"Come on, dammit," he said, kicking the horse hard. "I don't have time. Move."

Move? Move where? He knew only that he was traveling south once again, that Crownhark and the mutilated body of Solomon Braithwaite lay behind him, and that, farther back, was . . .

"Come on. Move!"

... was something he did not want to think about.

A particularly violent kick brought the horse's head up, and he tried to rear, but mistreatment, hunger, and thirst had sapped his strength, and nothing more than a feeble spasm shuddered the length of the beast. Stiffly, he walked, and Dythragor could urge him into nothing quicker.

The trees fell away, and he found himself at the edge of the tidal flats that stretched put to the Isle of Mist. He had not been here before, and in light of the name of the place, he found it curious that there was no mist to be seen: the afternoon sun glowed warmly on the green hills that rose up from the wooded sh.o.r.es, and the air was so transparent as to seem almost unnatural.

He crossed the flats, his horse responding with a burst of enthusiasm once his hooves touched the damp mud and sand. But when he had sloshed across to the island, his lethargy returned, and he actually lay down just within the trees of the forest, his nose buried in a stream, drinking sleepily.

Dythragor swore at him, but when kicks and blows failed to stir the animal, he gave up and dismounted. Above, visible through the gaps in the leaves and branches, a white tower rose straight as a spear from the summit of the hills, glittering in the sunlight.

He blinked at it, his eyes dazzled as much by the tower as by fatigue and inner turmoil. Who lived here? It seemed a lordly place, but Vorya had certainly never mentioned anything about another king, and the n.o.bility 288.

of Gryylth was concentrated at Kingsbury, Marrget, being from Crownhark, should certainly have known something about it, but had apparently kept silent. -He resolved to ask Marrget about it if he ever saw . . .

He stood still, his thoughts moving in spite of his efforts to still them. The thought of Marrget took him back to that day at the Long River, and the scene, like a news-reel jammed in the projector, replayed itself before his eyes, although this time the girl that he forced, that he stripped and threw to the ground, bore the remade features of the captain of the First Wartroop. She was screaming, her cries weak and incoherent, her hands and arms no match for the strength of a Dragonmaster. "Marrget . . . don't ..." he said. But his words were as brutal as his hands, and he found that he could not remember how to comfort.

He came to himself on his knees, shaking, his hands full of his own hair, his eyes shut tight against the inner vision and aswirl with phosphenes. As he staggered to his feet, the tower glinted at him mockingly, and leaving his horse by the stream, he made his way up the slope.

There was a path, and it made for an easy climb, but maze-like, it twisted back and forth as it ascended, and it seemed to Dythragor that it was more circuitous than it really had to be, for it descended almost as often as it rose and doubled back on itself unnecessarily. The day was well on into the afternoon by the time he gained the summit and stumbled across the gra.s.sy lawn toward the tower.

Scented by the sea and gra.s.s, the air was fresh and cool, and it soothed his sleepless eyes as he went toward the door, gawking up at the polished, white monolith like a youngster approaching his first Christmas tree. In all, the tower had a strikingly modern appearance, its marble walls unfigured, its windows recessed smoothly into the stone, and he felt anomalous, even vulgar, in coa.r.s.e leather armor that was stained and fragrant with the blood of the old man of Crownhark.

But in contrast to the unadorned sides of the tower, the door was not without carving. Runes and figures adorned .

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it in expert relief, and, at head level, as though designed to ensure that he would read it, was the single word: Listinoise.

Lifting a hand, he traced the carved word. It seemed familiar, but like a forgotten dream, its meaning fled when he sought it. The name of the tower? But it seemed so unlike the names he encountered in Gryylth, for it seemed to have its origins more in the Latin than in the Anglo-Saxon languages.

Latin. Anglo-Saxon. There it was again, the virus that Alouzon had brought with her to Gryylth. Questions and more questions. With a violent jerk, he grabbed the pull and swung the door wide, his hand on his sword. Whoever lived here would learn to respect Dythragor Dragonmaster.

Inside, he found blank marble walls and floor, and a ceiling that was lost in a luminous haze. If anything, the bareness of the interior added to the sense of modernity, and again, clad as he was in armor that, yes, seemed a part of the fifth century of his own world, and of an island called Britain, he felt that he was the anomaly, the stranger, the intruder.

