If she replayed the next few moments in her mind ten thousand times, Krystren would never quite fathom how he lost his grip on her flask. Perhaps his hand was stiff and sore from being used as a brake to halt his descent. Perhaps the flask itself was overbeaded with moisture. In any event, he lost control of it, and it began to bounce away. She watched Orujo reach for it, his outstretched fingers almost grasping it on its first rebound off the rubble, and then that stretch-the stretch of his beautiful sculptured, hard-muscled body, a body whose every square centimeter Courion knew and cherished-as he leaned out over the sheer slope. In that one gesture was embodied the very essence of his eternally open and optimistic personality, the absolute belief that anything he tried he would excel at. It was a moment, fixed in time as firmly, as irrevocably as the point of a compa.s.s, at once exquisite and horrifying.

And so he had stretched past the limit of any Sarakkon's ability, and grabbed the water flask on its way down. The weight, tiny as it was, had unbalanced him.

In a flutter of brilliant turquoise, he fell.

Down into the crisped center of the caldera he had plunged so shockingly, so quickly that Krystren was frozen in place. Rivulets of ash followed him down, disappearing with him, completely, irrevocably, with no trace at all that he had ever stood beside her.

Orujo!

She slipped into the Sea of Blood. Bright plumefish skirted reefs of coralbright and the ballet dance of the sea rays as they moved in and out of the slanting shafts of sunlight. They swam with Krystren, and wept for Orujo, understanding why a week after dazedly hauling herself out of the Oppamonifex caldera she was waiting at the port of Celiocco when Courion's ship had nosed in. Coming down the gangplank, he had seen the truth in her eyes before she could say a word, and that night, over her bitter protests, he had shipped out, never to return home.

Did he blame her for Orujo's death? He never said. And yet, his absence had spoken louder than any anger he might have raised against her, for he never wrote to her, and despite her best efforts she had failed for years to locate him. Until she had been summoned by the Orieniad. Cerro himself had told her that her brother had been sent on a secret mission on the northern continent, then charged her with the mission of finding him and delivering into his hands a small, wrapped parcel, sealed with wax. It did not seem possible that after all this time she would be reunited with her brother. How would he greet her?

What would she say to him? What was there left to say?

Only everything.

Everything that had been left unsaid, that had festered like an un-buried corpse in the house of theiryouth. The spectre of Orujo's death lay between them like a mysterious fen, fogbound and treacherous, causing them to lose each other forever. Except now, this mission had given them one last chance to remember who they once had been.

A shadow moving in the unknowable deep brought her up short. She backpedaled away from the searays, from the coralbright so full of life.

Though Courion had loved them and had professed to understand them, she had an unreasoning fear of orquidia. With a spasm of terror, she turned her back on the shadow and in fifteen long, strong strokes made it back to the safety of the tidal pool.

The sun had begun to melt into the Sea of Blood, turning the shallow water in which she lazed into a bowl of liquid silver. She had been on the island for several weeks now, sleeping during the day, never in the same grotto twice, making her reconnaissance at night, sticking to the moonslight.

It had been her initial intention to find a way off the island as quickly as possible. But when she had seen who was advising the sauromicians, she felt it her duty to learn as much as she could about the clandestine activities on the island before she continued her journey to find Courion in the dense crush of Axis Tyr. When Cerro had made her privy to the information she required to carry out her mission he had also revealed to her why Courion had been sent to the northern continent. He had left it up to her to connect the dots. So she had stayed in order to discover how much the Sintire knew of the Onnda's plans.

In the course of her eavesdropping, she had discovered, among others things, that the west side of the island was the most treacherous for a sailor. It also contained a hidden grotto choked even at low tide with deadly surf fueled by fiercely swirling crosscurrents. The discovery had almost cost her her life. But she had made it inside, finding an entrance up into the core of the granite towers, thick now with sauromicians, their new pupils, and their advisors.

