"What did ... ?" she began.

He turned toward Karan, directing at her that withering stare that she so remembered from her childhood. "I tell you, Karan, you brought all this on us ..." He raised his hand as she began to speak. "No, let me have my say! You did us harm, bringing the Mirror to Shazmak, stirring up Emmant, lying to us, stealing it away again. Doubtless they were bitter choices for you, but you made them. You provided a bridge for Rulke to reach out and wake the Ghashad. No matter how well-meaning, no matter how ignorant, you were the keystone. Not the shaper, but the vital link. Without you, would the Ghashad ever have got into Shazmak? Would Emmant ever have betrayed us? Without you it would not have happened. Because of you it did.

"I do not blame you any longer. Who am I to blame anyone? Your crimes pale to nothing beside my own. Yet you are in it, and you must bear the burden."

Karan was silent. She had not forgotten how bitter her choices had been, nor the consequences of them. You're right, she thought. I cannot ignore my part in this.

Suddenly it flowed out of Tensor like a flood, coming faster and faster, the words tumbling over one another in their haste to escape. "We are responsible both, you and I. As far back as Aachan, eons ago, I chose to help Rulke and Shuthdar forge the flute; I labored with them even knowing that what they did was forbidden. I left the flaw in the Night-land so that I might exploit it later. I chose to take you into Shazmak, to shape you. I set Emmant to spy on you, knowing what a broken instrument he was. I sent Faelamor to Shazmak, ignoring her warnings and her threats. I used power against the hapless Nelissa, violating the Conclave." He gasped a breath, then rushed on. "I used the Twisted Mirror to find the flaw again, even knowing that the Mirror might not show true. And it did not; it betrayed me. I made the gate and failed to protect it, and opened it too soon, ignoring your warnings and pleas, and the warnings of the Syndics. In all the Histories none has been more distinguished, more wholehearted and more consistent in his folly than I. Perhaps the hubris of Pitlis was the greater at the end, but mine has been the creation of a lifetime.

"Were it not ..." Tensor sagged, the will that held his twisted frame erect failing under the weight of his despair. Karan could not hold him. They fell together onto the salt.

She struggled out from underneath. Tensor had struck the side of his head against a knob of rock salt. A thick strand of blood oozed from his cheek, though it soon stopped in the heat. His dark skin had gone a bilious yellow-green. Breathing shallowly, he looked near death. The wind sang out once more; another squall was on them. There was just time enough to tie the cloth over Tensor's nose and mouth before the blast lifted her off her feet and tried to blow her down into the canyon.

Karan scuttled the few paces to the shelter that she had seen previously. Why had Tensor brought her out here? To drive home her guilt or wallow in his own? She had no illusions about what she had done during that awful time when she carried the Mirror. She had chosen her path, knowing that it must injure the Aachim. She would not wallow in guilt. So many people had used her. Even so, she felt her responsibilities.

The squall eased. Karan ran back to Tensor and shook the dust off his bandage. He opened raw eyes, staring right through her. With a corner of the cloth she picked crusted salt from his eyelashes.

"You said you wanted to confess something to me. Was that it? You told me nothing that I did not already know."

Tensor forced until he was sitting upright.

"No," he said, hacking the dust out of his throat. "Not at all. I have done a great wickedness to you." He tried to stand but could get no higher than his knees. Still he could look into her eyes.

"I remember how you came to me in Shazmak," Tensor rasped. "I will always remember how you stood on the doorstep and said, I have come home. What an urchin you were; what a tiny bedraggled little thing. And yet, what strength! What dignity! You touched my heart. You were all I would have expected of your father's daughter, rebellious and troublesome as he had been. Even so, I would have sent you away to die."

Karan shivered.

"I would have turned you away, for all that you were a daughter such as I had always dreamed about. You had no right to Shazmak-your father had broken his oath. And broken it again just by telling you of our city. I saw a great danger in you. There is a threat in all blendings, but especially in you. I saw that you would come, but not remain; that you would go back into the world and bring it down upon us. Would that I had turned you away.

"But the Aachim would not permit it. Seldom did they ignore my advice, but this time they were unmoved. From the moment they saw you they were captivated. They thought they knew you. Hah! They knew nothing!

"You touched my heart," he rasped, "and I loved you. Not even Rael loved you more. I was afraid of what you would bring-triune, a thousand times worse than any blending!"

Karan felt a spear of ice enter her chest. "Triune? What do you mean?"

