'Magister says no. Magister says that for a time Gahlians alive are better than Gahlians dead. Gather to me, now, you people, and listen to what the Magister says!'

The raven flew to Thewson's shoulder from which he stared down at them all, gathering their, eyes with little gestures of his beak, silent until he was sure he had all their attention focused upon himself.

'The Magister says this: "Remember the people of Widon the Golden and those of D'Zunalor!" The Magister says, "Remember Orena." The Magister says, "Remember the quest book of Ephraim the Archivist." So says Magister Omburan. So I, Kelner, his messenger, have spoken.' He flew down from Thewson's shoulder, blinked two or three times rapidly as though to shed the mantle of authority, tossed himself a grain of corn, and began to ignore them ostentatiously as he hummed and cast covert glances at them from under one wing or the other.

After a silence, Medlo spoke. 'Who could protect us from those coming from Zales? Zales is not far away. Three or four days' ride. Eight days' walk perhaps. What will the Gahlians find here? Many children. Many young women. Singers. Many of them old, certainly not warriors.'

Thewson agreed. There are few warriors here, Grandmother. Not enough, I think.'

'No,' Old Aunt mused, biting her lips. 'Not enough. We have never relied upon force, but upon being hidden and quiet. We have defences which are not generally known. The Hill can be sealed, parts of it hidden, to make it virtually impregnable. And there is reason for some of us to stay here.' She peered at Terascouros who nodded, shrugging. 'But the children, the young women, the scouts, the younger men it would be a prison for them, and they could not really help us.'

'Are we sure that Sybil does not know of our secret strongholds?' queried Terascouros in anger. 'If she has sold us to the Gahlians, she will bring them to every door, no matter how well hidden. And why did Magister remind us of Widon the Golden? Why remind us of the D'Zunalor? They, too, went to the north. Why remind us of that now?'

'Because,' rumbled Thewson, 'those people were warrior people. Yes? If the god sends the message that help against these Gahlians will come, then help must come from warriors. Many men. Men with swords and spears and axes. Wa'osu, those were axe people, those D'Zunalor. Besides, they have the Crown of Wisdom, and I wish to find it.'

'Oh, Thewson, why do you dare? The Lion Courts are gone. What difference does it make?' Jasmine clung to him, full of sudden tears at the thought of the children of the Hill, at the thought of Hu'ao out there somewhere with all the world 'closed.' 'We are driven away yet again. I want to find Hu'ao.'

He cradled her in his arms.

Old Aunt pressed her head between her hands. 'Shhh. I can't think. It seems ... it seems that the Magister directs someone to go north. Though to think the people of Widon still might be there seems monstrous folly. Still, they were sworn to Taniel once, to the Thiene. Would they come for that? To a summons from us?'

'Don't forget the children,' cried Jasmine. They must be sent to safety. They must not fall into the hands of those ... who did what they did to Jaer.'

Jaer, remembering precisely that, lost herself among the multitudes in her head, stood sweating and cold, astray in tumult.

'The Magister reminds us of Orena,' said Old Aunt. 'A place unconquered since it was established, a place to which the children could be sent for safety. It would be a perilous journey.'

'All journeys are perilous,' said Leona. 'I will go with them, to guide them and guard them. We must go soon, to cross the Del while the weather holds cold. Early spring will bring it to flood and will trap us on this side.'

'Yes,' Old Aunt agreed. 'Thewson could go north, seeking the people of Widon. The others of you, south to Orena, and the children with you.'

'Not I,' said Jasmine, firmly. 'I go with Thewson. Hu'ao is in the northlands somewhere.'

'Nor I,' said Jaer, struggling out of the tumult into her own persona, dry-mouthed and fearful. 'I... I am still Jaer! Jaer said she would go east. The raven reminds us of the quest book, Jaer's quest book, which I had from Ephraim and Nathan. Jaer goes east as Jaer said. As I said and do say.' Shuddering, she repeated herself. Within her, the multitude was, for the moment, silent.

'I go with you,' said Medlo, as though making an announcement.

'Yes. I would have guessed so.'

'You object to that?'

'Do I object to the moon, Medlo? I know well enough what brings it 'round. I know well enough what brings you or someone within me knows, better than you do who have not a thousand pair of eyes or ears to see and hear you doing and saying things you, yourself, do not understand.'

