Thewson cried out, 'Umarow,' and again, 'Great Beast.' He flung himself forward, searching the ground for something to use as a weapon, and Terascouros tripped him so that he fell sprawling.

'Wait,' she cried, her shrill old voice like the cry of a hawk. 'Wait. It's not your Great Beast, warrior. It is Leona.'

Thewson sat up stupidly, his usual expression washed away by one of combined greed and wonder. He began to rant a long, complicated tumble of words in his own language, waving his arms. Terascouros sat down beside him, her head hanging with weariness.

'Oh, I know. Yes. I know. I was there when she changed. Went into the north, we did. Found a place by a stream with the moon on the edge of the world. Stripped, she did. Told me to hold her clothes. There I was beside her, one moment she was there, the next moment she was gone. I was close enough to touch her, but I couldn't see her. She kept calling. "Look at me," but I couldn't see her. I felt the wing knock me over like a great wind, and then I knew I knew I needed a seeing spell, and I cried out to the Air-Spirit. I needed a spell, you know, to convince my eyes to see. I had to convince myself that there was something there. Too many years spent learning there's nothing there, then suddenly having to learn there is something there after all.... But you, you saw her at once. Strange. Perhaps because you are all young. Well, I can see her now.'

The gryphon paced slowly forward into the waning light, huge beak opening and tongue vibrating with a metallic call, the call of a bell struck with a padded mallet, softly resonant dwindling to a hum. They stared and went on staring. The light dimmed as the tableau continued. At last Thewson rose.

'It is Leona. Where are the dogs?'

'She left them behind. Couldn't carry all three of us through the sky. They'll hunt; they'll be all right. She'll get them later.'

'I need my spear.'

'You're not going to try to '

'No.' He shook his massive head, the tails of his bound hair whipping the air in negation. 'You say it is Leona. I know it is. We will do something now, and if we do something, I need my spear.'

Medlo went for the spear, grateful for the chance to move away alone. He saw, but did not believe what he saw. He believed, but did not know how he could believe. 'Too much,' he said. 'Too much changing. Things happening. Strangeness.' But he could not dwell on that, for the others came after him to pick up the black-robed one, bound and gagged as it was, and carry it back to the forest camp.

Later, none of them could make words to remember what happened then. They could recall only pictures of shapes and shadows.

There was firelight which was orange and amber, lighting and hiding, disclosing and shading. There was rock gleaming like metal, then as if furred with lichen. Trees, giving back the light from leaves in reflected fragments, then taking the light up into velvet darkness. All shifting, all wavering. Hard and soft, sharp and dull, real and imaginary, one following the other, one after the other, endless images.

There was the Keeper, or acolyte, or whatever it was or had been or titled itself. There was no hair on the Keeper anywhere. All the hair had been cut away. Only scars were there, thick and stiff, like the wax of candles poured layer on layer, angry red, as though the cutting had been done many times. It had no sex, only a roughness between the legs where the scars were, and a roughness on the chest where more scars were. No eyebrows. No hair beneath the arms. Only scars.

It could not say whether it was a woman or man, or had been girl or boy. It did not know. It knew only that the pain would end when it had been paid in kind, by another. When this one could 'recruit' another to suffer equally, then this one would be allowed to die, to go to that place it had been promised. But the account seemed never to be paid. It cried that it had brought others, more than one, many. Still the account was not balanced. They did not suffer enough. They had not yet lived long enough with the pain. So, this one said, it would go on bringing others recruiting others to Murgin.

At last the gryphon reached out and separated it from life with one great claw, and quiet came.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

INSIDE MURGIN.

Year 1168-Winter Jaer was drugged during most of the trip to Murgin. She came to herself from time to time to see the trunks of trees plunging past or to see firelight or to hear the clatter of hooves over stone. No one spoke to her. During most of the journey she dreamed.

She had come, she dreamed, with Medlo and Terascouros there may have been others, shadowy at the edge of her vision, but it was hard to see-to a place near a great sea; a city, not ruined but old, placid, sun-warmed, and so quiet that the sound of voices was an interruption. There was a broad river, a bridge, and at the end of the bridge a domed building where Jaer stood and watched as figures moved in and out of a wide hall. The floor of it sloped down on every side to centre on a pit filled with flashing lights and metallic gleaming.

Jaer could see high, narrow tables among the flickering lights six, seven. Men and women moved among them, speaking to one another with laughter and excitement.

'Audilla, will you care for me still?'

'Talurion, don't act the fool at a time like this!'

