Thigpen, running on all sixes and sniffing the astringent air, missed this brief exchange. Her keen ears had already picked up what the other two soon heard: a deep, rhythmic booming as of an animal breathing or a complex machine running. It was neither, however. By the time they reached the bottom of the stairs, they recognized the percussive backbeat of music.

They moved down a narrow pa.s.sageway whose ceiling was lost in gloom. Its walls were darkly gleaming and seamless.

"Over there is the entrance to a club called Cthonne," Eleana said, pointing to bronze doors, studdedwith shanstone cabochons. "It is unknown to either the regent or the Khagggun. Children come here in secret to dance the night away."

"Kundalan children."

"Kundalan and V'ornn," she told him. "What would strike them as more subversive?"

"How do you know about it?" Riane asked.

"It is a meeting place, for Resistance and those V'ornn who believe in its cause."

"There are V'ornn who believe in the Kundalan Resistance?" Thigpen asked.

"Besides Sornnn and Sahor?" Riane said to her.

Eleana nodded. "The Deirus, for one. They know what it is like to be beaten down, persecuted, indiscriminately killed."

They were nearing Cthonne's bronze doors, which were half-open. Just outside was a thin, grey-skinned Deirus. He was talking to two Kundalan youths, possibly Resistance. He glanced at them, and Thigpen immediately leapt into deep shadow. It was unclear whether he noticed her or not.

"I wonder what they are plotting." Riane was clearly fascinated.

"Come on, you two," the Rappa hissed with a furtive glance at the inquisitive Deirus. "There's no time to waste."

They hurried past the knot of conspirators and around a corner.

You will do what I tell you," Nith Na.s.sam said to Kurgan, "and only what I tell you."

They stood alone in the intimacy of Kurgan's private suite in the regent's palace. Kurgan would have much preferred meeting with the Gyrgon in the Temple of Mnemonics, but it appeared that Nith Na.s.sam had a penchant for intrusion. On the walls were arrayed the regent's collection of weapons, of comfort to him perhaps, though it was ignored by the Gyrgon.

"As you wish."

"Precisely so." Nith Na.s.sam's biocircuit horns sparked gold and green like a starfield in flux. "Tell me, regent, what you know about the Or-ieniad."

"The Orieniad is the Sarakkon ruling council."

"Tell me something I don't know."

Kurgan was silent.

"I see." The ghost of a smile played around Nith Na.s.sam's mouth. "Courion was a member of the Orieniad. Did you know that?"

Kurgan effectively hid his surprise. "No. I didn't."

"Since you are a self-professed expert on the Sarakkon I want to know what such a high-ranking Sarakkon was doing in Axis Tyr. Why was he hiding his ident.i.ty? What was his business with Nith Batox.x.x? It is clear that Nith Batox.x.x had layers of ident.i.ties he hid from the Comradeship. Do this for me, and I will allow you access to Nith Ba-tox.x.x's laboratory."

"Consider it done," Kurgan said.

Nith Na.s.sam's smile grew broader. "We shall see," he said as he turned and left.

Kurgan stared after him, his mind whirling. Then he let out a long-held breath. He had just pulled off his tunic when First-Captain Kwenn rapped on the door.

"Come," he said curtly.

First-Captain Kwenn crossed the residence chamber in his crisp gait to stand at the regent's side. His alloy armor shot from its highly polished surfaces a legion of reflections into every corner of the chamber, which was as pleasingly spare as his own small quarters. This regent, so different from the last, had stripped the residence of virtually all of the excesses his father had piled into it.

"Regent, there is a line of functionaries with memoranda, proposed law changes, pet.i.tions, Bashkir, Mesagggun, and Kundalan, waiting for you in the great hall. Many have been there since before dawn."

"You know, First-Captain, you have taken on the duties of a court functionary, and this displeases me greatly," Kurgan said tartly. He selected, then rejected one tunic top after another. "I am giving you ana.s.signment. I wish you to find out where my sister Marethyn is. She seems to have vanished. Use all your formidable array of sources."

"Regent-"

"Licit and otherwise, First-Captain. This is an order."

