Burning sulphur. Tallia's nose was itching and her eyes watered. "Can you go any faster, Malien?"

Malien accelerated a little, though she could not keep it up. A puff of white fumes rushed past them, sending them all into a fit of coughing, then dispersed in the chamber above. They kept on. The rumbling and groaning grew ever louder.

"How can it survive?" Tallia said to herself.

"The tower? It can't if this keeps up," Shand grunted. "Though it was very well built."

"The foundation chamber is just above," Malien called. "We're halfway. I've got to rest for a minute."

They clambered off the ladder onto solid floor, though that now shifted like waves on the sea. The rest of the group were also resting there, in spite of the danger. Two Aachim were monitoring the shifting foundations, fascinated by the way they were built.

"Why hasn't it fallen?" Basitor panted. "It's already at its limit."

"The rift moved that way," said Asper, pointing. "Should it slide any further in this direction, or move up, over she goes!"

"Look at this cable! The outer spring is broken. The cable must soon snap."

Just then they heard a hollow cry, "Xarah, Xarah!" and her twin hurtled down the ladder, her brown hair flying. Tallia could not help smiling. They were truly inseparable.

"Shalah, I'm here," shouted Xarah. "I'm safe." She ran toward Shalah with her arms out.

As Shalah jumped off the ladder, the rock gave a mighty shudder and one of the subsidiary anchor cables snapped. The free end lashed across the room, just missing Shand's face, to strike Shalah in the chest with the force of a log careering down a mountainside. She was slammed against the wall, slid down it and came to rest on the floor, her head resting against the stone.

"Shalah!" Xarah cried, racing over to her. "Shalah, are you all right?"

Tallia ran too. Shalah's eyes were open. She gave her twin a sad little smile and her eyes glazed over.

"Shalah!" Xarah shrieked. "Speak to me!"

Nudging Tallia out of the way, Asper checked Shalah carefully, though it was clear that she was dead. Her chest was crushed and her neck broken. He arranged her on the floor, closing her eyes with his fingertips. Tallia bowed her head.

"Come on!" Mendark shouted. "That cable is going to go."

They raced for the ladder. Xarah had to be carried, kicking and screaming. She could not abandon her sister, even now. They reached the ground floor and the Aachim rushed around trying to find a way out. There must have been secret doors but, though they hammered everywhere, they could not identify them.

At that moment the earth moved again, a different way, and from below came a shrieking groan that told of the foundation blocks being driven beyond their limits. The whole floor tilted beneath their feet, jerked upwards and jerked again.

"Up, you bloody idiots!" Mendark screamed and they all hurtled back to the ladder.

"Four floors to go," Tallia said. "Then back down two, out of the tower and across the bridge. If we can do that we have a chance."

"Unless the tower falls our way."

A low-pitched zipping sound raced up one side of the tower.

"The cable's gone," said Shand. "That's it!"

"Keep going," Malien gritted.

The tower lurched much more sharply up on one side, tilting the floor and the ladder. Just past the second floor, cracks began to appear in the wall where the cable had run. They widened rapidly, plaster showering down on their heads. As they climbed, stagger-kneed, through the fourth floor, a block of stone slid out of one of the curved bays to crash at their toes. Suddenly with a gush of stone and dust a hole appeared in the wall and they saw the minarets and domes of the fortress beyond.

"This way!" Tallia gasped, pointing to the hole. "Out through the hole."

"No!" cried Shand. "It'll fall that way."

A blast of burning air roared up past them, bringing choking fumes in its wake. Looking down, Tallia saw a red line far below, ebbing out of the rift.

Now they were just below the fifth level, Tensor's gate chamber. "I can't ... go any further," said Malien.

"It's just a little way," said Tallia, watching the cracks in the wall grow wider.

"Go on! My arm and my legs have cramped. I can't move!"

THE FALL OF.

THE TOWERS.

Is he dead?" Karan whispered when she could see again. They raced across a floor that was soggy in places, an icy slush in others. Blisters were forming on the side of Rulke's face that had been toward the blast.

"No," said Llian, carefully feeling a pulse in Rulke's throat. "But if he dies, we will too. See if you can find some water, quickly!"

Karan ran off. Llian squatted down beside the fallen giant-the great enemy who would surely use him if he recovered. But if he did not, they were trapped in the Nightland for the term of their lives.

After a few minutes Rulke groaned and opened his eyes. One eyelid was blistered too, and he seemed to be having trouble focusing. "Is it you, chronicler?" he whispered, putting up a feeble hand. Llian gave the Charon his hand. Rulke hung his head for a minute, panting, then his eyes focused. He flashed a smile that, in spite of their peril, Llian found strangely warming.

"We won," Rulke said. "We beat them! A good strategy, chronicler."

"So they didn't seal the gate?"

"No, it's not even closed."

"Then they could still ... invade?"

"It's possible. I don't dare close it, chronicler, lest I be unable to open it again."