The sun had bloodied the western horizon. The last crescent thumbnail of it emblazoned the sky with fiery color. Three of the five moons had risen. It was almost time for her to make her way into the Chaos Grotto, as she had named it, taking the winding staircase up into the heart of the sauromician citadel, there to begin her nightly session of spying. However, this evening she sat unmoving in the pale green moonslight.

She had heard the whisper behind her, an onsh.o.r.e breeze rustling the hems of long robes. Without turning around, she knew that two males had emerged onto a cave mouth almost directly above her.

They stood gazing at the same violet swath of twilit sea that stretched before her. The three moons were in a pregnant phase; their reflected illumination was bright as dawn.

"I would hardly believe it," said a very deep voice she recognized as belonging to Haamadi. "We have successfully killed a Druuge. And without possessing the Veil of a Thousand Tears." Haamadi was the youngest, and newest, of the sauromician archons. From what Krystren had gleaned, he had been elevated following Talaasa's death in Za Hara-at.

"Talaasa's failure was inevitable, as we told you." This voice was higher. "It was a fortunate occurrence not only for you, personally, but for sauromician and Sintire alike." The voice possessed the soft whispery insidious intonations of the Sintire Ardinal named Lujon. "Through us, you see that you need not rely on the Veil. Through you, we have a long-sought-after toehold of power on the northern continent."

"Leverage over the Druuge, you mean."

"You said that," Lujon said. "We did not."

"No, of course not. You wouldn't." The sauromician snorted. "The perfect symbiosis."

"Is it skepticism, Haamadi, that we hear in your voice?"

"We were born sucking at the great teat of Miina," the sauromician said. "Now we are sucking at yours."

"Caligo and Varda do not see it that way," Lujon said. "They have been archons for many years."

"That is the problem," Haamadi said. "Their frustration makes them impatient. Their impatience makes them incautious."

"You would do well not to discount their experience.""Their experience is in being thwarted by the Druuge."

"This is why they have asked us for help in locating the ninth bane-stone."

"And in return you have asked us to use our sorcery to find a certain Sarakkon. Tell me, Lujon, what is so special about this female?"

There followed a short pause. "She is an agent of our sworn enemy."

"And that is all?"

"That is more than enough, believe us."

Haamadi grunted. "And what of the ninth banestone?"

"What of this agent named Krystren?"

Their laughter spilled over the edge of the cliff, echoing harshly across the tidal pool where Krystren sat still, breathless, and, because of her power, invisible to them both.

"We discovered that the ninth banestone was hidden at Za Hara-at," Lujon said. "Unfortunately, it was taken from there before we could get to it. Rest a.s.sured that we will discover by whom."

"I am counting on it."

"But having it is not enough, is it? You also have to complete the Cage that has imprisoned-"

"Do not invoke the Dragon's name," Haamadi cautioned. "Not here. Not anywhere."

"And why not?"

"Its power is vaster than your mind can comprehend, Lujon." Another pause, after which Lujon said, "Raiding a Ramahan abbey has been quite informative. Our knowledge has increased a thousandfold along with yours."

"An unfortunate consequence of our new relationship." Haamadi's innate paranoia could turn any statement into an implied threat. "I foresee a time when your so-called toehold of power on the northern continent will increase to a point when an alliance with us will become disadvantageous to you."

"You feel we are using you."

Haamadi smiled with small, pointed teeth.

"But you are using us as well," Lujon pointed out. "This is the nature of symbiosis."

"No," Haamadi snapped. "The nature of symbiosis is two ent.i.ties in a mutually beneficial relationship."

"Your outlook is entirely too pessimistic."

"I am a realist." Haamadi pointed. "See that tidal pool below us? In it live a myriad of creatures coexisting peacefully. Until, that is, one or another of them gets hungry enough to devour its neighbor."

"What is your point?" Lujon said shortly.

"It matters not whether we rely on the Veil or the Sintire for our power," Haamadi replied. "Inside, we sauromicians are as hollow as this rock fortress we are forced to inhabit. We remain stripped of our power."

