Tallia hauled him off. "Leave this to me, Mendark!" Her tone did not admit of argument. "Keep watch, they must have seen my light." She pulled Llian up by the front of his coat. "Get up. Can you walk?"

He mumbled incoherently, able to think of nothing but sleep.

She took his arm. They staggered along the back of the amphitheater. "Your explanation will need to be a good one," she said in his ear. Her voice was chilly but he sensed that she was willing to listen.

"I would never do anything to harm her," said Llian. "You know that."

"I'm not sure what I know any longer."

He started on the story, but he was only up to the point where the two of them left Gothryme when Mendark caught them up.

"Quick! They're coming," he said.

Llian spun around and fell face-down in the snow.

"Trying to get back to Rulke, eh!" said Mendark, lifting him up. "I'm tempted to push you over the side."

"Rulke treated me more honestly than you ever did," Llian said bitterly.

Tallia ran around the rim to see how close the pursuit was. Mendark held Llian by the arm, but he had no intention of going anywhere. She came racing back.

"They're after us! Five, maybe six of them."

Llian wondered why Rulke would throw him out and then come after him straight away. But perhaps Rulke did not know where he had ended up. Perhaps he was just chasing the others away. There were too many perhapses.

Tallia sang out. "Mendark, hold them off. I'll take Llian down. Meet me by the Black Lake."

"This place is undefendable!"

They hurried across the high back of the amphitheater, onto a buttress cut by icy steps that led onto the ridge below. At a point where the buttress pinched in on the slope on either side to allow no way past, Mendark stood firm.

"Go down," he said. "No, wait!"

"What is it?" cried Tallia, trying to make out his expression in the dim light.

"I've just had a horrible thought. Shand once said that Rulke didn't have the talent to use the flute."

"I remember."

"Then maybe he needs a sensitive for the construct too. And this wretch has just delivered Karan into his hands." He cursed. "Why did you interfere the other night? I'd almost broken him."

Tallia was silent, shaken.

"How could you do this to me?" he raged.

"To you?" she cried in equal fury. "Don't you ever think about anyone else?"

They had not gone much further before Llian was stricken by the terrible pangs that had so wracked him in Gothryme. He fell down among the rocks and snow, clawing at his face.

"Light!" Mendark snapped.

It had begun to get light but now the overcast swept back in, dark and dense, like night falling again. Mendark spread the wings of his cloak around Llian. Tallia let a little chink of light from her globe fall on his face, then put it away again quickly. The wind had come up and dark clouds were racing down from the north-west, obscuring the stars and the moon. A flurry of hard snow, pellets on the wind, stung their faces.

"How far back are they now?"

"Top of the amphitheater. Too close!"

"If only it would snow properly," said Tallia.

Mendark looked up at the sky. "It won't," he replied. "Not enough to aid us, anyway. There's too much wind."

"Help us to the bottom of this steep bit," said Tallia, "then hold them off."

Llian sat up. "I'm better now," he said shakily.

"What was that about?" Mendark asked, taking his arm roughly. "Are you having trouble with your new master?"

This was too much. Llian raised his hands and clubbed Mendark on the side of the head, a feeble blow but one that caught the old man off-balance and nearly sent him tumbling down the steps.

"You deserved that," Tallia said coldly. "We don't need any more trouble. Do something to keep them back."

"This close to Rulke? The risk-"

"Well, take the risk, dammit. The way you go on about your place in the Histories..."

"All right!" he snarled, and disappeared back up the ridge. Shortly there came a blinding flash of light and rocks crashed down into the gorge. Almost immediately someone appeared above them.

"That was quick," said Tallia. "What did-?" She flung herself flat on the ground. Something whirred over her head.

Llian could tell from the lanky shape against the dark sky that it was a Ghashad. The man sprang over a boulder straight for Llian and heaved him effortlessly over his shoulder. Llian let out a squeak. Tallia dived but the man swung his leg like a scythe, sweeping her feet from under her. She fell heavily and began to slide across the steps, frantically trying to gain a purchase on the ice.

She gave a pained cry then skidded head first into a rock.

Llian's captor began to run back up the path. Llian heard Tallia gasp, "Mendark!" but no more.

The Ghashad's boots slapped the snow like paddles; his breath was a piston-beat in Llian's ear. Soon the path became so steep that he could not carry Llian up it. He flung him down on a patch of ice, breath hissing from nostrils crusted with icicles. Llian stirred and a boot slammed across his wrist. The man picked him up and continued on.

THE SEDUCTION.

OF KARAN.

You won't help me then?" said Rulke.

"I can't!" Karan replied.

"Not even for Llian?"

All along she had known it would come to this. "Some friend, after the way he spoke about me." She began to sweat.

Rulke showed his teeth again. Perhaps it was meant to be a smile; perhaps a threat. "An intimate friend, and the telling only the minor part of his performance. Why do you think I put you together in that cell?"

Her heart leapt out of her chest and lay on the icy floor with Rulke's boot on it.

"He's gone, but I have him still." He touched his forehead. "You will do what I say. Embrace the task willingly, else I tear the mind from his body before you. I will, if I have to!"

"Then you will never get what you want!"

"Don't dally with me!" he cried. "I can torment him for a week, a month, a year!"

