Thyerri biinked. The hand he rested on . . . the entire arm . . . glowed with faint green light.

"Mother?" he whispered, aloud this time, but there was no response, and the glow neither scintillated nor eva- nesced. He knew then, it wasn't Mother, but only the mountain, calling to whomever could hear.

Needing freedom, needing moonlight and cleansing breezes, he slid free of his pallet and covers, stepped over sleeping bodies and crawled out the window to the alley.

There were ways out of the old village, passages through the stone that were older than the city wall, passages Rhyys' City Guard didn't know about. Thyerri's feet fol- lowed one such without benefit of thought, and when next he came to his senses, the mountain was beneath his feet, and moonshadowed forest surrounded him.

He came to the lake and threw himself in, diving deep, feeling the energy tingling through him, dissipating at last into the icy glacier-melt water. And at the edges of his senses, there was a presence that called to him.

(Mother!} he shouted again, begging for an answer, seek- ing asylum from the wild ebb and flow of energy.

Still, there was nothing, though his mind began to spin for lack of air.

Lungs straining, he pulled at last for the surface. He broke free, gasping, and trod water. Water that glistened green in the silver moonlight. Glowing with energy, as Thy- erri himself glowed.

As someone on the shore of the lake glowed.

Someone who was watching him.

The energy ebbed at last, flowed from the air and himself and the lake . . . and that statue-still figure on the shore.

And as the last of the glow faded, the moon hid behind a cloud, leaving them all in darkness.

When the moon returned, the figure was gone.

~ ~