"But-" Manda gestured at the Specter.

"Please." Kyria reached for Manda's stump.

Alouzon understood suddenly. "Kyria, are you sure?"

The sorceress forced a laugh. "Friend Alouzon, I am more sure of this than I have been of anything in my very short career. If I do not survive, I beg you: remember me as a woman and a healer.'' She thought for a moment. "And as a feminist, too. I will not have that forgotten."

Manda had no chance to question or to protest. The energies that Kyria summoned enveloped her shoulder, spread down her stump, and continued in seething incandescence to etch out the form and appearance of a woman's arm. Elbow, wrist, fingers, knuckles, nails-all were blazoned forth in a flow of living light.

Kyria's eyes were clenched with the strain of pure creation. Calling forth the elements of the universe, she channeled them into Manda, reformed the missing limb, breathed life into it. When the light faded, Manda held up her hands, staring. "My lady ..."

But Kyria was gone. In her place was a lean, gray-haired harpy whose eyes blazed with unspeakable emotion. Her bony hands terminated in black claws, and the robes of a sorceress hung upon her like the tatters of a scarecrow. It was not Helen Addams who stood thus before the image of Solomon. It was but a piece of her, a reification of all her hates, as much a specter as the creature she faced.

She lifted her staff. The Specter was suddenly growing, filling the room, its head reaching to the top of the porcelain dome and its massive feet rooted to the ground on either side of the altar. It lifted a Dragon-sword that dripped with venom.

But the hate mat had been given form and substance by Kyria's sacrifice did not wait. Before the Specter had a chance to move, she had leaped for it, her staff lengthening and reforming in her hands until its tip gleamed with adamantine sharpness and brilliance. In a moment, she had reached the colossus, and her spear struck home, driving deep into the fold of its thigh.

Blood was suddenly everywhere. Alouzon collapsed as a shaft of pain rived her skull.

Screaming, the Specter flailed out blindly, caught its antagonist with the back of a hand as large as her body, and flung her across the room. She struck against the carved stone midway up the wall with a crack as of a hundred bones, then slid to the floor in a heap of blood and ragged cloth. With a cry, Dindrane and Santhe ran to her.

But the lance, impelled by the pent-up emotion of a score of years, had succeeded where even the Dragonsword had failed. The Specter shambled about the room, staggering, dwindling, fumbling at it. Darkness flowed from its thigh, spreading across the floor in a growing pool.

The light from the hole in the dome dimmed as a pale face with eyes as void as the Specter's peered in. Wings were suddenly buffeting the temple, claws were ripping the dome away in chunks, and Alouzon and her company scrambled to dodge the falling stone as the White Worm descended into the temple and took the wounded Specter on its back. Still wearing its incongruous, elderly form, the Specter turned to Alouzon, the lance stiff and erect in its wounded thigh. "I'll be back," it said.

If Alouzon had been able to cross the sea of rubble that the Worm had left, she would have attacked. But the blocks of stone were too heaped, the pain in her head too searing. "You and what army?" she managed.

The Specter smiled in spite of its wound. Deliberately, it took Kyria's staff in its hands and pulled it free. A fresh river of blood ran out to feed the growing pool. "You'll find out. My boy Helwych does his work well."

The pain was a crowbar through Alouzon's mind. "Helwych? What does he have to do with it?"

The Specter snorted, its face twisting with fierce agony. "You'll find out."

Casting the lance aside, it gave a shout, and the Worm spread its wings and rose into the air.

* CHAPTER 25 *

The wingbeats of the Worm had not yet faded into silence when a rocket slammed into the left side of the wide doorway, spattering the interior of the temple with stone fragments and glowing metal. The size of the room and the heaps of rubble saved most of the company, but Santhe, who had leaped to shield Dindrane and Kyria, cried out as a piece of shrapnel slipped beneath his armor and buried itself in his back. A moment later, a machine gun opened fire, and the room came alive with the whine of ricocheting bullets.

Alouzon felt hopeless. The company was trapped. Kyria might well be dead. Dindrane would not kill. Arrayed outside were an unknown number of Grayfaces with everything from M-16s to 3.5-inch rockets. Without the advantage of surprise and darkness, armor and swords were useless against such weapons.

The temple shook as a mortar round landed near the door, and from the distance came the sound of approaching Skyhawks. It was only a matter of time: whether the temple caved in under the blasts of mortars and rockets or disintegrated beneath napalm and air-to-ground missiles, the end would be the same. And even if, somehow, the world continued to exist after her death, the Specter and the Worm would rove free and unopposed.

Alouzon seized upon the thought. The Specter was loose with the White Worm. And Silbakor ...

Another mortar round demolished an outlying wing of the temple. Dust filled the air, and the concussion knocked the wind out of Alouzon even as she was trying to shout.

Silbakor. The Worm was gone. That meant . . .

She found her voice. "Get your ass in here, Silbakor!"

It was there in a moment. Wings black as iron beat the air, and as adamantine talons reached for the tumble of rubble lying on the floor, Alouzon was already scrambling forward. "Do I have to tell you everything?" she screamed. "Can't you take any fucking initiative at all?"

