Womanhood, and now motherhood. Manda's revenge had been working its will on her from the beginning.

Marrget turned around. Karthin had not moved. The thumbs of his big hands were hooked in the soft belt of the Vayllen robe he wore, and his eyes were downcast. "The war was an evil thing," he said softly. "There was grief on both sides."

"I am not speaking of the war, Karthin. I speak of myself and of Manda."

"There was grief on both sides," he said again. He sighed. "I was a farmer for a long time, but the war finally drove me from my plow. There were too many towns burned, too many men and women killed, too many rapes ..."

"The Corrinians did not rape."

"I will not say that we did. But Manda's tale can be repeated a hundred times over, in a hundred different voices."

Marrget was shocked. "Are you so unfeeling that you can dismiss the rape of a countrywoman with generalities? Have you no loyalty?"

Karthin blinked at her outburst. His eyes showed hurt. "I am loyal to those I love."

"Do you love Manda?"

"I do."

"Then . . . how can you ..." Marrget bent her head, forced the tears back. Weakness. Everything her body did suddenly seemed weak. Bellies full of children, and spreading her legs to a man's hot presence, and tears . . . ' 'Manda's hate is just, and so is her wish for revenge. And you deny it?"

"I deny nothing."

"Then how can you sit there and not wish her assailant dead?'' She was speaking against herself, challenging him to hate her.

Karthin sat, pondering the matter before him as a farmer might ponder the imminence of rain: examining the dry fields, the clouds, the bleached and withering crops. "I think that I would indeed wish him dead," he said at last. He rose and went to her, touched her face, ran his fingers back through her long hair. "But as far as I can tell, my beloved, the man who raped Manda is indeed dead. Long dead."

The tears welled up, persistent and weak.

Karthin laid a hand on her belly. "Dead and buried long ago. I never knew him. I know only you. I do not believe that there is a Marrget of Crownhark anymore: I speak to one called Marrha."

Sobbing, she tried to turn away from him, but he caught her and held her, and she did not resist. Her cries racked her body, and her tears soaked the front of his robe as he folded her in a gentle embrace.

"I . . .I want to die ..." she whispered at last.

"I do not believe you."

"That is well," she said, "for I am a fool."

Karthin stroked her hair. "Come to bed."

"How can I come to bed after what I have done?"

He shushed her. "Come to bed, little girl."

She shuddered as he led her across the room. At the side of the bed, she stripped off her tunic roughly. "Hurt me, Karthin," she said. "Hurt me as once I hurt Manda."

"Never." He shook his head and kissed her. "Never."

Dindrane heard Marrget sobbing as she went down the corridor toward Alouzon's room. The grief was real, she sensed: a combination of fear, guilt, and the unnamed things that could rise up in the middle of the night and reduce even the most taciturn to tears and regrets.

They are not heartless, then. They weep.

Violence had seemed so easy for the people from Gryylth, but now, standing silent in the dim corridor, Dindrane heard the depth of emotion in the captain's cries, heard also the strange juxtaposition of joy and sorrow that manifested as-amid tears and kisses both-Marrget and Karthin made tender love in the darkness of their room.

The priestess was moved. The gentle strength in Karthin's voice and the yielding softness in Marrget's were as pure a manifestation of the Divine as anything that she herself shared with Baares. There was no violence or bestiality here: only an absolute affection, one that knew how to cherish, how to give.

Stepping softly, she went on down the corridor, her thoughts suddenly turning along unfamiliar paths.

And what of Manda and Wykla? They loved as openly and passionately as Marrget and Karthin, and Dindrane had seen the glow on their faces as they had walked, hand in hand, through the gardens of the King's House, their light hair warmed by the colors of the setting sun, their steps guided along the path by bright clusters of early-blooming crocuses.

Their love was wrong, and yet they were happy. Dindrane shook her head, puzzled. Joy and love and happiness were gifts of the Goddess and the God. What did it mean?

The deep thrum of male voices drifted into the corridor from the room occupied by Santhe and his men. ". . .I think, then, that we should avoid drawing steel if at all possible," Santhe was saying. "Their ways are not ours. Fascinated as the children might be, let them be fascinated at a distance. Dindrane is right: there is enough death in this land."

"And if we are attacked?" said a cool, efficient voice. Dindrane had a vision of light hair and gray eyes. Parl.

"We will do what we can. But we will respect our hosts."

Dindrane went on. So polite. Yet so different.

And Alouzon Dragonmaster would cross the breadth of Vaylle and climb the jagged slopes of the Cordillera. It was a violent action, but Dindrane sensed that Alouzon was motivated by more than a desire for bloodshed. Nonetheless, the thought of an armed party traveling through the soft landscapes of Vaylle made Dindrane contemplate her own responsibilities, and she knocked on Alouzon's door with her mind already made up.

