"The same way we sealed the Nightland in the first place," said Mendark. "But it's a mighty spell. I'm not sure I have the strength for it any longer. My whole body is screaming."

Malien's pale face was spotted with drops of sweat. "And mine," she panted, "far worse than my shoulder does." She rolled over on her good side, retching into the dust of the floor. Tallia helped her back up and wiped her face.

"We can still leave it," Yggur said hoarsely.

"Not like this," said Mendark. "Once started, we've got to go all the way."

Steam began to wisp out from several points along the crack. The floor moved once more. Yggur was partly paralyzed down one side now, terror of his great enemy almost overcoming him.

"Mendark!" Shand shouted urgently. "You're pushing Yggur beyond his limits."

"No more than I push myself," Mendark said contemptuously.

At that, Yggur's head jerked up. "Must-do it!" he forced out, slurring his words, only one side of his mouth moving. His voice droned as if he blew the words down a long pipe. "I'll-prepare."

He wrested control of himself again. "I know the Proscribed Experiments better than any of you. Get the green dust ready. When I say, blow it over the portal and the whole of the model from all sides at once. Mendark-you, Tallia and Malien must keep it there long enough for me to do my work. I will draw power from the rift one last time, energize the ruby rod and fuse the emerald to the model-an impervious coating that will, with luck, seal the Nightland up tight."

"I don't like it," said Malien. "Already-" She was interrupted by a blast of pressurized steam from the crack, then another behind her. "The rift grows unstable. You've taken too much power from it already."

The floor shook underfoot. Steam issued from three or four places, forming mist in the room. "I think something just shifted below us," whispered Tallia.

"We've no choice," Mendark said. "Just do it!" While they prepared he conferred with Yggur about details of the Nightland and the requirements of the Secret Art.

Tallia squatted down beside Malien. "Better get everyone out who isn't needed," she said, "then if the worst happens, at least some of us will be saved."

"Saved for what?" choked Yggur.

SEALING THE GATE.

I can feel him sneering at us," Yggur wept, mopping his brow. Though Tallia was just as afraid, she had to resist the urge to smack him in the face.

"Nonsense!" said Mendark. "Get control of yourself."

Yggur straddled the rift, which was now a finger-wide crack running right across the floor, walls and ceiling. A bubbling, hissing sound could be heard in the depths. He strained to lock the dimensions of the Nightland into his mind, and then to summon power from the rift for the last time.

"Ready?" Mendark asked softly.

"Yes!" said Tallia, who held a tube filled with emerald dust to her lips. At the other quarters stood Asper, Xarah and Basitor, each with their own tubes out.

Malien stood by Mendark to aid with the channelling. Shand supported her. The others had already gone up the ladder.

"When I count three," said Mendark, looking over the barrel of the ampliscope into Yggur's eyes. "And as soon as you are done, get your head down and cover your eyes."

Yggur nodded. His cheek spasmed, then he took control again.

"One!" said Mendark, checking around the circle. Everyone was as ready as they would ever be.

"Two!" He closed his eyes to summon up the image of the Nightland clear and bright in his mind.

The bloodstone sphere glowed in the mist. Tallia felt a cold knot of fear grow in the pit of her stomach.

"He's too strong," Yggur whispered. "He's so strong! I can feel him, holding back our efforts, conserving his own strength until we make a mistake. How can we not? None of us knows what we're doing."

"He's weak!" said Mendark with scorn. "He's bluffing because he has to. Now remember, this is a delicate process. Not too much power. Yggur?"

Sweat was pouring down Yggur's cheeks; his eyes were staring.

"Yggur!" shouted Mendark. "We're hanging over the abyss. Get hold of yourself. Can you do it? If not, then get the hell out of the way so someone else can." He was hard put to keep the contempt out of his voice, and the whole room knew it.

There was a lengthy pause. "I can do it," Yggur said with a shudder. He dashed sweat out of his eyes.

