Then they were drawn in to the wholeness of the mind which the Sisterhood sent outward, becoming only a part of a greater whole, a single, curving edge of searching thought.

The mind moved over the saddle of the Hill, into the little valley where the mists swirled, narrowed itself into a fine blade of thought and moved to cut away one swirl of mist, one bit of circling shadow. Into that bit the mind looked, questioned: 'What are you? Who are you?' and heard the agonized whisper in answer.

'I am ... I am ... My name is ... Give me ... I need ... I am...'

Reluctantly the mind turned from this swirl of mist to another, again questioned, again heard. 'I am ... Let me ... I need ...' That was all.

Though the mind questioned again and again, it was answered only by a hollow, hungering, inexpressible need without identity. The mind withdrew, saddened. It gathered itself and fled away to the west like a cloud before wind, swiftly. It rested above the castle garth of Rhees, searching downward through fleecy clouds, knowing through Medlo's intelligence what was seen.

Riders came from the gates of the castle. Medlo's mother, the lady Mellisa, her brother, courtiers, the Master of Hawks, several gorgeously gowned ladies, three grooms, and a meaty, lumpish boy of eight or nine who glanced at the world from the back of a small horse, all swept out into an afternoon beautiful with blossom and sun. They were waved farewell by a stout, bearded man, the erstwhile Lord Hardel of the Marches, and he watched them long as they rode away, a curious look, part satisfaction, part regret.

On the heights above the road a half-completed temple towered, and the troop clattered past long lines of sweating black robes hitched to sledges loaded with dressed stone as they tugged them upward in endless procession to the heights. At one time an ancient keep of the Drossynian house had stood there. Now a Temple of Separation reared toward completion. The troop, to its last and youngest member, looked pointedly elsewhere. The mind could hear the thoughts of the Lady Mellisa as though she spoke aloud. There had been certain threats by the Keepers of the Seals. The Lord Hardel has negotiated. In return for being allowed to build the Temple without hindrance, and to take a levy of the common people into their group, the black-robed Gahlians had agreed to leave the lady and the lord in possession of their lands, titles, and enjoyments.

The lady mused that it would not have happened in the days of the High King at Methyl-Dain, but Methyl-Dain was in ruins and the High King survived only in certain esoteric references to oaths and guarantees formerly exchanged among the duchies of the kingdom. They would be exchanged no more. All the duchies had been 'Separated' as the Keepers put it.

Knowing all this, the troop made no reference to it. They spurred their horses into a clatter of rising dust and swept by, away to the riverside for an afternoon of fishing, hawking, and dalliance. The hovering mind followed their journey. As they neared the river meadows, one of the grooms fell back, his horse limping. The others went on to confront two iron wagons on the verge of the road. Two red-robed ones stood nearby. As the troop drew up, doubtfully, one of the Keepers raised his hand as if in greeting, and something round and shiny as a bubble flew from the raised hand to burst in the dust at the lady's feet. She smelled something unpleasant, started to say something....

The lagging groom had seen the wagons from the curve of the road and had prudently dismounted, tugging his horse into a screening copse. He watched, round-eyed, until the wagons were gone, then returned in all haste to the castle. There, he learned that a council of black robes had been installed as the governing body of Rhees. The consort, Lord Hardel, was stating the doctrine of the Gahlians as though it had been his own. It was being said that the Lady Mellisa and her brother, Pellon, had gone to visit her sister in the lower reaches of Methyl-lees, by the sea. The groom, more sensible than many twice his age, changed his clothing for something less conspicuous and left Rhees by the straightest road. What the groom had seen and heard, the mind knew, having watched and listened long into the night hours.