"Come on in."

Alouzon was sitting on the edge of her bed, her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands, but her weariness seemed not quite that of a soldier or a warrior, or even of a councilor or a diplomat.

She gestured Dindrane to a chair. "I've been expecting you."

"Indeed?"

Alouzon shrugged. "You didn't ask half your questions on the way to the city, so I figured you'd save them up for after dinner. Fire away.''

Violent she was, and yet subtle and intuitive. Dindrane perched on the chair, settled her skirts about her, and laid her healer's staff across her knees. " 'Tis to Broceliande you want to go."

Tiredly, Alouzon stared into the fire. Her sheathed sword lay beside her, a cold and unyielding bedmate. "Yeah."

Dindrane eyed the weapon. "Pellam is a wise king. He would not have given you permission to travel in his realm unless he was quite sure of your intentions. I confess I do not share his confidence."

Alouzon nodded. "We're a pretty scruffy bunch." She picked up the sword and rested the tip of the sheath on the ground between her feet. The hilt was in the form of two intertwined dragons, one white, one black, and Alouzon ran her hand along them with an expression that might have been of fear.

Hardly a reassuring weapon, then, even for one who was called Dragonmaster.

"What ..." Dindrane watched Alouzon's smooth brown hands for a moment. Womanflesh, like her own. And yet not. Alouzon had killed, and killed often. "What do you hope to accomplish?"

"Gryylth got hit a couple times," said Alouzon without looking up from the hilt. "I want to find out who did it."

"But you know that now."

"I've got a name. That's all."

"And what will you do when you find out what Bro-celiande is? "

Alouzon seemed to have no answer. Or maybe her answer was a part of the motivation that lay behind her outward actions: a restless, shadowy horror covered by a thin throw of words and gestures.

Dindrane pressed. "Will you go home then?"

"Probably."

"And then return with armies? And battle the Gray-faces?"

4 tT - 55 "And what of Vaylle?"

Alouzon sighed, tossed the sword behind her, and shook her bronze mane out of her face. She would, Dindrane thought, look at home in neither a man's trews nor a woman's skirts. She was Alouzon: indis-solubly wedded to tunic and armor and sword. Where did such a one as this come from?

"Let me tell you a story.'' Alouzon folded her hands and examined them for a moment as though she read the text of her tale in the twining of her fingers. "Where I come from, there was a country called Vietnam. It was full of people like you and me. All kinds. They lived their lives the way they wanted to. The problem was that no one would leave them alone."

Dindrane started to speak, but Alouzon shook her head. "Hear me out. Other countries wanted things that Vietnam had, and they decided to fight over them. The folks in Vietnam didn't want any part of it, but no one listened, and all of a sudden they had foreign armies on their land, and battles being fought, and people-including their own-getting killed. By the time the war was finished, there wasn't much of the place left."

"And is it to keep me from sleep that you tell me such nightmares?" Dindrane's voice was thin: Alou-zon had uttered her deepest fears.

"No. I just want you to know that I don't intend to let that happen to Vaylle."

Dindrane's mouth tightened. The arrogance of the woman! "I am glad that you have so ordained." Her voice might have etched glass.

But Alouzon looked up, and the priestess Was shaken by the tenderness that she saw in her brown eyes. "I care," said Alouzon, and if the Goddess Herself had spoken, She could not have put more sincerity and feeling into the words. "I . . .I love you all. I'm not going to let that happen."

Kyria's bolt might have slaughtered all the learned men and women of Lachrae, but Alouzon had risked her life to save them. And here again her stated commitment carried an implicit offer of self-sacrifice. Dindrane's mouth went dry. "Who . . . who are you, Alouzon?"

Alouzon laughed wryly. "Sometimes I wish to hell I knew, Dindrane."

"What is it that you want?"

Alouzon looked at her as a mother might look upon a firstborn child: half in awe, half in fear. "I'll tell you this: there's something in Broceliande besides death, and I'm going to find it. And when I do, it'll mean that you won't have to worry about what happened to Vietnam. I'm not saying that it'll be easy for any of us, but it won't be horrible, either."

"Shall we learn violence then?" But though Dindrane tried to find a blossom of righteousness within her, the flowers had withered. Her words fell flat.

Alouzon's motives were a shadow in the darkness behind her. "It might come to that," she said. "Maybe not."

Dindrane rose. She had thought that she had understood Alouzon, that her visit tonight would merely clarify certain points and establish certain boundaries. But it was as though she had peered through the ice of a winter lake to confront the immeasurable and unsettling depths below. "Baares and I will accompany you to Broceliande," she said. "You will need guides, and our people will need protection.''