Terascouros was watching them. 'And I,' she said, 'will go with you.'

Jaer laughed in honest humour. 'You, I couldn't stop if I would, Grandmother. You will or die. Perhaps you will and die, you know that?'

'It doesn't matter.'

'It matters to me. I do not like my old ones dying. I have had enough of that. But how could I stop you? Come, if you are determined to.'

'Come where?'

'East, where Jaer said Jaer would go. Where Jaer alone would have gone. Into the Concealment, perhaps. Past it!'

'Stubbornness!'

'Ah, Teras, I am no more stubborn than you are. It may be stubbornness, or wonder. If anything is "meant" by all of this, then going east is part of it. Do you think things are "meant"?'

Terascouros chuckled, almost lightheartedly. 'Ahl di you may be, in which case I will witness it. Ahl di you may not be, in which case I may as well be with you as here under the Hill, huddling behind some stalactite waiting for the Gahlians.'

Jaer and Terascouros were both surprised at that moment, for Jaer kissed the old woman. Thereafter, though warned and warned again, Terascouros would not be dissuaded.

Kelner flew away at noon, promising to return. Near evening he came to tell them that Sybil was camped on a rocky mound not far from the walls of Zales talking with a delegation of red-robed Gahlians. Jaer shuddered at the words, and Old Aunt drove the Hill into swarming activity. Even with all the people of the Hill working from light to night, it would still take some days to ready the wagons for the trip south and to close the Hill against discovery. On the second day, Kelner reported no change, but on the third day he told them that hordes of Gahlians had left Zales and were being joined by others from the valleys and from Lakland as they came south along the Gomilbata.

He told them also that he had perched long enough in a tree above Sybil's head to hear her telling of the defences and strongholds of the Hill in a defiant, hating voice. He hopped in lamplight repeating these words while Teraspelion, daughter of Terascouros, made notes on the charts she carried. Each day saw more of the outer caverns grow cold and empty as furnishings were removed into the deep places of the fastness and as hot springs were diverted away from the sunlit caves to those which lay deep in the endless dark below.

'I thank the Powers that Sybil worked most with the Council,' Teraspelion said. 'She had little to do with the Choir, or the farms, for which we must now be grateful. She knew the ways to the great libraries, of course, and to the kitchens, but she did not interest herself in the deeper ways so far as we know. Those ways are not generally known. Most have been in keeping for decades, and I have kept them private.'

'Yes, we will pray she knew nothing of the old gates and devices,' agreed Terascouros. 'Some have been here since the time of Taniel. Some may be from before that time. When the traitor comes with her myrmidons,' the old woman explained to the travellers, 'she will find open tunnels, cold as winter, and a few deep shafts leading into caves pillared with growing stone iced by the slow trickle of wandering springs. Us she will not find.'

Though the Sisters sounded sure, the travellers did not share their sense of security. Jasmine, particularly, begged Old Aunt and the others to flee with Leona to the southlands. The Sisters would not leave the mountain, explaining without explaining that they must stay away from Orena. Jasmine supposed it had something, once more, to do with prophecy or belief, and eventually gave up begging. Instead, she spent her time poring over maps which showed all aspects of the land north. Sometimes she merely stared, measuring with her eyes the distance between the River Lazentien, where she and Thewson would go, and the Chornagam Mountains toward which Hu'ao had fled. It was no more than a finger's space on the maps, but she remembered how weary real journeys were.

Thewson worked beside the men and women who were disassembling wagons in the farm tunnels in order to move them to the southern portal, piece by piece. The children were brought up in frightened coveys to learn their places and their assigned duties. Between times, Thewson began to learn to ride horseback. There was no horse large enough for him at the Hill. Leona went out into the world to return some days later bringing a great horse from the sloping green pastures of Sorgen where they had been bred for centuries. She rode one feather-footed monster and led another. Thewson, who had worn out eight or ten of the little Hill horses in learning what he could, regarded the huge beasts with favour. He was pleased to find that, when mounted, his feet did not touch the ground.