Beside Jaer and those other shadowy ones stood a man and a woman, not looking at one another, their faces blanked with a kind of melancholy which Jaer, even in the dream, thought strange and out of place. The man was speaking in a soft tenor voice, not so high as to seem effeminate and yet with delicacy, Taniel, why won't you join us?'

Taniel. Jaer remembered that name from lessons with Ephraim and Nathan. It was an important name, but Jaer could not remember why.

She who answered was slender, tall, dark hair gently curved around her ears and across level brows. She made a gesture of frustration. 'Urlasthes, you have asked and asked, and I have said and said ...'

His lips mocked a smile. Taniel of the Two Loves, is that it? Omburan, again?'

'Omburan, still. You know how he feels about this!'

'You know, my dear, eventually you must choose between us.'

'You know, my dear, that I will not. That's why I won't take part in this ... this thing you're doing. I don't want to be ... so changed.'

'Not even for the better?' Urlasthes watched her face closely, reached out to stroke her hair. 'No, I see you are not moved by the possibility of betterment. Well, when you have seen perhaps?'

'When I have seen. Perhaps, when he has seen, even Omburan...'

The other laughed, harshly. 'I will be above jealousy soon, Taniel. Beyond it. At this moment, however, I can still feel it enough to resent that.'

'If you will be above jealousy, Urlasthes, perhaps ... you will be above love as well.' She clung to him, and he calmed her as he might a child.

'Nonsense. We will be able to love more. Well, now is not the time to argue it. They are ready. See, Audilla is beckoning. Wait for me here. I will see you ... after.'

He joined those who were stretching themselves upon the high tables. Others moved around them, speaking quietly, as though in a ritual, a litany of numbers and lights. To one side was a vast tube or jar, bound around with hoops of shining metal and connected to the wiry tangle. The place fell silent. Still. One tiny movement by one of the attending figures, a small lever moving in a slot from one side to the other, and then a hum, as though something living had wakened deep in the earth.

Those who lay upon the tables began to shine, glowing from within. In the great jar darkness gathered, a grey mist, rolling, thickening, curdling upon itself as a storm cloud curdles. On the tables the figures shone brighter, beautiful in their shining, and more beautiful still until it hurt to look at them.

Still the darkness gathered. The jar filled, became black and horrible.

Upon the tables the figures stirred, rose in godlike glory, faces radiant. As one they turned toward the contained darkness, contemplating it for a moment with deep satisfaction. Then into each deific face came a frightened comprehension, and a growing horror.

As they approached Murgin, Jaer's captors gave her less of whatever drug it had been; she woke from her dreaming to feel the pain of bound limbs, of hunger and thirst, the beginning of apprehension not yet strong enough to be terror.

They came to a place of dead trees, a mile or more of grey trunks set in dun earth with no leaf or green among them and only the vultures and kites circling far overhead to show that anything still lived in this place. Then came the place where the trees had been felled, and they went as if between the horrid knuckles of ancient giants. Finally the hooves of the animals pounded across the black pave, mile on jarring mile, harsh ringing of hoof on stone until the animals arrived at last, blown and shivering, before the gates of Murgin. One of the company made a wordless cawing, as from a tongueless throat, and the gates grated open into broad, bare corridors lit with acid light, floored with stone, roofed with stone, into which no light of the sun ever came nor light of the moon ever peered.

They rode along bare corridors which twisted and branched deep into the mount of the city. Those they passed stood silent and bowed against the walls. The beat of hoof on stone was the beat of hammer on metal, an anvil struck relentlessly. They wound their way upward, the horses labouring, stopping at last outside an iron door set with bloodstones in the great Seal of Separation. These doors opened silently, and Jaer was dragged across an expanse of black floor to be flung down before a high dais with three carved thrones on which red-robed figures crouched beneath the weight of high iron crowns.

The robed one who had carried her threw itself before the thrones, prostrate and trembling. A gasping whisper came from the dais, so freighted with age, agony and exhaustion that it might evoke pity, but it breathed with such obscene gloating that the pity turned upon itself, became an instinctive revulsion. An image formed in Jaer's mind of a serpent, crippled and maimed, yet with all its venom and malice intact, crawling relentlessly after a tiring prey. The voice was made more terrible by a second voice, as like to the first as an echo, the two whispering together, interrogating the messenger who had brought Jaer and answering that interrogation while the messenger itself trembled and was silent.

'Did it go to Byssa?' breathed the first voice, 'to Byssa to meet the one we had been told would come there? The one the old women saw in the dreaming dark? Had the old women heard it first on the sea? And then near Delmoth? And then by the River Del, coming toward Byssa?'

