"At the tavern near the foot of the street."

"Take me to her," she said.

From a great distance Konara Inggres heard the tolling of the bells. It was the call to prayer, reverberating through the white-stone pa.s.sageways and cleanly clipped gardens of the Abbey of Floating White. The sound was so sweet it brought tears to her eyes.

Her eyes! They were not glued shut as Perrnodt's had been. She opened them, gazed, startled, up into the beautiful, manly face of the Nawatir. She opened her mouth, but her tongue felt thick. It seemed to have forgotten how it worked.

"Don't try to speak," the Nawatir said. "You're in Floating White. You're quite safe."

All at once, as if returning from a dreamworld, Konara Inggres realized that she was wrapped in his cloak, that she was encircled by his strong arms. She could smell him, a combination of spice and musk, and she did nothing for some time but breathe him in. Her head was in the crook of his arm, and sheturned so that her cheek rested against his left bicep. She rested there, luxuriating in the warmth that crept through her extremities. Her lips were half-open. His cloak, his warmth was like a balm, healing the psychic wounds the awful filaments had made in her mind. She thought of Perrnodt blinded, her eyelids glued shut with crystal, and she shuddered.

"It's all right," the Nawatir whispered, rocking her a little. "You're home now. You're safe."

The prayers of her flock flowed through the abbey, a song of joyous praise, spreading Miina's holy light, beating back the darkness of uncertainty. She allowed herself to close her eyes, to be rocked like a feverish child. Her mind felt empty, her body weak, just as if she had pa.s.sed through a terrible illness.

"Why did you do it?" he asked softly, gently. "Why did you put yourself at risk? You should have come to me first."

She smiled a little, as one does in a dream. "I am sorry." Her voice, a husky whisper, seemed odd to her ears, as if someone else were speaking. "I am not used to having a male around the abbey."

He chuckled and held her all the closer. "You have had to do so much on your own." She felt his breath, sweet as new-mown gra.s.s, cross her cheek. "You have shouldered so much responsibility.

Without you, the abbey would have fallen to Horolaggia. The daemons would have taken over. You have great courage and perseverance."

Konara Inggres felt so grateful to him that she began to weep.

Mistaking her emotion, he bent over her, and whispered, "Ah, don't."

His strong, callused hand stroked her tears away. And with that tender touch Konara Inggres felt something that she had dreamed of but had never actually experienced. The spasms began deep inside her, radiating out from that damp place between her thighs. Her nipples felt as if they had been dipped in fire, her mons was bared, split open like a ripe pomegranate, and she gasped once, involuntarily, shamelessly, then clamped her lips together so that she would not utter another. Deep within his embrace, her eyelids fluttered and she gripped him with fingers bled white by the swift, shocking overflow of her pa.s.sion.

"Konara Inggres, are you all right?"

"Yes," she whispered. "Oh, yes." But she bit her lip until she tasted blood. She was in utter disbelief.

Breathless and throbbing, her ecstasy was turned rotten by her acute sense of betrayal. For she knew now what she had been trying to keep from herself. She loved him. Her heart and soul, her mind and her body belonged to him, and she cursed her weakness, berated herself for what she could not control. And yet, she knew that she had to control it. She had to deny her heart what it wanted most, for she loved First Mother, had witnessed the intimate connection between her and the Nawatir, and she would die rather than disturb their tight orbit.

And so she struggled wildly, desperately, to free herself from his embrace, for she felt that if she stayed within it one more moment, she would lose her resolve and be lost forever. But he mistook her weakened thrashing for a recurrence of the trauma she had just suffered and held her all the more tightly.

Swaddled in the Nawatir's semisentient cloak, horribly and beautifully crushed against him, Konara Inggres sank into a well of self-pity. What had she done to deserve such anguish?

Dearest Miina, she prayed, haven't I been Your most loyal servant, haven't I toiled countless hours to preserve Your teaching, to protect all that is Yours?

And then from all around her or perhaps deep inside her the Great G.o.ddess miraculously responded.

Are you to be rewarded for being strong, righteous, holy? Are not those things their own reward? Do you think me so petty a deity to dispense happiness like so many party favors? Look to your work, child, for it is hardly begun.

Konara Inggres' shock, like a wave of ice water, both revived her and rescued her from the thrall under which she had been suffering.

"Nawatir, I am fine," she said in her normal voice. "Please let me up."

"Are you certain?" His expression was dubious.

"Quite certain."

He let her go, unwrapping his cloak from around her.