"Afraid we'll scare the horses?"

"Afraid, rather, that you will terrify the people," Dindrane replied tartly as she turned for the door. But her hand had not even found the pull when, plainly audible through the shuttered window, a distant scream cut the night air like a sharp sword.

The White Worm offered itself in terms that were almost sexual, and Helwych, prowling through the darkened corridors of the King's House, saw its indigo eyes and its blue nimbus everywhere: flashing out of sight around a corner, peering at him through an archway, flitting down the length of a hall.

Is this not what you want, my little man? Have you not lusted after me since the day Tireas declared that he had other matters than you to attend to? I am knowledge. I am power. Tell me now: am I not everything you desire?

The Worm was right. He had left his room so as to discover whatever mysteries of magic and knowledge might lie in the King's House and the temple grounds, searching, as always, for something to fill the lack of learning that had dogged him throughout his days of wizardry.

But the corridors had led him nowhere. He was lost now in a maze of passages and windows, of locked doors and forced turns. All the hallways looked the same, and what rooms he entered were empty save for the constant, intrusive presence of the White Worm.

Come. Give me . . . everything. And I will give you everything in return.

"Go away," he mumbled. He turned away and pushed through a side door that led into the gardens. When he turned around, the door had disappeared, but in the middle of the blank wall a face took on form and substance. It was a man's face, and though, like the Worm's, its eyes were the no-color of empty space, they possessed the hypnotic gaze of a specter.

The lips moved soundlessly. I will be everything to you.

Helwych shoved himself away from the wall and ran into the gardens. The night sky with its million stars hung like a weight above him, pressing his thoughts to the ground, and the voice pursued him.

All things are possible for me . . .

As he ran through a thicket of thorn bushes, a hand- a man's hand-reached out and tumbled him to the ground. In a moment, Helwych's arms were pinned beside him and the face he had seen was inches away from his own.

"Dindrane! Alouzon! Help!"

"They can't hear you, little man," said the Specter. Though somewhat above middle age, its hair gray, its face lined, Helwych's assailant was unaccountably strong, and nothing the boy could do had any effect on its grip.

"They will hear," Helwych insisted, "for we are in the garden of the King's House. Someone will hear."

The Specter shook its head and laughed dryly. "We're a long way from the garden, sonny. Farther than if you were in bed in Corrin." It spat. "Corrin! Dremord territory, if you ask me!"

' 'Let me go!" Helwych struggled, but he might have been fettered in iron.

"Let you go?" The Specter laughed again, bent over and fixed Helwych's gaze with its own. "Isn't this what you want? Isn't this what you've always wanted?"

Helwych's vision filled with the blackness of the Specter's eyes. Scraping together what self-confidence was left to him, he spoke slowly and deliberately, using the formula that was one of the last things that Tireas had taught him. "You cannot have my soul," he said. "I will not yield it."

"Yield it?" said the Specter. "I'm not asking you to yield anything. How the hell can you yield what you haven't got?"

"My soul-"

"Has been mine since Kingsbury." The Specter's gaze sank deeply into Helwych. "Don't worry: you haven't really been feeling anything since my hound took you, anyway."

Faintly, with his last shreds of identity, Helwych heard someone screaming, and then the sharp crack of a detonation.

The attendants had shown Manda and Wykla to separate rooms, but they slept in the same bed anyway, for they would not willingly give up what they had found in one another's touch since they had declared their love.

In the flickering light of a low-burning fire, Wykla's skin was the color of pale roses, and when, smiling, she stretched her arms up to Manda, there was acceptance and love in her eyes, not only for the maid of Corrin, but for herself as well. It was as if-with each night, each caress, each passage of pleasure from hand to body and back again-the girl rooted herself more firmly and more joyfully into the woman's form that had once seemed so alien to her that she would rather have died than endured it.

Manda's maidenhood had been torn from her, and Wykla's had been forced upon her; but in the union of body and spirit to which they abandoned themselves each night, the two women found themselves possessed of that which they had thought they had lost forever: themselves. And it seemed to both that such a queenly possession, long desired and long fought for, could only be truly clasped in the giving of it to another.

And they gave, unstintingly. Here was a release of sorrow, here a forgetting of the past. In the warmth of their common bed, they had only the present, and joy, and the faithfulness of souls that had grown together.

But what, Manda wondered as the fire flickered into low embers and fluttering ash, did Marrget feel tonight? She, too, had found love, and now she was with child. How distant, really, was the past?

The man who had raped Manda could know nothing of a woman's passion, or of the flutter of life within her belly. His guilt had been his own. Selfish, self-centered, conceited, he had taken his pleasure-and his blood-and had gone away again.