"Yes, regent." First-Captain Kwenn pointed to a tunic, of a deep brown matte fabric, and Kurgan put it on. "There is a possibility ..."

Kurgan turned. "Yes?"

"There is the whisper of a rumor-and let me emphasize that it is just that, a rumor-of a Tuskugggun in the north country."

"Idiotic! And certainly not Marethyn."

"Nevertheless, I feel I ought to probe further."

"As you like." There was a thoroughness about this Khagggun that Kurgan particularly liked-he was a professional through and through. And he congratulated himself on the sagacity of his choice.

There was a discreet knock on the door, and Kwenn went to see who it was. He returned a moment later. "Blood-Worm is asking to see you directly," he said.

Kurgan turned from his contemplation of himself in the mirror. "Ah, the one-armed one." He laughed to see First-Captain Kwenn wince.

"We have given all our spies code names for a good reason, regent," Kwenn said.

"Yes, but must the names be so foolish-sounding?" Kurgan donned dark leggings, snapped his fingers several times in succession. "Make a note. From now on, we will give them the names of libidinous Looorm."

First-Captain Kwenn winced again. "Regent, the crystalwork involved ..."

"All right, all right," Kurgan said crossly. "Bring him in. But I warn you, First-Captain, I have but a moment to spare."

First-Captain Kwenn returned a moment later with a filthy Kundalan with red-rimmed eyes. His back was bowed, and he was cupping the stump of his arm in the palm of his hand. Despite his bout with the Khagggun interrogators, there was nothing wrong with his memory. He described in detail the two Kundalan females he had seen.

"Shall I marshal a pack of Haaar-kyut?" Kwenn asked after he had paid the beggar and seen him out.

"Yes." Kurgan held up a hand. "On second thought, First-Captain, I think it would be best if you and I went ourselves."

"Without a proper detachment of guards?"

"Where we are going," Kurgan said in a tone that brooked no further contradiction, "they would only get in the way." He hurriedly finished dressing, donning a traveling cloak. From one of three hidden drawers he chose several small weapons. There was a strange and, to First-Captain Kwenn's way of thinking, unsettling grin on the regent's face. "We would not want to alert our prey to our presence, now would we, First-Captain?"

Giyan was discussing with Konara Inggres the copying and dissemination of the long-lost Utmost Source, one of the Sacred Texts of Miina, when the calm core of her exploded. The opal has shattered, she thought. Quickly excusing herself, she immediately Thripped into the Kells, there to find Perrnodt crumpled on the floor. By her side was the shattered opal.

"Perrnodt!" she cried, kneeling beside the stricken Druuge. "Oh, my dear, what has happened?"

Perrnodt's pale lips moved ever so slightly, but no sound emerged. Casting Earth Granary, Giyan gathered the Druuge into her arms. But the spell wasn't working. It was encountering resistance of a most peculiar sort. It was as if its healing properties were beings sucked through ten thousand tiny holes in Perrnodt's aura.

Hold on. Giyan communicated mind to mind with the Druuge. Just hold on.

Giyan conjured Penetrating Inside, but the simple Osoru spell to divine the nature of things also failedcompletely. Now she cast Transverse Guest, a far more complex spell in the same category. She could see the energy trails eating their way through Perrnodt's aura like a fistful of squirming serpents. All creatures possessed auras; they were the physical manifestation of the spirit in just the same way sorceresses possessed Avatars, creatures to house their spirits when they traveled through Otherwhere.

Those with the Gift, the Druuge very much among them, possessed a heightened aura that, like a castle moat, was part of their protection, in this case, from evil spells and creatures.

Whatever Perrnodt had encountered was so powerful that when she had peered through the light lens of the opal it had seriously compromised her aura. To work so profoundly upon a Druuge, far more powerful than any Ramahan, it must be exceedingly strong. How was it possible? She shivered.

Perrnodt was trembling in her arms. The fistful of serpents continued to eat into her aura, tearing great rents in it. Giyan conjured spell after spell, but nothing in her formidable a.r.s.enal had any effect, and she knew that if she was to have any chance of saving the Druuge, she had to find out what happened.