The mind turned to flow southward, over the Outer Sea and the clustered islands, across beaches glimmering under starlight, over vast brown deserts, and into the jungles which edged the land of the Lion Courts. In the deeps of this jungle a clearing flowed beneath the mind, in the clearing one tree, a tree which seemed to brush the sky, xoxa-auwal, sky gatherer, Tree of Forever, looming and eternal, at its roots a tiny rock shrine which was being dismantled stone by stone by black-robed acolytes who worked by glaring torchlight while others plied axes against the giant trunk. An aged man tottered into the clearing, waving a leafy branch, crying out in remonstration. An axeman stepped forward, almost casually, and cut him down. Thewson's perception allowed the mind to grieve for the shaman, faithful to the forest gods, dead.

The mind seemed to hear within itself a plangent, metallic call, a turning of the will toward the north. It drifted to the dark moors of Anisfale, grey in the early dawn, to hang there above ruins of ancient houses and crofts. A temple was being built on the site of the ancestral graveyard at Gaunt. The gravestones were set into the walls of the temple. A Gahlian minion hacked with chisel and mallet at one of them, smoothing away the words: 'Fabla, widow of Linnos. Too long dying. Too young dead.'

The mind raged, drew itself into fury, spat fire. 'Fabla,' raged the mind. 'Cannot even her marker lie in peace on the moors of Anisfale?' The mind recoiled, shocked, flowed around its own rage, isolated the anger, cushioned it and bound it, carried it away toward the east, toward Lak Island. It went into the dawn, over wooded valleys and down the long river courses to the endless freshwater lakes of the eastern plains. The city of the island lay quiet in the dawn, the primeval bulk of the convent and Temple dark and tenantless, the city walling itself into enclaves with walls half built, the sound of bell and drum from a newly built Temple of Separation filling the streets as water fills a bowl. Deep under the convent, in the immemorial cellars, at a door so old that its hinges fell away in reddened dust, the mind found several women in the garb of nuns stealing away from the city, under the walls, down long root-dangled muddy tunnels to the distant countryside. With them went a child.

On the floor of the sanctuary, white and still in a pool of clotted blood, lay Eldest Sister, true to her vision of the Goddess, cut down by the robed ones who now searched the maze-like corridors for other life. There was none. Behind the fleeing women in the tunnels, dirt fell in a tiny avalanche, hiding their footprints. 'Hu'oa,' the mind breathed gently. 'Flee swiftly. Get away.'

The mind came up from Lakland, peered south and east, toward the city of Tchent and the lands beyond the Concealment, encountering a wall of stubborn darkness, of amorphous shadow, of quilted mist, layer on layer, impenetrable. From this hidden place flowed malice, evil intent, a kind of horrid hunger as though something licked at their souls with a loathsomely coated tongue and breathed on them with a rotting, leprous breath. The mind retreated, burned as by a corrosive acid, and fled swiftly so that the towering, watchful darkness in the east should not follow them back into the Council chamber.

Medlo and Jasmine wept, the one for a loved land lost, the other for a child endangered. Thewson's jaw was clenched tight and his eyes blazed. He had not loved the old shaman, but he had honoured him and had honoured the great tree. Leona's pale gaze was fixed on the far wall of the cavern, expressionless and hard.

Out of the silence came the whispery voice of the Old Aunt who had called peace upon the Council.

'You have seen, travellers, and we with you. In our previous search we saw the city of Murgin fall. Some of us saw the creatures you described. Some of us saw other things. All of us now know that forces, powers, something came at your call, something we do not know, have not learned of, do not recognize. Long have we served the True Powers, these thousands of years. Long have we been true to Taniel who began our order. Long have we served those who guard and guide, those Masters of our earth; in metaphor, in symbol we have served. Now, we see symbols walking, metaphors sprung to life and moving upon cities.

'Long have we repudiated that, all its works, all its darkness, all its ancient shame; yet the darkness and shame remain. We are caught upon a battlefield, ill prepared for battle, unsure of the identities of the antagonists, sure only that we are opposed to something.

