"Indeed," Mendark replied softly.

She paced around the room and at each quarter-turn felt a breeze on her cheek from a ventilation shaft, though she could not see daylight up any of them.

"How are you going to do it?" Xarah asked.

Mendark frowned at the stone bench. "I'm not sure that I know," he said heavily.

Many hours later, the company had assembled at the bottom of the shaft again, all but Tensor, whom Mendark would not have near. They had collected such objects of power as they could obtain, including a fragment from the gate that Rulke had come through, and the restored metal mirror. Yggur had relinquished his most potent artifact, the grapefruit-sized ruby that he had used previously. The Aachim had worked all night, shaping the ruby into a rod and polishing the ends until they were perfectly parallel. Then they cut down the metal mirror to make a pair of small caps which they fixed over the ends of the ruby with the reflecting side inwards. The whole device was then wrapped around with metal bands, and shaped pieces of stone from Rulke's gate clamped to it.

"What is it?" Tallia asked.

"It doesn't have a name," said Mendark. "I only just thought it up. You could call it an ampliscope, I suppose. Ready, Yggur?"

Yggur trembled. "No!" he choked, standing astride the rift and gripping the device in two hands. Holding it out at arm's length, he nodded, a puppet-like jerk of the head.

Closing his eyes, Mendark held up a carefully chosen lightglass, a polished sphere of green heliotrope the size of an orange. Inside, the stone was spotted with red marks like drops of blood. "Conjure power, Yggur. And aim true, or you'll burn my hand off." He called to the others, "The remaining lights out now!"

The Aachim extinguished their lightglasses. The hot room was lit only by the glowing bloodstone, pale green with red flecks. A wisp of vapor drifted up from the rift. The faintest vibration shivered the rock beneath their feet. Tallia's skin crawled. She darted a glance upward but the foundations made no reply.

"Do you recall how the Nightland was made, Yggur?" Mendark asked softly.

"My very cells are imprinted with it," snapped Yggur.

"Good, for we must fit that print to the sphere. I will draw power from this place," Mendark said. "Yggur, you are to focus and amplify it."

A shudder wracked Yggur. His outstretched arms trembled. "Bring it forth!" he whispered. A tiny flare of pink leaked out from between finger and thumb. His whole body began to shake, then with a mighty wrench of will he took control of himself. The end of the ampliscope wavered then steadied, pointing directly at the bloodstone.

Tallia could feel the tension, the strain as if every atom in the room was energized. A tiny hum came from the device. It built to a drone, a whine, a shriek, a blast of sound that hurt their ears. For a fraction of a second a ruby beam of light burst out through the further mirror and struck the bloodstone.

The globe glowed like a cloud of bloody droplets. Men-dark grunted, then the radiance spread out to the size of a boulder and hung in the air, frozen light.

"A tiny image of the Nightland, as it was when it was made," said Mendark.

"I did not imagine it would be so easy," said Xarah, holding her sister's hand.

"Ha!" Mendark replied. "This is only the beginning, and a very tentative one at that. Now we must sense out the boundaries of the Nightland, map them to this sphere and drag the map to the correct shape. Only then can we try to close the gate on him."

"Get on with it!" Yggur snarled. "This is like holding a horse over my head. I can't do it all day."

Mendark took a small object from his pocket, a piece of yellow amber in the shape of a comb with three teeth, attached to a band which he put around his head. "I am the only sensitive here, am I not?" He looked to each of them in turn, but no one indicated otherwise. "I will do the sensing while you, Selial, take this comb and map the boundaries of the Nightland onto the sphere." He turned to Malien. "Malien, I would not ask this of you but there is no one else-will you take my place?"

Malien eased her arm in its sling, flinched, then said, "I'll channel the power, as best I can. Begin!"

She gave Mendark her free hand. He closed his eyes; his lips moved. Selial touched the amber comb to the sphere of frozen light and three fine yellow lines appeared there. She scribed the comb smoothly around the circumference of the sphere. The trio of lines followed it, around and under and back, next to the starting point.

"That was hard," said Mendark, dashing sweat off his forehead.

"It's not the hundredth part," said Yggur in a hoarse voice.

"I know!"

They continued. At the beginning of the third circle a tiny wiggle appeared in the scribed lines. Selial steadied herself, but before another quarter-turn her arm began to jerk back and forth, creating a wild series of zig-zag marks. Without warning, she dropped the comb. Her arms fell to her side; her breast heaved; her haggard face crumpled like crepe.

"I can't do it!" she gasped, choking for air. "I can feel him on the other side, watching and waiting. Gloating!"

