But the day turned grim. The road grew narrow and rough, and the few isolated steadings and manors that appeared to right and left were deserted. Some had been burned or bombed.

This part of Vaylle had always been a comparative frontier, its towns few and widely scattered, its com- munications with the coast intermittent and terse. But Dindrane sensed an air of desolation that stretched beyond the ruined cottages and manors and the pitted road. The entire region seemed dead. Even the grass seemed to grow sullenly, unwillingly.

Late in the day, as the cold shadow of the Cordillera was stretching eastward, Wykla called out and pointed to a steading some distance from the road. There was a woman there. Arms wide, she was leaning over the railings of a sheepfold as though to pick up a hungry lamb within.

But when Dindrane and Alouzon rode out to speak to her, they found a corpse whose hands and feet had been staked out wide in a monstrous crucifixion. The desiccated flesh of her thighs was stiff with dried blood, her abdomen had been roughly slit from crotch to ribs, and flies buzzed thickly about her shattered skull. Little remained of her face save a shadow of pain and fear.

To Dindrane, she was more than a countrywoman who lay murdered before her eyes: she was an emblem of what Vaylle had become. Raped, and raped again. When, the priestess wondered, would the final blow be administered . . . and by whom?

Alouzon did not touch the body. "SOP," she said softly. "When they were done playing, they shot her."

Dindrane found her voice. "Is this what happened in ... Vietnam?"

"In lots of places." Alouzon looked up, glared at the Cordillera. "Happens all the time. This and worse." Turning, she strode back to the horses as though pursued.

Marrget's voice carried faintly from the road. "Did she speak to you?"

"She said a lot," replied Alouzon.

Dindrane stayed for a moment, praying, hoping that the peace the woman would find in the arms of the Mother could make up for what she had experienced in her last moments of life.

But she was still thinking of Vaylle. Had the woman protested? Or had she allowed herself to be meekly led from her flock and tied down, her eyes wide with pain but her lips closed passively? Against her will, Dindrane was beginning to hope that she had struggled, that she had cursed the Grayfaces and struck at them, that her last words had been a cry for revenge.

The air was still and stagnant and ripe with the odor of fetid water when Kent came into view around a bend. The streets were empty, as was the road. Windows gaped like the empty sockets of a skull. Roofs had fallen in. Whole blocks of buildings and houses had been burned, and the River Shenaen lay at the base of the Cordillera like a broad ribbon the color of a stormy sky.

Dindrane halted the party at the edge of town. Silence. "Enite told me that no word had come from Kent in weeks," she said softly. "Perhaps . . . perhaps this is the reason."

"Maybe they're hiding," Alouzon whispered. "Would they know you?"

"I am chief priestess," said Dindrane, though the title had come to give her no comfort. "All the people know me."

"You want to shout?"

Dindrane thought of the woman at the sheepfold. "Greatly I fear that there would be no reply." But she turned to her husband. "Harper," she said, "harp for us. Sing us a song with some cheer in it, that the people of Kent may know we are friends."

Baares set his harp before him on the saddle. His eyes were downcast.

And Kent lay silent.

"You are wise, priestess," Kyria said softly.

"It is my husband who gives-" Dindrane stopped herself in mid-lie. She felt suddenly distant, as though she had to confront Kent and the horrors beyond it alone. And though she knew unaccountably that she could do just that, the knowledge was a cold stone in her heart.

The Grail: solitary, complete.

' 'I have . . . seen too much,'' she said.

Baares had not spoken, but Dindrane knew that he had felt the same way. He had contemplated violence, and he had acted upon his thoughts. He also had seen too much.

But he was still a harper, and he struck a chord that rang out in the still air like a bronze sunbeam. Arpeggios rippled out from his fingers and, in a soft tenor that seemed loud in the hush that covered Kent, he sang: ' 'The winter is past, the winter is past The rain upon the hills falls warm. Rejoice! For in the Goddess' arms The God awakes and lives once more. "

A door creaked open in the distance. "Who comes?" came a man's voice, hoarse and tentative.

