Thigpen snorted. "There is no way to destroy a banestone."

The Hagoshrin lifted a curved yellow claw. "Ah, but there is. It must be taken into Otherwhere and there cast into the mouth of the white dragon."

"Whose Avatar is that?" Riane asked.

"It is a shared thing and so both more and less than other Avatars," the Hagoshrin said. "It belongs to the archdaemon Pyphoros and his three children.""We defeated them," Riane said. "I sent Pyphoros back to the Abyss at Za Hara-at."

"And yet the white dragon still sails through Otherwhere. I know. I have seen him."

"You have the ability to Thrip?" Thigpen said. "I did not know-"

"There are many things you Rappa do not know about us." The Hagoshrin sniffed.

"Enough of this." Riane began to squirm her way toward the elongated neck of the creature. "You will retrieve the banestone while I fetch Eleana."

She was brought up short as a tentacle wrapped itself around her waist. "You do not understand."

The Hagoshrin's stinking muzzle had turned back to the aperture of the air shaft. "I cannot touch the bane-stone. It is the one thing-"

"Then you get Eleana, and I will go after the banestone."

The Hagoshrin heaved a sigh, slithering its bulk through the aperture. Riane followed it, levering herself out into the palace corridor- a dark and airless place she guessed must be one of the myriad service hallways that honeycombed the palace's living quarters.

Over the undulating body of the Hagoshrin Riane caught a glimpse of Eleana in the nightlily bedchamber onto which this end of the corridor debouched, and her heart felt squeezed within her breast. She could barely breathe, and there was a roaring in her ears.

She was on her way toward the bed when she heard an explosion so close by it knocked them against the corridor wall, and the Hagoshrin began to scream.

Kurgan, on the run, grabbed the ion cannon out of his bodyguard's grip and waved him and another tense Haaar-kyut off. Had they not became inured to this regent's peculiar whims, they would have flanked him anyway; but neither wanted the public dressing-down and humiliating loss of rank that would be a sure consequence.

As he flew down the corridors, moving deeper and deeper into his residence wing, he was glad to be alone. No one had seen him bring Eleana up from the nether regions of the palace, and he wanted no such observers now.

The banestone was tolling-an ominous sound in the center of his mind. It was, however, as clear as any Khagggun clarion call to battle.

He saw a noxious Kundalan creature crouched over Eleana as he entered the bedchamber, and he flipped up the photon rangefmder, took a preliminary reading, and shot from the hip. The thing was so big he could hardly have missed even if he were stone drunk.

The blast disintegrated a large patch of cilia that covered much of the beast's seemingly shapeless body. It threw its head back and roared. Kurgan came on, shooting without aiming properly, still believing, despite the mounting evidence, that the ion cannon could put a hole in the thing.

It had Eleana wrapped in one of its tentacles, and Kurgan kept his fire away from her. But another tentacle shot out and slammed him back against the far wall of the bedchamber. Half-dazed, he raised the ion cannon to deliver a blast directly into the beast's face, but the accursed tentacle lashed out, spoiling his aim. Then the tip of it wrapped itself around the barrel of the weapon.

Kurgan was dragged forward, smashed into a chair, overturning it. One leg splintered, flew across to the table on which sat the alabaster box. The table canted over, the box slid off, and Kurgan let go of the ion cannon, leaping and twisting to cradle the box against his chest. His momentum rolled him over into the side of the bed. The lid of the alabaster box popped open, and, as if having a mind of its own, the banestone rolled into his hand.

It felt at once hot and cold. A kind of liquid flowed through him, and he rose, holding the banestone before him, scrambling over the rumpled bed on his knees.

The beast had retreated, taking Eleana with it. How it had found her, he had no idea. But of one thing he was absolutely certain, he was not going to allow it to take her from him. He was abruptly overcome with a rage that commanded him to hurl the banestone at the beast. He c.o.c.ked his arm back.

"Stop!" the beast cried in alarm.Kurgan did not know whether he was more surprised that it could talk or that it was afraid of the banestone, but its fear was what he homed in on. He threw the banestone directly at it.

The Hagoshrin was dying. It had felt the life force draining out of it even before it came to the place where Kurgan Stogggul had secreted Eleana. Its dying had progressed. The deliquescing, the warmth that had run through it, was gone, overridden by a certain sluggishness of foot, a shortness of breath. That was followed by a terrible systemic weakness. It was so debilitating, in fact, that by the time Kurgan fired at it, the sting of the ion blast reverberated through its corpus. The stench of its own hair burning made it nearly faint. Stupid to have attempted this rescue with death so near, with the terrible danger the banestone represented. It had tried to tell the Dar Sala-at the truth about the banestone, although not very forcefully. The truth was it could not bear to disappoint the Dar Sala-at, not after the awful shock it had given her. The Hagoshrin had been astonished by its fondness for the Dar Sala-at. Odd. Never during the centuries of incarceration had it ever imagined such a thing. And then there was that d.a.m.nable Rappa! It did not want to appear weak in front of her, not with her already lowly opinion of Hagoshrin.