"Aah!" groaned Yggur, his bad knee buckling. He would have fallen had not Tallia sprung to his side. The sphere of light began to grow dim.

"Hold the sphere!" Mendark roared. "More power, Yggur. Lose it and I may never get it back."

The muscles of Yggur's cheek were working, his eyes darting this way and that. The sphere brightened slightly.

"Are you all right?" Mendark said sharply.

"I ... I think I can overcome it. You can never know, Mendark, the frightful memories that this brings back."

"I'm supporting you."

"You weren't last time!" Yggur said coldly. "Well, what are we going to do?"

Mendark cast an eye at Selial, a broken wreck on the floor. Her nerve had failed again. He shook his head.

"I'll have a go," said Tallia, "though I've not done this kind of thing before." She bent down to take the amber comb from Selial's limp fingers. Her own shook, more than a little.

"Think of nothing," said Mendark. "Empty your mind completely-just open yourself to my sending."

They started again. Tallia found it incredibly hard work. She began to trace the outline onto the sphere. The trio of yellow lines were all twisted, almost as bad as Selial's last had been.

"No, no!" Mendark yelled. "You're not following me. Concentrate!"

They began again and this time it was a little better, and improved as Tallia learned how to follow Mendark. They had half the sphere done before he suddenly slumped to the floor, breathing hard.

"I've got to rest," he said. "Can you hold it, Yggur?"

"I'll have to, won't I? Be quick!"

"Just a few minutes," Mendark said, hanging his head between his knees.

Tallia was glad of the respite. She felt quite faint, and when she closed her eyes could still see the wavering triplets of lines. As she did so the floor shuddered. Hot gas hissed out of the crack in the floor and caught fire in the air, producing choking white fumes. One whiff and she could feel it searing the inside of her nose, throat and lungs. Her eyes began to sting. She felt suffocated, claustrophobic.

Tallia sprang up, gasping, "Quick! Up the ladder."

The bloody sphere of light, half-woven with lines of yellow, vanished. Pent-up aftersickness exploded in her head. Tallia lifted Malien over her shoulder and ran for the ladder. Each breath was like breathing acid. Most of the Aachim were there already, jostling each other.

"Out of the way!" Asper shouted, trying to carry the helpless Selial through.

"No, you fool!" Malien grabbed at his shoulder. "Let the strong go first, else we will all die here for the weakest."

In an organized panic they clambered up the ladder. Asper was one of the last, panting under his load. Tallia followed, forcing against a sickness that grew steadily worse, and last of all Basitor and tall Blase. The white fumes billowed about them like waves on a stormy sea, one second rippling gently around Tallia's ankles, the next bursting up the shaft in a torrent that had them all hacking and clinging helplessly to the rungs while they tried to heave up their burning lungs like vomit.

"Aaah!" cried Blase.

Tallia looked down to see his fingers slip off the rungs. He fell into the fumes, a dull thud notifying his arrival at the bottom. Basitor started to go after him.

"No!" cried Tallia. "That's certain death!"

He looked up at her with bloody eyes. "Death is certain!" But he did not go down.

They reached the basement where the foundations were. A few white puffs ebbed out of the shaft to dissipate in the open space, and that was the end of it. A few minutes later, looking down with her lightglass, Tallia could see all the way to the body.

"Shall we try again?" asked Malien.

"Have to remake the ampliscope first," said Mendark, taking it apart. One mirror cap was burned through from the intensity of that burst of light. The polished end of the ruby was stuck with drops of condensed metal. "Malien, we'll need as many of these caps as your people can provide."

It took some hours to restore the device to its previous condition-hours when, twice, the living rock trembled all around them with enough force to make the shifting foundations groan. But they did not unseat themselves, the spring cable did not break, the tower did not topple, and eventually the group went down again, knowing that they were past their best.

Blase's body was picked up, honored according to Aachim custom and carried up the ladder. Those Aachim no longer required-half of them-went with it, to prepare for whatever departure they would make. No point risking all their lives in such a hazardous place.

Once more Mendark held up the bloodstone lightglass. Once more Yggur straddled the rift and, as Malien summoned power from it, amplified it within himself and directed it into the ruby rod. Once more that crimson beam blasted through the mirror and pumped up the bloodstone to a sphere of solid light. White-hot sparks blazed curves though the air; molten metal dripped from the end of the ruby.

Mendark swore, a shrill cry of pain. A huge red blister grew on the side of his hand, product of the misdirected ray. He staggered, almost fell, then stood up straight by an effort of will. His hands held the sphere high and did not waver.

"Sorry," said Yggur without sympathy.

"Come on, come on!" Mendark screeched.