'Murgin is destroyed, and its pitiable wraiths now surge in the shadows, lost, unable to rejoin, Separated indeed as their doctrine insisted and yet not, we think, as they hoped. For what is left of them, we weep.

'And now you come to say the Sai Surrah is come, the Lasurra sai who sleeps, and sleeping changes, and is now male, now female as was foretold by the Woman of Hanar a century and a half ago. Such wonders! So, Sisters, travellers, hear the words of this Council. Until the Sleeper wakes, we wait. And when the Sleeper wakes, we will take up our weapons, contemptible though they may seem to the powerful. Rest then, for it may be long and long before we rest again, or it may be too short a time until we rest forever.'

They went forth from the chamber in twos and threes, not talking, each searching the faces of others with fearful, resolute eyes, as though to memorize and keep forever the appearances of this time. Old Aunt came to the place where the travelers stood.

'Teras, I have sent the singers into the wilds.'

Terascouros looked puzzled. The old woman shook her head almost impatiently. 'The seven singers ...'

'To sing the names, weeping? Aunt. You would call for help with rituals which haven't been used for a thousand years?'

'Rituals given us by Taniel, to use in a time of need. Yes. What else would you have me do? What you may do is ray that there is one remaining in the wilds who will ear.' And she went into the corridor, nodding to herself. Terascouros shepherded the others away to the place where they slept.

Jasmine asked, 'Where was Sybil? I didn't see her.'

'Sybil was wrong,' said Terascouros. 'Wrong out of pride, out of ambition. In the Sisterhood, if one is wrong, one is set to a long silence. One may be mistaken and still hold honour and place, but one may not be wrong. We may see her again, but we will not hear her voice in our lifetime.'

In this Terascouros was herself wrong.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

MAGISTER.

Year 1169 Later Winter In the brightness of morning, Magister Omburan walked between two of the places of the world. High on the eastern face of the Palonhodh, at the midpoint of a long, east-west ridge, an outcropping of stone towered in the form of a hooded figure facing south. Shadows moving beneath the craggy hood created a vast and commanding face, and at the feet of the figure a spring bubbled into a moss-edged cup of water-smoothed stone. Bare, shivering trees surrounded the clearing, and a great slab extended its lichenous mass over the pool to shadow the water.

Magister Omburan knew this place, this concatenation of stone and water, of grass blooming with violets in spring and with tiny, purple asters in the fall, of white-trunked trees. He knew its numen, its identity, singular and unique, and the name of its inhabiting spirit. He spoke this name, a sound in which stone, water, leaf and tree were included, each in its own relationship to all the others, and the numen replied: 'Magister. Omburan. Contentment in time.'

'Contentment in time, Dweller.'

'Walk in earth, Magister.'

'I walk in earth, Dweller, speaking of long growth.'

The dweller, too, spoke of long growth, of the accretion of slow ring upon slow ring within the trees, the swifter unfolding of bud to blossom, the away and return of birds. Magister Omburan waited, untiring, feeling with the numen the eastward roll upon the wheel of the humming earth. Noon came as they spoke, the hot light filtering through the Magister's silver flesh and across the blue feathering of his wings and crest.

'A troubling, Magister.'

'Troubling?' Magister Omburan bent his attention toward the dweller, uttering a word of contrition and shame for his distraction, his failure of concentration.

'Men, Magister. Troublers. They come singing the names. They weep. They go.'

Magister Omburan meditated upon this as the afternoon moved into evening. So they had come, singing the names, weeping. Many the seasons since that had last occurred; long the sunpaths and moonpaths; countless the leaves. Those who had come singing had not known the earthways, could not move as the Magister did, for to do so required knowing the names of the places, their limits and connections, their true sounds. When still learning, Omburan had come to this place to sit yearlong in the shadow of the looming stone as the water spoke. Another year had been needed to learn the way into Dalisslintoro-oa, next numen to the south. Only Omburan and a few others could walk in those ways, for only they had taken the time to learn the names and the places. Only one people, then, could have come singing the names those to whom the names had been given.