'Oh, yes,' responded the second voice. 'The old women saw it in the dreaming dark, coming toward Byssa. A strange one. Power all around it. Did our messenger go to Byssa to meet it? To find it? To catch it?'

'No,' breathed the first. 'No. Our messenger was tricked, was delayed, was unwise. Our messenger knew the will of that but did not do the will of that. Is this not so?'

The prostrate figure trembled, trembled and was silent. A sigh came from the dais. Almost, for a moment, Jaer might have believed that sigh. For a moment.

'Where was the one we sought? The old women were given drugs, potent drugs, the drugs of dreaming. What did they see? The far places of Anisfale, Far, too far. This was not the one we sought near Byssa. Again the dream. The town of Yenner-po-Tau. Far, too far. Ah, but wait. One old woman speaks. She says, "No, not Yenner-po-Tau. The forests instead. The forests of Ban Morrish!" '

'Where was our messenger? Oh, our messenger had not dared to fail again, our messenger had been wise, so wise. Our messenger had gone with dogs through the canyon of the River Del, had found a trail, had followed it into the forests.' The voice tittered. Jaer wanted to vomit. Her head swam with the residue of the drug they had given her. The voices reciting to one another what was obviously already known went on, dizzyingly. She could not understand the obscene laughter in the voices, the sense of anticipation. Of what?

'Then the old woman spoke of the forests of Ban Morrish. Then we sent word to our messenger. "Search," we said. "Seek, find, for the one we seek is near you in the forest of Ban Morrish." Did our messenger hear? Lo, one is now brought before us. But was this one alone? Where is the one of power, the strange one, the one sought? This does not look like the one we sought. Were there not others? Where are those others? Did our messenger not bring them? This is a sad and dreadful thing.'

'Sad and dreadful,' echoed the other voice. 'Our messenger has failed.'

'Nooo,' moaned the figure on the floor. 'Nooo. I have brought the one you sought. Even when the dreamers could not find it, Lithos found it. Even when the directions failed, Lithos did not fail. Lithos found it. Lithos sent me with it. Lithos says it is the one. It is here!'

'Oh, no,' tittered both voices. 'The messenger has failed. Let the messenger look on the reward. The reward our messenger may not receive.'

At the side of the dais a huge stone moved, pivoted upward to stand like some massive monument at the end of a black pit. From the depths came a low mutter, a kind of growling as of some malign conversation among unthinkable creatures. The messenger had risen to struggle toward this pit, fighting against two other robed figures, lunging nearer and nearer to the opening. It was allowed to approach almost to the edge before one of the red-clad figures upon the dais gestured. The stone fell with a hideous finality to the sound of the messenger's sobbing.

'It wanted its reward,' tittered the voice. 'It wanted to go into the pit, to fall, to come to the end. But that is the reward for those who do not fail. This messenger failed. This messenger must try again.'

The sobbing figure was dragged away. Jaer stood up, swaying. None of what had happened was at all real, and she brushed it away as she would a foolish dream. The falseness persisted, the red figures on the carved thrones were still there, each weighted by its iron crown. The play was evidently over. From the thrones they bent toward her, eyes intent upon her, the viscid voices winding into another interrogation. They desired to know about Jaer, her birth, life, her companions, destinations, purposes. In her dreaming confusion she said one thing and its opposite. She had been born, she said, in Lak Island, or perhaps in Rhees. She had grown up in Anisfale, except for travel in Xulanuzh to the south. There were lions in the south. Her mouth grew dry and then she said nothing. The guards gave her water with something acrid mixed into it, and the room hardened into clarity.

'Once again,' said one of the multiple voices. 'Tell us where you are going. Who travels with you? Where are they now?'

'I don't know,' said Jaer, honestly. They asked her again, and she told them of learning to play the jangle. They had her stripped and looked at her while the guards turned her around before them.

'This is not the one,' they said. 'This is not power, not danger, not the weapon, not the adversary. This is only a female, young, useless. The messenger has indeed failed.'

'Lithos does not fail.' An objection, a hiss.

'The messenger has failed.' Firmly. 'This is not the one. But it may know the one. We will send this one for modification, after which it will tell us everything.'

Jaer looked up, suddenly defiant. 'I will not tell you anything. Not anything.'

'Oh, yes.' The voice returned to its tittering, oily tone. You will tell us what we wish to know. You will look deep inside for little things you have forgotten. You will bring them to us as gifts. You will beg for the reward, but we will not give it to you until you have told us all. No, we will insist that you live for a time, only a time, until you have told us everything.'