Baares lifted his head. "Priestess Dindrane and her consort come from Lachrae," he said. "They bring a company from a far land.''

The door creaked open a little more. "Baares?"

" 'Tis I."

An odor like death hung over the town, but there was a soft stirring among the buildings, like a rustle of yellowed satin. Heads peered cautiously out of windows and doorways.

The man who had addressed Baares stepped into view, and his torque of office told Dindrane that this was the magistrate, Rhoddes. Without that clue, though, she would hardly have known him, for his cheeks had grown sunken and pale, his hair sparse and gray. He looked as gaunt as the Specter.

She shuddered at the memory. How much truth had there been in her vision? "Rhoddes. 'Tis I: Dindrane."

He came forward, details of his wasted features crowding toward her. "Dindrane: beyond all hope you have come. Dear Goddess ..."

Singly, and in twos and threes, the people of Kent dribbled into the street and gathered about the party. They were all as pale and emaciated as Rhoddes, and the bellies of the ragged children were bloated. Withered hands reached up to Dindrane, and she took them and willed strength into those she touched. Baares dismounted and went among the folk, speaking softly to them, embracing those who seemed on the point of tears with sorrow.

"What has happened, Rhoddes?" said Dindrane. "Have you no food?"

"Food?" he said vaguely. His blue eyes had faded to a milky gray, and he seemed "not to comprehend her question. "We have food. We have plenty of food. 'Tis a prosperous town, Kent is."

Alouzon swung to the ground with a creak of leather and a clink of steel. "You're starving, man."

"Starving?" His tone was distant.

Baares looked up. "Starvation of the spirit," he said, "not of the body.''

"Indeed," said Dindrane, "I believe that thing."

The peoples' eyes were as empty as the shattered face of the corpse at the sheepfold, and Dindrane felt suddenly ignorant, ineffectual. She suddenly wanted to turn her horse and run away-alone-into the hills. She needed time to think. She needed time to find out what she was-what anyone was-when not simply one half of a divinely ordained pair.

But she stayed where she was, took hands, prayed, embraced the children and their parents. The Grail nurtured. And so would Dindrane of Lachrae.

Rhoddes was staring at the Gryylthans. "You bring weapons?" he said. "Has our devotion been in vain?"

He turned to Dindrane. She felt his eyes on her and tried to meet them, but found that she could not. ' 'Your . . . devotion has not been in vain," she said. "The blessing of the Goddess be upon you."

"And the God's upon you," said Rhoddes tone-lessly.

Alouzon had crouched down to comfort a child, but he flung up his hands and ran away screaming. "She has seen hounds!" he cried.

Dindrane looked after him, shaking with strain. She was understanding Alouzon at last, and the knowledge was a rawness at the ragged edges of her isolation. "Many," she murmured. "More than she ever wanted."

The man's hands were rough with years of battle and callused from the hilt of his sword. They flung Manda to the ground, tearing at her tunic and breeches as she fell. Thirteen years old, blonde and blue-eyed, with a hot temper and a disregard for caution to match, Manda was already righting him.

Naked save for a bit of rag that had stubbornly clung about her neck, she writhed beneath her assailant and felt herself-unready and still virgin-penetrated with a single cruel thrust that sent a lance of pain through her belly. But though the pain contracted her awareness until it occupied a single point just below her aching womb, still the thought hammered at her, a dull, ponderous, ringing ostinato of purpose and hate: I am going to kill you, man.

Manda awoke with a gasp. The room was dark and cold. Beside her, curled up like an amber-haired kitten, Wykla slept, her face nuzzling Manda's shoulder.