"Oh!" said Llian, trying to control his reactions. That meant there was still a chance of escape. He stared at the Charon's ravaged face, wondering what would happen to them now. "Are you ... all right?"

Rulke shoved himself to his feet, but had to clutch at Llian's shoulder for support. "I've not felt this bad in a good age," he said, inspecting his injuries reflected on the construct: the blistered face and bloodshot eyes. His hands and fingers were burned from his encounter with Rulke's emerald rod, not to mention Karan's knife wound through his palm. "Ah, how it wracks me!"

He shook himself, muttering words that seemed to be some kind of cantrip to postpone exhaustion. He flexed his muscles and stood unaided. "But I cannot rest yet. So much to do and to learn. And you can help me there!" he said vehemently.

Alarmed, Llian moved back a step. The floor had solidified again. Rulke sprang after him. How could he have recovered so quickly?

"So, will you aid me?" asked Rulke softly. He took Llian by the arm. "I will reward you handsomely if you do. But if you don't ..."

"Hold on," Tallia said. She climbed around Malien on the ladder, careful of her shoulder, and seized her good arm. "Shand, can you push her up?"

Shand put his head up between Malien's legs, settled her weight on his shoulders, took one, two, three steps up the ladder, then they all tumbled to the floor of the gate chamber.

The walls were beginning to come apart, the nine-leaved clover shape separating along the seams. The floor tilted even further, part of the ceiling fell, then with a roar one whole bay of the room fell out. Tallia heaved Malien over her shoulder, finding her very heavy for her size, then she and Shand staggered over the rubble, their steps ringing on the crumpled remains of the metal door.

Just outside the door she stumbled over a woman's body. It was the powerfully built engineer, Thel, crushed under a fallen block of stone. The air was so full of dust and smoke that Tallia could not see at all. The stairway was littered with rubble and more coming down all the time. Taking Tallia's hand, Shand led her down, guiding his way by the wall. At the fourth level they could see in one side and out the other. The spiraling cables of stone were unraveling. But even as they watched the tower swayed back, the cracks closing up again.

"Keep going," Shand rasped. "Just a little way now!"

Pieces of rubble were rolling and clattering down the stairs. One bounding fragment the size of a football struck Shand in the backside, knocking him over. To Tallia's relief he got up again, sporting a bloody nose. He grimaced, holding his buttock.

Just ahead was the western bridge that led out of the Great Tower into the fortress. They put on a final, hobbling burst as the tower tilted once again. A gap appeared between the end of the bridge and the landing. Rock was breaking all around them with snaps and roars.

Tallia ran, her knees wobbly. With an effort that she felt was going to burst her heart, she sprang, soaring over the gap with Malien on her shoulders. She landed on the bridge and her knees collapsed, sending them both skidding across the stone.

Malien shrieked in agony. Tallia lurched to her knees, knowing that she could carry her no further. Blood was dripping from her skinned knees. Shand was in a similar state. They began to crawl up the arching bridge, knowing that they were doomed, as the whole world began to shake itself to pieces above them.

A block of stone smashed on the bridge, making it vibrate. Another knocked a piece out of the side. More thudded against the paving stones below. The road cracked under them. Tallia was about to lie down to die when Osseion and a group of Aachim appeared in front of them, the ones who had gone up the previous day. The three were picked up, head and feet, and raced across the bridge as the stonework began to shake free of the metal supporting it.

The whole bridge began to crack apart into plates of stone that slid and shifted, opening crevasses that they had to leap over, then just as suddenly closing up again. The plates slid inward, a chaos that their bearers had to scramble over like goats. Tallia felt the surface drop beneath her, before Osseion flung them both onto the landing. Tallia looked up and saw a sight that would live with her all her life.

The Great Tower leaned a little more. Puffs of dust issued forth from the middle to the top, then the cables separated and the whole tower began to unweave. For a moment it looked as if the nine strands would fall separately, right on top of them; then as the tower leaned further it began to come apart at the top, block by block, and the top half fell in a shattering roar to the right, onto the domes and minarets of Katazza fortress, bringing many of them down as well. Pieces of lapis scattered in all directions, one cutting Shand's cheek. One of the great spring cables went wheeling across the sky, singing, to smash through the largest of the domes.

Last of all the platinum dome fell, soaring through the air to land half on, half off the side of the fortress with an almighty clang. It hung there, suspended, in one buckled piece. The lower parts of the tower began to slide down as well, then boiling dust covered the whole scene.

When all was still and the dust settled, they looked over what remained. Five of the nine stone cables were broken off down to the level of the bridges, while the other four stuck up in a jagged, tilted cluster circled by a ragged annulus of gold and lapis. Spring hawsers dangled out of two of them, still quivering. Behind them and to their left the fortress was undamaged, the towers and domes standing yet, but the other end was a ruin.