He stopped with his foot on the first of a flight of stairs. Fifth-century Britain. He looked down and examined the blood-stained leather as though it had been brought in from an excavation on Cadbury Hill, his scholar's eyes, surfacing now within those of the warrior, searching for, finding, details: the bronze buckles, the saucer-brooches and fittings worked with Celtic spirals . . . zoomorphics ... It was impossible, but true.

Again, he pulled himself out of the questions. Fifth-century Britain? He might as well believe that the world was flat.

The stairs spiraled up around the interior of the tower and brought him to another door, this time of apple wood, again carved. The images were confusing, and to his tired eyes they writhed and capered across the surface of the wood, prancing as though in an endless, twining procession. Runes, animals, faces, flowers-all tumbled and nodded, all twisted and revolved, all glanced now and 290.

then at the strange old man who had come to their door dressed anachronistically in the armor of a bygone age, of another world.

But he reminded himself that he was not old. It could not be Dythragor Dragonmaster that was so regarded by carved eyes and wooden faces. And Solomon Braithwaite lay dead on the floor of an inn, miles away. He himself had killed him. It was just Dythragor now, just a life of war and glory, of battle and strength . . .

The face of the girl he had raped surfaced before his eyes, regarded him sorrowfully, then vanished. Her place was taken by the images of two children who fled from burning fields, hand in hand, the boy, by the look of him no more than four, leading his younger sister through the flames, his face growing older with each moment.

Then a flower, then Marrget, a woman, her hair long and flowing and free, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s bare. She held her head proudly as she turned to him, a cup in her hands. Her lips moved soundlessly, but he read the command: Ask.

His hand was on the door pull, and it squirmed in his fingers as though it sought to meet his grasp. "Ask? Ask what?"

Ask.

And then she was gone into a netherworld of formless mist, of stars that shone from below the ground.

A shrieking harpy flapped its filthy wings before him, and suddenly Helen was there, her finger pointing accusingly. He did not have to read her lips: he knew what she was saying. They were almost the last words she had spoken to him, and they were replete with the hatred and contempt that had riddled their marriage and left it lifeless. She might have been-yes, she was: he could see it clearly-holding that evening edition of the Los Angeles Times before him as she had outside the courtroom, the screamer headlines announcing the deaths of four students in Ohio.

Are you satisfied, murderer?

Her words cut him now as they did then, and his heart twisted in his chest, his arm turned numb. But he refused .

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to give her what she wanted, he refused to take the pills again. Spitting in her face, he opened the door and rushed into the room beyond.

It was lit with the twilight of a summer evening, the ceiling dark blue and sprinkled with silver stars, the floor a variegated carpet of browns and greens that seemed to mimic a landscape. Soothing, quiet, it seemed a sanctuary, a holy place into which the profane did not enter.

The setting sun streamed through a single window, fell upon the altar and gleamed on the embroidered threads of gold that wound through a crumpled mound of black satin. If there had been a Mystery here, it seemed that it was gone, fled. Only its veil was left. But when he picked it up he recognized with a start the blouse of Korean silk that he had brought back to Helen after his days in Seoul: the expensive, exotic gift he had given her the day before they were married.

Sacrilege. He stared at it, breathing hard, the rectilinear pictograms spelling out unknown words and sentiments, the white-plumed storks engaged in a mating dance that ridiculed both his childless marriage and the excesses of forced copulation he allowed himself in Gryyith.

"You d.a.m.ned b.i.t.c.h." His words, whispered, held an edge as brittle as gla.s.s. "Where are you?"

As in an answer to his question, the door slammed behind him, and he turned around to find that the inside of the wood was covered with a mirror, and that his own reflection-quaint and faintly absurd in the trappings of heroic culture-raged at him from out of its depths.

Footsteps pattered down the stairs outside, and he heard the door of the tower open. Rushing to the window, he saw, far below, the figure of a woman running southward, her black hair flying behind her and her robes of silver and sable fluttering like the wings of a b.u.t.terfly. She was not Helen, and yet maybe she was. He could no longer be sure.

"Helen!"

He caught a glimpse of a white face, and then she was 292.

gone, vanishing into a wall of fog that was rising from the ocean that lay to the south.

Lifting his eyes, Dythragor looked out over a sea of mist. It roiled in shades of white and gray and stretched off into the distance as though it were made of twilight and shadow. The sun was setting, and the near-horizontal beams pierced it, turned it into a cloudy opal shot with sparks of fire.

