Aeriel subsided, sat gazing at the other. Slowly she nodded and felt the dusky lady press her hand. With infinite sadness, Ravenna told her.

"She is my daughter, Aeriel. It is to her that you must give the pearl."

"She... the White Witch is an Ancient?" Aeriel stumbled, utterly dismayed. All the world had thought Ravenna the last of the race of Ocea.n.u.s. The Ancientlady shook her head.

"No, child. She was born here, on your world." Abruptly, Ravenna rose. "What do you know of my people?"

"Little, nothing," Aeriel managed. "In Terrain, where I was raised, we called you the Unknown-Nameless Ones."

The Ancientlady gave a short, painful laugh. "Truly, has our memory crumbled so far?" she said. Then softly, "Well, perhaps it is a good thing."

Silence then. The misty light of the pearl made Aeriel aware of every wrinkle in the coverlet, every mote in the air, every score upon the scabbard of the burning sword, but nothing the other said was clear. Reeling, she struggled to collect herself.

"I know your people came into the world long ago, from Ocea.n.u.s. That the land was dead, and you gave it life. That you made us and all the herbs and living creatures. That you were like mothers and fathers to us, and shared your great wisdom with us, as much as we could understand, and showed us how to live well and justly, caring for us always..."

Again Ravenna's bitter laugh. "Child, child," she said. "It is not so. We did come from Ocea.n.u.s long ago, and we did create the living things upon this world. But hardly out of love-for luxury. For our own dalliance. We never shared our knowledge with you. We h.o.a.rded it and kept you as ignorant as we could."

The Ancientlady turned suddenly and shook her head, pacing.

"This world was our pleasure garden," the dark lady continued, "and we thought of you, the inhabitants we had fashioned for it, not as our children, but as decorations. Chattels. Slaves."

Coming nearer, she knelt again before Aeriel, speaking urgently. At a sweep of Ravenna's hand, the light in the chamber dimmed. The sword whispered. The pearllight glowed. Once more the colored beads of fire darted, but not upon the surface of the pearl this time. They were within her own mind now, swirling and shimmering, put there by the pearl. With a gasp, Aeriel touched the jewel on her brow and watched the images dancing before her inner eye.

"We are a very old race, Aeriel," the Ancient said, "immensely learned, but far from wise. Once our chariots traveled to the last reaches of heaven. But that was long ago. This moon, your world, was deserted then, dead-until we took it upon ourselves to make it habitable. We created vapors for us to breathe, peoples, animals, plants. Members of our race could spend dozens of hours abroad before needing to return to the Domes. And so from across the heavens we came, to trifle in our garden."

The pearl showed Aeriel everything Ravenna described: the great machinery manufacturing air, the world seeded, the first small creatures released."Eventually, the ecology of this world began to evolve on its own. Scientists came then, walking among you and studying your kind. I was such a one. But I dallied, too-to my bitter regret. We all dallied. Coundess of your people are our descendants, many generations removed. In my folly, I bore a daughter and raised her here, in NuRavenna, as one of my own race."

A sigh of despair. Aeriel studied the pearl-made image of Ravenna, centuries younger, cradling a fair-skinned infant in her arms. The Ancientlady groaned.

"I should have done what my fellows did with their own halfung progeny: sent her out into the world to become some great heroine or queen. Instead, selfishly, I kept her, promising that one day she would return home with me. A lie- though one I hoped, desperately, to somehow make true. But that goal proved unattainable. No creature born here can survive on Ocea.n.u.s. The pull of our world would crush you to bits. Yet I allowed my daughter to believe herself wholly of my Ancient race and that Ocea.n.u.s was her birthright. Again and again I delayed my return, postponing the inevitable moment when I must reveal to her the truth."

Aeriel saw a young girl barely in womanhood, with the same proud cheeks and high forehead as her mother, her hair the same jet black. Her nose was thinner than Ravenna's, though, the chin more pointed, her complexion paler, the eyes slanted and green.

"Oriencor," Ravenna breathed. "O my daughter, Oriencor."

A s.p.a.ce of silence. At last Ravenna roused.

"Then came the news. We had all been recalled. A great disaster upon our home world: war-a thing not known in centuries. Some of my colleagues had prompted wars among you here, upon your world, that they might study them, but that our own world might one day be engulfed in such a conflict, none ever dreamed.

"Most of us sped home at once. My daughter was eager to be off, to join the fight and unleash against those of our own people who had become our foes the Ancient skills which I had taught her. But I demurred. Nor would I allow her to go without me. No one wanted her, anyway: I was the only one who considered her human. At last, I confessed her ancestry to her."

Ravenna's words grew low and halting.

"She went mad. Cursing me, she fled and vanished into the wild marches at desert's edge. When the last chariots departed, I remained behind, searching, but I could find no trace. In the end, in despair, I concluded she must have perished."

