Less time than I thought, Rulke said to himself. It'd better be enough!

Only minutes later, it seemed, it was time for Llian to begin again. Several days went by. But there was one last thing Rulke had to do before he brought Llian out of the trance. He bent down to speak in his ear.

"Come to me, when I return to Santhenar, and you will have your reward. My price is a tiny one. One day I will call, and you must come and tell me what you know. If Karan has survived you will bring her too, for I need her more than you. But just in case you don't want to pay your debt, I have put a compulsion on you, chronicler. Should you not come when I call, this is what you will feel. Understand that I take no pleasure from your pain. I do this because I must."

He tapped Llian lightly on the temple and instantly he convulsed, alternately wrapping his arms around his body and flinging them out. His eyes came open, but they were empty. Then Rulke touched him on the forehead again and Llian fell back into his former position.

"So little tolerance for pain," Rulke said to himself. "Truly they are a degenerate and undeserving species." Then aloud: "Will you come?"

Llian opened his eyes. "I will come," he said, and his voice was startlingly clear. He closed his eyes again.

"Wake now!"

Llian stirred and stood up, looking dazed. "What have you done to me?"

"Nothing you need worry about. I put you into a trance and you told me the Histories-enough to go on. If I need more and cannot find it elsewhere I will come to you again."

"What?" croaked Llian, swaying back and forth.

Rulke steadied him. "Time doesn't mean much here, but in the outside world three or four days have passed since you began. I have no further use for you."

"I can go?" His head throbbing, Llian sensed that a long time had passed, though it did not seem real.

"Yes, tell your friends that you escaped. What ruse you use to explain your escape ... well, you are a teller. I leave that to you. But be sure that you convince them, or you are no use to me and neither of us will get what we want. No, let me make it easier for you. Little point you being caught out in a lie at once. Sleep for a minute longer."

Llian dropped back into his trance. "Forget what I said," said Rulke softly. "Forget your betrayal too. Go across to the gate. When I wake you again, jump in and believe that you have escaped."

"I'm afraid of the gate," said Llian, his eyes still closed.

"And so you should be. This is the most unstable one I have ever encountered. But it's the only way out of here, for you and for me. Imagine if I fall victim to the gate when I depart. What a cruel irony that would be. Off you go. I'll send you to a place outside Katazza fortress, for your safety."

Llian got up unsteadily and limped across to the corner of the room. There he stood for a moment, looking puzzled. Rulke followed him, doing something with his hands. Slowly the plate began to glow once more, the luminous air above it to stir, its tendrils rising like steam from a pot. Llian stared at the plate as if he did not understand what he was seeing, or what to do with it.

"Wake!" said Rulke. Llian woke and at the same time Rulke lunged at him.

Llian leapt onto the plate, leaning away from Rulke's hand. The tunnel swelled; Llian fell backwards into it. It slowly closed around him, faded and disappeared.

The Nightland gave an awful screech, the sound of air escaping the mouth of a balloon, then snapped inwards. Staggering across to the construct, Rulke flung himself inside. He was just in time. The Nightland shrank down to the size of the room and kept shrinking, collapsing until it enclosed the construct like a rubber sheath.

Rulke lay inside, gasping. A tremor passed up his arm, the first spasm of the aftersickness that by sheer will he had been holding at bay all this time. What he had done recently would leave him incapacitated for a precious week. Would the Nightland even last that long?

Rulke lay down on the floor. Truly he had a long way to go before he took on the mighty of Santhenar. Fortunate that they did not know that.

THE PUZZLE.

Not far below the southern rim of the plateau, a little pavilion made of yellow-green serpentine was hidden in one of the pockets of forest that clad the steep slopes. It was a place that Malien had spent much time in. Karan had taken to sitting there too, in her lonely exile, looking out over the sea or down to a series of rockpools and perched bogs among the trees and the shaped stones. It was a place of power, she sensed, but not the same kind of power as the rift offered, not at all. Perhaps that was why Malien had liked it.

Karan hated the fortress-it felt like an alien, broken place, and so she slept in her tent by the pavilion, bathed in one of the pools and dined on figs and other fruit now ripening on the trees.

She had been alone in Katazza for five days. In the afternoon she walked along the edge of the plateau, looking for wild food to supplement her diet. Finding a patch of wild onions, hundreds of tiny bulbs crowded together, she had just bent over to tear up a clump when everything went out of focus, a sensation like being pulled into a gate. A distortion in the air wandered across the open space behind the fortress like a tornado, took a bite out of a moss-covered wall, scattering stone like biscuits, and disappeared over the edge in the direction of the pavilion. A pungent smell drifted on the breeze. There came a liquid, splattering sound, like-she thought in horror-like a body being blown inside out. Trees toppled, creaking and groaning, their impacts shaking the ground.

