The Dragonmaster looked uneasy, almost distrustful. "Uh . . . yeah. And other things."

Kyria pursed her lips. She had, in the past, alienated Alouzon and the rest of the company again and again. Only dear Santhe had taken pity on the vicious little bitch and had, now and then, brought her a plate of scraps.

"Other things," she said softly. "Like Solomon Braithwaite, for instance?"

Alouzon's eyes narrowed. "Are you still on that?"

"I do not understand."

"You used to go on about how you were going to find him and kill him once and for all."

"Ah . . . yes, I believe I did." She sighed. Helen, did you have to be quite so nasty about everything ?

But she sensed that Helen was crying in the darkness, and she instantly regretted the harshness of her words. If she wanted to help others, she had to be willing also to help herself.

Alouzon was talking. "Well, you know about Vaylle now. It's my baby. How come you're still on Sol's case about it?"

"Because ..." Alouzon had likened her to Mernyl. But Mernyl had been sure of his knowledge. "...because I sense . . . something ..."

Alouzon looked tired. "Kyria, if I really thought that there was a way out of this, I'd take it. But there isn't. Don't try to give me hope. I made Vaylle, and I'm destroying it. For that matter, I shoved you into the brain you've got now."

Kyria shook her head. "That you did not. Helen was fighting herself, and she had cut herself off from her sources of strength. She had lost from the beginning."

Alouzon did not look convinced, but she rode on in silence for a time. The horses' hooves made clop-clop sounds on the stone pavement, and Dindrane and Baares had reached out and clasped hands as they rode. Dindrane's head was bowed as though she worried about the harm that might befall Lachrae in her absence. The harper kept his eyes on the mountains, as though defying the powers that threatened his land.

"Answer me this, Alouzon," said Kyria. "How do I fit in?"

The Dragonmaster shrugged. "You got me." The sorceress fixed her with a look. "Come on ... honey." She snorted at the odd feeling of the word on her tongue. "I do not believe that anything happens here without a reason. If Silbakor had wanted a wizard, it could have provided you with someone more ... ah .,. . tractable than Helen. But I ..."

"You were there. You were available. We were attacked. ''

Kyria nodded. "Just so. We were attacked. Do remember: I was married to Solomon for twenty years." Alouzon sighed. "How could I forget?" "Hear me, please. What do you personally have to do with me? Very little, as I had divorced Solomon some ten years before you first met him. And yet I have been brought into this strange place, and given power, and ..." She laughed in spite of her gravity. "...and a double-barreled personality. Why?'' "I don't know."

"You do not, but perhaps Solomon knows." Alouzon stared fixedly at the mountains. "This is nuts. He's dead."

"As you reminded me in Los Angeles," said Kyria quietly, "we both saw him standing up in his grave." "But . . ."

"Think about it, I beg you." "Then what the fuck is in Broceliande?" Kyria shook her head and smiled slightly. "My question exactly, Alouzon."

* CHAPTER 18 *

The afternoon sun danced across the bare pasture-land and silver lakes of Vaylle, and it shone on the green slopes and jagged peaks of the Cordillera, but Dindrane saw nothing of it as she led Alouzon's party down the road. Instead, her sight was turned inward, examining her memories.

Lachrae burning. The frightened, pained eyes of a child who had lost most of his skin. The red, glistening remains of the man and woman who, a few days before, had greeted the morning with a song. The look on Baares's face when he had stood up from a healing, his spirit warring against itself, wanting nothing so much as to kill, to rend the attackers as they had rent his city and his people.

The Gryylthans had brought nothing to Vaylle save death. Alouzon and Marrget could argue that there was already death in the land, but their reasoning was specious. Where before individual houses and steadings were attacked and destroyed, now whole towns and large portions of cities were leveled. Where before the week's dead could be told on the fingers of both hands, now they numbered in the hundreds.

But though she had condemned the Gryylthans, Dindrane wondered privately-the thoughts forcing themselves on her, prying through her defenses-whether it was her own argument that was, hi the end, specious. What did it matter whether Vaylle sickened and died house by house or city by city? The dead were dead whether they journeyed to the Far Lands singly or in droves, and peace lay as bloody and slaughtered by the destruction of one steading as by many.

At least Alouzon and her companions had tried to do something about it all. Their methods seemed barbarous, their attitudes insane, their affections perverse, but still . . .

She gripped her healer's staff. How many would die? And would they die singly, or in company? She had no control over the deaths, and now, with Alouzon's company journeying through the land with King Pellam's permission, she did not even have the power to decree manner, number, or place and time.

But she realized that, despite her efforts, despite her ministry, despite the workings of all the healers of Vaylle, she had never really had that power at all. The thought reared up and grinned at her: Vaylle was nothing more than a victim.

"My flower?"

She lifted her head. It had been days since Baares had used that endearment, and it was like a splash of cool water. She met his smile with her own. "I am . . . well, husband."