The Rappa were a clever race, but their weakness was their hubris, their annoying sense of superiority.

These ruminations, typical of the time just preceding death, were what made it hesitate, and the hesitation was fatal. Before it could react-indeed, if it could have effectively reacted at all in its debilitated state-the banestone struck it square on the forehead. The Hagoshrin went down as if poleaxed, and lay upon the dusty floor, staring up at the great mural of the nightlily in its overgrown, feverish garden. Eleana lay insensate within the cradle of one tentacle and, becoming once again aware of this, the Hagoshrin attempted to haul its disgusting bulk up and make for the air shaft in the corridor. It wasn't so far away, that dim aperture. And yet, it seemed to be on the other side of Kundala. Oh, the agony the banestone had inflicted on him, and now it lay close. The Hagoshrin could feel it pulsing, feeding, growing in power.

Kurgan Stogggul was scrambling across the floor in search of the ion cannon still weakly clutched in the Hagoshrin's other tentacle. The Hagoshrin tried to move it out of the way, but it saw Kurgan withdraw a thin, triangular-bladed dagger and, reversing it in his fist, stab down so that it slit the tentacle down the middle.

Pain lanced through the Hagoshrin, and more of its life force leached away. Still, it held stubbornly to the ion cannon, while Kurgan tried to jerk the weapon free. If only the Dar Sala-at understood what the Hagoshrin was doing. If only the Dar Sala-at would use the Veil of a Thousand Tears to protect her from the effects of the banestone, for if she touched it with her bare hands as Kurgan Stogggul had . . .

The Hagoshrin shuddered as Riane shot across its flank on her way toward the banestone. It tried to voice a warning, but all that came out of its V-shaped mouth was an unintelligible croak. To die like this, it thought, a hideous beast, where is the justice in that?

Riane broke into a sprint at the Hagoshrin's cry of pain. She had been witness to everything that had transpired, and now she raced down the corridor and into the bedchamber. Without waiting to a.s.sess fully the situation, she struggled across the Hagoshrin's supine bulk and there she came face-to-face with Kurgan Stogggul. The regent looked at her, and recognition flooded his face.

"You," he grated through clenched teeth.

The banestone lay to the right of Riane, dark and evil-looking. A vibration rippled through the Veil of a Thousand Tears, a kind of reflexive shudder. Riane could hear the voices of the Dragons wailing in her mind, warning her. She still harbored the hope that she could get the banestone and save Eleana. She took one step toward the bane-stone, but at that moment the Hagoshrin's strength gave out, and Kurgan wrenched the ion cannon out of its grip.

There was no time for thought, for logic. Riane, reacting on pure emotional instinct, changed directionsand scooped Eleana into her arms. Kurgan squeezed off a shot, but the Hagoshrin's head rose upward, taking the violent energy discharge squarely between the eyes. At the same time, its body rippled, pushing Riane across the mountain of its bulk.

Riane, Eleana in her arms, slid to the floor and ran. By that time, Kurgan had managed to change his vantage point. Sensing the beast was no longer a threat to him, he concentrated on Riane.

The Hagoshrin gave one last scream, and Riane threw herself to the floor, her body covering Eleana's as a glowing blue bolt of hyperexcited ions pa.s.sed over her head and blew out a chunk of the marble wall.

The Veil of a Thousand Tears was singing, and she unwound it from her waist, letting it unfurl as she rose. The Veil was transformative, she knew, and she reasoned that it would not allow the ion blast to reach her in its native form. She turned to see Kurgan's grim face.

"If you fire again, you will harm her as well as me," she said.

She saw Kurgan pull the trigger, just as if she had given him a dare. She lifted her arm, the Veil floating in front of her. When the blast struck the Veil the hyperexcited ions metamorphosed into inert pebbles that dropped to the floor in an impotent clatter.

"You will have to do better than that, Kurgan, to come after me." Riane and Kurgan stood staring at one another across the gulf of time, race, culture, memory. There was, she was astonished to discover, some elemental force that drew them together as strongly as it repulsed them. There was a circle-the Venca word for it was yannam, which signified a mode of knowledge, a way of seeing the world, a particular state of being-within which the two of them existed. Riane could see that it mattered not that Annon had been thrust into the form of a Kundalan female. Just as his love for Eleana survived the transformation so did the peculiar friendship-enmity between Annon and Kurgan.