Perrnodt. . . Perrnodt, what did you see when you looked through the opal? Did you find the lost Ramahan?

Perrnodt stirred, and Giyan almost recoiled at the echo of the agony rending her.

I saw them, she said very faintly. But they are not lost.

Where are they, then?

Hidden. They have been hidden.

What has happened to them?

They set one upon the other. Those who would not obey were tortured, and when they had given up their secrets they were given to be kitted to those who would obey in order to bind them, as proof of their loyalty.

But this is monstrous, Giyan said. Who would do such a thing? Who are they obeying?

The . . . Perrnodt writhed in her agony. The sauromicians.

Impossible. The sauromicians lack the power.

No longer.

What do you mean?

Tears of blood were leaking out of Perrnodt's eyes, and her head lolled. Clearly, she had fallen into a kind of delirium. Giyan felt despair begin to overwhelm her. Perrnodt was dying. She could not allow that to happen, and yet she was powerless. No Osoru spell was powerful enough to combat this pernicious enchantment.

And then Giyan began to weep, for she knew that she was not, in fact, helpless. There was one weapon in her a.r.s.enal that had a chance to save Perrnodt. But it was a weapon she had turned her back on, a weapon she had vowed never to use. Her ability as a seer. She knew the path she would embark upon if she willingly chose to invoke it, because once she opened the psychic door there was no going back; she would not be able to close it again. And, as history had proved, like as not what lay at the end of the path was complete and utter madness.

She was shaking as if with an ague, but as she looked down into the agonized face of Perrnodt, she knew she had no choice. If there was a chance to save the Druuge, she had to take it.

And so she opened the psychic locks she had spent years constructing as her oracular abilities clamored ever more forcefully to be heard. Time dissolved into a rain puddle from which ripples spread outward from so many points at once that at first she was dizzied and grew afraid. It was as if, sightless from birth, she could suddenly see. At first, there was a sense of a terrifying randomness. And then, all at once, the new world made sense and was thus forever transformed.

She searched amid all the skeins running this way and that, finding Perrnodt's and following its many convoluted branchings-for a life, any life, had a great many possible futures-to the particular end she sought. There she found Perrnodt's shriveled spirit unable to support life in her physical body. As she suspected, knowing how the Druuge might meet her end gave her a clue as to how to combat the spell.

She had very little time, she saw, before the process became irreversible.

Perrnodt had not been killed by the sorcerous serpents eating away at her aura, but by a certain xi-wraith. The serpents were but the advance guard, there to open the way so that the xi-wraith couldpenetrate the aura and enter Perrnodt's spirit through Crooked Spring Gate.

Giyan had had experience with xi-wraiths because her training had made her intimately familiar with the fifteen Spirit Gates that kept the body and mind healthy and free of evil intent. Each Spirit Gate was susceptible to a different xi-wraith, which were created as psychic safeguards against any Ramahan gaining too much power and upsetting the delicate balance between male and female members of the order. Over the centuries, there were those who found ways not only to circ.u.mvent the xi-wraiths but to corrupt them to use for their own purposes.

Giyan closed her eyes, went into Ayame, Osoru's deep trance-state. She felt jihe, the moment of disconnection with her corporeal body, and then, as her Avatar, the great bird Ras Shamra, she was pa.s.sing across the grey, white, and black landscape of Otherwhere.

In the distance, she saw, half-hidden behind the black line of jagged mountains, the dreaded shape of the Eye of Ajbal, Avatar of a powerful Kyofu sorcerer. From the corner of the Eye, she could see dripping like a tear the xi-wraith as it waited for its chance to infiltrate Perrnodt's aura. The presence of the Eye of Ajbal was further proof-if any was needed-of the extent of the power that had formed behind the Dark League.

She knew she had to work fast to defeat the xi-wraith before the Eye noticed her and turned its black light in her direction. She flew directly at the xi-wraith and began to conjure Great Bell. This particular xi-wraith ate truths, transforming them into lies. The clear, pure tone of Great Bell was the only way to defeat it. The trouble was, she needed to get within a hundred meters of it in order for Great Bell to work. The risk was that the Eye of Ajbal would spot her before she could complete the spell.