The figure beckoned with one hand. Jaer was dragged forward until she faced the crouched creatures in their red gowns. Their left hands lay flat on the stone thrones, and through the hands nails of steel had been driven which held the hands to the stone. On each head the high iron crown was held in place by pins of steel thrust through the living flesh into the skull. Filth ran down the sides of the thrones, and Jaer knew they had been nailed there for an untold time.

'You will tell us,' the voices promised.

She was taken away, given into the care of a jailer who put her in a cage. Around her were other cages, full of old women who slept, their chests moving slightly with laboured breaths. Soon the jailer returned to her cell and took all her clothing, feeling her body with hands that were like paws, leering from a face that looked like lumps of brown-purple fungus, speaking from a mouth like an unhealed wound. Oh, so much to cut away. This, and this, and they must go up inside to get it all. This is good. It pays best, your kind. I must stay here until it is all paid for me. Someone else must pay for me. Then I can go. Soon, I think. Soon. I have been here so long. No, maybe not long. I forget.' The creature gave her a wrapping in exchange for her clothing, gave her food and water, and then took her from the cell to show her the laboratories and surgeries where the modifications were done. Jaer saw them all. There was an endless screaming in those places, for it was all done with the victims quite conscious. Then, when what was done had partly healed, it was often done again. The jailer explained carefully what it was they would do with Jaer.

She was returned to the cage to fall weeping upon the floor, choking with terror and crying endlessly to herself, 'Oh, Ephraim, Nathan someone, don't let them do that to me....'

But, of course, they did it anyway.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

OUTSIDE OF MURGIN.

Year 116' Midwinter Day The gryphon buried the Keeper as a cat buries its own excrement, scratching dirt over the body with heavy lion paws. Then it spent long moments staring at Terascouros while the old woman muttered and maundered and shook like a sapling.

'She talks to me in my head, like a beetle crawling on my brain,' she gasped. 'Oh, I'm hungry and tired, and there is still so much she demands us to do- Jasmine hugged the old woman. 'You're cold, grandmother. What are we going to do now? Do you want some tea? To eat something?'

Terascouros nodded, babbling, 'Yes. Tea. Oh, that would be good. Something to eat. What are we going to do? Oh, child, Leona says that there are others, others like her. I don't know if she means really like her. Unseen, she says. Around us, or near us, within hearing. Forgotten and unseen, able to move at our summoning, full of terrible power. She says she can feel them, knows they are there. Perhaps I misunderstand her. It's hard to know. But we will try. Oh, yes, we will try.'

They fed the old woman tea and broth. Across the fire the gryphon glared at them, a wicked glint striking at them from the huge eyes as it waited while they ate. They were caught and held by that glare, seeming to themselves to be moving as in a dream in which sight and hearing were intensified but feeling dimmed. They considered the idea of fear, but calmly, as though it were a strangely shaped stone kicked up in their path, a thing of only momentary interest, not really an obstacle.

Impatiently the gryphon rose to its feet and cried out in its voice of imperious brass. Terascouros lurched upright, stumbling a bit.

'Thewson, you'll have to walk beside me to hold me up. These old legs don't want to work, not at all. Medlo, help Jasmine, she's as tired as I am. Oh, well, so are you. You won't have to do much. Just come along and gather together what strength you have. If we catch the city by surprise, it may be enough. Bring our things, and come.'

At the edge of the pave they could look up into the sky where a slender moon and the stars shone dimly upon the city. The fringe of dead forest gleamed grey-silver, a softly luminous ring which swept from behind them away on either side, far out around the circle of the pave to vanish behind the ebon bulk of Murgin. Nothing moved upon the vast blot. The light from the sky fell upon it and was swallowed up. It was only blackness, with greater blackness as its centre.

'All the trees cleared away,' mumbled Terascouros. 'So that from that tower they can see anything that moves. Well, let them see, eh?' and she dug a sharp old elbow into the gryphon's ribs. Jasmine shuddered, sure the beast would eat the old woman in one bite. Instead there was a sound of shallow thunder, the gryphon's laughter.

'Once again, we will make a circle,' said Terascouros. 'As I had you do once before. I with you, this time. Yes. We will call to those powers the gryphon senses, creatures of the dark, the forests, the seas, the lonely mountains, the chasms and abysses of earth. Jaer had seen strangeness, had she not? And you, Medlo? Strangeness which we have learned not to see. Well.

'We will do what we can, and the gryphon will go to Murgin, break down the doors, search out that place the black robe spoke of, the place where Jaer should be. If those in Murgin are as I was, they will not be able to see her. She will come like a great, invisible scythe, a vengeful blade. Still, she is only one. We need more. A multitude, a horde....'