She sprinted down the path, four steps at a time, scarcely daring to hope. Could it be the gate? She raced through the forest, thorny branches scratching at her. Bounding over lichen-covered outcrops and skidding on wet leaves, Karan hurtled through Malien's pavilion and out the other side.

There she stopped, looking down. Trees had fallen in a tangle of branches across the path. She could not see her bathing pool at all. "Llian?" she called uncertainly.

Karan climbed through the branches. One tree lay right along the path. To get past she had to hop from rock to rock along the sheer edge of the terrace. There was no sign of a gate.

Parting the ferns, she looked down on her pool. It was completely gone, blasted down to half-rotten logs embedded in peat. Black ooze was spattered across the rocks. Decaying strands of vegetation hung from the tree branches, dripping mud.

"Llian!" she shouted. Where once had been tall trees was now a bald patch covered in a mulch of shredded leaves, bark and wood. She trudged through the muddy debris, flinging wood pulp everywhere.

"Llian?" Perhaps a tree had fallen on him. She ran along one side of a fallen trunk, expecting to find him pulverized underneath. Karan clambered through the branches and back along the other side. Nothing! The hope, the thrill of expectation faded. She sat down on the trunk staring into nowhere. He must be somewhere in between, lost by the treacherous gate. And her stupidity had caused it.

Behind her Karan heard a faint, squelching plop. She whirled, but there was no one there. "Llian?" she whispered, seeking through the shadowy wreckage.

Something stirred her hackles-a momentary fear of the Whelm who had hunted her so relentlessly. But surely she was safe from them here-they could never have endured the sun of the Dry Sea.

Again she heard that squelching sound. Karan ran back to the empty pond. Nothing to see but stinking black mud and rotten logs. Then a log in the bottom lifted an arm and feebly let it flop again.

"Llian!" she screamed and leapt in, skidding down to him.

He was completely covered in mud, not a vestige of skin or clothing visible. As she reached him he struggled to lift his arm but the pull of the mud was too great. It gurgled around his mouth like a hippo blowing.

She lifted his head. He took a choking breath. "Oh, Llian!" she wept, raking mud out of his mouth. He shuddered a breath then settled down in her arms, too weak to open his eyes. Karan picked muck out of his nostrils with a twig. She scraped his eyelids clean, washed his face with muddy water from a pool that had begun to accumulate in the bottom of the hollow, then just sat there, dazed by the miracle. There was nothing more she could do-he was too heavy to drag up the slippery slope out of the bog.

How had he got free? How could he have escaped from Rulke? Sitting in the cold mud, Karan suddenly began to sweat.

Eventually Llian stirred in her arms. "I was sure you were dead," he whispered hoarsely, his beautiful voice reduced to squeaks and rasps. "I saw Katazza in ruins."

"Llian," she wept, cradling him more tightly. "How did you escape?"

"You were right," he croaked. "He is very tired, very slow."

His eyes touched hers then slid sideways, so that a stabbing pang, a sudden chill went through her. Then his eyelids closed.

"The gate hurts more each time," he mumbled and fell into a dazed sleep.

Suspicion rose again. What had he been doing for the last five days? No. It was my fault. I will be loyal. I will not doubt him.

A few minutes later Llian woke abruptly. "Under the bed!" he shouted.

"What are you talking about?"

His eyes opened. He looked blankly at her. "Karan," he whispered, giving her a wonderful warming smile. Then he looked puzzled. "Did I say that? I don't know." Like a dream, he had lost it again. He tried to get up, his feet went from under him and he slid down into the puddle. "Oh, my head!"

Karan took hold of his arm. They crawled out of the bog to another pool, to wash.

"What happened?" she asked after they were cleaned up. "I thought he was going to kill you."

Llian remembered that. "You abandoned me to Rulke," he said furiously. "How could you?"

I didn't, a tiny voice inside her screamed. We had a plan, remember? But you didn't follow and then the gate pulled me in. But Karan knew she had let him down and couldn't bring herself to make excuses. "I should have done better. I'm sorry." She took his hand. "I just ..."

Llian wrenched her hand out of his. "I thought he was going to kill me. Then he had a kind of a fit and staggered off. I didn't see him again for ages. I could have eaten my arm by that time."

"What did he do to you? Llian, tell me!" She wrung his hand.

He pushed her away again. "He asked a lot of questions. He didn't even know that Yalkara had gone back to Aachan. He put me into a trance. It was like a horrible nightmare, strange but not real. I don't know what he did after that; it could have been anything at all. He said that I told him the Histories of the last thousand years. I could have done, though I remember none of it."

"Well, your voice is quite hoarse."

"My throat hurts. He tried to win me to his side. I was tempted too. Then he woke me and ..." Llian hesitated, feeling that something was not right about his escape. Before he said a word he knew that it would sound suspicious. But then, she had left him behind; what did he have to feel guilty about? He looked her straight in the eye and used his voice, that near-magical ability of great tellers to manipulate the feelings of others by the sheer power of their words.