In her mind's eye, Aeriel saw the Ancient chariots leaping away on plumes of fire into the black, starry sky. Ravenna's daughter screaming after them as she fled the City. Her mother searching, combing the planet in vain. Aeriel could have wept for the dark-haired halfling girl. When the Ancient spoke again, her tone had flattened into exhaustion.

"Those few of us left upon this world had to decide what to do. Messages from our home world had ceased. Only silence answered our hails. All of our chariots were gone. Some urged the building of new chariots, but we had neither time now nor the means. Already this world had begun to die. Artificial from the first, it had never been intended as self-sustaining. A handful of us, cut off from our mother planet, could never hope to maintain this daughter world as before. We resolved to let it decline gradually and see if we could find a balance-point. We decided to try to salvage the world."

With the aid of the pearl, Aeriel envisioned the world's atmosphere thinning and spinning away into s.p.a.ce, whole species of plants and animals dying, people over the generations growing thinner, smaller, hardier.

"And we succeeded," Ravenna said, a trace of animation returning to her voice. "Over the years, we bred new species of vegetation that could survive without our care. We trained the duaroughs to maintain the subterranean machinery that manufactures water and air. Now that the atmosphere had thinned, we could no longer pa.s.s outside the Domes without masks to help us breathe. Bit by bit, we withdrew from your people, allowing you to evolve as you would."

The beadwork landscape woven in Aeriel's mind by the pearl became more recognizable, dotted with the herbs and beasts and peoples she knew. Ravenna sighed.

"A point of stasis was reached at last, the entropy halted-or so we thought. Then the Witch appeared, upsetting our delicate equilibrium only subtly at first: wells tainted, dams undermined, cisterns breached. The scarcity of water was always our weakest point. We repaired the damage as best we could. But soon she grew bolder, flaunting her handiwork, spreading drought. As our numbers dwindled, she seized every sc.r.a.p of technology she could, ransacking the darkened Cities for tools.

In time she learned all our most unspeakable arts, with which she means to ravage this world as surely as my race have ravaged Ocea.n.u.s."

Aeriel gazed at nothing, the images in her mind grown dark.

"And yet," the Ancient whispered, "she is my daughter still."

Aeriel sat in silence, not knowing what to say. "What happened there," she ventured at last, "on Ocea.n.u.s?"

Ravenna started. An explosion of colors leapt suddenly into Aeriel's thoughts. She shrank from the scenes forming there."Plagues," the Ancientlady choked. "Weapons of unimaginable ferocity, horrors unleashed to last a thousand thousand years beyond the lifetimes of their creators and victims alike. Ocea.n.u.s destroyed itself. That is why it glows in heaven with such a cold and spectral light: quick with the poison that never ends. Nothing is left alive there. This is the only world that remains: this my daughter's only birthright. If Oriencor would but listen! If I could but persuade her to renounce this mad vengeance, repair the world, and come to NuRavenna to reign after me-"

The Ancient halted, half turned away. Aeriel gazed at her.

"How can I help you, Lady?" she asked finally.

The Ancient turned on her. "Crush the Witch's army," she answered, with such fierceness that Aeriel flinched. "Destroy her darkangels. And lay the pearl of the world in her hand."

Aeriel stared, amazed at what Ravenna seemed to be asking. Was she, Aeriel, to convert the lorelei as once she had rescued a darkangel? But the Witch was infinitely more powerful-and more wicked-than her unfinished darkangel "son"

had been. What if Oriencor did not wish to be saved? What if she used the sorcery of the pearl to further her own evil ends?

Yet Ravenna seemed so certain that Aeriel dared not question her. She was an Ancient, after all, with knowledge far superior to Aeriel's own. I am but the bearer, the pale girl told herself. Perhaps it is not necessary that I understand. The Ancient lady paced, moving restlessly.

"What does the future hold, Aeriel-do you know?"

Aeriel shook her head. Ravenna sighed.

"Nor do I. Many possibilities exist. An infinity: destiny isn't fixed, you know."

Aeriel nodded, trying desperately to comprehend. So Talb the Mage had told her once, many daymonths past. She thought of the Lady Syllva's army, poised on the desert's edge ready to march-or was it already marching by now? How long had she been wandering with the Witch's pin in her head and how long healing here under Ravenna's care? The other returned to her, reaching once more to touch the pearl, and again Aeriel felt the strange, glancing thrill of the Ancientlady's power.

"This jewel on which I have shown you the past," she said, "can also scan ahead in time. I have other such jewels here in the City. And I have sat with them countless hours on end, searching, hoping for a means to undo my daughter's madness."

"What have you seen?" Aeriel asked.

"Many things."

Images stirred once more in the pale girl's mind.

"I have seen your army overthrown and Oriencor triumphant. I have seen Irrylath putting the Blade Adamantine into my daughter's heart. I have seen him killed--"

"No!" Aeriel cried involuntarily, as the scene loomed before her-even though these images of possible futures had a shifting, half-finished look. They were not fixed and vivid as the actual past. Still she recoiled. Ravenna nodded.

"Your husband, yes," she said, "that served my daughter once."

