It screamed as it came, and it was suddenly very close, banking and diving on them, spitting flashes of light with a sound as of cloth being torn in two. A hundred yards away, sand and foam erupted in a line of destruction that swept toward them like a scythe.

The women reacted instinctively and shoved each other away just as the ground between them exploded, scouring their arms and legs with hot sand. Blinded by grit, deafened by noise, they fell, groping frantically for one another, and when their vision cleared, they saw that the thing had finished with them.

But it was now diving toward Quay.

* CHAPTER 11 *

The first explosion threw Alouzon into Marrget, and the two women tumbled to the floor as the front wall of Hahle's house crashed down in a shower of stone, wood and thatch. Alouzon clawed her way to her feet more by instinct than by intent, terrified at the thought of lying inert and helpless in the face of such an attack.

She pulled Marrget up beside her, grabbed the Dragonsword, and then they were climbing over the rubble, splinters and fragments of stone lacerating their hands. When they gained the top of the pile, they saw that, on the other side of the narrow street, the buildings and houses had been leveled. Red flames were already springing up in the heaps of thatch that had slid from fallen roofs, and the dust of stone and mortar hung in the air like a shroud.

Alouzon buckled her sword over her linen tunic, wishing that she had not doffed her armor, but a screaming came across the sky, and she knew then that leather would be no more protection than cloth, for she recognized the unmistakable sound of a turbojet engine.

They gained the street, and Alouzon saw, high up and off to the north, the flicker of white wings as a McDonnell Douglas Skyhawk banked around for another run at the town. Afternoon sunlight flashed on the cockpit canopy, and dark beneath the fuselage were the bulges of napalm pods and bombs.

She grabbed Marrget's hand. "You lived here. Where are the infirmaries?''

The captain seemed fascinated by the sight of the jet, but with the discipline of a seasoned warrior, she turned to the task at hand. "I believe the Council Hall would be the likely choice. It has large rooms, and is at the center of town.''

The Skyhawk was diving again. Sprinting across open ground, the women threw themselves into the shelter of a thick stone wall just as the plane strafed the length of the street, churning the bare earth into the consistency of a plowed field.

In the wake of the shriek of the turbojet came screams and cries. People were trapped in houses, buried under rubble, dying slowly or quickly. The jet circled again.

My fault. This is all my fault. Damn the war. Damn all of it. Aloud, Alouzon said: "It's going to be napalm next, I bet."

"Napalm?"

"Fire."

Marrget sheathed her sword. "We need Kyria."

Alouzon was already running toward the center of the town, moving as fast as she could along the rubble-choked street, trying to ignore the frantic whimpers and cries of the wounded. Behind her, Marrget kept pace, calling out directions with what breath she could spare. The sound of the jet picked up, Doppler shifting in a rising whine as it accelerated toward the town once more. It streaked overhead and flashed into the distance, and Alouzon heard the crump of impacting napalm pods. Thick orange flames erupted off to her left. The westering sun was suddenly obscured by black smoke.

They found Kyria standing in the middle of the town square. The wizard's staff was burning in her hand, but she looked vacant. She stared at them, then at herself, then at her staff, then at the flitting image of the Skyhawk that screamed through the sky.

"Kyria! Do something!"

Helwych was standing beside her, his eyes wide and his face gaunt with fear. He shook his head. "She has been like this since the last healing, Dragonmaster." He could scarcely get the words out. "She is not herself."

"Helwych, you got any tricks up your sleeve?"

The lad was striving valiantly to master himself. "I know little, Dragonmaster.'' He looked ready to cry. "I was taught nothing."

"Find something, big guy." Alouzon gave him a gentle shove in the direction of the circling plane. "Anything. Leave Kyria to me."

Marrget had plunged toward the Council Hall, calling Karthin's name. Alouzon seized Kyria by the shoulders. "Helen! Kyria! Dammit, come out of it!"

Kyria looked blank. "Alouzon? Is that you?"

"We need help!"