'We have long awaited troubles, Dweller.'

'Will this being unbecome, Magister?'

'As Earthsoul wills. As we may prevent.'

The water burbled up and flowed away. Small flowers sprang up in the grass where the Magister had moved. Night had come as they spoke. As Magister went southward he heard the Dweller in Dalisslintoro-oa respond to the Magister's greeting.

'Long have you walked in earthways, Magister.'

'Long has Dalisslintoro-oa bloomed and grown and leaf-folded, Dweller.'

This numen knew beeches rising massively in green-trunked towers. Here the streamlet ran between flowering banks, and the great stone watcher gazed down on an ancient dolmen. Night swirled around the Magister's black hide, hid his huge dog feet, reflected starlight from his long white fangs and gleaming eyes. There were shapes and suitabilities for days and others for nights, forms for spring and others yet for fall.

'Trouble, Magister.'

'So say all the Dwellers, Dalisslintoro-oa.'

Magister sent his perception northward, the way he had come. The lands had been disturbed there, and many ancient dwellers had gone. He named them in memory, listing them among the cherished ones, reminding himself of their names in sorrow. Men had come in the north. Some heard the word of Earthsoul and made gardens. Others made barrens, holes in the fabric of earth, deadly places. No earthways were left there. The air burned, the stone was silent. Water was a curse there, and a filth and a defilement.

'It is grieving to unbecome, Magister.'

'It is grieving, Dweller.'

Dawn soaked upward into the darkness, north and south along the horizon of sparkling lakes and marshes to the east of Palonhodh. Early light shifted the shadows beneath the craggy hood of the watcher, making the shadowy features move and blur as though the shadowed lips uttered a command. Upon the dolmen a complex symbol gleamed as if drawn by slender fingers in a dew upon the stone. As the sun rose higher, the symbol dried, the last drops fading toward the south where Magister Omburan had gone. There, far and white against the southern sky brooded the hoary head of Gerenhodh.

BOOK II.

The Gate.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR.

THE AWAKENING.

Year 1169 Early Spring.

Winter moved north from the Hill of the Sisterhood; the Choir of Gerenhodh sang stillness upon the ghosts of Murgin. They roiled beneath this imposed quiet with ominous malevolence. Jaer slept as though forever; and the travellers gathered on a sunny ledge near the kitchens to fret away their impatience and drink midmorning tea. Old Aunt was with them, croaking hoarsely over her mug as Terascouros muttered angrily at her.

'You can't go on, Aunty. Let the others sing the ghosts quiet without you for a day or two. Within the week you'll all be hoarse, and what'll the ghosts do then?'

'We do not know what they will do at all,' the old woman cawed, grimacing at her own harsh voice. 'We seek only to keep them quiet for a time, Teras, until our plea for help can be answered.'

'Help!' Terascouros made a mocking face. 'Rituals that haven't been used for a millennium.'

'Rituals that haven't been needed for a millennium,' the Old Aunt corrected. 'But taught to us by Taniel taught to her by Omburan, so it is said to be used at need.'

They had argued the matter since the morning after the Council when they learned that Sybil had left the Hill, had been seen riding away toward Zales, speedily, as though fearful of pursuit. Since that time Old Aunt had come each day to the ledge to stare northward into the wilds, whether to see her seven singers returned from their ritual endeavours or to see something else, she did not say. So this morning, she stared away in the early light which shattered from the threadlike tributaries of the Gomilbata and seemed to waken the vivd colours of a vanished autumn from the forest. For an instant a glint of crimson burned among the distant trees.

'How are we supposed to know whether the singers have had any effect?' grumbled Medlo. 'What are the names they have sung?'

'Names of a place, a place long gone. A special place, which meant something to the one whose help we seek ...' Terascouros's attempt at explanation was cut short by Old Aunt.