His eyebrows went up. "Oh . . . I see that harpers are not the only ones who possess glib tongues."

She colored. "What would you have me say?"

"The truth."

She wondered whether he spoke as mortal man or active spirit, but in neither case could she refuse the admonition. Softly, so that those behind her could not hear, she told him of her thoughts.

Baares nodded. "Very different the Gryylthans are. And yet very like."

"I could ask you to speak the truth, also."

He hung his head for a moment. "I confess, my priestess: I have harbored thoughts of violence. I can no longer call them evil, though."

"Nor ..." She struggled with the words. "Nor, I am afraid, can I."

He stared, shocked at her admission.

" Tis confused I am," she said. "Alouzon was right: they tried." She glanced back at the company and noticed with a pang that the Dragonmaster was riding by herself, head down, dejected. "They endangered themselves to save us. Actions . . . worthy of the God. And not the first they are."

"They shame us."

"Husband?"

"Our thoughts of bloodshed stem from anger. Theirs come from righteousness . . . and loyalty. I might even say love." He fell to musing, plucking at the strings of his harp. Dindrane listened nervously for a time, but no: all his strains were consonant.

"We act from loyalty to our Goddess," she said softly.

"I think that we do that thing," said Baares. "But does She expect us to sit and wait for death? The God dies: He sacrifices Himself in the waning of the year and the harvesting of the crops. But He does not wait passively or idly. He struggles against the onset of winter, and the reapers must cut Him with the sharpest of blades in order to fell Him. He dies fighting. And yet He loves."

Dindrane looked at her staff. To turn the energies of healing into a weapon . . . "The Goddess carries a sword," she said softly. "I wonder sometimes whether She does her own reaping, if therefore-"

She fell silent quickly, and a wave of sickness swept over her. She was a healer. She could be nothing else. Leaving Baares to pluck at his harp, she trotted her horse away from the road and huddled in the saddle as she kept abreast of the company. The afternoon sunlight seemed cold, and visions of the dead lay across the land like a film of oil upon a lake.

As they had during the journey from Daelin to Lachrae, Dindrane and Baares stayed away from towns and villages. Alouzon and the others did not question the action. The Dragonmaster even went so far as to order travel for a short time beyond sunset so as to put extra distance between their camp and the last village they had passed.

"I don't want anyone to get hurt," she said in her dark, quiet voice. Dindrane looked puzzled, approving, and reluctantly admiring at the same time.

Dindrane did not understand. Kyria did, though, and she understood also the strain under which Alouzon labored. Staying close by the Dragonmaster's side, she attempted to demonstrate her trustworthiness. Yet, at the same time, Kyria knew that the support she offered was a tenuous thing, for Helen was always waiting for a chance to return.

After the evening meal, Kyria called the warriors to her and spent a few minutes enchanting their swords so as to make them more effective against the hounds. She could not make the blades so potent that they would slay the beasts on the spot, but when she was through they would cut without spraying corrosive phosphor all over the wielder. With the blades so altered, and with her own sorcery to mete out larger powers as they were needed, the expedition had a relatively decent chance of making it to Broceliande and back without great loss.

But even a small loss was a grievous one. Birk-impassive, stoic Birk-whimpered in his sleep that night, and Santhe watched over him like a worried father. Dindrane and Baares seemed not to comprehend at first, but when Alouzon whispered an explanation, they looked understanding, though properly horrified.

The Vayllen mind-set left them, in their own way, as intolerant and ignorant as rigid and uncompromising feminism had left Helen Addams. Kyria recalled her own thoughtless condemnation of Marrget and Wykla. She had wished a hundred times that she could take back her words, but knew that that was impossible. Nor did she have any guarantee that she-as Helen-would not utter them again.

Angry. Spiteful. But she could do something now, and perhaps that was the important thing. Leaving her blankets, she made her way through the dark camp to Santhe. Beside the councilor, Birk struggled with his dreams of loss and loneliness.

"He is not well, then?" she said.

' 'Not well at all," he said.' "The slaughter in the last days of the war was great. All my wartroop was scarred, but these two . . ." He gestured as if Parl still lay at Birk's side. "...saw worse than most. But they persevered, and they helped one another." He shot her a glance. "Like the women of the First Wartroop.''

Wykla was keeping watch with Manda, and though they stood at opposite ends of the camp, their hearts were as close as if they had been shoulder to shoulder. Marrget was bedded down with Karthin just outside the reach of the firelight, and her soft gasp told Kyria that they were making love.

Man-souled or woman-souled, they were stronger than Kyria herself could ever hope to be. "Even a sorceress can be a fool," she said; and, extending a hand, she let it hover for a moment above Birk's forehead. Birk sighed, turned over, and slept soundly.

"My thanks," said Santhe.

