First was the sound of a cat spitting, a small cat, with small anger. Then a hair-thin crack ran up the walls of the city, spilling light, and the crack grew wider as the wall bulged outward, hanging for long moments like a brooding cliff. Then the wall fell, and the sound began again. The city gasped and shuddered, dying as it stood, killed by the unseen while its light still searched for what had killed it.

Through the rents in the city wall, the host poured into the city. The searching beams paled and died. A moan came over the pave as the earth would moan after a great quake, and the multitude of creatures met in the centre over the wreckage of the fallen tower. For a moment the pearly light blazed up, silvering wing and talon, horn and hoof. Then the light faded and was gone.

Beside them the gryphon cried over a bundle which it touched with a single talon. Terascouros and the others scrambled across fallen stone to unwrap the robes in which Jaer was tangled and then to weep as the gryphon did. The Keepers had not done everything that could have been done, so the body could still be recognized as Jaer-as they had last seen her. They turned from the mutilation with anger and nausea as Terascouros knelt to examine it with trembling hands.

'The heart still beats. Great Powers, why does she still live? It is not possible to live after that, but her heart still beats.'

Thewson gathered Jaer's body into the robes and stood, saying, 'We must do something. Where are healers?'

'None,' said Terascouros. 'The nearest would be the Sisterhood where we were going. It's too far. Days' journey from here. Even there, I doubt they could save her.'

The gryphon wailed, a long, whining cry, stumbling to its feet to show long lacerations on its sides and flanks. The great beast turned away from them north, began to move away.

'I tell you, it's too far!' screamed Terascouros.

The gryphon wailed again, but moved on. Thewson followed. Medlo hawked deeply and spat. It was not possible to look on that body without a deep, heart-holding sickness which made one spit sour bile from the throat. He went after the others, gathering up his belongings as he went, moving wordlessly into the forest. At the crest of the first hill, he turned to look back, feeling Terascouros clinging to his arm. A lonely cry came from one of the black figures which still moved upon the pave, moved and dropped, one by one. In the early light they could see what was left of Murgin, a featureless pile, a great tumulus, tomb for all who lay within.

From within the ruin a mist gathered, pillarlike, rising, beginning to change, to move, a roiling fog which hung in long, tangled tentacles then drew into a single shape, the shape of a monstrous head, cocked and listening. Terascouros gabbled under her breath, 'Oh, that... that... come away, quickly, come away.' She plunged down the hill, shuddering, with Medlo running to catch up as she went on, 'Away, into the trees. Hide from that.'

They managed to walk for some hours before the gryphon moaned and fell, panting, limbs shivering with chill. They gathered wood, built a fire, and Terascouros bathed the gryphon's wounds while Jasmine ripped clothing into bandages. In her kit was a store of dried herbs which she stewed into a sharp-smelling poultice to stop the wounds from bleeding. They used it on both Jaer and on the gryphon, then gulped food and lay aching on the hard ground until the gryphon cried out and stumbled to her feet once more.

They went on through the afternoon, losing the sun in a pallid overcast which seemed to lower with every passing our. Medlo remembered the shape which had gathered over Murgin, and he kept looking over his shoulder as he tried to carry Terascouros. They took brief rests at intervals. From time to time Thewson would lower Jaer to the ground while he stretched and bent his arms to get the blood flowing through them. Each time, Jasmine would turn back the blanket and put her ear to the thin, bloodied chest which moved so slightly.

Their way led upward, along dim aisles of trees so lofty and full that no sunlight fell between, the forest floor carpeted only with generations of leaves. By late afternoon the ends of the forest halls were hidden in fog, and even Thewson's steps had begun to slow. The gryphon panted strangely. They were lost in greyness, in chill. The end of the light came suddenly, and Thewson turned to them.

'Off that way a little is a cave. I smell the fern and the water. We can go no farther now.' He led them aside from their path into the darkness and mist until all of them could hear the music of water dropping slowly into cavern pools. It was a sound like hollowed wood struck randomly in an aimless melody. There were beds of dry sand beside the pool within the cavern, and dead trees lay at the entrance in a tumble of broken branches.

Their fire lit the cavern, but it barely touched the wings of the gryphon where it lay deep against the rock, eyes closed and beak gaping across a taloned foot. Jaer's wounds had bled again, and Jasmine poulticed them with the last of her herbs. They slumped beside the fire, too weary to eat, unable to sleep, for Jaer's shallow breaths had long, agonizing pauses between them during which each of them believed that she would not breathe again.

