You need us. How novel! But we don't need you. We refuse you, Faelamor! Your crimes have brought shame on us all.

Ellami! Faelamor begged. Tallallame needs us. We must find the way home.

We know that, said the voice, strengthening as Faelamor weakened. But not your way. Begone!

Faelamor shuddered, clenching her fists until her nails cut red crescents into her palms. Maigraith, fearing that another fit was coming, withdrew from the link hurriedly.

Bring back the link! Faelamor shouted into her mind, and as Maigraith did so, she continued. Ellami, Ellami, don't go! A disaster-a catastrophe!

Oh? said the voice.

It's just another of her tricks, said another, deeper voice. Gethren, Maigraith thought.

I've been inside Havissard, sent Faelamor.

You used a gate! The voice was incredulous.

I had to, since you refused to aid me.

Don't dare blame us for your crimes, Faelamor.

Listen to me. I found a book in Havissard An awful book, by Yalkara!

There was a long pause, then the first voice said sharply, What book? What does it say about us?

Maigraith's curiosity was aroused. Why were they so afraid?

I cannot ... could not read it, Faelamor sent. But just the script is a horror. It reminds me- Not over the link! snapped the second voice.

An even longer pause followed, as if the Faellem were conferring one among another. Put the book away in the safest place, Faelamor. Protect it with your strongest illusion. Do nothing to put us at risk.

The book is lost, Ellami, Faelamor wailed. I dropped it in Havissard and- And? said the voice, now frigid.

Mendark has it, Faelamor wept.

The voice swore. There seemed to be another hasty conference. Then, in tones like a creeping glacier, These are our orders. Do nothing whatsoever to make this mess worse. Wait upon our coming.

EVENIL.

Faelamor sat on the grass, weeping. "This is the worst day of my life," she said after her tears were used up. "To be abused so by my own people. I cannot bear it."

They sat silently for a long time, then Faelamor stood up. "I must go back to Havissard."

"You would disobey their orders?" Maigraith asked. She did not care either way, but she was curious.

"They're too far away," Faelamor rationalized. "They don't know what I know. I've got to recover the book. Quick!" She began to throw things in her pack.

"If Mendark used a gate he could be five hundred leagues away by now," Maigraith said, gathering food, knife, light-glass and all the other little things that Faelamor was sure to forget.

"I don't think so! I don't believe he came through a gate at all. I think he's still there, or nearby, with the book. Send me back!"

"Send you?" Maigraith said. "How?"

"Through the gate, fool!"

"It's my gate," Maigraith said softly. "I don't know that it would work with you."

"I watched you," Faelamor said. "I saw how easy it was for you." She shivered as if afraid of Maigraith's power, or potential. "I know you can do this for me. It's your duty to do so."

Maigraith did not argue. They hurried upstream to the gate stones. She stood to one side while Faelamor squeezed into the cramped space between the stones.

Maigraith was tormented by self-doubt, by mixed emotions. She did not want Faelamor to use her precious gate at all. She hated her, wanted her to die in the gate. And yet she felt the duty of care keenly.

Faelamor stood ready. Maigraith opened the gate and tried to visualize the destination, the library in Havissard, but Faelamor wrenched the image from her and vanished with a tremendous clap of inrushing air.

Maigraith stared at the empty space between the stones. Her head hurt. She was not ready-not nearly-but Faelamor was gone. There was so much that they had never discussed. How was Faelamor going to return? What would happen when the Faellem appeared if she did not come back?

She sat there for two days, staring at the space between the stones. Once she thought Faelamor was on her way. Maigraith tried to take control of the gate but it did not open; Faelamor did not return.

Ravenous, Maigraith took up her crutches and hobbled down to the camp. There she packed her pack, returned to the gate and tried to open it, to follow Faelamor to Havissard. The gate opened easily but she could not find the destination.

Havissard was completely closed off. Maigraith could not find a trace of it. Faelamor had made sure that she could not follow. After a week of failed attempts she was worn out in body, mind and soul. Initiative deserted her. She could not see what to do. Could not think.

Abandoning the gate, she returned to the camp and began to make preparations for the coming of the Faellem. That was still months away, the end of autumn at the earliest, but if hundreds appeared they would require food and shelter. Maigraith needed to be busy. She set to work.

Faelamor landed in the library at Havissard, after a journey that she never wanted to do again. The gate might have been lined with spines, for it pricked and stung her all the way. It was Maigraith's creature, one that wished only to torment her.