The yellow eyes glared at her, and the great wings unfurled for a moment, lifted up and out like vast canopies, and caught a falling mortar round in mid-air. The concussion was a burst of light and sound, but did not even mark Silbakor's skin.

But other rounds would be on their way, and the Skyhawks were approaching quickly. Alouzon scrambled onto the Dragon's back. "Stay down until this is over," she called to the others. Dindrane, bent over Kyria's body, did not look up. Santhe lay still, blood seeping from beneath his armor. The rest, pinned down by fire, could hardly acknowledge her words by anything more than briefly lifted hands and terse nods.

With an uneasy glance at Dindrane, who now knew what fragile Hand had created Vaylle, Alouzon prodded Silbakor. "Let's go."

The Dragon hesitated. Machine-gun fire raked the doorway, spattered off its hide.

"Look, Silbakor," said Alouzon, "if you're going to give me the same shit you gave Dythragor about the Tree, I'm going to tell you you're fucked."

It blinked. "I shall not. But-"

"C'mon. Move."

The Dragon was airborne instantly. Flashes erupted from the encircling jungle: mortar rounds. Without a word from Alouzon, Silbakor swept in and smacked the shells aside, detonating some, sending others back to fall among the Grayface troops. Explosions ripped through the trees. Alouzon heard screams.

She had no sympathy. "Take 'em out, Silbakor."

"Dragonmaster, I would not endanger you."

"Dammit, I'm safer here than anywhere else except my living room in L.A. Get 'em. Now!"

The Dragon dived at the mortar emplacements. Tracers streaked toward it, but the gunners might as well have been firing at a cliff of basalt.

Clawed wings ripped through the ranks of panicking men, knocking some senseless, crushing others, flinging bodies through the air. A rocket exploded above Silbakor's left eye, but the armor-piercing warhead was designed for earthly materials, not for a substance that defied both physical law and the decrees of biology. Wings beating, claws flashing, eyes glowing in passionless fury, the Dragon methodically rooted out the last of the Gray faces.

It did not take long. In a minute, the only sounds were the steady beat of Silbakor's wings and the rush of the air stream.

Alouzon searched the skies for the jet fighters and spotted two faint dots in the distance. Confronted with the fury of the Great Dragon, they had turned and fled, but Alouzon was not willing to allow them to run loose either in Broceliande or in Vaylle. She ordered Silbakor to pursue them.

Again, the Dragon seemed filled with doubts. "They are far away, Dragonmaster.''

"Are you saying you can't do it?"

"No."

"Then go after them, dammit."

In seconds, the Dragon had increased its speed to a furious drive. The daylight flickered, and Alouzon had a brief glimpse of stars and nebulae swirling about her. When the sky came back, Silbakor was high above the jagged peaks of the Cordillera, stooping on one of the Skyhawks.

The pilot had hardly enough time to scream before the Great Dragon's claws smashed through the plastic canopy, tore through aluminum and steel, and left the fighter a truncated corpse of an aircraft that tumbled down toward the green plains of Vaylle.

But the second plane banked sharply, lined up on Silbakor, and squeezed off a Sidewinder missile.

Silbakor pulled up and spread its wings. "Hold, Dragonmaster.''

Alouzon understood: the Dragon intended to present its own choice of target to the missile. If this suddenly daft Dragonmaster was going to insist on attacking the culmination of centuries of destructive technology, then it was Silbakor's job to protect her.

Grappling for a hold on an iron hide that, vertical, seemed as slick as a mirror, Alouzon bent her head against the Dragon's neck and clenched her eyes shut.

The Sidewinder smacked into the Dragon's belly at over twice the speed of sound. The explosion loosened Alouzon's grip, and she was suddenly staring down through ten thousand feet of clear air. Far below, the rolling fields and pastures of Vaylle were rioting in a verdancy that only summer could bring.

Summer? But spring had hardly begun when the expedition had set off from Kingsbury. The journey to Broceliande had taken a little over two weeks. How then had summer come so quickly upon the land?

The Specter's words came back to her: You 'II find out.

The two-mile drop stared her in the face. Green, green, green. Everything was green. Crops were ripening, cattle were browsing in rich pastures, sheep were grazing. And, in Gryylth, men were picking up swords and donning armor, and Helwych was ...

How long had they been in Broceliande? Months, it appeared. And that meant that Helwych-my boy, Helwych, the Specter had called him-had already returned to Gryylth.

Silbakor banked, slid beneath Alouzon, and caught her. Alouzon's head was still reeling from the altitude, but she struggled with words as she pounded on the Dragon's back to attract its attention.

"Dragonmaster," it said, "If you die, everything of substance is no more. I beg you: give up this madness."

"That's just fine with me, Silbakor," she shouted above the rush of wind. "Take me to Gryylth. Quick."

Though the rocket blast and the concussions from the mortar rounds buffeted her like great hands, Dindrane hardly noticed. Her attention was elsewhere: reaching out onto subtler planes of being, probing the psyche of the woman she had known as Kyria.