Medlo's fingers caressed the neck of his jangle. The endless music of the falling water fell into him with an obdurate sadness. He knew Jaer would die. He wished, prayed that Jaer would die so that he could stop screaming within himself for Jaer to live, to breathe again, and again. He saw in Jasmine's eyes the shadow of his own panic and fear.

Terascouros, also, knew Jaer would die, but wondered why those in Murgin had let her live this long. She would not die at once. No. This had been done so that Jaer would die after a time, after waking. Terascouros thought of that waking and prayed that Jaer would die before that could happen.

At length they slept. Outside the cavern the mist moved past in endless companies of shifting forms; it gathered in battalions at the cavern's entrance and waited there. Inside, the travelers woke to Jaer's screaming.

It was not a loud screaming. It had rather the sound of a small animal which had been caught in a trap and had been there through days and nights without water or food or hope. It was not a cry for help or a scream of surprised pain; it was the cry of a body which can make no other sound and is too agonized to remain silent. It is the sound the torturers wait for, knowing that there will be no more after this sound has ended. It was not Jaer's voice, nor any human voice.

'It is too far,' said Terascouros. 'We will not reach the Sisterhood while she lives.'

'We will go on,' said Thewson. 'If she dies, we will bury her.' His face was dark and inscrutable.

'There are certain roots,' said Jasmine hopelessly. 'Ease-root is one. It grows in meadows can stop pain. I have none. This is not the country to find it.'

Terascouros shook her head. 'Sunny meadows. No, she will go on like that until she dies. It will not come soon enough.'

'We will go on,' said Thewson.

They went on, out into the darkness before dawn and away to the north once more. Behind them the battalions of mist seemed focused upon the firelight within the cavern. The travellers passed out of the fog and into the clear starlight of early morning. On the hills there had been frost during the night which made their feet squeak a shrill protest over the cropped grasses. Ahead was open land interspersed with groves of white-trunked trees, and far ahead the bulk of Gerenhodh blocked out the light of the stars. Thewson pointed it out, and Terascouros nodded. 'Yes. The Sisterhood is just south of that, in a long, twisting valley. It's been fifteen years. I may not be able to find it.'

As they crossed one of the chain of meadows, both the gryphon and Jasmine cried out at once. To the left the gryphon wandered away toward a distant gleam of pooled water, and on the right Jasmine knelt beside a frost-blackened stem. 'Easeroot,' she said. 'I'm almost sure. Who would have thought to find it here, so far from the lowlands?' She was digging frantically with her fingers, and Medlo came to offer his dagger, wincing as she blunted it on a buried stone. The roots which came into her hand were the size of men's fingers, a long sausagelike row of them connected by dry, fibrous netting.

Thewson put his burden down and stood flexing shoulders and thighs as he watched the sky lighten to the east. At his feet the constant moaning went on, scarcely louder than a low wind sound at night, and yet as rasping upon the nerves as a knife blade across jangle strings. The gryphon had disappeared behind a clump of trees. Terascouros fell to her knees.

'Is it the root you know?' she asked.

Jasmine nodded. 'Nothing else resembles it. It is a kind of sleep drug which deadens pain. It is not often used, because it sometimes kills. Still...'

'Don't worry yourself with words, child. Use it. If she dies she can be no worse off than now. Better, perhaps.'

Jasmine flushed. 'I feel so guilty to think such things.'

'Only fools insist upon life at any cost.' Terascouros sighed. 'Others would say that life may be laid down when it becomes too heavy. Where does it go, after all, but into the keeping of the Powers who gave it and will give it once again? Well. What can I do to help?'

Jasmine cast around her, confused, i need to cut it up, and to squeeze the juice out. I need fire to boil it down. That's all. I will mix it with the cordial in my flask. The nuns in Lak Island gave it to me, and I have never touched it.'

They minced the root and squeezed its milky juices in a twist of cloth while the endless screaming went on and on. Jasmine tried not to hear it as she boiled the juices. At last she took the pan from the fire and poured the contents into her flask. This she took to the screaming bundle, almost dropping it when she turned the blanket back and confronted the bulging eyes and gaping mouth.

Terascouros came to her side. 'Let me. Go, sit down. I'll do it.' She began to drip the liquid between Jaer's torn lips, drop by slow drop, pausing to stroke the corded throat until she felt a swallowing motion beneath her hand, then dripping the mixture once more. 'How much? How much is safe to use?'

'A spoonful, perhaps. That much, and then wait. If that is not enough, then another few drops and wait again. Each root is different, and they vary with the seasons.'

Terascouros went on with the slow administration, drop by drop. There was some change in the meadow, some shift of light or movement of cloud then they realized it was the fall of silence. The screaming had stopped. Beneath Terascouros's gnarled old hands Jaer's eyes had closed and the bloodied lips grown still.