Carefully, so as not to awaken her lover, Manda swung her feet off the edge of the couch and sat up. About her, lying on couches and cushions, wrapped in furs against the penetrating cold, her companions slept soundly in-the abandoned house that had been given over for their use that night. Dindrane slept alone, her face sorrowful, while her husband stood watch outside the door. Across the room, Alouzon tossed and murmured with her own uneasy dreams. Nearby, Kyria lay in Santhe's embrace, and in the dim light of a banked fire the two looked like children who sought security in one another's arms.

And, off in the corner by themselves, stretched out side by side as was fitting for husband and wife, lay Karthin and Marrget.

What, indeed, was Manda supposed to call her? Rapist? The term seemed absurd now. Marrget could no more rape than could Alouzon or Dindrane. Even her name seemed out of place. Karthin invariably called her Marrha now, and so, at times, did the other members of the company.

Friend? How could she? Enemy?

"Oh you Gods, what shall I do?" she whispered. "She has proved herself my comrade over and over, and yet I cannot find anything but bitterness in my heart. But he ... he is dead.''

A few feet away, the woman he had become breathed softly in repose, her hand resting lightly on her husband's chest, and though her hair was braided as was proper for a married woman of her people, a sword lay at her side.

Manda picked up her own weapon, went to the door, and opened it cautiously. "Baares?" she whispered.

He looked up from his harp. "The God bless you, Manda."

The God. The one they called Solomon. Where, she wondered, had He been when a thirteen-year-old girl had been raped? ''And you also.'' She slipped through the opening and closed the door behind her.

"It is not your time yet, Manda," said the harper.

"I could not sleep. This is a bad place, and the river is too close. I think I will scout the shore before I return to take the watch."

"As you wish." Baares scanned the dark street. Nothing moved. Nothing stirred. The well-fed but starving town looked even more dead at night than it had in the daylight.

Eyes vigilant, she stepped carefully down the street. The waning moon shed a faint light on the tumble of houses and buildings. The Cordillera was an invisible mass that eclipsed the stars. The river, fetid and stagnant, gleamed like the blade of a freshly blooded dagger.

She grimaced. Evil town, evil dreams, evil thoughts.

Surely, Kent was a place for nightmares and nocturnal terrors. Having slumped into a numb acceptance of constant violence, its people had seemingly turned into wraiths and ghosts that clung desperately to their bodies as a pauper might defend a meager hovel.

A plash from the river attracted her attention, and she slipped into the deep moonshadow of a wall and examined the blank water. After several minutes, a vague shape detached itself from the dark backdrop of the Cordillera. The light was uncertain, but Manda decided that it had to be a small boat. She made out three, perhaps four figures in it.

Gray faces.

What was it going to be tonight? Murder? Explosions? Rape? Her formless anger at a man who seemed now forever beyond any kind of revenge seized upon this clear and definite enemy. The Grayfaces would die. If she could do nothing else, she would see to that.

She turned silently back toward the house to rouse her companions, but she had taken only a dozen steps before she was confronted with a pair of glowing eyes and a mouth dripping with phosphor. Instinctively, she readied herself for the hound's spring, but before she had a chance to move or even call out, she was knocked flat from behind.

She skidded across the cobbles, her sword flying from her hand. Stunned, breathless, she was nonetheless already groping for her belt knife, though she knew that the smaller blade would be of little use against a multiple attack. "Baares!" she managed, but her voice was faint.

Jaws snapped at her. She rolled to the side, brought up her knife, and plunged it into the beast's throat. Phosphor gushed over her arm like a stream of liquid fire, and she felt the hilt of the knife turn slick as her skin began to dissolve.

There were two of the beasts, but though she had wounded one, its companion was untouched, and when she tried to rise and gain her footing, it simply put its muzzle against her back and pushed her to the ground again.

Through the pain that had turned her arm into an open sore, she sensed that the second hound was about to rip her open from the back. Rolling desperately, sliding through the growing pool of phosphor, she managed to get an arm up in time, and tike jaws closed on her forearm instead of her head. She heard the crunch of breaking bone, felt the numb prickling of a suddenly missing limb.