Kurgan, for his part, was unaware of this, and yet so absolutely was their fate, their yannam, tied together, that he sensed something, as one scents a fire long before it becomes visible, before it can be determined whether in the dead of winter it is a blessing or a danger. Riane saw in his face a flicker-not of recognition, that would be impossible-but of that precognitive sensation that crawls down the spine and is called intuition.

"Kurgan, you must give me the banestone," Riane said. Kurgan laughed, a caustic, unpleasant sound.

"I will die before I give you anything you want."

"You do not understand. There are creatures searching for the bane-stone. They will stop at nothing to get it."

"Really?" Kurgan sneered. "And who are these creatures?" Of course Riane did not know. "One banestone they all are searching for," the Hagoshrin had told her. Only it had neglected to tell her who they were. But even if she knew, she doubted that Kurgan would believe her.

She was caught on the barbs of an insoluble dilemma: try to get the banestone from Kurgan or save Eleana.

As she began to back away into the corridor, Kurgan said, in a matter-of-fact tone, "Leave her here.

What could she mean to you? Just another soldier in your doomed fight."

Riane watched his face as she continued to retreat. Either way, she would lose, and something precious would be irretrievably lost.

Then his voice changed again. "Listen. Listen to me." Softened now with his expression. "Why bother?" Cajoling. "She will die anyway." Beguiling even. "If not today, then tomorrow or next week.

Like you." Shadows crept over Riane, stealing Eleana's face. She sensed the corridor behind her, could smell its familiar and comforting fustiness. Almost there.

As if Kurgan realized what she was thinking, his face abruptly twisted, and he shouted; "If you take her, I will track you down, punish her by killing you slowly, piece by piece in front of her. This I swear on my own life."

Riane slipped completely into the shadows and, turning, ran for the air shaft aperture.

With a low growl, Kurgan scrabbled over the inert bulk of the creature. He ran after them.

The banestone, pulsing its eerie power, sank Riane's barb more deeply into his psyche. You mil have to do better than that, Kurgan, to come after me. Imagine, he thought, furious, a Kundalan tauntinghim! Again and again, he fired wildly into the corridor, the hyperexcited ions ricocheting off the walls, floor, and ceiling.

The utility corridor was heating up like a porcelain oven. Riane reached the aperture, and Thigpen scrambled away from the edge, where she had been waiting, tense and agitated.

"Thank Miina you're safe," she said. "Did you get the banestone?"

Riane shook her head. She was busy unwrapping the Veil of a Thousand Tears from around her waist.

"Little dumpling, what are you doing?"

Riane had no time to answer her. Wrapping the Veil around Eleana's inert form, she said, "If I'm not back in five minutes, sink your teeth into the Veil and pull Eleana to safety."

"And leave you behind? I most certainly will not."

Riane glared at her. "I am the Dar Sala-at! You will do as I tell you."

"It is because you are the Dar Sala-at that I cannot comply. I am bound to protect you,"

"Eleana is my beloved. You are bound to protect her as well."

"She is not the savior of all Kundala."

"Apparently, neither am I." Riane reached out and ruffled Thigpen's fur between her ears. "Listen to me. If I fail to recover the banestone, you and Eleana must survive in order to warn Giyan. You understand that, don't you?"

The Rappa sat back on her haunches, her forearms crossed angrily over her breast.

"Thigpen-"

"Yes. All right, by Miina, I understand!"

Riane nodded, then, with a last look at Eleana, she turned and poked her head out of the aperture.

"Come out, come out, or I will smoke you out." Kurgan's voice echoed down the corridor. He had apparently regained his senses, for he had stopped firing.

Dropping silently to the utility corridor's floor, Riane crept out toward the nightlily bedchamber. The razor's whisper of an ion blast caused her to drop to the floor and cover her head.

"I can see you," Kurgan whispered. "Shadow moving against shadow."

Another blast, ricocheting back and forth, searing Riane's shoulders, the backs of her hands.

"I can see it's just you," Kurgan called. "What have you done with her?"

Riane said nothing as she cast Flowering Wand, the simple cloaking spell. Then she began to crawl toward Kurgan. She could see him hiding behind the bulky folds of the dead Hagoshrin.

"What are you doing? You have disappeared," Kurgan cried. "Ah, I see. You've cast a spell."

How could he know that? Riane asked herself and, almost immediately, received an answer.

"The banestone is throwing off shocks. It may not know you yet, but it has attuned itself to your spellcasting." He commenced to move, crabwise, across the mountain of flesh. "Even if you are invisible, it will lead me to you."

Can this be true? Riane wondered. She cast Penetrating Inside to try to learn the nature of the banestone's attuning ability.

"There you are!" Kurgan leveled his ion cannon and squeezed off a shot.

Only Riane's quick reflexes saved her, but the beam of hyperexcited ions struck close enough to sear her lungs, left her gasping and dizzy.