"The power you were judged to have misused. In that regard, Miina did Her job well."

"Is it any wonder we are impatient to regain it?" he cried.

Lujon, crossing his arms over his chest, said nothing.

Haamadi regarded him for a moment. "You do not like us."

Lujon laughed. "On the contrary. Despite everything, Haamadi, you we like."

"Insofar as Sintire can feel anything."

"That is an old lie," Lujon said with some asperity. "We are not machines."

"I have heard otherwise." There was a short pause during which Krystren could imagine Haamadi shrugging. "But perhaps I am misinformed."

"Youth is often tempted to draw conclusions from the flimsiest of evidence."

"That is dangerous," Haamadi admitted. "It is also dangerous to believe that age and wisdom are synonymous."

"Both of us speak a rebellious tongue," Lujon said in a contemplative tone of voice, "and yet we represent ancient federations."

"As for myself, I am no proponent of monolithic thinking."

"Come, Haamadi," Lujon said. "Let us drink together. Sooner or later, we think, we will reach aconsensus as to how best to accommodate one another."

"Drunk or sober," the sauromician said, "I will never fully trust you."

"It seems to us that is because you recognize in us something precious to you: the pearl of ambition."

"And if so?"

Lujon forced air between his teeth in a tuneless stream. "We now have a firm basis on which to move forward."

For some time after they had retreated into the rock fortress, Krystren remained in the tidal pool, trying to digest all that she had heard. The implications rippled out in all directions, multiplying dizzyingly.

Sintire on the Oomaloo; Sintire in league with sauromicians. Sintire so desperate to find her they had made a deal with sauromicians. She shuddered. On the other hand, she was gaming an understanding of both the ramifications and the urgency of her mission. She could spend all spring eavesdropping on the sauromicians and their new allies, but this conversation had served to make it even more urgent that she find Courion and deliver to him the information she carried.

And so she cast her mind toward how to get off the accursed rock. It was too far and too treacherous to swim to the mainland, and she had not discovered where the Sintire had stowed their ship. Besides, she had no wish to alert them to her presence; stealing one of their small boats would only inflame their curiosity, not to mention their determination to get it back.

Something interrupted her pondering. Fifteen meters out, where a short time ago she had been swimming, where the seabed plunged into the deep, she saw a dark stain upon the water. As the tide was coming in, it was slowly making its way toward her. When it was close enough to recognize, she rose and stood shivering on the salt-rich evening air.

It was an orquidia.

Unreasoning panic sent a chill through her, but she found that she could not move. The creature had arisen from the deep, and was now making its way toward her with each successive wave. It must be over six meters long. She knew she should climb out of the tidal pool, gain as much height as she could in order to protect herself. Obdurately, she stayed where she was, even as, one after the other, the creature's tentacles slopped over the rocks into the tidal pool.

She watched the suckers, big as her ears, brown as the algae that turned the bottom of the tidal pool furry, expand and contract as they drew ever nearer. Shame mixed with her paralytic terror. She was deeply, inconsolably ashamed that she, crifica Onnda, should feel such fear. Where did it come from, this horror that drained her of rational thought and action? From deep inside her, she realized, in the mysterious underworld where dreams are born, the kind of dreams from which she started awake, her hair plastered damply to her cheeks, the kind of dreams that stayed with her, dulling the day to pastel translucence.

A particularly powerful wave washed the orquidia's head partway into the tidal pool, causing a scream to bubble in her clotted throat. The rubicund beak was curved as a talon, sharp as any raptor's. One terrifying saucerlike eye stared evilly at her, and she felt like vomiting. It was quite some time before she realized that the eye was filmed over. The orquidia was dead, murdered by some enemy in the deep. It moved at the whim of the tide; it was harmless.