"Who am I?"

Perplexed, and damning herself for being so, Alouzon tried to decide on the best answer. How deeply had the identity of Kyria rooted itself into Solomon's angry ex-wife? How deeply did she resent it?

Regardless, Helen Addams had only words and spite at her command. It was Kyria who had the power that Quay needed. Alouzon shook her. "Kyria! You're Kyria!"

Her words were nearly drowned out by the roar of a Pratt and Whitney turbine. Bullets riddled the Council Hall, and part of the roof fell in. The heat of napalm fires flickered at her back, and dust and smoke added a twilight cast to the scene.

Stifling her fears, Alouzon kept at Kyria. "You're a sorceress. Do something. People are getting killed."

"I've . . . I've got to make my own choices."

Another explosion. Alouzon grabbed Kyria and shielded her from the hail of dirt and gravel propelled by the concussion. Her back stung, and a baseball-sized stone sent blood trickling through her hair. "You haven't got any more choice than I do," she said. "You want those kids to get killed?"

Kyria looked hopelessly at her staff. ' 'Kids again ..."

Nearby, a flash of blue fire sprang up. Helwych was conjuring, sending trails of light toward the speeding jet. The colors snaked through the sky, but the Sky-hawk flew through them unharmed and began another run.

The mention of children, though, had galvanized the sorceress. Sucking in a breath, she struck the butt of her staff on the ground, and blue-white light leapt along its length. "All right, Sol," she cried. "You want to play? Come and get me!"

Her staff blazing like a star, she ran out into the square and took aim at the Skyhawk. The plane banked sharply, dropped another pod of napalm, and came directly for her, twin cannon twinkling with death.

"Come on . . ."

The tracers streaked whitely through the smoke, but Kyria's staff eclipsed them with stellar brilliance. Blue-white shaded now into blue-violet, as though, with the urgency of her need, Kyria was tapping deeper and deeper into the fundamental powers of the universe.

The bullets were almost on her when she let the charge go. Instantly, the Skyhawk was enveloped in a lethal cloud of seething glory. The cannon cut off as though a switch had been thrown, and, a moment later, the jet exploded in a massive fireball studded with bits of metal and plastic. A wing pinwheeled off to the side. The tail section tumbled through the air. Burning, trailing smoke and flame, the wreckage arced over the town and crashed to the earth some distance outside the fortifications.

Kyria fell to her knees, sobbing. "Leave me alone. Just leave me alone. I can't do this ..."

Alouzon tried to raise her to her feet, but the sorceress was hysterical now, her eyes unseeing, her cries obviously directed not at Solomon, nor at the Sky-hawk, but at something else.

"Go away! I don't want you anymore!" She beat her hands on the cobblestones and seemed ready to batter her head in a like manner, but Alouzon held her, pinning her arms to her sides. Kyria wept and screamed. "Stop it!" But again, Alouzon knew that she was addressing someone-or something-else.

"Kyria . . . please . . . it's going to be all right." How easily the words came to her lips now! Bandon was dead, Quay was dying, and the corpses of her friends and companions might well be scattered throughout the city, their eyes as sightless as those of the dead men left behind by the wrath of the Tree; yet still she insisted that all would be well.

What prompted such foolish optimism? The Grail? Was she now offering the promise of the Sacred Cup to one who would doubtless spit at it?

Kyria wept. "Kids . . . always the kids . . . and me too now ..."

Would she spit, though? Alouzon found herself echoing Kyria's question: who was she? Certainly not Helen Addams. And yet she was Helen Addams indeed.

"We are well, Alouzon," came Marrget's clear voice, seconded by Karthin's basso.

Still struggling with Kyria, Alouzon offered thanks to whatever Gods heard prayers from Gryylth. "What about the others?"

Karthin answered. "Of our own company, we do not know, Dragonmaster. But those whom Kyria healed are now in need of healing again."

"Kyria ..." The sorceress was sobbing weakly now, exhausted with healing, killing, and struggle against herself. "Kyria, we need you again."