"Keep up your spellcasting," Kurgan crowed in delight as he scrambled closer. "It will lead me right to you!"

How could the banestone counteract Osoru spells? Riane wondered. She had no other means of combating the ion cannon. Kurgan was close enough so that retreat was no longer an option. Surely, with the bane-stone's help, he would shoot her in the back as she ran. But how was she to fight him?

She switched to the far more powerful Eye Window sorcery that was a combination of Osoru and Kyofu, taught to her by Perrnodt in the wastes of the Korrush. Speaking the Venca runes, she conjuredup Re-weaving the Veins. But immediately she saw the offensive spell turned back on herself by some mysterious property of the banestone, and she murmured the counterspell just in time.

Kurgan was laughing, holding the banestone high, delirious with its power.

Despairing, Riane cast her mind into its darkest recesses for a way to counteract the banestone. And then she thought of something. Reaching back into the fortress of her memory, pa.s.sing the twin fountains of memory and oblivion into the entryway, down the silent corridor into the proper room. There, The Book of Recantation was waiting for her, and she mentally leafed through the pages. Her expertise in Kyofu spells was at best incomplete, but she did not think she had another alternative.

She found the right page and incanted the sigils, invoking Fly's-Eye, a spell that had once been used against her to confuse her.

Almost at once, Kurgan stopped his advance. He looked around this way and that. He put one hand to his head and squeezed his eyes shut. The Kyofu spell was working; he was clearly disoriented.

At a full sprint, Riane broke out of the shadows of the corridor, leapt at Kurgan, bowling him over backward. Riane reached out, but the banestone just evaded her fingertips, rolling down a groove in the Ha-goshrin's body. Riane, scrambling over Kurgan's body, stretched for it, and Kurgan brought the b.u.t.t of the ion cannon down into her stomach. All the breath went out of her, and she doubled up, gagging.

Her grip on Fly's-Eye wavered, and Kurgan reversed the ion cannon, his forefinger tightening on the trigger as the muzzle came level with Ri-ane's head.

Riane slammed her left elbow against the middle of weapon and an ion burst cracked the ceiling, raining plaster down on them. Fighting to regain her breath, Riane kicked the ion cannon away. For that, she absorbed three devastating punches in a row. She thought she heard a rib crack, but it might have been in her mind.

As the two grappled together Riane could feel waves of V'ornn energy pulsing up from her core. That was good, for it increased both her strength and her determination. But at the same time, she felt Annon's conflicted emotions. As much as he hated the Stogggul, when it came to Kurgan, he could not quite give up his childhood friend, could not quite believe that the evil that flowed through his father and grandfather before him had irrevocably infected Kurgan. There was a part of him that still loved him in that intimately interconnected way only children with shared experiences can, part of him that was certain that he could save his friend from his family's curse. And so he held on to him, fairly embraced him, even while they pummeled each other, the love and the hatred commingling until they became indistinguishable.

In this subtle way, Riane was losing the battle, and inside her the Riane personality, that had ceded control to her V'ornn counterpart, reemerged into the light to take control. Blocking down hard on Annon's personality, she used her legs as she had been taught in another forgotten life. She clung to Kurgan as if he were a sheer mountainside, as if faced with a drop of a thousand kilometers, because as on a treacherous ice-encrusted tor she knew that her very life depended on her tenacity and agility. She slammed Kurgan onto his back, saw his eyes flutter, knew that he was losing consciousness, and she rolled over him, down the Hagoshrin's fleshy embankment, following the path of least resistance the banestone had taken.

She saw it gleaming darkly, rolled and tumbled toward it, had it within her grasp when a tremendous blow landed on the back of her head. Everything went sheet-white, snowstorm, silent as the bottom of a well. She could barely hear herself groan as she turned over.

Kurgan reared up over her, the b.u.t.t end of the ion cannon he had retrieved at head height, ready to drive down onto her neck, cracking her windpipe.

Even through her pain and disorientation Riane tried to get her hands up to protect herself, but her arms felt like stone, and she could hardly move them, let alone maneuver them into a defensive position.

She tried to get her brain to work, to conjure up another Kyofu spell, but her mind seemed as leaden as her body. Her last glimpse of Kurgan revealed him, torso arched, muscles rippling.

Kurgan, about to deliver the lethal blow, felt rather than saw a blur of red-and-black fur slam into his leg. When it reached a nerve bundle, he collapsed heavily, tumbling head over heels over the last hillock of the gargantuan corpse to the floor.

As Thigpen darted for the banestone, Kurgan fired awkwardly from his p.r.o.ne position, cursing thecreature as it retreated. Keeping one eye on the banestone, he gritted his teeth and began to clamber back up the mountain of stinking flesh until he reached the ravine where Riane lay. But she was gone, and so was the little beast.