The mirror penned him in the temple, but he drew the Dragonsword and lashed out at it. Reflection struck reflection, shivering the gla.s.s into fragments that imaged him from a thousand different perspectives: here he was six, watching his mother pull her collar up over the bruises his father had given her; here he was an old man, dead in his office; here again, he was Dythragor Dragon-master, raping a Dremord girl, denying a friend . . .

The steel bit deep into the mirror, into the wood beneath it, splitting the door and leaving it hanging on its hinges. He shoved it brutally open, and a shard of gla.s.s traced a line of crimson down his palm as it showed him a picture of a young soldier examining photographs at a desk in Seoul, wondering if he would ever have a chance to kill something.

He ran down the stairs, seeding the white marble with drops of his own blood. The tower door was still open, and he ran across the gra.s.s toward the mist, following the path of the black-clad woman.

The ground dipped suddenly, the mist began, and he entered a dim landscape of ghostly trees and pale ferns. When the sun set, taking with it the last of the daylight, he was left groping by instinct, feeling his way by the touch of a trunk, or the brush of a frond across his face. The woman could have been anywhere, even behind him, and he kept his sword in his hand, ready to slash at the slightest movement.

He followed the slope down, and the ground turned soft beneath his boots, quaking with each step. Lights appeared ahead, twinkling quietly, and with a sense of relief he almost ran to meet them.

The ground grew softer, almost slippery, the footing .

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uncertain, and as a golden light began to build ahead of him, the faint outline of a chalice manifesting through the darkness and the mist, he tripped, slid, and wound up face down on what he had a.s.sumed to be the damp ground of a bog, or of a sandy sh.o.r.e.

But it was not a bog, nor was it sand. What lay beneath him was a shimmering transparency, a simulacrum of earth and gra.s.s, only slightly more solid than the projected image of a motion picture. He could see through it; and beyond the layers of soil and stone, which seemed to be no more than a few feet thick, there was a nothingness that was populated by scattered points of lights.

And he realized that he could only be looking at the stars.

Ahead, the Grail hung in the black sky, just out of reach, as though daring him to take the final step and throw himself upon its promise. Throbbing like a heart, golden as a summer dawn, it brimmed with living waters Siat tumbled over its rim and cascaded down into the void as though they could fill the universe.

With a cry, he turned, scrambling in soil that seemed to want to melt away beneath his feet and pitch him headlong into vacuum. Clawing at the half-real gra.s.s, he worked his way back to the tower and clung to the cold stone as though it were the only sanity in a world gone mad. He wept, screamed, his tears streaking down his face, glistening on the gra.s.s, mingling with the dew that, toward sunrise, gathered at his feet, flashing like diamonds, or like stars.

* CHAPTER 20 *

Alouzon's voice grew hoa.r.s.e from shouting, her hands sc.r.a.ped and raw from ringing the tocsin beli in one village after another. Silbakor could give her speed, but even the immense bulk of the black Dragon and its impa.s.sive, yellow eyes could lend her no more than an air of authority. If she were to gain the support of the women of Gryylth, it would be by her deeds, and, more important, her words.

/ don't want you to follow me. I want you to go out and help your men.

The bells clanged urgently, and the Dragonmaster shouted and gestured, digging deep into the oratory that had lain unused since she had helped to fire the campus protests of another world and another age. She reflected that she was using the same techniques, the same urgent call for change and revolution, that had so dismayed Solomon Braithwaite, but she could not relish the triumph: these same sentiments had led her cla.s.smates to death.

I'm telling you this: it's not a matter of choosing whether things are going to change. They're going to change whether you like it or not, and all you can do is decide which side you 're on.

The old men scoifed, and the women at first were doubtful. Here was a stranger-and a woman at that-come now riding a Dragon as though she thought herself a hero of Gryylth, calling for them to leave their homes and (of all things!) travel across country to fight the Dre- 294.

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mords. A clear violation of custom, taboo, and the entire context of their lives.

And if you get in the way of what's happening out there, it's going to run right over you.

Some turned away, went to their homes, and hid. Others, caught by, attracted to, this woman of power who stood atop the stone housings of the tocsin bells and declaimed sentiments that they, perhaps, in private moments, in stray thought, held themselves, stayed listening. Her voice was restrained and impa.s.sioned, pleading and commanding by turns, and she painted a picture of words that confronted them with the deadly scenario that was unfolding a few miles away: an army slaughtered, Gryylth on the run, the Corrinian phalanxes advancing like a wave of rage.

There's a time when the system works, and then there's a time that it starts to kill you. It's killing you right now. Even if you can't see the Dremords coming for you, believe me they 're coming, and the system's helping them come. So what are you going to do about it?