"Can't . . . can't do it ... I don't even know who lam . . ."

"You're Kyria. You've got the power. you have to use it."

"It uses me."

"I know. We're all being used. Come on: one more push."

Kyria sobbed again and slumped in her arms. "I can't. I can't. I can't."

Abruptly, in spite of her words, she rallied. Straight- ening, she opened eyes that were suddenly clear and dashed a sleeve across her face to wipe away her tears. "I will heal," she said, her voice touched with strange inflections. "But I am weak, Alouzon. Pray, take me where I am needed."

"Kyria?"

"It is I."

Alouzon hesitated. "Who are you?"

"One who is needed at present. Please, Alouzon. Quickly."

Amid the pungent odor of high explosive, the smoke of burning napalm, and the crackling of burning thatch and timber, Alouzon took her toward the Hall as townsfolk-stunned, wounded, bloody-began trickling into the square. Santhe, Parl, and Birk showed up a moment later in the company of Hahle and the men from the defenses; and after assuring himself that his wife was safe, Hahle began organizing those who had not been hurt into firefighting and rescue teams, sending the injured to gather before the doors of the Hall.

The Hall itself had been damaged, how heavily no one knew, but Marrget and Karthin plunged back into the building. With Helwych helping as best he could, they brought out the survivors and laid them in the square. Newly-healed limbs had been shattered once again, and wounds that sorcery had closed minutes before now gaped wide and red.

In the fields to the north of the town, the jet burned fiercely, streaking the sky with smoke.

"And what if there's another?" Alouzon murmured.

"There will be no others . . . for a while," said Kyria.

"You sure?"

"I am. But we must be away by tomorrow morning, for we are but one step ahead of those powers that seek to destroy us."

The sorceress's black eyes were serious, and their brightness told of a depth that might have contained worlds. Alouzon nodded, wondering at what she saw. "Yeah. I got that impression."

In the smoke-darkened sunlight, Kyria's staff shown pale yellow as she went to work, and she moved quickly from person to person, pausing to touch, to chant, to lay her head against that of a terrified girl or boy as the magic did its work. Chest wounds vanished, bullet holes healed in moments, arms and legs that had been mutilated beyond recognition were made whole and reattached.

Marrget and Karthin brought forth the sick, and Kyria healed them. It seemed natural to her: a simple, loving gesture of one human being to another, with no conditions, no judgment, no anger or hate or vengeance. Boy and girl, woman and man, she left them all alive and wondering at the health that was now theirs.

And when she was done with those from the Hall, she, with Alouzon and Marrget supporting her, moved into the town. Quay was a ruin of smoking buildings and tumbled stones, and some sections were still bum-ing fiercely, but those of its inhabitants who had not been killed outright in the attack were, by sunset, unharmed.

But the effort sapped her. Whether from the flow of power or from the interior struggle against herself, Kyria grew visibly paler with each working, and though her smile and her comfort remained undiminished, her eyes were glassy with strain by the time the last healing was done.

She stood up from smoothing Wykla's sandblasted legs and touched the girl lightly on the head. "I seem to heal you often, child.''

Wykla was speechless. She also had heard Kyria's words the day before.

"Fear not," said Kyria. "Be well. Be ..." She glanced knowingly at Manda. "Be happy."

Then, with a lurch, she gasped for breath and fell full-length on the ground.

Helen Addams lurked in the crawling shadows of the world, waiting for a chance to move. Kyria was hard at work, her white hands lying lightly on the wounds of child and adult alike, bringing healing and comfort; but soon the healing would be done and the battle would begin again.

Weak, silly little thing! If Kyria was so powerful, why then did she not destroy the woman who was waiting for an opportunity to strike a killing blow? Why did she insist upon merely pinning her in place?

An enemy left alive was an enemy who could rise up and attack. Solomon had found that out. The stupid fool should have gotten out of the marriage while he could. As it was . . . well, his stupidity had cost him, and if he had come back, it would cost him again.