"You are a double blending, Karan, a triune, for you carry the blood of the Three Worlds in you. Three different human species-old human, Aachim, and Faellem!"

"Faellem!" said Karan, bemused.

"You did not know that you had a Faellem ancestor? I never told a soul; no one could be trusted with that knowledge. Our Histories speak about the triune, how she would come out of nowhere and move time and space itself. How I wish I had put you out that door." He came to his feet; his big arm went around her slim shoulders. Tensor hugged her to him, very gently.

She looked up at him, unable to take it all in. This changed everything. She wasn't who she thought she was at all.

"But they let you in. All I could do was shape you myself. I took charge of your schooling, trying to prevent the flowering of those talents that I judged to threaten us most. Did I succeed or did I fail? Did I damage you? Certainly you are less than you might have been, and you are now too old, too formed to recover it. Sometimes the shaping succeeds, but at other times the force of destiny, the momentum of fate as your mother's people would say, cannot be altered. You did not develop in some ways where you showed great promise. Yet you burst out in other, unexpected ways; talents flowered that may in the end threaten us more. I even tried to suppress all knowledge of the house of Elienor, so that you would never learn of your great heritage. But Malien would not allow that. She undermined me at every step."

Karan was shocked. Shocked to learn of her ancestry. Triune was a curse, a terrible stigma of madness and unpredictability. Shocked at what he had done to her. So that was why she had been pursued for so long. Why everyone wanted something from her, once they recognized something strange and rare in her. How dared he meddle with her so; and without her ever knowing? She could not forgive him for that.

"That is all," said Tensor. "Go back now. Yours is the future, if you can salvage anything from the ruin my folly has wrought."

Karan turned away, hating and despising him. Curse him! Why should he not end it here if he so willed it? Salt sand abraded her cheeks as she went down the path. At the bottom she looked back. Tensor stood tall as a pillar of salt. Snatches of verse came on the wind, a soliloquy of despair and failure. "I am nothing. All I ever stood for is nothing!"

A choking cloud of salt struck her. Karan crouched down with her cloak over her face until it had passed. Another squall wailed toward her, and after that another. Hours had gone by since they had come outside. The day was done, a few bright stars out already and the ruddy scorpion nebula brooding above. She peered through the gloom. The pillar was gone; Tensor was not there. Her anger evaporated. Despite his sins Tensor had been as a father to her: she could not let him die alone.

She ran back up, tripping and skidding in the gloom. Tensor lay still, just a rag among the crags. He looked dead, but when she unwrapped the salt-covered cloth and smoothed his cheek his eyes fluttered open. She lifted his head, brushing the salt away.

"Leave me," he begged. "This is a fitting place and a fitting end."

He was giving up, slipping away feeling only self-pity and despair. Something about the gesture pricked at her. It was his pride talking, as it had always done. Karan's compassion disappeared, so diminished was Tensor from what he once had been. How dared he meddle with her so? Let him do something to make up for his follies.

"I have done wrong, I know," she said, "but never did I act for myself. You wronged me and all Santhenar with your vast pride, but what have the Aachim to be proud of save the past? Even there it rests more on glorious failures than on great deeds or lasting works. It is a long time since the Aachim were great in anything but hubris. Now get up! There will come a time when even your aid will be needed. Get up! Your despair is no more appealing than your pride, and both are rooted in the same source."

"Leave me," he rasped. "I have nothing more to give. It is fitting that I die in this barren and worthless place. So we all pass."

His eyes lost their shine, slowly closing as he let loose the hold of his will on his crippled body.

"Do not dare to die, you craven!" she shouted in his face. His eyes flickered open, though so dull that not even the brightest star reflected in them. "It was your wicked folly that brought terror and destruction upon us all. And now that the damage is done you wallow in self-pity, as cursed Pitlis did, then abandon your people without hope. But not this time-I do not allow it."

Tensor's eyes began to glaze over. The coward! In a fury she sprang to her feet and kicked him as hard as she could, right in his injured hip, and was instantly horrified and disgusted with herself.

Tensor convulsed. His eyes flicked open and he let out a great cry of agony. His arms gripped the abused limb while beads of sweat broke out all over his face, which the starlight touched with points of light. He made no further sound, even though the pain went on and on, ringing back and forth through his body like a bell. He directed her a look of pure rage.

"Why have you called me back, hateful child? My time is finished."