He brought her a cup of steaming greengage tea. She held it with both hands and gratefully sipped thebrew.

"Now, if you have regained sufficient strength," he said, "kindly tell me what you thought you were up to?"

So she told him how she had felt they needed reinforcements for the a.s.sault that seemed sure to come. She showed him the master list of abbeys, told him how she had searched all of them, how all were bereft of life-all save the Abbey of Summit Window on Kunlung Mountain. "But the Eye of Ajbal found me before I could tell the Ra-mahan of our need."

"I thought you had taken up Perrnodt's quest to find your missing Ramahan." The Nawatir sat with his hands cupped in his lap. "But that would have been stupid, and you are not stupid."

She had trouble looking at his hands without feeling a telltale trembling in her inner thighs. "How do you know about the Eye?"

"Lady Giyan has had experience with it," he said. "I could feel it. I knew it was searching, and I a.s.sumed it was looking for us here. I came to your chamber to warn you. When you did not answer my knock I entered and saw you with this." He held the casting opal in the palm of his hand. "You did not respond. I felt the Eye moving and knew you were in trouble."

"But how on Kundala did you save me from it?"

"I brought you back with this." His cloak rippled to his touch. "Perrn-odt was too far gone for it to save her, but I got you wrapped in it in time."

She shook her head. "I do not understand."

"I am only beginning to," he admitted. "The cloak is pure Dragon energy. It fluxes in and out of this Realm, through nethers.p.a.ce, into others. I wrapped you in a lifeline, and it brought you back to me."

It brought you back to me. She knew what he meant, but still. . . She closed her eyes against the return of her anguish. She thought of Miina.

"There is something I must tell you," she said. "When the Eye briefly took me, the intelligence behind it cast a spell-Sphere of Binding. It wanted to know my thoughts, and it began to crack open my mind like a gla.s.s jar."

"Did it find out anything?"

"You saved me before it could. But at the same time I was privy to its thoughts."

"Do you know who or what the ent.i.ty was?"

"No. There was a blizzard, a jumble of words and images. None of it made sense, and most have receded now like dreams. But there is one thing. The Eye of Ajbal was not looking for me, not until it sensed my opal casting."

"Who was it looking for?"

"Someone named Krystren." Konara Inggres frowned in concentration. "I do not know who that is, but one thing I am certain of: its search was desperate."

It was a Deirus Jura brought to see them. Riane recognized him, slim and grey-faced, dark of eye and wary of mien. He had looked at her when they had pa.s.sed the partly open doorway to Cthonne on their way into the caverns beneath Middle Palace.

Jura said his name was Kirlll Qandda.

He came with his satchel, a shapeless, old-fashioned cor-hide bag of Kundalan manufacture with many pockets and gussets and a capacious interior, and drew up a chair beside Eleana.

"She's not going to be ill in here," the Mesagggun owner said, hurrying up. "She's not going to die."

But he shut up and backed away, muttering to himself, when Kirlll Qandda st.i.tched him with a piercing eye surprising in one so meek-looking.

"I won't have it," the owner said once, before turning away and vanishing into the kitchen.

"We can ill afford his contacting the authorities," Thigpen said.

Jura nodded and followed him into the kitchen.

Kirlll Qandda commenced his examination. If he was surprised to encounter a talking sestapod, hegave no outward sign of it.

"No sign of a head injury," the Deirus said. "Did she suffer a fall?"

"I think she was given something," Riane told him. "But I don't know what."

Kirlll Qandda nodded. He had completed the gross physical examination, and his fingers, small, almost feminine in their gentleness, probed more slowly, looking, Riane supposed, for tiny abnormalities.

"Her neck is clear, as is her scalp," the Deirus said. "Also her arms. But hold on, what's this?" His practiced eye had spotted the small hole-one of many-in her tunic. But this one was different; it wasn't a tear but went straight in. He pulled up the stained and filthy fabric to expose her bare midriff, a pale, vulnerable swath compared to her sun-browned arms and legs. There on her left side was an angry-looking reddish blotch with a triangular black puncture wound in its center.

"Neat as a surgeon," he said. And Riane thought: Kurgan.

"Well, now we know how it was administered. The question of the moment is what is it?" Kirlll Qandda opened Eleana's mouth, and, delicately drawing out her tongue, began a careful examination of it. "Did you know that you can tell virtually everything about an individual from looking at their tongue?"

he continued in a bright, conversational tone.

Riane shook her head.

"Well, it's true. Each section of the tongue corresponds either to a system or to an organ." He pointed.