Pain and panic freed her voice. ' 'Goddess!''

She lashed out with her knife. Grinning, the hound backed, let her strike go wide, then lunged forward, its jaws wide, its phosphorescent throat seething like a pool of magma.

But it did not reach her. With a hollow thud and a ring of bronze strings, Baares's harp smashed into its head and sent it reeling. The big man was suddenly beside her, his feet braced wide apart, his face murderous. "Is it fighting you want? Then by the Goddess and the God, 'tis fighting you will get!"

A second swing of the stout willow harp broke the skull of the already wounded hound. It rolled over and lay still, but the gush of phosphor struck Baares full in the face, blinding him. "Arms, Gryylthans!" he cried.

Shouts in the distance. Alouzon's voice came faintly to Manda's ears. "Everyone move! Kyria! C'mon, go! Go!"

The second hound had regained its footing and was slowly stalking the blind harper. With a wrench of his dissolving face, Baares composed himself, listened, and put himself between Manda and the beast. "Tell me when it is close enough for me to strike, child," he said softly, "and I will strike."

Manda herself was almost sightless with pain, but she forced herself up on her remaining elbow so as to lift her head out of the stinging miasma of fumes that arose from the hound's blood. "Straight ahead of you," she gasped. "Almost. Not quite. Wait."

The harper was murmuring to himself, but it was not the meaningless ravings of pain. His voice was as controlled as it had been when chanting a song of praise that afternoon.

"...fold me in Your embrace, that, should this be the hour of my death, I may be led to Your lands by the hand of the God."

"Now!"

The hound leaped. Baares swung. The harp struck the beast directly on the forehead and sent it to the ground once more. The instrument, though, had never been designed as a weapon. With a ripping of bronze strings, it shattered in his hands.

Footsteps approached, pounding on the cobbles. Dindrane shrieked. "Baares!"

Alouzon was barking orders. "Karthin, Marrget: blockade the far side. Santhe, back me up. Kyria, gimme some light.''

With a crackle, the street was suddenly illuminated with blue-white incandescence, but the hound was undeterred. Before Manda could warn Baares, it regained its feet and drove in without prelude, catching the harper by the throat and dragging him to the ground.

Alouzon was already on top of it, and Manda caught the look of utter hatred on her face as the Dragonsword went up gleaming. It was a hate that made all others seem puerile by comparison, a deep and deathless anger that was all the more terrible for the fact that it seemed directed not only at the hound, but at Alouzon Dragonmaster herself.

As the Dragonsword fell, Alouzon was screaming. "Damn you! Damn you!"

Shock had numbed Manda's pain, but it also made her stare blankly as Wykla dropped to the ground beside her and turned white faced with horror. "Kyria! Manda's arms . . . please ..."

"I am ... all right ..." Manda said tonelessly.

"The Gray faces ..." But her memory had turned foggy. What about the Grayfaces?

Dindrane was kneeling beside her husband. Baares was half covered by the inert bulk of the hound that had nearly severed his head. Lifting her staff with a cry, the priestess was suddenly surrounded by a yellow nimbus that rivaled Kyria's blue-white light, and the flow of healing energy was like a breaker that foamed through the street.

But Baares was dead. Manda, though vague with pain, knew that. Nonetheless, Dindrane grasped at all the energies that were hers to command in an effort to restore her husband to life. Sobbing, her hands clenched on her staff, her head bent and her eyes shut tight, Dindrane tried to do the impossible.

Manda's vision was blurring, but she sensed Kyria beside her. "I ... I ..."

"Easy." The sorceress's voice was grave. "O Goddess . . ."

"Can you . . . ?" Alouzon's voice.

' 'Please,'' said Wykla. ' 'Please.''

"Give me room," said Kyria. Manda felt the sorceress kneel. "Child," said Kyria, "you are too badly wounded for me to do this gently. It will hurt. Try not to be afraid."