"I meant how thick, Em, not how far away."

"So did I. Once it gets thick enough, it'll be above the level of what you call the Edge of the World. Then it'll start to move. It'll grind down mountains and spill down onto the plains. Nothing can stop it, and people won't be able to live in this part of the world anymore."

"Have you seen this happen before?"

"Several times. It's just about the only way Ghend and Daeva have to interrupt what Deiwos is doing. We're going to have to change our plans, Althalus."

"I didn't know we had a plan."

"Oh, we've got a plan, all right, pet. I just hadn't gotten around to telling you about it yet. I thought we had more time."

"You've already had twenty-five hundred years, Em. How much more did you think you were going to need?"

"Probably about another twenty-five hundred. If you'd told me about Ghend earlier, I might have been able to adjust things. Now we're going to have to cheat. I just hope it doesn't make Deiwos angry with me."

"Your brother's awfully busy, Em," Althalus said piously. "We shouldn't really pester him with all the picky little details, should we?"

She laughed. "My thought exactly, pet. We were made for each other."

"Are you only just now coming to realize that? The simplest way for us to cheat would probably be for me to just slip on over to Nekweros and kill Ghend, wouldn't it?"

"That's an awfully blunt way to put it, Althalus."

"I'm a plainspoken man, Em. All this dancing around is just a waste of time, because that's what it's going to come down to in the end, isn't it? Ghend wanted me to come here and steal the Book so that he could destroy it. If I kill him, we can destroy his Book, and then Daeva has to go back and start all over."

"How did you find out about Daeva's Book?" she asked sharply.

"Ghend showed it to me back in Nabjor's camp."

"He's actually carrying it around out in the real world? What's he thinking of?"

"Don't ask me to tell you what somebody else is thinking, Em. My guess is that he knew that I'd never seen a book before, so he brought one along to show me what they look like. The pictures in his Book weren't at all like the ones in ours, though."

"You didn't touch it, did you?"

"Not the Book itself. He handed me one of the pages, though."

"The pages are the Book, Althalus. You've touched both Books with your bare hands?" she demanded, shuddering.

"Yes. Is that significant?"

"The Books are absolutes, Althalus. They're the source of ultimate power. Our Book is the power of pure light, and Ghend's Book is the power of absolute darkness. When you touched that page from his Book, it should have totally corrupted you."

"I was moderately corrupt already, Em, but we can sort that out later. What do you think about my idea? I can slip across the border into Nekweros without anybody ever seeing me. Once I've put Ghend to sleep, I'll burn his Book, and that'll be the end of it, won't it?"

"Oh, dear," she sighed.

"It is the simplest solution, Em. Why complicate things when you don't have to?"

"Because you probably wouldn't get more than a mile past the border, pet. Ghend's about seventy-five hundred years ahead of you. He knows how to use his Book in ways you couldn't even imagine. Using a Book is a very complicated process. You have to be so totally immersed in the Book that the words come to you automatically." She looked at him speculatively. "Do you really love me, Althalus?" she asked.

"Of course I do. You shouldn't even have to ask. What's that got to do with what we were just talking about?"

"It's crucial, Althalus. You have to love me totally. Otherwise, this won't work."

"What won't work?"

"I think I know a way for us to cheat. Do you trust me, pet?"

"Trust you? After all the times you've tried to creep up and pounce on me from behind? Don't be ridiculous."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You're sneaky, little kitten. I love you, dear, but I'm not foolish enough to trust you."

"That's only playing, so it doesn't count."

"What's love and trust got to do with getting rid of Ghend and his Book?"

"I know how to use our Book, and you don't; but you can do things out there in your world, and I can't."

"That sort of defines the problem, I guess. How do we get around it?"

"We break down the barriers between us, but that means that we have to completely trust each other. I have to be able to get inside your mind so that I can tell you what you have to do and which word from the Book you have to use to do it."

"Then I just tuck you in my pocket and we go kill Ghend?"

"It's a little more complicated than that, Althalus. You'll understand better, I think, once we're inside each other's minds. The first thing you have to do is empty your mind. Open it up so that I can get in."

"What are you talking about?"

"Think about light, or dark, or empty. Turn your mind off."

Althalus tried to empty his mind of thought, but that almost never works. The mind can be like an unruly child. Tell it to stop, and it works that much faster.

"Well have to try something different," Emerald said, her ears laid back in irritation. "Maybe . . . ?" she said a bit uncertainly. "Go to the south window. I want you to look south at the mountains of Kagwher. Pick out the closest one and count the trees on it."

"Count trees? What for?"

"Because I said so. Don't ask silly questions. Just do it."

"All right, Em, don't get so excited." He stood up and went to the south window. The nearest peak was only a mile or so away, and he started counting the snow-covered trees up near the top. The snow blurred the outlines of the trees, and that made counting them very difficult.

