If you change your mind midstream, if you weaken-"

"I am not weak."

"If you tell Dacce what we have asked you to do-"

"Never." Leyytey was shocked. "Never!"

"Gratified to hear it. Nevertheless, you must realize that powerful emotions are in play."

What would you know about it, she thought. "It was you who put us together!"

"He is genetically flawless. You were meant to consummate a specific act with him. A breeding, that is all."

"Yes, yes. To perpetuate your precious line! To make you immortal! I did it for you. Only for you!"

she shouted. "And look where it's gotten me!"

"Weak-kneed. Typical Tuskugggun argument." "Then why did you insist that I mate with him?" Pninsighed. "I have already explained."

"You knew this could happen. You knew it, and yet you went ahead-"

"I discounted the possibility-" "No, no. You wanted a grandson-"

"-because-"

"-a genetically perfect grandson, and nothing was going to get in the way of that."

"Because," he bellowed, "like any Tuskugggun I expected you to do as you are told."

A shocked silence enveloped them both.

"N'Luuura take it all!" She did not know what to do with her rage. She felt as if she might at any minute explode, turn herself into a living weapon that would impale him with ten thousand splintered bones. Striking out with her hand, she swept her tools off the chronosteel table that stood beside the ion forge. They rang like bells against the stone flooring.

"Daughter." Pnin took Leyytey by the wrists and pulled her close to him. "What you must do, think of Dacce as a thing to be used, manipulated," he whispered fiercely. "The way he thinks of you."

She stared up into her father's golden eyes. "The way you think of me."

Pnin grimaced. "What grievous sins have I committed to have such an insolent child?"

Leyytey laughed. She could not help herself. She laughed until tears came to her eyes, and he let go of her wrists. Afterward, when she was alone again, alone as always, the laughter stopped. But the tears kept on rolling, building like waves until she could no longer stand. Crouched by her ion forge, she put her head in her hands and sobbed as if she would never stop.

These Ramahan were seduced out of Floating White by sauromician archons," Minnum said. "I mean to say how would the Dark League come into possession of such a thing?"

"Unless," Giyan said thoughtfully, "the sauromicians had somehow forged an alliance with Sarakkon."

"But why?" Minnum asked. "What would the sauromicians achieve from such an alliance?"

"That is what we must find out."

"If I may say something," Marethyn interjected, "I have been down in the death pit." And she told them about how she had stumbled across the dying Ramahan and what she had said. " 'One, two, three, four, five,' she counted out my fingers and then asked me what I saw. When I answered that I saw my fingers, she laughed at me and called me stupid." Marethyn held up her hand, her fingers splayed wide."

'Five pivots,' she said. Does that mean anything to you?"

Giyan and Minnum exchanged a glance.

"There is an abbey by that name southwest of here near the village of Silk Bamboo Spring," Giyan said.

"But what could she have meant?" Minnum wondered. "That Five Pivots was where they had been or where they were being taken?"

"It. does not matter." Giyan rose. "Either way, that abbey must be our immediate destination." She gestured, and the little sauromician got to his feet, the bones of his legs cracking a little as he stretched.

"You are leaving now, before first light?" Majja had come over to them.

"I am afraid there is no time to waste," Giyan said.

Marethyn rose, too. "How can we thank you?"

Majja nodded. "You saved Ba.s.se's life."

"You are doing important work here," Giyan said. Her blue eyes settled on Marethyn. "I doubt this will be the last time we see one another, Marethyn Stogggul." She held out her hand, and Marethyn grasped her wrist in traditional male V'ornn style.

"I will not forget you," Marethyn said. "Either of you."

The two had gone to the edge of the small encampment, when Giyan suddenly turned and said, "You are aware of the Wing, aren't you?"

"What?" Marethyn and Majja said at once.

Minnum told them of the long line of Khagggun he and Giyan had encountered crossing the crest ofthe ridge above them. When he described the leader, Majja gasped.

"Hannn Mennus himself is leading them? Are you certain it was an entire Wing?"

"Absolutely," Giyan said.

Majja shivered. "That means he has been promoted from Line-Commander."

"What direction were they headed in?" Marethyn asked.

"West by southwest."

"Ah, Miina," Majja cried. "Gerwa's camp!"

18

Twilight

Riane, carrying Eleana over her shoulder, emerged from the darkling, claustrophobic twilight beneath Middle Palace into the pallid, noisome twilight of Axis Tyr. She was exhausted both physically and emotionally. True, she had managed to save Eleana from Kurgan Stogggul, but in the process she had missed an opportunity to get the ninth banestone, and she felt defeated. All the despair and desolation she had felt when she had discovered that The Pearl was a fake came rushing back in a bitter black tide.