"It is as I suspected. Here, you see these red spots in a circle? They are in the place that represents the autonomic nervous system. That tells me that she was given a paralytic agent of some kind. The fact that there are five spots is a response peculiar to Nieobian paralysis gel."

Annon had heard of the substance but, of course, Riane could not admit to it. No Kundalan had even heard of the planet Nieobius, let alone anything that came from there.

"It's fortuitous you found Jura," he said, as he rooted around in his Kundalan satchel. "I very much doubt that Kundalan herbal medicine could cope with this."

Neither could sorcery. Riane vowed to remember that. "Is she going to be all right?"

"As soon as I synthesize the antidote and administer it." Kirlll Qandda looked around. "Let us find a more private place, shall we?"

Immediately, Thigpen trotted into the rear of the place, soon returning to inform them of a storeroom that would be suitable. Riane, gathering her strength, scooped Eleana up, and they followed the Rappa back into the gloom of the cafe's interior and into a small, airless cubicle. A curtain of dust motes hung in the air as if suspended in syrup.

Kirlll Qandda hurriedly arranged some wooden boxes into an approximation of a pallet, and Thigpen laid down a layer of clean tablecloths. Onto this, Riane laid Eleana.

Kirlll Qandda was already fitting together a series of mimetic-alloy rods, cones, and ovoids. He took a swab of Eleana's saliva off her tongue and inserted it into the end of one of the rods.

"Try not to worry." He smiled. "It won't be long now."

"I remember you." Thigpen was sitting up on her two pairs of powerful hind legs. Her black eyes were bright as lamps, and her sharp teeth were slightly bared.

"See those teeth?" Kirlll Qandda turned to Riane. "Did you know this beast has the ability to inject a powerful nerve toxin through a tiny aperture at the base of each tooth?"

"Don't change the subject," Thigpen snapped. "And where do you get off calling me a beast?"

Riane shot Thigpen a sharp look, and said, "No, I didn't."

Kirlll Qandda gave a tiny, rueful smile. "It is safe to say that what you don't know about Rappa could fill an encyclopedia."

"And you do?" Thigpen snorted. "I know you, Deirus. No matter how much you obfuscate, you cannot change the fact."

"How do you know him?" Riane asked.

"Tell her." Thigpen crossed her forearms over her breast. There was a very unpleasant look on her face. "I would like to hear your version."

Kirlll Qandda shrugged. "There is not so much to tell."

"Oho!" Thigpen's teeth clacked together warningly."Hush now." Riane put her arms around the Rappa's neck, rubbing her knuckles in the spot where Thigpen liked it best, between her ears. She nodded to the Deirus.

"I was on a.s.signment with a Khagggun Death Pack-"

"They broke into the Abbey of Listening Bone!" Thigpen snapped. "What is now the Gyrgon Temple of Mnemonics." Riane could feel the Rappa shivering. "They killed and tortured-"

"It was the day of the occupation. I was dragooned out of my lab. I had no idea what they wanted me to do until I arrived with the Death Pack."

"Did you take part in the torture of the Ramahan?" Riane asked.

"No, I-"

"But you did!" Thigpen barked. "I saw you kill and keep on killing helpless Ramahan who just lay there!"

The silence was so absolute they could hear Eleana softly breathing.

"Time," Kirlll Qandda said, removing the mnemonic stick. He opened Eleana's mouth and pressed the end into the base of her tongue, then he did something to make the stick turn clear. "There," he said, sitting back. "She will awake within the hour. Six hours after that she should be fine, though somewhat weak. Make sure she eats and drinks plenty of water. One of your vaunted herbal tea decoctions wouldn't hurt either."

He turned his attention to Riane, studying her intently. "It looks as if you have been in quite a battle."

He reach out. "Do you mind?"

Riane shook her head, sitting still while he examined her.

"These bruises, sc.r.a.pes, and punctures look recent." He glanced up at her face. "And yet except at their very center they appear to be almost healed." He returned to his examination. "Quite astonishing, really. No ointment, salves, herbs of any kind have been used. I admit I am somewhat mystified . . . and completely fascinated."

"I am Ramahan," Riane said, as if that explained everything.

"Ah, but not your typical Kundalan priestess, not by any means."

He finished examining her. In all that time Riane had not moved.

"Sorcery, yes?" When she remained silent, he shrugged. "I don't really blame you. Were I in your position, I wouldn't trust me either." He looked at her. "What would it take?"

"Tell me," she said softly, "what happened."