowing that the belt was already twisted, that the path was already cleared through the forest on which their feet must walk.

They speak to him through rock and through water, although the salty sea almost drowns their voice.

It. Is. Done. You. Have. Saved. Us.

The link retreats, and their presence withdraws.

The tidal wave sucked back into the sea, pulling every loose piece of debris with it into the sound. At first, the wagon was caught in that riptide, but the church wall trapped the wagon among its fallen stones and the chains held him. Battered but alive, he was left wheezing and choking on sodden ground as the water receded.

The sun came up. It was a cold, cloudy day; there was no blue sky visible, and an ashy haze muted the daylight, but nevertheless the world had survived. He had survived. He was weak and exhausted and sopping wet and hungry and thirsty and filthy and yet despite all this at peace.

It was done.

He had seen the beginning and now the ending. The crown of stars was obliterated. The Ashioi had returned from their exile.

'Lord save us!" said a man's voice, heard as through a muffling cloak. "Can anyone have survived that? Go on, then, boys!"

Hounds barked. He heard them pattering through pools of muddy water, paws slip-slapping on the ground. He tried to open his eyes, but a salty grime encrusted them, and it wasn't until tongues licked him, wiping away all that blinded him, that he could see again.

'Sorrow!" he whispered. "Rage!"

They whined as they bumped up against him, waggling their hindquarters in ecstasy. They were thin, and scruffy, and overjoyed. The salt had cracked the bindings that shackled him, and as the hounds swarmed over him, the chains fell away.

A man loomed into view. He uttered a gasp of shock, or a murmured curse, or perhaps a prayer.

"Alain?" He knelt beside him but didn't touch him, not yet. Instead he dragged the heavy chains off his body. He was weeping. "I heard, lad, but I had to see for myself. They said you'd gone over the ridge. And that storm! Ai, Lady. There's at least three dead in the village and I haven't been back home yet to see how Bel and the others fared. My God. What man could be so cruel as to treat another man in this way?"

He cracked open his eyes. "Father?"

Henri looked much older; he had many more lines on his face, and his hair was gray. But the face was so blessedly familiar, so beloved. There were tears on the merchant's cheeks.

'Ai, God, lad, can you forgive me? Even though you weren't the old count's son, you never deserved this. I raised you better than to lie and cheat in such a way. I suppose the old count chose for himself and how could you say him nay? There was a girl he'd bedded who bore a stillborn child near or about when you was born. He might have thought otherwise, might have insisted you were his. Old sorrows take men that way sometimes. I should have trusted you. I should have known you better. That's how I failed you, Son."

The words spilled out in a rush as strong as the tide, leaving Alain stranded and out of breath. He was still dazzled and shaken and stricken, and the hounds were laying half on top of him, pressing as close as they could.

Henri frowned, wiped away tears, and spoke again. "Off, you brutes!"

Amazingly the hounds crept back meekly, their soft growls more like groans of protest. Hesitant, as if he wasn't sure he had the right to touch him, Henri laid a hand on Alain's arm. "Here, lad. Come now, get up. Lean on me."

With help, Alain was able to stand, although his legs were shaky. The sea churned, the water a foamy, dirty gray, and the islands were half hidden within the murky haze. The ruins had been washed clean by the tide, and debris littered the old shoreline, but the strangest sight of all was the new inlet carved out where Dragonback Ridge had once risen. Trees lay tumbled like so many scattered sticks down a ragged, rocky slope that was cut, where the earth met the water, into channels separated by the heaps of dirt and rock that had sprayed out into the sound when the dragon woke. Along the curve of the bay, distant and mostly obscured by haze, he saw the tiny cottages and longhouses marking Osna village up on its rise overlooking the strand. The village was more or less intact as far as he could tell from this distance.

Henri stared, too. The hounds sat patiently. "I've never seen such a night as that," said the merchant in a quavering voice. "That dragon come alive. That tempest. That wave off the sea. It took Mis tress Garia's granddaughter with it. Maybe it's the end of days, after all. Maybe so."

'It is the end," said Alain, surprised at how steady his voice was. He glanced down at his naked body and was shocked to see how wasted and thin he'd become. "It is the beginning, too. There'll be hard times to come. But I pray the folk of Osna village have faced the worst. I pray they will be spared any greater hardships."

Henri looked at him searchingly, and with an odd expression of respect. "Do you know of this? Do you know if it were God's hands that brushed us?"

'I know of it. It was humankind caused this, not God."

The merchant reached up and wiped at his cheek, then frowned. "What's this mark on your face? You hadn't such a birthmark before. Is it a scar? It looks like a rose."

The Lady's Rose. For so long he had misunderstood what it was-or maybe the Lady of Battles had. Maybe she had misled him. Maybe the Lady of Battles was not his patron but his enemy.

'It's the Rose of Healing, Father. It's to remind me of how much there is to do. Adica didn't mean to cause so much harm, but now someone has to try to pick up the pieces. I'll do it. I must. But if I could just sleep a little first. If I could just eat something..."

'Bel will have my head! You've been starved and treated no better than a wild dog. Here, now, come along." He began walking. Alain had to lean on him to stay upright, but it was easy enough; Henri had a strong arm. "I've a cloak to cover you and a horse for you to ride. You look too ill and worn to walk so far."

'Where are we going?"

'Home, Son. We're going home."