And the silence would drag out, the faces of the women mirroring fright, grief, loss. Their men were no more, their husbands and sons were dead. They were defenseless. And yet, inevitably, someone-a midwife perhaps-would ask the question: "Tell us what to do, Dragonmaster."

Your lives are at stake, and all you 've got to fight with is your lives. So you 've got to put your bodies on the line, you 've got to stop what's happening, and you 've got to show the Dremords that, whether they like it or not, Gryylth isn't just going to lie down and get walked on.

They listened. Even some of the old men listened. With baskets on their arms and babies on their hips, with tools and pots and even sharp sticks, they left the villages in long straggling lines, heading for what was left of a once-proud army, bringing help to their men. By their actions, they violated custom, they ignored taboo, they shattered the brittle strictures that had hemmed them into their lives.

But they would not submit.

By the time Alouzon returned, some of the women she 296.

had harangued that morning were already within sight. The western sky was still blazing with sunset as she slid from Silbakor's back into Marrget's arms, and with what was left of her voice she told her to expect further help throughout the night.

"They are traveling after dark?" Marrget was incredulous. "What did you tell them?"

Alouzon forced a smile through parched lips. "Same thing I told you, lady." Her world spun suddenly, and she would have fallen to the ground had not Marrget caught her.

She came to herself when it was quite dark, but she judged that she had not slept long, for the waning moon had not yet risen. She was mildly surprised: she had thought that she could have remained unconscious for a week. Maybe the Dragonsword was aiding her as it had after the Heath.

For a while, though, she allowed herself the luxury of remaining among her blankets beside the fire, and with unclosed eyes, she watched the stars. The constellations were not those of Earth, but after pa.s.sing night after night beneath them, she was beginning to recognize patterns and colors. Without the glare of the moon, she even saw two parallel bands of cloudy luminescence that spanned the sky: the distinctive mark of a spiral galaxy.

Maybe it was the Milky Way that so gleamed in a comforting arc. That would be nice, she thought. To be in the same galaxy with everything that she found familiar, everything that const.i.tuted her past and her present . . .

She heard the murmur of voices, male and female, the sound of spades and picks in earth, the sharpening of stakes, the grating of slabs of stone as they were lifted from the road. Marrget and Vorya, carrying out her suggestions, were overseeing the destruction of the Corri-nians' most efficient means of transport and were filling the downs to either side with a scattering of simple but effective traps.

She turned over, stretched, and peered at a landscape illuminated by torchlight and populated with indistinct figures. The village women, it seemed, were doing most .

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of the work, allowing the tired soldiers and warriors a needed rest. One laughed in the darkness, and those who were awake joined in. Cvinthil started up a song in his firm tenor, and the chorus sounded across the downs as men and women, motivated by fear and survival, worked together, finding in their work a commonality that transcended s.e.x, custom, and world view and replaced them with a shared vision of a different life, one that-for the sake of the wartroop, for the sake of the girls of Bandon, for the sake of Gryylth and Corrin-she prayed might continue past this one night of cooperation and faith.

Afar, afar, My love lies afar.

And who tells me he shall return Who lies afar from me?

It was the same song that Cvinthil and Seena had sung for her, Seena's soprano riding sweetly upon her husband's countermelody. Now, though, the song came from many throats, and she heard, amid the strain, the sound of the men's line duplicated an octave higher as the women of the First Wartroop, their ident.i.ties disguised by darkness and their transformation, added their old harmony in their new voices.

Footsteps approached, and someone sat down near her, sighed. Someone else stood by. "There is no need to drive yourself like an ox, child," said a woman.

"Eh?" Marrget's voice. Alouzon allowed herself another minute to drift and listen..

"You've been working like a man all evening. I've watched you."

"I believe, my lady, that we all must play the man this night."

"That is true, child. But . . ."

Alouzon stole a glance. Marrget was a few feet from her, sitting on a bundle, rubbing sore arms with dirty hands. A midwife, hair unbound, stood before her, her ap.r.o.n and gown stained with gra.s.s and soil.

". . .but you are young and slender. You have had no children to strengthen you. Be easy on yourself."

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"I will be easy when my work is done." Marrget's tone was friendly, but reserved.

The village women knew nothing of the fate of the wartroop, and the midwife addressed Marrget with a kind solicitousness. "I must say, though, that you are wise for your years, to have taken your brother's garments for yourself when you set out. What village do you come from, did you say?"