Tallia sighed with relief.

Mendark beat his arm up and down, one, two. "Three!" The word came out like a whipcrack.

As one they blew the dust directly at the model, then dropped flat to the floor with their hands over their eyes. For an instant the dust glittered green all over the sphere, then Yggur erupted defiance, sucked in a mighty breath and a fountain of light roared from the end of the ruby rod.

"Too much!" Tallia heard Mendark scream, then she was blinded by a cataclysmic burst of light from the model. It poured through her hands, her closed eyelids; for an instant it overwhelmed all her senses. Then it was gone into the dark.

It did not begin again for some time. Rulke was quite spent, sitting with his back to the ice pane, dozing but waking every few minutes to check on the gate. Karan fetched a quilt from the bedroom and wrapped herself and Llian in it, watching and waiting. It was a strange feeling to be reliant on their enemy for everything, to identify so closely with his own hopes and fears. Yet at the same time, she knew of his reputation for treachery and trickery, and dared not trust him. Karan was very afraid.

The palace shuddered and the walls thinned further. Karan could see through room after room as if the walls, and the contents of each room, were made of glass. More energy gone, she realized. Only the construct retained its solidity now.

"Ugh!" cried Llian, who had begun to sink into the floor. Even that was failing. She helped him out.

"I'm starving," Llian said hoarsely.

Rulke looked up at him with dull eyes. "In my bedroom, which you have already used, you will find a flask and some meal tablets. Bring them here."

Karan ran off, returning with the flask and a handful of little cubes like large dice made of baked dough, which she passed through the porthole. Rulke shared them out equally, washed down with a couple of swallows each from the flask. It did not satisfy but it was better than nothing.

"I've been thinking about what you said earlier," Llian said to Rulke.

"Oh!" said Rulke, uninterested.

"About tricking them. I've been watching the way you fight them. Perhaps I presume too much, to-"

"You do, but get on with it! Damned chroniclers, you never use one word when a hundred will do."

"You go straight at them with all your strength," said Llian. "A poor strategy here, I should think."

"It's served me well enough in the past," Rulke replied listlessly.

"You attack your enemies as though you were stronger than them. Once you were, I know, but not here." Llian paused, searching for the right words.

"Do you have any more advice for me, puny man?"

"I've never been good at physical things," said Llian, "save one."

"Two," Karan murmured, running her hand down the inside of his thigh.

Rulke gave her a disgusted glance. "You're like a pair of rabbits!"

"I was champion arm-wrestler at the college," said Llian. "I often beat men more powerful than me. They think it's a contest of strength, but it's really like staring someone down. It's a battle of wills."

"Go on," said Rulke. "Perhaps you wish to challenge me one day." He flexed a bicep the size of Llian's thigh. "What is your tactic?"

"It takes a lot more strength to force than to hold. I-just hold my opponent while he uses up his strength trying to force my arm down. After a few minutes, when our muscles are screaming, I give a little. He forces with all his might, thinking me done, but I hold him again. And again! Finally I put a defeated expression on my face, and the last time he forces, as soon as he stops I slam his arm the other way with all my strength. He is beaten!"

"There's more to you than there appears, chronicler," said Rulke. "Though-"

The ice pane rippled. He lurched back to the plate.

The struggle began again, though before long it was clear that Rulke was losing. The glow of the gate-stone was as bright as the sun at midday, the spears and splinters of bursting light sprayed out in all directions, pocking the pane like a cheese grater. The mist roiled like steam from a volcano.

Gasping, wild-eyed, Rulke fell to his knees, holding out his clenched fists, his whole body wracked by shudders. The light faded to nothing. He lowered his head to the floor, resting on a tripod of knees and forehead. There was complete silence.

"What's he doing?" Karan whispered.

"I don't know," Llian whispered back. "I can feel pressure building though."