'Have I killed her?' asked Jasmine.

'No. She is asleep again. As she was when she was brought out of Murgin by Leona and where is Leona now?'

They looked about them, without real interest or concern, then sprawled down by Jaer's body. Only Terascouros stayed alert enough to see Leona emerge from the distant copse and walked naked across the meadow to join them, her arms and sides cut with long, deep gashes closed by clotted blood. Terascouros found her clothing among the packs and helped her dress after washing the wounds with the mixture Jasmine had made. Leona said nothing, only lay beside them and let her eyes fall closed. All slept. Above them the mist began to gather, and from the fringes of the wood behind them long tendrils of searching white curled across the meadow. When they woke at last, it was evening, and the battalions of vapour hung about them like amorphous creatures of the sea, writhing and curling toward them and away. The fire was long since dead.

Jaer still slept, and Terascouros thought that the torn lips looked less swollen, though it was hard to tell in the grey light. She stood to confront Thewson. 'Do we eat first and have hot food, or do we go and eat cold food as we walk?'

'Grandmother,' he said, 'be very still and look about us. Use your vision. What is it you see?'

Terascouros peered into the fog, stilling herself with an internal command, a practiced quieting of mental scurrying. She instructed herself to see, and she saw. About them stood an army of white, silent figures, robed in fog, motionless as though blind and deaf, all turned toward them and massed one behind the other to the far edge of the meadow at the circling trees.

'Ghosts,' she whispered. 'Ghosts of Keepers, of those in Murgin, blind and seeking. What do they seek?'

No one answered.

At Thewson's instructions they built up the fire so that it [ burned brightly, drawing the white forms even closer, then followed him away. As they went through the ghosts they felt a tingling, horrid and premonitory, a clammy intimacy as though they were embraced by something not living. They, the living, passed through the gathered forms to go away north, leaving that great host centred upon the abandoned fire.

'How did you know?' Terascouros asked, in a whisper.

'I saw them, early this day, in starlight. They were white on the dark sky, watching for fire. I think perhaps they find warmth? Perhaps they are sent to find warmth? Wa'osu. We have in my land a great sin. We have few sins, but this is one. It is called xoxa-nah luxufuzh, gathering of shadows. Those dead in Murgin, they do not sleep in their bones. Here are their shadows come after us. For what? What can shadows do? Voal yoa: away from evil. Ulum, hara-ah-ya! Lord, deliver us.'

Terascouros was shaken. She looked back down the slope they climbed to see the meadow full of white forms, still, still, still, focused upon the fading glimmer of the fire. 'We must hide from them. Somehow.' She walked beside Leona who paced beside them almost as blindly as the ghosts, though her wounds no longer bled.

They walked throughout the night. It was mountainous land which rose before them and plunged before them so that they were always climbing up or staggering down. They lost sight of Gerenhodh for long hours only to see it loom before them at the end of some long black line of mountains and then lose it again as they dropped down into a wooded valley. At last the horizon above the mountains turned pale green at the east and light crept into the world. Jaer had half wakened twice throughout the long hours. Each time, Jasmine's medicine had sent her again into deep sleep. It seemed that Jaer breathed easier, too, but Terascouros derided herself for imagining it.

Just as the dawn broke full in the eastern sky, they saw the tendrils of searching mist break through the trees at the top of the hill down which they had just come. Leona seemed to see them for the first time. 'What is it?' she asked through dry lips. 'That is not fog. Fog does not act like that.'

'No,' said Terascouros. 'It hunts for us, Leona. It hunts for us, and it finds us.'

Thewson laid Jaer down and went to gather wood, moving wearily, woodenly, his feet dragging. 'Fire once more,' he said, 'to hold the ghost warriors here while we go on.'

Terascouros stopped him. 'No, Thewson. You may have the strength to go on. I do not. We must rest, and if the ghosts will gather around us again, then they must gather.' She stared around them, thinking that they must be within short miles of the Sisterhood. A line of mountains looked familiar, the shape of a cliff, but she could not remember more than that. It had been years since she and Sybil had parted, one to stay and rule the Sisterhood with iron mind and will of adamant, one to go out into the world in pursuit of a legend. Terascouros sighed. She could be within yards of the refuge and not know it. They stood, a ragged, weary line, watching the approach of the fog which advanced ominously down the hills, flowing among the trees, unstoppable.

Jasmine began to cry.

From behind them a voice came from the trees. 'Well, Sister. I had not thought to see you again in this life.'

Terascouros turned, astonished to hear a voice she had once resolved never to hear again.