It would not be an easy healing. Kyria was bleeding within and without, her skull had been crushed, and her heart, faced with such damage, was faltering. But there was something else, too; something that was grappling with the spirit of the sorceress, hanging like a weight about it, dragging it down toward death.

Faintly, Dindrane heard a rush of wings, heard Alouzon cursing the Dragon; and then all sound faded as she willed herself into the injured woman. At first she mended bones, closed interior wounds, healed skull fractures; but then she set off into the darker regions that lay beyond the physical body, where Kyria's soul struggled to return to life.

Dindrane stepped softly along the floors of vast, empty caverns, the only light that of her staff. Her feet made hollow sounds on the ebony floor, and ahead there was a sense of dread and an oppression.

I do no harm. I tread these paths to bring healing and strength; and whether I bear this soul back to life, or yield it to the gracious Goddess, I do so with courage and love.

The words of the healer's prayer helped her on her way, but it also left a nagging doubt. The Goddess . . .

The Goddess was Alouzon.

Though Dindrane fought with the knowledge, she could not deny it. It was true. She knew it was true. All the violence, all the sorrow, all the conflicts that Dindrane had seen in the Dragonmaster were not flaws or vices or failings. They were, rather, inescapable aspects of the very Deity who was worshipped from a thousand stone circles scattered across the length and breadth of Vaylle. It had been Alouzon's hand that had made her, her land, her people.

And yet Alouzon was as mortal as Dindrane herself, and had, in fact, required healing after she had saved Pellam's emissaries from Kyria's blast. Dindrane knew herself to be a witness to the playing out of a great and terrible mystery; but, priestess though she was, she could not comprehend it. She was not sure that she wanted to.

She pushed the thoughts away. She had reached the mouth of the cavern. There was another healing to be done.

Forcing herself through the narrow opening, she found herself walking on a close-cropped lawn. Before her, heaped among sheltering trees and bushes, were the ruins of a house: shattered plaster, broken wood, twisted metal. Fires were sputtering into life, and smoke was drifting up.

And Kyria was in there.

Dindrane glanced about uneasily. The night sky was washed out as though by a blaze of light that, though hidden by the surrounding trees and hills, must have stretched off for many leagues in all directions. Beyond the ruins, glowing globes hung from poles, and moment by moment a sound like a whistling shriek, rising and falling, was drawing closer.

Shoving aside boards, pushing through chunks of plaster, stepping carefully around heaps of broken glass, Dindrane entered the wreckage. The house had been flattened as though by a great weight, and soon she had to drop to her knees and crawl, her back scraping against timbers and the sharp points of nails.

The shrieking was quite close now, and the fires were taking hold. Dindrane found herself forced onto her belly. Staff in hand, she squeezed through a passage. The fumes from the spreading fires choked her, and she could see nothing. But as she wriggled forward, her outstretched hand encountered flesh and cloth, and she brought up the light of her staff and found herself face to face with the ancient hag who had thrown herself at the Specter, "Dindrane."

" 'Tis I."

"Glad ..." The hag shuddered. She was obviously in pain. Beyond her was the sorceress. Kyria lay still, her eyes closed, her breathing shallow. The hag gestured. "Help her?"

"I . . ." Kyria seemed essentially unhurt. Though pale, she might have been sleeping. "I have done all I can." She met the old woman's eyes. "I think I have come here for you."

"Not much you can do. Gone." The hag coughed. A trickle of blood appeared at the corner of her mouth, and she wiped at it with the back of a clawed hand. " 'Bout time."

"That is not-"

"Shut up." The gray eyes turned hot. "Did my job."

"You . . . ?"

The hag laughed: a dry, metallic sound from a throat that had previously known only screams. "Just learned how to talk," she said, "and I'm gone. But I got Sol."

"Sol?" Dindrane felt cold. Was she now going to be told that Solomon, the God, was that . . . that thing?

The hag shook her head. "Not yours. Mine."

"Who are you?"

"Part of Kyria."

The fumes from the fires were gathering, darkening the air. "What do you want?"

The hag nodded at the sorceress. "Save her."

"And you?"

"Kill me."

Every particle of the healer's being rebelled at the demand. "How dare you-"

The hag grabbed the front of Dindrane's tunic and dragged her forward. "Can do it," she hissed. "You can. I'm gone. You want to keep Kyria, you kill me."

"I ... I cannot do that."

The hag cuffed her. "Little cunt. Just like all the rest." She struck Dindrane again, harder, then turned and scrambled toward Kyria, claws lifted. Dindrane gasped, lunged after her, and hauled her back by one skeletal leg.

What followed was a battle of hands against claws, of reflexes against snapping teeth. Rolling back and forth among the splinters and glass, jabbing at the hate-filled face with her healer's staff, drawing up her legs to knee the hag in the belly, Dindrane fought desperately as the fires spread and the smoke thickened.

"I kill her," screamed the hag.

"That you shall not," said Dindrane. "I fought the Specter, and I will fight you. I declare this woman my friend and my comrade, flesh of my flesh and spirit of my spirit."

"Words."

"They are more than words."