Tears glittered in her eyes, and she felt so betrayed and abandoned that she thought she would dissolve into a cascade of sobs. Then she became aware of the Annon part of her a.s.serting itself, urging her to keep going, and breaking through the depths of her despair came the Hagoshrin's exhortation, The Pearl is only an object. We do not better ourselves through objects. Without your belief in yourself you are nothing.

A pair of Kundalan servants cajoled their toddling V'ornn charges down the street. One of the brats bared his teeth at her. A Bashkir toting up receipts went swiftly by. He was soon elbowed aside by three careless Haaar-kyut, and he cursed them as he lurched; but they were in too much of a hurry to apologize or even to reply.

Thigpen herded Riane into an alley deserted save for a phalanx of half-filled trash bins and a wary wyr-hound that backed away from them on spindle legs.

With a barely audible groan, Riane put Eleana on her feet, bracing her against the stained wall.

"Eleana, Eleana." Her voice was a coa.r.s.e whisper. "Ah, Miina, what has he done to her?"

"Hold on, little dumpling."

"Thigpen, Kurgan has done something to her, something my sorcery cannot combat." Riane's eyes were abruptly filled with tears. "What if only he can rouse her?"

Behind the Dar Sala-at's eyes Thigpen could see the traumas piling up. She knew they needed a place to hole up so the two could heal and recuperate. The trouble was she had not been in Axis Tyr for more than a century. The changes the V'ornn had wrought stupefied her. Turning her furry back to them, she wept silent tears for a golden age that had been trampled underfoot.

Quickly, she pulled herself together. But a more thorough a.s.sessment of her two charges alarmed her.

With Eleana still unconscious and Riane almost out on her feet, it seemed clear to her that more than rest was required. A judicious application of appropriate medications was definitely in order. Another problem: no known Ramahan herbalist within kilometers of the city and nowhere to get herbs that she herself could prepare.

"Little dumpling, I am going to Thrip us out of here, to a place where I can get herbs to treat your exhaustion."

"And what of Eleana? I have tried several healing spells on her without avail. It follows that herbs will not work on her, either." She shook her head. "No, we must stay within the confines of Axis Tyr."

"You are ill with fright and fatigue; you are not thinking clearly," the Rappa said gently. "Axis Tyr is dangerous for us on any account, but now that you are so debilitated-"

"No!" Riane said more sharply than she had intended. She scooped Thigpen up into the crook of her am. "Listen to me," she said in a more normal tone of voice. "I made a choice to save Eleana. It may have been the worst decision I ever made, I don't know. But what I do know is that I cannot leave Axis Tyr. I must remain close to Kurgan now. I have to shadow him until I can find the moment to get the banestone away from him."

"But by now he will have every Khagggun within a hundred kilometers looking for us.""Not necessarily. No, if I know anything about the regent, he will think of another way-a less public way-to hunt us down."

"How can you know that?"

"The Hagoshrin was right. He loves Eleana. Because his father had a taste for Kundalan females, Kurgan will do whatever it takes to keep his interest in her secret."

Thigpen sighed. Of course the Dar Sala-at was right. But how were they to get aid and succor in this most hostile of environments? Then she thought of the Looorm Jura, whom they had helped in the shan-stone temple. I have lived all my life on Isingla.s.s Street, she had told them.

Thigpen felt the tremors going through the Dar Sala-at, and she jumped down. Riane was leaning heavily against a pale wall, supporting the insensate Eleana. Star-roses trailed down from a wrought-iron window box almost to the crown of her head.

"Sorry," she said weakly. "Sorry."

Thigpen could see that she could not go on, that the three of them could not walk another block, let alone trek up to the northern district, where Isingla.s.s Street wound its crooked way up a sharp and unexpected slope. It was narrow, that street, and shadows would be collecting there like gimnopedes nesting in the sysal trees. It would already be full twilight there, but not quiet, no, not quiet in that unlovely district where Looorm and greasy Mesagggun rubbed shoulders and, at times, groins.

When the Ramahan had inhabited the regent's palace they had erected sorcerous fields to prevent Thripping within its environs, but they were now far enough away from it to be able to Thripp. She knew it was likely quite dangerous to Thripp them because the sauromicians' power had advanced far enough that they might be monitoring the activation of the power bourns. Nevertheless, she knew she had to take the chance. Wedging herself between them, she darkened the air with her sacred litany. She found the power bourn flowing deep beneath the bedrock of the city, and almost at once the vertiginous sensation arose like a behemoth from the deep and engulfed them all as, with an enormous effort, she Thripped them to Isingla.s.s Street.