'Sybil?' she cried. 'Is that you?'

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.

THE SISTERHOOD.

Year 1169-Winter Weary as they were, it seemed to the travellers that Sybil greeted them with a kind of contemptuous amusement, though whether this appearance was put on for Terascouros's benefit or was Sybil's usual pattern, they were too tired to care. She dealt with their needs efficiently enough. Four strong, quiet men brought a litter onto which Thewson laid Jaer with tenderness and relief. They followed the litter-bearers a short way among rocks, around barriers, behind a lacy fall of water into wide, sand-strewn corridors which led upward into the hills. Deep clefts in the rock had been glazed to let in the light, and from these they could look back and down to the meadow they had left. There the mists gathered, circling, swirling in a slow spiral of searching movement.

Smooth-walled side caverns were carpeted with rugs of creamy wool, patterned in green, amber, and brown. Men and women dressed in these colours stood talking among themselves as they passed or scurried away at Sybil's curt instructions. She left them in a cavern furnished with cots and a steaming pool, saying that others would attend to them. As she left, she lifted the robes which concealed Jaer's mutilated form and said some casual words about the man appearing uninjured, going out before they could answer.

Jasmine drew the robe away and stared in disbelief. For a moment she thought that Jaer's body had been stolen, taken away by the litter-bearers, that another had been substituted. This figure was not wounded, not bloodied, but whole. She exclaimed, only to have Terascouros grip her shoulder, signalling silence.

Voices chattered in the doorway, and a dozen green-clad women entered with flagons and pitchers of steaming water. As one of them drew the robes away from the litter, an agonized moan came from the figure there. 'They seek me. They seek Jaer. Let me be someone else. Let me be anyone. Send me away before they find me ...'

Medlo fell to his knees beside the litter, running dirty fingers through his hair in frantic thought. He began to talk to Rhees, of meadows and lawns, of long tunnels of willow over wandering canals, of the smell of hay and the sound of high summer, of anything and everything away from the place where they were in the forests of Ban Morrish at the foot of Gerenhodh.

'It is Jaer. Is it?' Jasmine wondered.

'Shush,' said Terascouros. 'Let them wash your hands and face.' The women were clucking over them, undressing them. At Leona's side, two women raised their voices in dismay at the long lines of new pink flesh which filled the ugly lacerations along her sides. Leona herself was staring at them incredulously.

'What is this?' she whispered. 'I had thought almost to die of these.' She turned to Terascouros pleadingly. 'I do not understand.'

'Shush, shush,' begged Terascouros. 'When we have had time to rest a little, Leona. Wait, please. Jasmine, please ...' She spoke to the women. 'Sisters. Ask Sybil to grant us a few moments. There is a warning we should give.'

The women assented, sent one of their number with the message while the rest went on with the cleaning and binding up and pouring of bowls of broth and wine. Soon they departed in a flurry, leaving the travellers clean, warmed, fed and exhausted. Moments later, Sybil returned to them.

'Well, Teras?' Her voice was cold and uninterested. 'Is there something not to your liking?'

'All is as the Sisterhood would have it, Sybil. I have no complaint, only a warning. We may be endangering you all. It would be best to keep those seeking mists away from the Hill, to hide from what hides in them, or guides them.'

'A little fog? Not even unseasonable?'

'Truly, Sybil, I think it is not fog.'

The woman laughed, scanned them all with a cold, arrogant eye. 'You have not changed, Teras. Still determined upon your own way, your vivid imagination, your own interpretation of things. Still believing in your own strange convictions and persuasions. Well, if you wish to talk of it, you may speak to the Council. I would have had you come before Council in any case. Whatever the "danger" I'm sure it can wait until then.' She smiled, a brief, chilly smile, and was gone.

Terascouros shook her head, tears brimming above her lower lids, biting her lip in vexation. 'She has not changed. Hard. Sharp. No comfort in her. Well, it will be the Council then, and until then, rest. Thewson, if your strength will bear you further, stay here with Medlo. When he tires of telling stories into Jaer's ears, send him to the next cavern to wake one of us and take a turn at storytelling yourself. Do you know what is needed?'

'Surely, grandmother. It is needed to tell a wonderful tale of another person, another place, a story that a dreamer may live in to be other than he is. I know that. I will tell Jaer of the women of N'Gollo who dance on high pillars for the honour of the god.' He stood over Medlo, face grey with fatigue, yet his spear was upright in his hand as though grafted there.

The three women lowered themselves onto cots in the adjacent room, trying to let muscles loosen with little exclamations of pain. Leona whispered, 'Can you explain? I had wished to die from the pain of those cuts....'