"Well," said Mendark, "that's finished us. No chance of making a gate to get us home now. We'll have to walk the Dry Sea in summer! That's never been done before. Thank you, Yggur! You've turned what should have been a victory into certain defeat"

"You should not have used the emerald against him," Tensor whispered. "After Rulke had such a victory over Yggur with it, how could you hope to master him?"

"You got us into this, Tensor, and refused to help," Men-dark snarled. "Don't bother to advise us now."

Yggur stared with sightless eyes over the ruin that was Katazza. "I was too afraid," he said yet again. "Too afraid."

They took stock of themselves. Those who had been down over the rift at the end-Yggur, Shand, Mendark, Asper, Malien, Basitor and Xarah-were burned and blistered about the face and hands from that last explosion of emerald light. Malien's shoulder wound had broken open in the fall on the bridge and urgently needed attention. Tensor was crippled, Yggur blind, and Xarah sat by herself, her eyes turned inward, not even weeping for her lost twin.

"Is there no hope at all of remaking the gate?" asked Tallia. Crossing the Dry Sea in summer was a nightmare that none of them was in any state to face.

As she spoke there was a mighty earth trembler and a fountain of molten rock and ash burst up from the rift on the other side of the fortress, twenty spans in the air.

"That's the fate of Katazza now," Mendark said. "Would you go in there again?"

There was no need to answer.

The Aachim had earlier brought all their packs and stores outside. They checked their gear, heaved packs over their shoulders and with a last look at the wonder and the tragedy that was Katazza they set off for the cliffs that led down to the Dry Sea.

"Shalah!" Xarah wept, her arms and legs thrashing; then they carried her away.

They headed down the winding western road, Shand leading tall Yggur. Then came Mendark and Osseion, the latter's huge frame dwarfed by his pack. Tallia walked by herself, dreading the thought of the Dry Sea, though she was better able to withstand it than most. The sixteen remaining Aachim followed her, nine walking in single file, then two carrying Malien. Two more at the rear bore Tensor on a stretcher, a bier for the living. The Histories had taught Tensor nothing.

What had once been the long island of Katazza was now a mountain chain girt by a series of cliffs and slopes that plunged near two thousand spans to the floor of the Dry Sea. It took five days, with all their cripples and encumbrances, to reach the old shore of the island and climb down the cliffs to the sea bed. The further down they went the hotter, drier and saltier it became.

At the base of the last cliff they climbed out of a shady cleft onto a scree slope crusted with salt. The air was so thick that it clotted in their throats; heavy and desiccating, and when the wind blew, which was most of the time, it carried salt dust that tormented eyes, ears and mouths. The heat was ghastly, like the inside of an oven, the afternoon sun a sledgehammer trying to pound them into scraps of bone and skin.

"This is unendurable," said Shand, holding his cloak over his head as he pushed back into the shade. The others followed. Minutes went by; no one moved, or even spoke. Tallia could see it in their eyes-the Dry Sea had defeated them already.

Some handled the heat better than others. Mendark, huddling at the furthest extremity of the cave, dried out before their eyes. The very skin of his face shrank so that each fiber of his scanty beard stuck out like a hairy goose-pimple.

Yggur was panting like a dog, sweat making rivers across his brow. He smeared the damp across his face in a futile attempt to cool himself, but the air sucked the moisture off him like a sponge.

"No one has ever walked the Dry Sea in summer," Yggur said. Alone of them all he had not crossed it to get here. "It's madness. I can't do it." He lapsed back into torpor.

"Still seven days till summer," said Shand. "It gets a lot hotter than this."

They sheltered in a cave all day and, come nightfall, had not the strength to begin their trek. The morning after, a debate raged for hours as to whether they could attempt the Dry Sea at all. Even the Aachim were for going back to Katazza until the end of autumn, hopeless and perilous as that seemed. Tallia fanned herself with her hat but did not add to the debate. She knew that they had no option.

Cracks opened in their skin and crusted with bloody salt that the midges sucked at constantly. Shand was so red in the face that he looked ready to explode, while Selial seemed incapable of sweating at all: her pallid skin flaked off her face like dandruff.

"How far was it from here to the lakes?" asked Malien of Osseion.

"Ten nights. But the nights were longer then."

"And cooler," said Tallia, fanning herself languidly. "And we were fit and well. It could take twice as long this time."

Malien eased her arm in its sling. The shoulder, though healing, still gave her a lot of pain. "If we go back we'll die there," she said.

"Or as good as," agreed Mendark. "Give Rulke half a year to prepare and we'll never stop him. I'm for going on, by myself if necessary." There was a trace of the noble sacrifice in his tone.

Osseion laughed disrespectfully. "By yourself, master? You do not command me?"

Mendark flushed. "Just you and me and Tallia!"

"All or none," said Malien.

They trudged through the night, the longest they'd ever suffered. Only one thing raised their spirits the whole time.

"I can see!" Yggur roared at the rising sun. "I can see!"

As it turned out he could not see very much; no more than the difference between light and darkness. However, it gave him hope that his sight would return. His bitterness eased somewhat.