Again, Helen tested the invisible walls, reaching out taloned hands to feel the flavor of the energies that washed against her hide. She was growing increasingly desperate, and she cursed the half-existence she was forced to endure while Kyria moved with graceful ease in the physical world, admired, even loved, by the very people that Helen had come to hate.

Kyria finished her work and the walls crumbled. The sorceress had been taxed by her efforts, but as her assailant leaped at her, she turned, smiling softly, her arms open. "Come," she said. "I will not hurt you. We must do this together."

Helen tried to curse her aloud, but inarticulate screams were all that she could manage as she bore the sorceress to the ground and slid her hands about her throat.

Immediately she smelled the sea: salt, the fresh clear air of a New England morning. The Atlantic was quiet today, and the hills were as green as the sky was blue.

No . . . no, not this . . .

It was her eighteenth birthday, and arrayed in her youth, her womanhood still a new thing that offered questions and wonder with each day, she had gone from her father's house and descended to the shore. Solomon had left for Korea the day before, and though his absence was a hollowness in her heart, she felt paradoxically full, as though the very fact that she would be here, at home, waiting for him to return, could supply both of them with the strength that they needed to endure the hardships and separation brought by the distant war.

That was, it seemed, her duty: to wait, to support, to nurture through the days and weeks the love that they had come to share. Solomon had the outer world of battle and male camaraderie; she herself had a quieter universe of more tender emotions. And both, she divined on this rarest of mornings, were good, and necessary. Through Solomon she could be complete, and thus could he be made whole.

Kyria stared up at Helen with gentle eyes, but Helen's hands tightened on her throat. Damn her for these recollections! In reaching into her mind and pulling them forth, the sorceress was violating her just as surely as had Solomon when, in the predawn darkness of their bedroom, he had grabbed her-fatigued, sore, and frightened though she was-and forced her to take his penis.

Raped, and raped again: morning after morning, year after year.

"Come," said Kyria. "This is both of us. We must work together.''

With a howl, Helen struck her in the face. Kyria wept, but more memories came, and, indeed, the sorceress's tears seemed to be more of sorrow than pain.

We must work together ...

There was no light in the bedroom, and Helen was huddled into the dark corner between the bed and the wall, wanting nothing so much as to make it darker, to pull the bedspread and blankets off the bed and cover herself, as though there were any refuge black and silent enough to hold the hell of her.

Mercifully, it had been quick: a trip to the parking lot of a grocery store on the other side of town, an automobile slipping up in the night, an open door. All quick. And then another trip with a blindfold over her eyes, the car turning and vibrating and turning again while, up front, the woman in the passenger seat counted out the sheaf of hundred-dollar bills, quickly, the numbers murmuring off her tongue in a practiced monotone.

Sol's money. It was fitting that it be Sol's money. After all, it was his lust and his wad of sperm that had started it all. That had been quick, too: a harsh breath as he penetrated her, and fast, rhythmic gasps as he worked himself to climax. He might have been stabbing her, thrusting a blade into her body again and again, whimpering in a killing frenzy that now ended hi the obligatory death.

Quick. Up the back stairs of the warehouse, her blind feet stumbling on the metal steps. Quick again. Out of her clothes and into the frayed hospital gown. Quicker still. On her back in the dingy room, her feet in the stirrups, the doctor's voice (she hoped that he was a doctor) muffled as he asked the nurse for implements with names so arcane they might have denoted the tools of sorcery.

Quick. Quicker. And then she was home, cramping, bleeding, the house dark and the corner of the bedroom darker. Maybe in the blackness of this Berkeley evening-just maybe-she could hear the cries of her lost child, cries that, unuttered, rang nonetheless in her imagination and mixed with the sound of her own voice as she screamed incoherently into the muffling presence of the down pillow.

Stop. Stop it. Damn you!

And then Sol coming home at last, stumping up the stairs, dropping his briefcase on the bedroom floor.