The minute she arrived at the library, skidding across the dusty floor on her elbows, Faelamor remembered the slim book slipping out of her bag. Mendark's footprints were clear where he had walked across to pick it up. Maigraith's were there too, careful not to obscure the others. Faelamor admired her for her cautious mind, and damned her too.

She followed Mendark's winding path through the rooms and corridors of Havissard. It was a tedious day but Faelamor took no shortcuts. Even when it was clear the tracks had doubled back on themselves, she followed them every step in case Mendark had hidden something. He hadn't. Faelamor was able to sense out his path where Maigraith had lost it, though only near the end of the day did she find the greasy chute by which he had made his exit.

Faelamor crawled into it, thinking that he might be trapped at the lower end, or broken on the rocks below. She had the foresight to take out her knife, pressing it against the side to brake her slide down.

At the end she smacked into a hatch reduced to a hinge and two pieces of broken timber. But there she remained, for the protection that Mendark had passed through, by the power of Yalkara's ring, was an impenetrable barrier to her.

Impenetrable but transparent. Looking down, Faelamor could clearly see the bramble thicket and Mendark's body trapped in it. His arm moved feebly; he was still alive! Days had gone by but he was still trying to hack his way out. I've got the gold he came for, she thought, and he has the book that I so desperately need.

The thicket might as well have been on the dark side of the moon, for she was trapped in Havissard as securely as he was outside. Faelamor tried every power she had but nothing would allow her passage through the protection.

After the sun rose next morning, she saw several figures slashing their way through the thorn bushes. Faelamor struggled until it drove her wild, until illusions exploded out of her in all directions. She animated the stone in the same way that she had brought the trees to life in Elludore. Contractions began to pass along the chute like the motions of a dragon's bowel.

It could not excrete her though. The protection constipated it. I'm hallucinating, she thought. I'll kill myself if I'm not careful. Staring out, her view sphinctered down to a pinhole straight in front of her, Faelamor saw Tallia and a huge soldier cut down a limp-looking Mendark and carry him away.

Faelamor stabbed at the transparent barrier, over and over, but it was unbreachable. Her guts were burning again. Digging her knife into the wall, she forced herself backwards up the greasy tunnel, crawled to the library and, using the greatest effort of will that she had ever employed, forced open the gate.

This one was not like any gate she'd ever imagined. It was a wet, dripping, organic tube like the maw of a giant snake, one whose gullet dripped acid from the roof. A belch sent acrid, rot-stinking fumes tumbling past her. But it was her only way out. Faelamor closed her eyes, bent forward then forced her way into the shuddering cave. She did not expect to get out of it.

"Take me to Mendark's book!" she shrieked. The gate snarled and hurled her into oblivion, then just before the ultimate blackness she sensed Maigraith trying to bring her home.

She failed. The gate exploded and dropped her into nowhere.

Faelamor had not returned from Havissard. In spite of her sense of liberation and self-discovery Maigraith remained in Dunnet-the chains of duty and responsibility were still strong. She kept on with her work and in her spare time practiced her mental and physical regimen until she was as fit in body and mind as she could possibly make herself.

Autumn passed. Preparing for the coming of the Faellem involved a mountain of work. When that was done Maigraith worked on her gate, shaping the twin ironstones into obelisks, making her controling stone, the four-part egg, more perfect, more attuned to the river, the cave and the obelisks, visualizing as best she could various destinations, and even opening gates to one or other of them. She never went through them though, for the work was exhausting and she knew that every gate was a risk-she might not come out again. For the moment there was no purpose to her life, and nowhere that she wanted to go.

And Maigraith had identified a weakness in herself that she was unable to overcome. Even for places that she knew well, most times she could not conjure up a clear picture of the destination in her mind. It made her afraid of the gate again.

The lonely days passed. Winter came. One day, when the snow was thick on the forest floor, Faelamor returned unexpectedly. Maigraith was pleased to see her, finding her own resources stretched thin by the months of isolation.

"Where are the Faellem?" Faelamor shouted from across the clearing.

"I have seen no one since you left."

Faelamor swore, something that she rarely did. "Then I have hurried all this way for nothing. I called you with my mind, many times. Why did you not answer?"

"I sensed no link," said Maigraith coolly. Why should she be blamed for Faelamor's failing?

Faelamor smashed her fist against a tree, even more uncharacteristic. "Is there food?"