Whispering a short prayer to Yahe, she cupped her hand into the tidal pool, splashed water onto her face. She felt like laughing, but she could not rid herself of the shame. That it was involuntary was all the worse, for her Onnda training was meant to supplant such vulnerabilities with the iron fists of concentration, determination, and perseverance.

Only Courion knew of her phobia. He had tried to free her of it, to no avail. Now he would not talk to her. Her own brother.

The orquidia lay spread out before her. Waves lapped its filmed eyes. Six of its twelve powerful tentacles lay limp in the tidal pool. Small fish were sucking tiny morsels off the suction cups. If they were unafraid, why wasn't she?

She rose, at last. Wading through the warm water, she took a deep breath and ripped off the orquidia's beak. Using it in lieu of a knife blade, she began to cut off the tentacles. Then she bound the body with half of them, making it narrower and deeper so that it took on the shape of a canoe. She cutthe hollow trunks of dead softwood trees that storms had felled along the sh.o.r.eline into appropriate lengths, bound them with the remaining tentacles on either side as ballast. She split a branch lengthwise and clambered aboard her makeshift water-craft.

Dipping the branch into the water, she paddled furiously past the surf to get beyond the island's westernmost headland. This was the difficult part, because she was headed perpendicular to the tide. She leaned in, putting her entire body into it, and presently she found herself far enough out so that she quit paddling. Her orquidia craft quickly turned north into the tide, and now the going was a great deal easier.

Still, she could feel the current obdurately pushing her in a westerly direction. She concentrated on paddling against it, maintaining a course due north, for the farther west she went, the farther she would be from Axis Tyr and Courion.

It took her the better part of five hours to gain the mainland. When, at last, she clambered off the orquidia, she could barely stand, and her stomach cried out for food and water. Still, sleep was her overriding priority. She crawled through the muck of the tide line, finding shelter between a pair of ma.s.sive rocks, and set her back into the groove. For a time, she gazed out through soft moonslight and bristling starlight at the rising black hulk of the island known as Suspended Skull. She could not imagine what evil Haamadi and Lujon were plotting.

She fell asleep fingering the worn cube of red jade. In her dreams she rode upon the back of a live orquidia and, strangely, experienced the joy Courion must have felt riding one. Then his ship, cleaving the waves at full sail, struck the orquidia head-on. It split in two, and she burst asunder.

Book Two:

GATE OF BLINDED.

PATH.

For a sorceress, Third Sight is all im-portant. If Gate of Blinded Path is closed or otherwise impaired, errors in judgment are inevitable. Now the future is filled with brambles and thorns. And many a sorceress has come to a b.l.o.o.d.y end, trying to claw her way out.

-Utmost Source, The Five Sacred Books of Miina

11

Einon

With a sigh that caused the sky-blue velvet curtains of his quarters to tremble, Nith Immmon unwound himself from his ion exomatrix. Removing the alloy suit that both protected and hid Gyrgon when they were outside the Temple of Mnemonics was a delicate and difficult task. For one thing, it was laced with skeins of quasi-organic veins and arteries of biocircuits. These bio-circuits were chains of computer chips. The chips processed photons through a mnemonic liquid, which both held them in specified patterns and magnified their power. For another, each and every vein and artery was connected to specific pores in Nith Immmon's skin, linking into the Gyrgon's autonomic, endocrine, and nervous systems.

Nith Immmon's hermaphroditic body looked as if it was bleeding from every pore. But instead of drooling down his naked form, the blood followed a spiral course that eventually linked every square centimeter of the Gyrgon's form. A kind of garment was thus knitted, section by section, forming a three-part, body-fitting tunic, leggings, cape with a neck cowl that rose to the level of the Gyrgon's ears, all of a greenish blue hue. It was composed of an exhaustively complex network of quasi-organic biocircuits whose skin, metallic and burnished, coruscated in the light.

The Teyj, sitting on the branch of a small, potted sysal tree whose gnarled roots Nith Immmon periodically pruned, observed this all-too-familiar transformation with a c.o.c.ked head and a brilliant eye.