The walls and the pane vibrated, giving out a low gong-sound that made the bones of their skulls quiver. Then the plate exploded with light so bright that they had to shield their eyes. The pane of ice evaporated in an instant. Rulke screamed, a tortured wail that echoed and echoed, ringing like a bell through the spaces of the vast room. He toppled onto his face and lay still.

"That's that then," said Llian in a parched voice.

"Oh, you fool. You bloody, bloody fool!" said Mendark.

Tallia opened her eyes, and at first it seemed that Yggur had succeeded after all. The model hung in the air a moment, lines smeared into a blur of yellow. At one place on the sphere there was a faint tinge of green-the place where the portal had been.

"Yes, you've done it!" she cried.

"No," said Mendark, crushed as if the whole weight of the tower had descended on his shoulders.

There was no green coating on the rest of the sphere. Yggur's blast had boiled the emerald dust to vapor.

Yggur swayed on his feet, eyes staring, mouth open.

As they watched, the light-shape slowly faded, but before it went out a cone-shaped plug of green glass dropped free and cracked in two on the floor. The floor heaved under their feet, steam issuing from a dozen vents.

"You-cretin!" Mendark ground out, in a fury so wild that he was practically incoherent. "You used too much power by a hundred times."

"You drove him much too far," said Shand. "I warned you, Mendark."

"I can't see," wept Yggur, watery fluid pouring from his staring eyes. "Can't see anything at all." He still clutched the ampliscope in one hand, though it was useless now, the ruby rod sagging down at the end like rubber. "I am so afraid."

"Is this the end?" Tallia asked. "Can we do no more?"

"We're finished," said Mendark. "No possibility of sealing it now."

"I'm afraid," Yggur repeated in doleful tones.

"You threw away our only chance. I knew you could not be relied upon."

"Then why did you push him?" Tallia snapped.

"Because I had no choice!"

"No point blaming each other," Malien said. "Let's get up the ladder while we still can."

Tallia bent down to pick up the plug of melted emerald. As her fingers closed over the pieces a shockwave passed through the floor and she heard a low, rumbling, grinding sound from underneath. Steam began to belch out all along the vent. Yggur, who still stood straddling the rift, was thrown off his feet.

"Light!" Mendark shouted. Each brought out their light-glasses. One side of the rift had moved up and it now gaped wide enough to put a leg inside. A burning blast of air came up.

"We'll never get out!" cried Xarah, running round in circles through the mist.

Above them the foundations shrieked and groaned. Tallia felt a growing terror-they were going to be entombed here and slowly burned to death.

"Tallia!" Shand shouted. "Help me."

They shepherded the cripples-Yggur and Malien-to the ladder and helped them onto it. The others were already moving up. Tallia was very weak; such aftersickness she had never felt before. The others looked just as bad.

She hung off the bottom of the ladder with Shand, watching them go. Mendark had already disappeared and Yggur, despite not being able to see, climbed very quickly.

"Go on," said Malien, supporting her shoulder. "I'll be slow. I'll go last."

"No," said Tallia. "You may need my help. You go, Shand."

He folded his arms and smiled. "I've lived more life than I ever wanted, Tallia. After you."

She nodded thanks and turned to the ladder. Malien was climbing slowly, one-handed. Tallia followed close behind, not looking up, for there was a constant rain of dust and pieces of crystalline crust from above. The ladder shook continuously now, once so hard that Malien lost her grip and would have fallen had not Tallia been right against her. Malien gave a grunt of pain, which for her surely indicated that she was in agony. Tallia trapped her between her body and the ladder until she took hold again.

"How is your shoulder, Malien?"

"In the entire span of my life I have never felt worse," Malien replied, sagging against her. "And I think this will be the end of it."

"I think so too."

The earth quaked again. Above them the foundations wailed like tortured demons. Tallia looked down. Shand was just below her feet, climbing steadily. "How are you doing, Shand?"

He did not look up. "All right, though it's getting hot and I can smell the fumes again."