Maigraith turned into the store shelter to fetch what she had. She laid it out on the flat slab that they used for a table: small flat cakes, baked of nutmeal and honey that morning and flavored with the sexual parts of flowers; fish from the river, smoked; pickled mushrooms; wild onions, rather old and withered; the bulbs of a plant rather like a lily that grew by the river, though these had a starchy, gluey flavor. She also had a very mild wine made from fermented nectar.

Faelamor looked at the food with scant enthusiasm.

"I will have tea as well," she said, turning down to the river to wash.

Maigraith was not hungry but she joined Faelamor at the meal, nibbling on a piece of nutcake.

Faelamor finished her meal, wiped her face and stood up. She had not taken her pack off.

"Are you going again so soon?" cried Maigraith, feeling like a child who, though uncomfortable with her visitor, did not want to be abandoned. "Did you recover the book? What news of Mendark, of Yggur?"

"News must wait! It is a race now. Mendark and Yggur are up to something." She turned away.

"I will not be treated like a child!" insisted Maigraith. "Tell me what is happening in the world or I won't be here when you return."

Faelamor scowled, but answered. "I tried to force the gate to take me to the book, but it hurled me out of Havissard into a secret library, one Mendark built, a long way south. How I got out again is a tale in itself. I didn't recover the book. But Mendark is back and I'm sure he still has it. Since then I've been spying on the company's meets," Faelamor said with a little pride. "It wasn't easy, even for me."

She told Maigraith the gist of the tales about Mendark and Yggur, and Karan and Llian too, which were already well known. Itinerant tellers were now spreading them around Meldorin. "And there are most disturbing rumors from the mountains behind Tolryme, where we met a year ago, if you recall?"

"I remember. We met there after you betrayed the Aachim and let the Ghashad into Shazmak-"

"I did not betray them-they are not our species; not Faellem! I warned Tensor of the consequences of holding me but he chose to ignore me."

"Beautifully rationalized! You went to Tolryme to spy on Karan."

"To search out her ancestry, and learn what you had kept hidden from me: that she was triune!"

"I didn't know she was triune," said Maigraith. "And you did betray the Aachim. Hundreds died because of you."

"I warned them!" Faelamor repeated angrily. "Besides, that was a year ago."

"That makes it all right, does it?"

Faelamor ignored her. "Something is stirring near Tolryme, in a place called Carcharon. An ominous name! How am I to deal with that as well?"

"I-" said Maigraith.

"Yes! Go and find out what is going on-it may be Rulke. I've got to go back to Thurkad and recover Yalkara's deadly book. Go as soon as you can."

"I will," Maigraith said.

Then over her shoulder Faelamor said: "When the Faellem come, tell them nothing."

It was the best part of fifty leagues to Tolryme the way the forest paths ran. It took Maigraith ten long days of marching in the cold. On the tenth evening she reached the town just on dusk and took a room in its only inn, a large square granite building that was rustic in the extreme. She longed for a bath but because of the wood shortage that was impossible. The best she could do was an all-over wash with a jug of lukewarm water.

She changed her clothes and went down to the dining room. That was a spartan affair too-coarse bread and a watery stew of vegetables that were long past their prime. As she was mopping up the last of the liquid with a crust a young man limped up to her table.

"I beg your pardon," he said, doffing his cap and twisting it in his hands.

She looked up. He would have been a handsome fellow had he not been so thin, for his brown hair was magnificent and his bones well chiseled. But his cheeks were hollow and one arm was gone above the elbow.

"You are Maigraith," he said.

"I am," she replied, "though I would prefer that you did not broadcast it about. How do you know me?"

"I fought for you at the battle of Casyme last summer, when you overcame the sorcerous Ghashad and saved the First Army. My name is Evenil."

"How is it that you are here, Evenil?"

He smiled self-consciously. "This was my home town before I went a-venturing. But one day I found myself in Orist without a copper grint to my name, so I joined Yggur's army and eventually ended up here again."

"What do you do now?"

"I was paid out when I lost my arm-a few silver tars-and now I do whatever I can. There's plenty to do, even for someone with my handicap, but no one has any money to pay for it. And even if they could, there is precious little food to be bought, and hellish expensive. My tars are already gone."

And you are beginning to think that you will starve this winter, she thought. She had seen the same dozens of times, even on this short journey.

"Tell me, Evenil," she said, indicating the chair opposite, "do you know my friend Karan Fyrn?"

He sat down. "No," he said, "though I've heard all about her. I used to play at Gothryme when I was young, but she wasn't there then."