There were tears on her salty cheeks. "As you schooled me, so I school you," she said in an icy voice. "What contempt you must have felt for me, to shape me like an animal, to rob me of my destiny. Well, that is what I feel for you now: contempt! You have created nothing. You warped, you twisted, you destroyed, and when all the good you started with lay in ruins you fled because you had not the courage to try and mend what you broke."

Her voice rose above the wind. "It is your pride that tells you to die out here in the desolation. I would have thought more of you if you had gone out alone, rather than bringing me here to lecture me and be a witness to your so-called nobility. This is not nobility; this is not honor, this is hubris! Tensor is a craven's name, and yours are a proud, vain coward's deeds, the ruin of all. Get up from your coward's bed, Tensor, or I curse you all the way into the grave, and beyond it. Get up. Get up!"

While this was going on the company had come running up. The Aachim looked to go to Tensor's aid but Shand put out his arm and stayed them. They all gathered behind him, watching-impassive, shocked or angry.

Karan saw Llian's hungry eyes on her, but she had no time for him just now. "Get up," said Karan. "Redeem yourself."

Tensor struggled, gave up, looked into Karan's cold eyes, tried again and came to his knees. His skin was an ugly yellow gray, his brow dripping with sweat. "I cannot," he said. "The pain ..."

"The pain?" she shouted in his face. "What is pain beside the pride of the Aachim? What is pain beside honor? To hell with your pain. The Tensor I knew would not have been swayed by it. Stand, if you have the courage."

Tensor squatted with his hands supporting him. He forced, fell back to his knees, forced; fell again. Forced. Fell. Each time he was weaker. Karan could see him failing before her eyes. It was all she could do to stare him down, hating herself. No point, if he could not do it.

"If you have the courage ..." she whispered, her complexion bleached of all color. The Aachim stirred behind her, but still Shand held them back. Tensor made a supreme effort, pushing himself against the pain and the exhaustion, to the limit of his strength and beyond. He fell again. He looked up at her-old, hopeless, desperate.

"I cannot," he croaked. "Will ... will you help me?"

It was over. Tears washing gullies down her salt-crusted cheeks, Karan put her arms about his waist and strained to lift him, carefully as ever she could. He staggered to his feet, supporting himself with his hands on her shoulders. Steadying himself, Tensor took a lurching step and would have fallen on his face, but she held him up. They rested for a moment then Karan gave him her shoulder and they made their laborious way past the company, down the hill and into the cavern to the place where Tensor had lain before. The others followed slowly behind, stepping together in pairs like an honor guard at a funeral.

Tensor stood by his litter, leaning on her shoulder, looking down at her. "How would you have me redeem myself?" he asked in a gentle, hoarse voice.

"I've no idea," she replied, "only that a time will come and you will be called."

"I will answer," he said, was lowered to his litter and fell into sleep.

But all that night, and for the rest of their journey across the salt, Karan could not stop thinking about what had been done to her, what she might have been and what she now knew herself to be. A triune-a mad, shameful thing. Suddenly Karan felt dissatisfied with herself, at the part of her that had been lost forever. There was a hollow inside her that she could not fill.

On the other side of the cavern the arguments were still going on when the sun rose. Llian listened, fascinated by the drama and noting everything in his perfect memory for his Tale of the Mirror. That cheered him up considerably. It was going to be a Great Tale, the twenty-third, and his name would be on it.

"But how does it help us?" Tallia was speaking now. "We don't know how to make the flute, or how to use it."

"That's a problem for the morrow," said Mendark. "Let's make it first, if we can."

"It is the morrow and we can't keep putting it off."

There was a long silence. The dawn wind flung salt crystals against their door with a gritty hiss.

A croaking, halting voice spoke from the corner.

"I know exactly how the flute was made," said Tensor. "I can tell you, though at the last it will not avail you."

"You!" cried Mendark in astonishment, though whether at Tensor knowing it or at agreeing to help them, it was impossible to say.

"In Aachan," Tensor said wearily, "we became the lesser folk, the toilers, after the Charon took our world. We did the tiresome tasks and the unpleasant. There were many weary tasks in the making of the flute, too many for Shuthdar. He needed an assistant and I was that helper. How could I ever forget such a thing?"

"How is it that you did not make another for yourself, if you knew the way?" Mendark asked suspiciously.