"I escaped the same way you did when you abandoned me," he said.

She flushed as red as a rose and he took a tiny pleasure in it, and felt ashamed at the same time. "Whatever he did, it must have hurt him terribly. He looked awful, sick, and somehow I got into the gate. He tried to stop me but it had already carried me away."

Karan was wrestling with her own fears. Llian had not used the voice on her since their very first meeting. What was he covering up? So went the winding path of her thoughts, to nowhere.

It took ages to clamber up the littered path to the plateau, for Llian was quite weak. There he stopped, stunned by the extent of the ruin, the broken towers, the shattered fortress. Where the rift ran across the paved area, one side was now upthrust head-high, a wall across their path that steamed and fumed. From the volcanic peak to their north, clouds of ash gushed. The ground shook underfoot, sending up a blast of steam in front of them. The rubble of the Great Tower shifted.

"How did you get out of that?" cried Llian, shocked out of his anger.

She told him. "This place doesn't look very safe," Karan continued. "Let's get our packs and get going."

They trudged on. Llian bent to pick up something on the ground-a lozenge-shaped piece of lapis lazuli as long as his hand. "Look," he said. "It's beautiful. I wonder how it got here."

"I broke off a big lump climbing the tower," she said, fingering it. "Bring it, if you like."

"I will." He tucked it into his wallet. "A memento of Katazza."

"Hey!" he cried a little later.

"What?" she asked tiredly.

"I remember now! Rulke set me a puzzle. He said that Kandor would have hidden his most valued papers in a place that was subordinate but fundamental. Subordinate, under, and fundamental, bed. The answer is, under the bed So obvious I would never have thought of it."

"I've no idea where his bedchamber is," Karan said doubtfully.

"I do. I've been through every room in Katazza."

It required a hazardous scramble over rubble to get to it, for one of the minarets had fallen through the roof of the fortress, partly blocking the hall outside. They found the bedchamber to be even more extravagant than Rulke's. The bedposts were of fragrant cedar wood, gorgeously carven, the head and foot decorated with inlays of a dozen kinds of precious timbers, the edges traced out with silver-decadences showing couples writhing in ecstasies of abandon.

Llian crawled under the bed. Karan stared at the images in open-mouthed astonishment, then snorted and joined Llian underneath.

"I didn't mean to leave you behind," she said. "I'm so ashamed, Llian. Can you ever forgive me?"

"Not now!" he snapped, tapping the floor tiles, feeling the bedposts.

"I've a good idea," she said shortly, rubbing her nose on the back of his neck. He would not be distracted.

"There's nothing here," he said, vexed. "No, it wouldn't be that simple."

"What are you looking for?" Karan asked, intrigued as he prodded and pulled at the underside of the bed.

"A hiding place for secret documents."

"Looks pretty solid to me," she said, feeling up on top of the side frame. "Hullo, what's this?"

As she pushed on a recessed knob, something clicked above her head. She tapped the beam, which now sounded hollow. Karan slid a cover aside, felt up into the hole and pulled out a long metal box. She flipped up the top. It was full of papers, and beneath them was a thin book.

Llian's face lit up. He took the box out into the light. "This is it, Karan!"

There were no other secret compartments in the bed, or in the floor beneath, at least none that they could find. They sat on Kandor's bed eating skagg, a brick-sized cake baked of root flour mixed with dried fruit, nuts and seeds.

Llian sorted through the papers. A tied bundle contained a series of reports of investigations into Shuthdar's death and the destruction of the flute. Most dated from just after the Forbidding. The papers below the bundle were much later, from not long before Kandor's death.

Under the book, on the bottom of the box, lay a very tarnished silver chain made of braided wires.

"It's got a lovely feel," Karan said, stroking the blackened metal against her cheek. "It's all warm and comforting and protecting."

Llian sniffed. "It's just a piece of silverwork."

"You to your talents and me to mine!" she said, irritated. "Anyway, it's beautifully made, and the braid is the same as the Great Tower. I suppose Kandor had it made to remind him of the tower. It feels very old."

He took it out of her hand. "So it is. And since I found it, it's mine."

She looked hurt, but Llian went down on one knee, then slipped it over her head. "Let's start again, shall we?" He kissed her on the tip of the nose.

"Oh Llian," she said, kissing him back.

It took hours for Llian to read everything, but the papers only described dead ends, the results of fruitless investigations. He wearily cast the last to one side.

"It's not here. Kandor must have taken the evidence with him."

There were only two documents remaining, the first a slim book bound in leather as fine and soft as skin, but written in the unreadable Charon script.

He put it aside, perusing the other document. "Hey! It's a letter to Rulke." Then he swore.

"What's the matter?" asked Karan, looking up from the book. "Can't you read it either?"