"Move over just a little." Her voice seemed to be murmuring in his right ear, and he jerked his head around in surprise. He couldn't feel her on his shoulder, but he could almost feel her warm breath on the side of his face.

Emerald was still sitting on the bed a dozen feet away. "I asked you to move over, pet," her voice sounded inside his head. "I need a little more room."

"What are you doing?" he exclaimed.

"Shush. I'm busy."

He felt a kind of surging inside his head as if something were moving around in there. "Quit fidgeting," her voice told him. "I'm not taking up that much room."

Then the sense of intrusion began to fade and he felt the gentle rumble of her purring within his mind. 'Now you are mine,' her purring gloated.

"What's going on?" he demanded in alarm.

'You don't have to talk out loud anymore, pet,' she breathed inside his mind. 'Now that I'm in here, I can hear your thoughts; and you can hear mine, if you'll just take the trouble to listen.'

"How did you do that?"

'Just think the words, Althalus. There's an awful echo in here when you think them and say them at the same time.'

'Are you really in there?' He sent his thought inward.

'My awareness is. It's also over on the bed, but it's easy to be in two places at once with your mind.' There was a kind of tickling sensation over his left ear. 'It's bigger in here than I thought it'd be. You're more clever than I'd imagined, and you're really rather poetic.'

'Will you quit rummaging around in there?'

'Not A chance, pet. Cats are curious. Didn't you know that?'

'How did you manage to break through so quickly? I thought this was going to take a long time.'

'So, did I, to be honest. I was pushing at the barrier before you started counting. I couldn't get through it, though. As soon as you started counting trees, the barrier went down.'

'Does that mean that I'll have to say "one-two-three" every time I want to talk with you this way?'

'Not anymore, pet. I'm in now, and you'll never get rid of me.'

'It's going to take some getting used to. I've never had somebody inside my head before.'

'Is it really that unpleasant?'

'Not really.'

'Now I'll be with you wherever you, go.'

'I wasn't going to leave without you, Em. I'd been meaning to talk with you about that. I'm not going anywhere without you, kitten-even if that means that the world goes all to smash. The world doesn't matter; you do.'

'Please don't say things like that, Althalus.' Her voice inside his head had a melting sort of tone. 'You're making it very hard for me to think.'

'Yes, I noticed that.' He considered it. 'When you get right down to it, though, this is where we've been going since I first came here, isn't it? You started out by talking to me out loud, and a talking cat isn't the most natural thing in the world. All we've done is take that one step further, so now you won't have to waste all those thousands of years teaching me how to use the Book. We could leave right now if winter weren't settling in.' He looked at her with one raised eyebrow. "Now that you've opened the door, all sorts of things are coming through," he said aloud. "I don't want to seem critical, Em, but you shouldn't really be having those kinds of thoughts, you know."

She glared at him for a moment. Then she jumped down from the bed and stalked away.

"Are you blushing, Em?" he asked mildly.

She turned and hissed at him.

Part Two

THE GATHERING.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

Stay out of there, Althalus! What's in there is none of your concern!"

"You're the one who opened the door, Em," he replied mildly. 'It swings both ways, you know"

"Just mind your own business and quit snooping. You have to start paying closer attention. When I tell you which word to use, I'm sending a picture of what the word's going to do. You must have the picture in your mind as well as the word. The word's just a sound, pet. Nothing's going to happen if all you're doing is making noises. Now try it again."

"How much longer is it before we have to leave?"

"About a month-six weeks at the most. As soon as spring arrives, we go, whether you're ready or not."

"We have to pick something up in Arum?"

"The Knife, yes."

"Is that the knife I'll use when I kill Ghend?"

"Will you stop that?"

"Isn't that what this is all about? Ghend's interfering with what Deiwos is trying to do, so I'm supposed to get rid of him. It's not really all that uncommon, Em. I've done it before. I'm primarily a thief, but I'll take on a murder if the pay's right. I thought that's what you had in mind."

"It most certainly is not!"

"It is a simple solution, Em, and you wouldn't even have to get your little paws dirty. We go to Arum and pick up the knife. Then I go to Nekweros and cut Ghend's throat with it."

"That's not what it's for, Althalus. It has writing on the blade. There are some people we're going to need, and we'll recognize them because they'll be able to read that writing."

"Isn't that just a little exotic? Talk to your brother and find out who these people are. Then we'll chase them down and get on with this."

"It doesn't work that way, Althalus. Situations change. If things have happened one way, we'll need certain people. If they've happened in another way, we'll need different people. Circumstances decide exactly who we're going to need."

"Wouldn't that mean that the writing on the knife blade changes as the circumstances change?"

"No. It's not the writing that changes, pet. It's the reading."

"Wait a minute. Doesn't the writing mean the same thing to everybody?"