She dipped down, skimming just above the shadowless topography of Otherwhere. She found thermals there which she rode, keeping her avian form utterly still. She was perhaps three hundred meters from the xi-wraith, which was now depending from the corner of the Eye like an icicle. As she neared it, it began to take form: a globular body, hairy as a skorpion-spider, from which a mult.i.tude of tentacles protruded in a sudden fury of impatient questing. The xi-wraith scented the clearing path to Perrnodt's Crooked Spring Gate.

Two hundred meters, and Giyan did not think she would make it in time. She had to risk flapping her wings, gaining the added speed. She arched them up and down, and again. One hundred fifty meters, and now the Eye of Ajbal seemed to blink and, in blinking, began to turn in her direction.

Giyan felt a flood of terror, and she pushed her Avatar to its very limits, flashing across the landscape.

The pupil of the Eye of Ajbal opened, turning a fiery hue as it set its sights on her. Giyan sensed the onrushing peril and banked to the right as a flash of lambent energy sped by her. She banked again, this time to the left, feeling the scorch of the energy blast all across her belly. The Eye was trying to get her to rise so that it could get a clear shot at her. She had to resist that at all costs.

Twenty meters to go and the third energy blast tumbled her over onto her back. She righted herself, flew right into another before she could regain her momentum. Rubble blew at her, striking pinions and breast. She flew through it, heading directly at the xi-wraith. She was close. Almost there. The Eye was readying itself for its most powerful blast, and she uttered the last words, completing the spell.

Great Bell's clear, plangent tone extended outward in waves. When the leading edge encountered the xi-wraith, the tone changed, rising in pitch, echoing through Otherwhere. The xi-wraith gave a little yip of surprise and pain and shattered like a crystal goblet thrown against a shanstone wall.

The Eye of Ajbal had turned directly into Giyan's path, tracking her, waiting to see which way she would bank so it could burn her out of the ether. Instead, she flew directly at it, her heart pounding painfully in her breath. It grew to monstrous size and, this close to it, she could see tiny evil things like weevils or wyr-maggots crawling like veins across its convex surface.

She felt the gathering of its Kyofu power, the imminence of its attack, and still she flew on in a collision course with the dilated pupil. The energy beam commenced to erupt from it, and Giyan entered Ayame, in an instant letting go of her psychic self, removing herself from Otherwhere.

Shaken, she opened her eyes. She was in the Kells in the Abbey of Floating White; she was still holding Perrnodt. Of the sorcerous serpents or the xi-wraith there were no signs. She leaned over, kissed the Druuge's clammy forehead. Pulse and breathing were returning to normal. Perrnodt was safe.Now she conjured Earth Granary, enveloping them both in its healing warmth. Her head throbbed and her skin felt scorched where parts of her psychic being had been exposed to the near misses of the Eye of Ajbal's pernicious energy emissions.

It terrified her that the sauromicians had returned, backed by such power. Who or what could be behind their rise? What horrific deal had they made in exchange for this newfound dominion? She shuddered to think. She looked down into Perrnodt's pale and haggard face and her fists clenched. Why hadn't Miina killed the sauromicians when She had had a chance? And then she thought of Minnum and was grateful that the Great G.o.ddess had been merciful.

She returned her attention to Perrnodt, stroked her cheek, and murmured to her until the Druuge rose into consciousness.

"Perrnodt, Perrnodt," she whispered, as the Druuge's eyes opened. "You are safe now. I have destroyed the xi-wraith. It is all right."

But then she saw Perrnodt's eyes, eerily pale, opaque as chalkstone, and she knew it wasn't all right.

Perrnodt, what has happened?

I am blind, Giyan. Her psychic voice was frail and halting. The Dark League has blinded me.

Dear Miina! Giyan cried. How is this possible?

They have . . . punished me.

Giyan bent over her. Through Earth Granary, she could sense that Perrnodt was still in shock. She knew that she ought to wait to continue questioning her, but she could not stop herself. Why did they punish you, Perrnodt? What was it they were so desperate to keep secret?

The source of their power. . . .