"He's gone!" she said furiously. "You've already sent him away."

He pulled a device out of a pouch in his cloak, two short tubes of metal joined side by side, with glass in either end. "Put these to your eyes, and look over there!"

Karan looked through the glasses and at once Llian sprang into view, stumbling through the snow. Illuminated by some abnormal light, he was quite clear to her, yet his companions were mere shadows against the darker dark.

"Where is he? That's ... that's the amphitheater!"

"So it is. My construct didn't work as well as I expected. It needs tuning. When I get him back I'll test it properly." He gripped Karan's shoulders and pulled her face up to his. "You can't bear to be parted from him, can you?"

She had to force herself to look him in the eye, not to shrink away. "It's tolerable, to keep him out of your reach."

"Remember Gothryme, remember Tullin!"

"How do I know that what you show me is real?"

Rulke grew impatient. "It's real-see this!"

He wrung his hands right in her face. Through the glasses, Llian convulsed, his mouth wide open in a silent scream, and fell down in the snow tearing at his head. She had seen that before. It was far too horrible. She put the glasses down but the image stayed in her mind. Llian's silent cries wracked her.

"Is that the reality that it takes to convince you?" he shouted in her face, so close that she could feel the heat of his breath.

"You boast about honor but you're just a sadist."

That struck him in his core. "I'm not!" he cried. "The very future of my species is at stake."

"I've heard that before!"

"Have you?" He thrust his face against hers, staring into her eyes. She did not look away. "Would you not do the same if the life of your child was at stake?"

"I don't have a child," she gasped, trying to get away.

"But you want one, more than anything you have ever wanted?"

"Yes!" she whispered.

"What would you not do to save its life?"

"Very little," she admitted.

"As with me! Do you need any further demonstration?"

She shook her head. "I know your work," she said. "I've seen enough of it."

"Then what is your decision?"

"I cannot make it."

"I have no time for this," he snapped, wringing his hands again.

Llian's agony surged back across the link. Karan almost fainted with the pressure of it.

"Leave me!" she screamed.

Rulke made to wring his hands a third time, and in a fury she swung her fist up at his chin. He was caught by surprise, but ducked out of the way. He laughed, genuinely amused, ruffled her hair as if she was a child, then went down the stairs, leaving her cold and alone in the big room. She was caught and they both knew it.

Karan sat on the cold bench. Llian would be better off dead. What point her resisting any longer? Perhaps Rulke was right anyway; perhaps Santhenar would be the better for his rule. How could she tell? Even the wisest, the most learned, could not foretell the way the future would go. Why should the choice come down to her? She didn't want any of this-only Llian.

How much Llian had brought to her life. How much he had done for her. What she most thought of was his tenderness, his gentleness, and the clumsy, laughable, idiosyncratic way that he did most things, save his art. She did not have the will to hold out any longer. Once she would have thought of the greater good, but no longer. Why should she not consider her own little world and her own happiness?

But something still nagged at her. Why was Rulke in such haste? He insisted that he had plenty of time yet he pressed her very hard. And it had been the same in his dealings with Llian.

Ghashad came and went, cleaning the table, packing unidentifiable items inside the construct, removing others.

She went back to the embrasure. The snow had stopped but the wind still howled in the roof. The clouds that had previously covered all the sky were now torn into rags through which the moon could be seen, high above. On the other side the sun was rising. She mentally reckoned up the days until hythe, mid-winter's day. A week. What a winter it had been; what a year. Would the next be a better one? It could hardly be worse. Yes, it could be very much worse, and that depended on what she did in the next few days.

The clouds thinned and she saw that the moon was past the three quarters. It was a long time since she'd seen it, with the continual overcast; not since she'd returned to Gothryme. A full moon in hythe-that would be a good omen for the new year. But that set her to thinking. What omen was that connected to? She leaned far out, the cold wind biting her cheeks.

The moon in hythe reminded her of a rhyme she'd heard somewhere. The dark face of the moon was waxing. Bad luck! Whatever the phase of the moon, whenever it showed the dark side was an ill-omen. But when the full moon showed only the dark face-which only occurred a few times in a lifetime-it was an evil omen. Though Karan did not set much store by omens, she shivered at the thought.

Then it all fell into place. There had been something about the full dark moon after she and Llian fell through the gate into the Nightland. Yggur and Mendark had talked about it once. Suddenly she understood why Rulke was in such a hurry. The moon would be full in about a week. Hythe was a week away too. She squinted against the wind. By the look of the moon, it would be fully dark in a week too. A full dark moon on hythe, mid-winter's day, might only occur once in a thousand years for all she knew. And that was the prophecy-the day that Rulke would come out.

Rulke must be ready in a week. No wonder he pressed her. Until now he had played with her, but time had run out. When he came back up the stairs it would be to force her, savagely if he must. Little time for her, either.

The hairs on the back of her neck prickled. She turned slowly, knowing already what she would find there. Rulke! He stood close behind. Huge. Magnificent. Terrible. How could she even think to oppose him? Surely he knew everything, even what she was thinking. What did it matter anyway?

He said nothing but clasped his hands, and the tormented image of Llian was back in her mind though she had put the glasses down a long time ago.