"There was no opportunity in Aachan; and once we came to Santhenar, what need? We were happy here at first. We have never sought power, only freedom. Then, after the Forbidding, what would have been the point? Besides, Aachan gold was needed. Nothing else would suffice." His eyes closed; he slept once more.

They discussed this at length. "Do you think he can be relied upon?" Shand asked. "Better not to even think of using him, if he cannot."

"He has always been honest, after his own fashion," said Mendark. "As honest as any great leader can be. But surely he serves his own purpose. And even if he remembers the making of it perfectly, that is not to say that it can be made anew.

"Four things we will need to find or to learn." Mendark ticked them off on his fingers. "One-enough gold, the right kind of gold, for the flute. Two-the way to make it. Three-the way to use it. Four-the one to use it. We have leads on the first and the second. Let's see what we can do with them. If we can find gold and make the flute anew, there will be time to worry about whether we can use it. Perhaps that's one of the secrets of the Mirror."

Perhaps it is, Llian thought, and maybe I will be the one to find it. Suddenly all his chronicler's enthusiasm was renewed. What a tale it was going to make, and it was his.

They should have been excited at the prospect that the flute offered, but as Llian looked around the little group he mostly saw dread on their faces. Or despair, that they would put everything into this venture and it would come to nothing. All but Mendark.

"Malien, I must know more about the Mirror. What was written about it?"

"Nothing that I know of, except that it existed, and it was perilous."

He frowned. "Why so?"

"There was no need. Those few who wielded the Mirror knew everything about it. Then it became a quixotic and dangerous thing, and it was put aside and forgotten. After it was stolen, Yalkara wrested it to her own will; changed it. What we knew about it was no longer relevant."

"I can't believe that nothing was written down."

"That was long before my time. You'll have to ask Tensor or Selial. But not even Tensor can tell you what Yalkara did to it."

"Well, I'll start working on the third problem," said Men-dark. "The way to use it. I'll take charge of the Mirror now, Shand."

"You won't!" said Shand angrily. "It has come back to my keeping, and the gift of it is mine alone. Listen to what was foretold many years ago: The Mirror is locked, and cannot be used save by the One who can unlock it. That key lies within the Mirror itself. Can you resolve that paradox?"

Mendark wrestled with the idea for a considerable time. "No," he said.

"Then you will never be able to use it."

Llian was consumed by the paradox but Shand would say no more.

FIGHTING IN THE.

MUD.

During the day the storm wore itself out. Before dark they gathered their goods together and set off, hauling the sleds with their flabby waterbags along the grit of the canyon floor and onto the crystalline salt beyond, which crunched and crackled under the runners. It was now three weeks since the company had left Katazza, and twelve days since they'd filled their water bottles at the base of the mountain. They had water for another week, but it was eight or nine days to the lakes.

They made better progress in the good conditions, particularly as the latter parts of each night were lit by the new moon rising, though ominously the dark side was now inching toward full.

The days became unbearably hot and tedious-tempers flared for no reason at all. As the moon darkened, seeming to reflect their own troubles, so did the feuding grow worse. Since Karan's attack Yggur's eyesight had deteriorated again, which drove him into a cold, bitter fury with Llian, with Karan and with the whole world.

Karan hardly noticed, so preoccupied was she with Tensor's revelation, and what he had done to her.

One day, Karan noticed that Selial seemed to have aged remarkably. Her silver hair had gone a dingy white and her clothes hung on her.

"What's the matter with Selial?" Karan asked Malien as they trudged across an utterly featureless plain of salt.

"She will die soon. She has given up."

"Is there nothing that can be done for her?"

"Would you make her suffer more than she already does?"

Karan looked back. Selial was stumbling along by herself, head down, arms hanging lifelessly. At that moment she looked up, but did not acknowledge their gaze.

"She was very kind to me in Shazmak."

"Then do her the same kindness. Give her words of comfort and thanks, the best you can make, and leave her be."

That evening, before they set out, Selial summoned the Aachim together. Karan was invited too. They took their places on the ground around her. The moon was three-quarters full, but it gave an eerie light, for it mostly showed the dark side.

"My time has come," Selial said with the dignity that so characterized her. "But my resting place is far from here, so I will keep on. I have chosen to lie beside the Iron Gates of the Hornrace, at the tip of the Foshorn. The Rainbow Bridge was our greatest feat in all Santhenar, and I would share my forever dreaming with my great-grandmother who made it. She is buried on the other side. May we meet again when Faranda and Lauralin are linked once more."