'Terascouros, there are times when I am inclined to wish that you had shared your mother's infirmity. Often now I think I may have loved Mawen best for her silence.'

'He doesn't ask an unreasonable question, Aunt. How are we to know, after all?'

'We will know when we know. You may help by watching for anything unusual. It will occupy your time at least.'

Terascouros shook her head, pantomimed a sentinel's pose, hand across her eyes. 'I see a flight of bright birds from the copse at the brook. I see a fox at the edge of the meadow thank the Powers for long sight making his way home from our hen coops, no doubt. There is a cloud of crows over the forest edge to the north, disturbed by those crimson banners.' She choked on the word, repeated it in amazement. 'Banners!'

The dark line of trees broke on the crimson flags; the procession came toward them over the meadow's winter dun, figures as slender as reeds, green and swaying as they came in a dance of incredible grace beneath elegant undulations of the long, bright banners which lifted and fell in joyous calligraphy against the pale sky. They spelled a message of air and wind which the central figure below them echoed with each silken ripple of the gown he wore. It glittered with jewelled flowers, sparkled with vines, visible even at the limits of their vision and becoming only clearer the closer he carne. After a time in which they did not breathe, its wearer stood before them, full in the morning sun, attendants grouped in attitudes of respect and attention. Old Aunt fell to her knees, drawing Terascouros down beside her.

'Magister Omburan,' she whispered. 'I have not learned the proper titles of honour.'

Thewson thought that the tall one smiled. Medlo seemed to hear words. Later they found it hard to remember. Leona, however, heard clearly and did not forget.

'Contentment in time, Singer. Is it your people who have sung the names, weeping?'

'Magister, I did not know what else to do.'

It was your intention to summon me, Singer?'

'You. Any one of you, Magister. Or any servant of yours. We meant no disrespect.'

'None has been shown. May not the foster children of Taniel call upon the kindred of Taniel in time of trouble? Tell me the troubling.'

'There is a place south of here, Magister. A place called Murgin.'

'True. A great barren. A filth. A grieving and desecration.'

'One was taken into that... barren. Magister. One of us, my kinswoman, called upon certain Powers. She was answered, Magister, and that barren was cast down. Yet... things remained, a kind of mist, a gathering of ghosts. It grows, Magister, grows and fumes beneath our singing. It has injured some of our people. Here in our Hill is the one brought out of Murgin. The ghosts seek that one, perhaps. That one only sleeps, sleeps as though never to wake.'

Above them the banners described a turbulence of air and sun. Presently she went on, 'We are frightened, Magister. Have we consented to some evil? We do not know what Power it was that cast Murgin down. We do not know what Power gathers here. We are greatly troubled.'

'So. The troubled may sing the names, ancient and unforgotten, revered and cherished, the names of the long vanished.'

'So we were told, Magister. By Taniel.'

A bird cried jubilation. In that moment they lived long. All minor motions were stilled and only the great ones were perceived. Beneath them the earth turned, singing. At last the Magister moved slightly.

'As you have sung to summon, sing to waken. Taniel gave herself for you, for earth, and gives herself still. This time was not unforeseen. Await my messenger. Hold fast to your way. All may yet be well.'

In the forest near the ledge an oak blazed forth, haloed as though to mark some marvel. A shadowy way led behind it as though it were a roadway. For a moment they saw it. Something moved there briefly, and then the oak was only an oak once more. Time returned. Sound returned. Sandals scraped on stone. Old Aunt rose from her knees, moaning at the pain of stiffened joints. They stirred as though wakened from a dream, sought memory of it only to find the noon sun, the wind, the ordinary call of birds. Terascouros was unwontedly quiet, and Old Aunt glanced at her from the corner of an eye suddenly wondering and joyous. 'Well, Teras?'

'Well, Aunt?'

'Shall we use the useless old rituals to wake the sleeper?'

'Why not?' Terascouros mocked herself. 'It seems they have power yet.'