The gryphon may have sighed, or only breathed deeply. Wings struck downward, ringing like anvils, buffeting the air, lifting the beast upward in a long arching flight toward the black city. Terascouros tugged them into the circle, linked their hands and began the breathy, monotonous chant which hinted at melody. The other three shivered, caught in a skein of thoughts which flowed restlessly around the circle as they linked, as though doors had been opened among them, and their very selves flowed and coalesced. Medlo caught a thought of the Tree of Forever, knew it, lost it, wondered at it. Thewson was caught up in the gardener's mind, was planting herbs, seeing them grow, and knew that he was Jasmine. She, in turn, watched the great sea serpent move down the moon track toward Candor. The flowing thoughts ebbed, steadied, became a torrent which rose up around them like flame. They grew within it like trees of force, their branches waving in a storm wind of sound which was the chant made manifest. It went up from them, a fountain exploding from within their circle, upward to break into clouds borne on hurricane winds, crackling with pent energy and shattering the sky with lightning. Within their circle the sources of the fountain dropped deep into the earth. They were a fragile ring around a tempest which plunged from the depths outward, widening, spreading across the sky to the horizons and beyond, around the sphere, the call of the chant falling from it like rain.

Then the call faded, the storm quieted, fell away into fragments of cloud, and they were left teetering at the edge of a bottomless well. They looked again, and it was only the bare, grey earth beside the pave. From the black city came a splash of acid light and a mighty clangour as of metal shattering. The squat tower came to life, and light speared out across the pave, beams which crossed and recrossed in search. Thewson gathered them back into the shelter of the forest. 'Leona has broken the doors, he said, matter-of-factly.

'She is only one,' murmured Terascouros. 'Only one. Did any other hear us?'

There were other sounds from the city, a shrilling of bells and whistles. Tiny black shadows began to mass in the light from the broken doors. Terascouros went on mumbling, 'Only one. One.'

Jasmine caught her breath, staring toward the south where flickering whiteness at the limit of their sight moved from the rim of the forest into the cleared lands. The movement suggested tossing heads, manes thrown in silver veils, single horns jutting like spears from foreheads. Nearer there were bulkier movements, taller, like vast reaches of pinions. To the north, suddenly, were gouts of flame as though a mighty forge coughed among the trees; and sounds of hills moving, of horns blowing above and below the range their ears could hear. Around the full circumference of the pave drew in a noose of pearly fire, leaving only the space they stood in darkness.

Behind them came the pad of huge feet, and they turned to confront a sphinx which paced toward them on slow lion feet, fixing them with enigmatic eyes. 'We come who were called, with those both high and low, with theuram, with basiliskos. Go or die.'

Thewson backed away from the sphinx, gathering the others with outstretched spear toward an outcropping of stone onto which he lifted them, muttering the while, 'Wa'os fanuluzh. To break those walls.... Basilisk.... I know him....' They perched precariously above the torrent of pale creatures which flowed past them, some part snake, part bird; some part bird, part beast; some part beast, part man; some part man, part snake; a tumult and perturbation of creatures, striding leafed ones, flying fish, some indescribable. Jasmine laughed, almost hysterically, and Terascouros pulled her close.

' "All things are possible, and enduring, in Earthsoul." Have you not learned that? There is no Separation in the heart of earth. Annnh. Look on more wonder than these eyes have ever know....'

Before them the circle of pearly light grew thicker as it moved over the pave toward Murgin. In that black city, the outcry mounted, the light beams jittered across the pave, washing the creatures into invisibility with splashes of green light. They can't be seen in that light,' said Medlo, awed.

'Pray they cannot be seen at all,' murmured Terascouros. 'Leona is still inside alone.'

The pearly light had extended almost to the walls of Murgin, washing over scurrying black figures that darted this way and that without avoiding the creatures. Abruptly the disc of light divided, becoming a pallid wheel, dark spokes running from the centre to the edge, and down these aisles of darkness something moved from the forest to the city. Down the aisle directly before them there was a soft clicking, as if made by small talons. The light flowed in behind the sound, making the disc whole once more.

All waited. The creatures filled all the miles of the pave, filled it and covered it and waited now at the very walls of Murgin. Within Murgin the clamour went on, but on the pave was only silence. At last a winged shadow occluded the light from the broken gates, and from this shadow came the gryphon's voice crying adamant and iron, blood and stone. A sigh rose from the pave, and the walls of Murgin began to fall.