"My pleasure," said Kyria. She started to rise, but thought better of it. "I must thank you also," she said, settling beside him. ' 'You were very kind to me, in spite of my ..." She bit her lip. A fine sorceress she was, tongue-tied before a handsome man! "... my difficulties."

"Lady, I could not do otherwise."

Kyria questioned him with a look.

Santhe shrugged. "After many sorrows, everything ceases to matter. Laughter becomes a kind of a mask, like those worn by children on the eve of Summer's End, and courtesy becomes empty. I saw the Tree slaughter my men and my friends. I saw Marrget stand up and contemplate the terror of a new body. I saw more valor and more horror than I ever wished to see in any number of lives. And I decided then that all was meaningless, that my duty in life was to help as best I could those who were left to me."

Kyria's lip trembled. She bit it again to still it. "You have done well, councilor."

He sighed. "I do what I can, lady." He looked down at Birk. "I do not think that Birk will be with us much longer," he said softly. "His love draws him to Parl."

"I could heal him."

' 'Nay, he would not have you do that.'' Santhe shook his head. "Is there so much love in the world that we can afford to erase even a little of it?''

Kyria was thoughtful. She met Santhe's eyes and, with as much composure as she could muster, she kissed him. "You are wise, sir," she said. "Gryylth has a good councilor.''

"And a good sorceress." He smiled.

She heard the emptiness in him and found that she wanted to fill it. But she still had Helen to contend with. "Do not say so," she said, wishing that she did not have to utter the words. "I am as changeable as the moon. I create now, but I could destroy tomorrow."

"True," he admitted, "but ..."

"But you will bring me scraps nonetheless?" She

smiled. Sad. Wistful. >

"All the scraps you desire, my dear rabid dog." He smiled again.

She stood up. "I. . ." Much lay behind her: twenty years of marriage to an abusive man, aborted children staring sightlessly at the ceiling of a dank warehouse, the carefully honed vituperation that was the product of a long-festering hate ...

And yet, in the respite she had been granted, she had, in effect, thrust her head above the stinking water in which she had been wallowing and gulped a lungful of clear air, stared at the blue sky and the yellow sun, breathed a prayer of thanks that such air and such sky and such suns existed in the universe.

There was power, yes, but power did not simply mean the power to wound or to kill. There was power to comfort, to nourish, to strike when necessary and soothe at other times. There was power to choose.

Learn that, Helen. Learn that much and the rest will come.

"I thank you again," she said to Santhe. "Knowing my limitations, will you call me friend?"

He reached up and took her hand. "I will indeed. The Gods bless you, friend Kyria."

"And you, Santhe." She bent, held his hand against her cheek for a moment, then straightened. "Good night. Fear not for Birk: he will sleep soundly."

"I do not fear for him. I . . ."A deeper emptiness entered his eyes. "I fear for you."

She held his hand a moment more. "And I also, friend."

They were under way again at dawn. Alouzon had not slept. The world-her world, she reminded herself-looked white and raw to her: the trees too tall for a sky that seemed to weigh down on her head, the grass too frail to force its way up through the cold ground.

Even after a night of wearing her mind bloody with thoughts of Kyria's words about Solomon, she was still not certain how to interpret them. Solomon was dead, and though her feelings about him were mixed, still he was gone. He should, by nature, have no more say in the affairs of Vaylle than Brian O'Hara, the archaeological martinet of UCLA.

The day passed. Vaylle unfurled like a flag, undulating in soft, feminine folds. If Gryylth was a landscape by Turner, then Vaylle was an illustration from a child's picture book. Colors were blue and white and pastels. Rivers wound across the patchwork fields as though drawn with a silver pen.

But the land was pocked with the hulks of burned-out houses and the shredded corpses of cattle that bore the unmistakable marks of the hounds. And what graciousness was left ended at the Cordillera. Rough, uncompromising, forbidding, the mountains lost their elfin quality as, with the party's approach, they rose farther and farther into the sky, their green-clad lower slopes hinting darkly at what they concealed.

Sleepless and shaking, Alouzon looked up at the peaks that raked the sky like granite claws. Guardian or not, God or not, how was she supposed to cross that! Or deal with something totally unknown on the other side?

Unconsciously she reached out, groping. Kyria took her hand. "I'm going to need you, Kyria."

"I will be here."

"You sure?"

Kyria understood, and sighed. "As much as I can."

Something flickered between the summits of the Cordillera, and Alouzon instinctively flinched. But no: it was just a cloud.

Cloud? Dark and black and spreading across the range of mountains like an invading army cresting a parapet, it grew swiftly. Soon the peaks were lost in a blackness that reminded Alouzon unpleasantly of what had once gathered about the Tree and, more recently, the ruins of the Circle.

"Dindrane. Baares."

They had already reined in. Alouzon and Kyria came up to flank them. "I see," said Dindrane.