Pain and rage and jealousy swept through Aeriel at the thought of Irrylath. Desperately, she tried to clear her mind, to banish the frightening image that the pearl now wove there: Irrylath falling from the back of the Avarclon, hurtling headfirst through empty air toward a great turbulence below. The vision refused to fade. She shuddered. A tear, hot and salty, spilled down her cheek.

"Say it will not happen," she whispered. "Say that Irrylath will not be killed."

The Ancient, her great, dusky hand so much larger than Aeriel's, brushed the tear from the pale girl's lips.

"I cannot promise you that," she said sadly. "Would that I could. But I have also seen him alive at the end of the war. You killed. You all killed. The possibilities are numberless, and no one is any more likely than another."

She touched the girl's cheek lightly, and Aeriel smelled myrrh. The pearl's horrific speculations vanished now. She sighed in relief.

"That is why I made the rime," Ravenna told her, "to try to guide you and the Ions-all of history-toward that one best future I have glimpsed among the rest."

The Ancientlady eyed her very sadly now.

"Have you ever treasured something, child," she asked, "a thing so dear you thought you could never give it up-then learned you must?"

Cold terror returned to Aeriel. No. Never- not Irrylath! She shook her head.

Ravenna sighed. "Soon I must do so-give up what I love best for the good of the world. Come, child. Gird on your sword. The time has come for me to spell you the end of the rime and put my gift into the pearl."

EIGHT.

Rime and Shadow

Aeriel's heart leapt at the Ancient lady's words. Now at last she was to learn the riddle's end. Almost eagerly, she reached for the sword that the other had given her. Its strange, sorcerous feel alarmed her still, but she did as Ravenna bade, belting the long blade's girdle about her waist. She trusted the dark lady completely. Ravenna nodded.

"Now say me the rime."

One hand on the swordhilt, the other going to touch the pearl upon her brow, Aeriel closed her eyes and began: "On Avaric's white plain..." She recited until she came to the final lines: The Witch of Westernesse's hag overthrown."

There she halted. That was all she knew. Without opening her eyes, she sensed the Ancientlady's smile.

"You know most of it, then. Good. Here is the rest:

"Whereafter shall commence such a cruel, sorcerous war, To wrest recompense for a land leaguered sore.

With a broadsword bright burning, a shadow-"

Abruptly, she broke off. Aeriel blinked in surprise. An image composed of beads of fire had jumped into place upon the near wall of deep blue gla.s.s. She recognized the dark features of Ravenna's liege man.

"Lady, a word," he began.

"Melkior," exclaimed the Ancientlady softly. Aeriel sensed her dismay. "I bade that we not be disturbed."

"Forgive me, my liege. The duaroughs insist..." He halted short, his gaze glancing beyond her to Aeriel. "She's awakened,"

he murmured in surprise. "You said you would send for me when she revived."

Ravenna's lips compressed, but not with anger. "Time presses," she began.

The dark man's eyes widened suddenly. "And you've given her the sword? You swore that you would not, not until-"

She shook her head. "I thought to spare you."

"No!" Melkior cried. "Lady, hold off. Hold off until I come!"

His image vanished. Ravenna whirled. "Haste, child," she said urgently. "I had hoped to accomplish this while Melkior was yet occupied with your companions, but he will be here in another moment. Quickly-draw the sword."

Aeriel stared at the Ancientlady. "Am I to defend you against your liege man?" she stammered.

The dusky lady hurriedly shook her head. "No. I would not ask that of you. Nor would I wish any harm to come to Melkior. But we must lose no time. Unsheathe the glaive."

Aeriel did so. The blade leapt from the scabbard almost without her will. The misty fire along it burned and whispered.

"Hold it up before you," Ravenna bade.

Aeriel held the glaive point-upward, clasping its long hilt in both hands. It seemed to have no weight, stood humming upon the air. Lighdy, deliberately, the Anciendady brought her palm down upon the point. Aeriel started, feeling a jolt of energy course through the blade. The pearl upon her brow blazed, and for a moment, the white fire running along the sword flared in a wreath of burning colors.

"Sheathe it," Ravenna said.Aeriel slid the blade, whitelit again, into its case. The light of the pearl on her brow had diminished now. Holding her hand, the Ancienlady seemed suddenly short of breath.

"Don't fear," she said.

Carefully, she cupped her palm to the pale girl's forehead. Aeriel felt a sudden rushing, as of hurding headlong, or as of some unbreakable diread spinning out of Ravenna and into the pearl. Its force held Aeriel transfixed. She could not have moved if she had wished. Only s.n.a.t.c.hes reached her mind-of strange magics, indescribable sorceries, the woven patterns for all living things- all winding themselves away, unreadable, in the jewel's depths. Already the diread had begun to dwindle and slacken. Aeriel felt a change of air as, all at once, the wall behind Ravenna parted, and her liege man dashed through.

"Stop!" he cried. "Lady, stop-"

Gently, the Ancient took her palm from the pale girl's brow. "Peace, Melkior," she whispered, turning. "It's done."