Terascouros spoke through a haze of weakness. 'Leona, tell me something of this search of yours this thing you were looking for.' When there was only an uncomprehending silence, she begged, 'Please, tell me.'

'The Vessel of Healing? It was said to have been a gift of the Thiene to the founder of the college of healers in Kra-Usthro. In the ruins of a dead city in Tharsh is a library, and in it I read that the ruins of Kra-Usthro lie on the River Sals, west of Palonhodh Pass. The college ended with the reign of Sud-Akwith.'

'And what was it, this Vessel?'

'Who knows? It was said to provide healing for any wound, any ill. When the founder was very old, of an age to return to Earthsoul, his students urged him to drink from the Vessel, but he refused, saying he longed to rejoin Earthsoul and that the Vessel should go with him into the loving soil.'

'Was that done?'

'The writing said he was buried at Kra-Usthro, but that the people of his home village stole the body away, saying that he should be buried in all honour in his birthplace. Then there was fighting between the two places, and decades of confusion. When all was done, the body was gone. The book I read said that his students had taken it to a religious house far in the east where it might have less honour and more respect, the Vessel of Healing with it. So it was written.'

'Far in the east. It happens that Jasmine comes from the eastern edge of the settled lands. Is there not an ancient house of religion in Lak Island, Jasmine?'

Jasmine was unpinning her hair, letting the heavy, smoky grey of it tumble on her shoulders as she rubbed her aching head. 'Oh, the nunnery? Yes, it is old. But old as it is, it is built on the foundations of a place older still. The place is so old that no one knows when it was built, or who built it, or what it was.'

'And the nuns gave you something from the ancient buildings? Perhaps from the vaults? The cellars?'

Jasmine nodded. 'From the cellars. The Sister said that it was very old.' Hair pins fell from her mouth as she gaped. 'Are you saying ...'

Leona was already ripping the oddly shaped flask from the straps which held it to Jasmine's pack, that battered, old flask into which the juices of the easeroot had been poured. Terascouros murmured from her cot, eyes closed, 'Easeroot does not heal. Oh, it will ease pain, make dying easier, but it will not heal. Yet something healed. You are healed, Leona. Jaer is healed. Is there any sign on the flask, a name, a symbol?'

Leona polished the dark metal with the edge of her tunic, making a small silvery patch across the ancient lines. There were twisting leaves, fish, birds, a curly-maned sun, letters in a wavery script which was undecipherable to Leona. She offered it to Terascouros. 'Can you read it?'

'No. There is probably no one alive who can, save perhaps among the archivists in Orena. When the Thiene came into the known world, they brought with them many gifts. The first was the gift of the Sisterhood, for it was the Thiene, the Thousand, who founded the Sisterhood. Also, they explained the covenant of the Powers. It was they who coaxed the archivists out of Tchent where they had hidden themselves since the Departure to send them among the people, teaching. If the legend says that the Thiene brought as a gift a vessel of healing, I would believe it though I am more inclined to believe that the Thiene found it or preserved it rather than made it. In the Sisterhood we are taught that certain things have great power because of the intention and dedication with which they are made and the acceptance of that by the Powers. So, who knows when this was made? What can we believe except that the Vessel is here, now, in our hands? Do you doubt it?'

'No.' Leona laid it reverently on the blanket. 'I see my own wounds healed which were made only days ago. This is the Vessel I sought. This would have healed my love.'

'Would have? Will you not beg it from Jasmine and take it to Anisfale?'

'After five years? Fabla cannot be alive still. No. Surely she is gone to peace, a better peace than mine. I had sworn to lay the Vessel even on her grave, but perhaps the time is gone for that. I am weary, old woman. I am other things than weary, as well things I am incapable of understanding.'

They lay quietly, Leona cradling the flask in her arms, unable to wonder properly at the miracle, too worn for astonishment. They slept. When Medlo came, his face sunken and lined with exhaustion, he woke Leona before sleeping himself. So they went, two by two, through the day and night hours, talking endlessly into the ear of the sleeper who had been Jaer, sleeping between times as though they would never sleep enough.

During that day and night, Jaer's body changed four times. The green-clad sisters saw, put their heads together in whispering gaggles in corners, went away to consult others and came back again to watch with intent faces, hands twisted into the hems of their tunics. Every hour or so one of the party knelt at Jaer's side to tell a story. Because they were weary, they told what was easiest for them, stories of their own lives, that which they knew best. When the Council summoned them, Jasmine was storytelling with Thewson at her side, so it was Medlo, Leona, and Terascouros who attended upon the assembly.