Tallia felt sluggish as she moved. She reached out for the three-toothed comb and felt Mendark's sending thump into her mind.

"Now concentrate, harder than you ever have before," he shouted.

She began to scribe the yellow lines around the blood-spotted sphere, first tentatively then with a growing confidence, feeling for the first time in her life that she worked with Mendark as one. Finally she drew the last triplet-the sphere was completely encircled. Tallia sighed and made to lower her arm, which was aching almost as badly as her head.

"Not yet!" cried Mendark and Yggur together. "Again, the other way!"

Tallia almost gave up. The work was only half done! The flesh was drooping off Yggur's rigid frame as if pulled down toward the rift. Catching her gaze he drew himself erect.

"I will not give in now," he said limply.

Tallia began again, crossing the previous set of lines at right-angles. By the time she'd finished the sphere positively glowed with bloody droplets, but that was not the end of it either. "My arm!" she gasped.

Asper ran across to massage the cramps away. She had to do it again, obliquely, and once more the other way. When Mendark was finally satisfied she collapsed.

Mendark looked to Yggur, and then to Malien. They were all half-dead with strain. "Still a long way to go," Malien said.

"It's a very poor model of the Nightland, as I sense it now," Mendark replied. "Well, master map-maker, show us how it's done."

Shand came out of the shadows and took up the comb. With the three teeth he caught hold of a yellow thread here and there, or sometimes a whole group of them, slowly teasing them out until the shape was no longer a sphere but more like a knobbly potato, warped, knobbed and pitted all over.

"That's more how I understand it," sighed Yggur.

"And how I sense it," Mendark replied.

"There are more dimensions than these three," said Shand, "but we'd need a better model than this to map them. Still, I think it'll do. Now to find the flaw; the way in."

NIGHTLAND.

Llian tumbled through empty space. "Karan!" he screamed, blinded by the light.

With a smack his nose hit something hard. Snatching at it, he felt smooth warm skin and Llian found that he was holding Karan by the shin. He shifted his grip, looked down and saw her beautiful face upside down near his feet, surrounded by an aurora of white and blue light.

Karan tried to smile, though it was an effort to do so. Holding him was like trying to press two magnets together, an unseen force tried to fling them away from each other.

"What are you doing down there?" she shouted over the roaring of the wind. She held his belt while he twisted around and groped his way up her body. They clung together, lip to lip, breast to chest, thigh to thigh, through a passage that was endless; where time seemed to have no meaning. And in that eternal crossing, even through closed eyes the colors warped all around and in and out.

"Where are we going?" Llian whispered.

"I don't know. I thought the gate would take us back to Thurkad. That's where Yggur and Faelamor came from."

"We should be there by now. When Tensor sent me through his gate I came out the other end straight away."

Karan had a horrible thought. "Maybe this isn't that gate," she said. "What if Rulke came through a different gate?"

Just then something shivered between them. Llian's eyes snapped open in alarm. Karan was staring directly into his eyes and her pupils were so wide that the glorious green disappeared. Her red curls were a riot of waving tangles.

"Something's gone wrong, hasn't it?"

"Yes," she whispered. "Llian, hold me tight. I'm afraid this is the end."

He squeezed her so hard that she could scarcely breathe. "Well, at least we're together," he whispered into her ear.

Even as he spoke, a visible ribbon of the ether insinuated its way between them. It had color and form but was intangible. Then a tiny bubble formed in the middle of it, a hard little bean pressing against Llian's chest. It began to swell rapidly, like a balloon being pumped up, prising them from each other. Llian tried to push it away but his fingers went through it with barely any resistance. Already an arm's length separated them.

"Llian," Karan screamed. "Don't let go!"

She clung to his arms but her hands were slowly forced down his wrists. They gripped hands, straining against the pressure. Their efforts were futile. The balloon burst without a sound and flung them apart.

Llian sought about wildly for Karan but all he could see was her black shadow spinning off, dwindling against the pulsing glare. The madness of thrashing light and sound cut off his senses one by one, and though he cried out to her he had no voice to be heard. Now he lost sight, hearing, touch. He was lost in a dimensionless place for an unknown time, then smashed through a crystalline window and skidded across a floor as cold and slick as ice.

Llian lay there for some time, completely blind and numb. Pain was the first sensation to return. He woke to feel his body tormented in a dozen places. His tongue, badly bitten from Tensor using him as a shield against Rulke, felt as if he had licked a saw blade. His knee throbbed from some other forgotten accident.

Cold-ice-floor? he thought laboriously. Then either dead or alive, I am no longer in the gate, but somewhere real!