Astonishingly, it was just as she remembered it: the slick roughly laid cobbles, the acute turnings as the narrow thoroughfare wound its crooked-backed way up the steepening slope. The facades of the narrow buildings seemed to tip outward into the street, cutting off the midafternoon sunlight even in summer.

Still trying to act as Riane's dumb pet, she led them to a nearby tavern, where they were able to take a table seemingly carved out of the shadows in the rear.

Riane, who was by then carrying Eleana in her arms, set her down on a deeply cushioned chair. The owner came over. He was a Mesagggun aqueous of eye, vitreous of skull, with the powerful shoulders and bent back of the professional laborer. When he inquired about Eleana's health, Riane told him that she had been ill for days and was now sleeping off her exhaustion. He brought for her a powderleaf tea, touting its healing properties, and for Riane a cup of strong ba'du. For Thigpen there was nothing. He cautioned Riane to keep her pet from bothering the other patrons. Reaching down, he swept the Rappa onto the floor.

Thigpen jumped back onto the chair as soon as he was gone. "You sit here and sip your ba'du, little dumpling," she whispered. "I will return as quickly as possible with Jura."

And so she set off. It happened that she knew the area well, for in the ancient days the northern district was home to the Rappa who served Mother and the Ramahan konara. Though there had been plenty of room for them at Middle Palace, they were more comfortable in less grandiose quarters, where they could maintain the convenient illusion that they were their own masters.

That was the problem, really, she thought, as she started up the crooked spine of Isingla.s.s Street And possibly that was where it all began to go wrong. There once might have been a time when Miina strode across Kundala, when Ramahan and Rappa shared equally in the numinous mysteries of the religion. But then, so subtly that not even the most astute Rappa could have judged the date, the relationship began to change. Just when did the Ramahan-Mother included, oh yes!-begin to view the Rappa as servants, lesser creatures there to do Miina's bidding-and, therefore, theirs? Doubtless, the Ramahan would deny this bias, but they would only be deluding themselves. It would not have been so easy, so expedient to blame Mother's death on the Rappa had not the priests and priestesses already consideredthe Rappa as lesser, as other.

And so a caste system had developed within the powerful world of the abbeys, one, though unacknowledged, fully as specific, as exacting, as heinous as that of the V'ornn. Because the very nature of a caste system engenders a polarization. It encourages everyone within it to think either I am better than or I am lesser than, I want more or I have nothing, I have power or I am powerless.

And so the rot had begun from within the very bowels of the system. It is a well-known fact that one of the things daemons do better than any other creature in the Cosmos is smell rot. They are drawn to it like insects to excrement. And so they sniffed out this rot at the very beginning and, insinuating themselves in invisible ways, accelerated the decay.

Thigpen, her thoughts plunged deep in gloom, trotted up the impoverished street. It just goes to show, she thought, that the downtrodden are the downtrodden, no matter what race they belong to.

It was fortunate that it was the time of the evening when, like fin-bats, the Looorm emerged from their backwater lairs, swarming throughout the city on their way to a.s.signations or their nightly patrols to drum up business.

Jura was emerging from a shadowed doorway near the top of the street. She looked both sad and irresolute, which lent her the appearance of being lost. When Thigpen trotted up to her, she stopped dead in her tracks. For a moment, she looked blankly at the Rappa then, as if a switch had been thrown, recognition dawned in her vulpine face, and she knelt.

"Well, well, what are you doing here?" she said to herself.

"Jura, we need your help."

The Looorm's eyes went wide and she emitted a tiny grunt of astonishment. "What is this?"

"We need your help, I say."

"You can speak!"

"Yes, yes, of course I can speak," Thigpen said shortly. "There has been an accident."

Jura frowned. "What kind of an accident?"

"Eleana has been hurt. Riane as well."

Jura sat on her haunches staring at the Rappa.

"Will you help us, Jura?"

"I was just on my way to work." Her hands were pale and thin and very soft.

"Riane needs you. We all need you."

"I have been thinking about everything Riane said to me, and it seems that this is work I no longer want to perform." She looked down at her body. "But what am I to do now? I don't know anything else except how to lure males."

"Jura."

At last, she recognized the urgency in Thigpen's voice. "Where are they?" She rose. "Where is Riane?"