To Leona and the group of Sisters and men who would accompany the children to Orena, Old Aunt lectured on what she knew of that place and of the Sisterhoods to be found between. 'Oh r'na,' she said. 'It is said Oh r'na, not oh-RAYna.' There were many Choirs located in the Great Sea Desert of the east, a few in the lands of the cattle herders, a few more down the length of the Unnamed River which ran from the fork of the Del southerly into the wilderness past the junction of the River of Hanar. 'Which,' said Old Aunt, 'once in a few hundred years runs red as blood. We have heard it does so now. This is the "time of Hanar" spoken of in the prophecy.'

'Where did the prophecy come from?' asked Leona.

Old Aunt shook her head. 'A woman came out of nowhere to the Sisterhood, gave them the password, entered their stronghold, spoke to the Council and departed. Her words you know: "In the time of the River of Hanar, the Ahl di will come. The precursor sound is the sound of a baby crying in the night. One who cannot speak will speak of the coming." Then she went away. No one thought to write down what she looked like, or where she went. We know only what she said.'

Jaer, Medlo, and Terascouros packed foodstuffs, filled flasks, went through the contents of their packs a dozen times, strengthened the seams of their clothing. They decided to leave as soon as the others had gone. So they were at the southern portal before dawn on the seventh day of the month of thaw, watching the shivering children distributed among the wagons. Some were half asleep, a few cried. In the wagon a young Sister quieted her charges by telling them the story of the Princess Moonlight who slept a thousand years in the castle with no doors. Terascouros smiled, said, 'Old Aunt used to tell that to me when I was their age.'

Leona, with Mimo and Werem at her side, stood at the lead wagon talking with the scouts; many of them had white hair and faces lined by years. Jasmine went to her in the darkness and pressed something into her hand. 'The flask, Leona. There are many in your caravan, many only babies. If there should be sickness or worse things, use this.'

Nothing of Leona could be seen except a fugitive gleam of starlight reflected from her eyes. Jasmine squeezed her hand and stepped away. Out of the darkness a whisper came. 'Is it in this way that quests are fulfilled? By free gift? When the reason for the quest is long past?'

Jasmine whispered in return. 'Your reason is past, Leona. My reason is now. There may be other reasons, yet. Take it with my love.'

For a long time the creak of the wagons came back to them as they stood in the high portal, peering into the night. At last there was only a low moaning of wind among the stones, and they turned to the northern portal from which Thewson and Jasmine would leave with a small group of riders. Dawn was only a short hour away, and the last of the ways was being closed. Only Old Aunt and Teraspelion stood beside them. Jasmine pleaded once more that the Sisters flee away south.

'Don't worry about us,' said Old Aunt. 'Teras will tell you that we are not martyrs or fanatics. We intend to be safe. We will know, deep in our burrow, what happens up here in the empty corridors, just as we know what happened in Rhees and Lakland. We will know what happens to you as well; so go safely and do not grieve over us. Do not fret over the Choir at Gerenhodh.'

Still, Jasmine hugged each of them, saying to Jaer, 'I would go with you, Jaer you know I would but you do not need me now and Hu'ao does. Be fortunate in your seeking.' Then they rode away, Jasmine still craning back to look at them until the forests came between. Even then the others stood in the portal gazing to the north. Kelner found them there and woke them to action with harsh screaming.

'Host of Gahl almost at your doors, and you stand here asleep! You will be Gahl meat before noon!' So they ended their time together running through the tunnels to the southeast portal and had only time for an uncomfortable gripping of shoulders from which Terascouros turned dry-eyed and anguished and Teraspelion with angry sobs. Then the last of the travellers, Terascouros, Medlo and Jaer, mounted and went from the Hill. When they had come almost halfway down the long slope toward the Gomilbata, the earth shuddered behind them. The last open ways had been sealed. Terascouros dried a few scanty tears and stared fixedly into the cold wind, speaking no word until a flurry of black wings tilted onto the horse's crupper behind her. She said his name as though it were a curse. 'Kelner.'

Thereafter he perched on one horse or another, rising to circle far above, teetering on the wind, dropping once more to clack beak and report the movement of the black hordes from Zales. They crossed the Gomilbata at the ford, black ice at either bank and black water beneath, the horses sliding and blowing, shaking their heads and snatching at the bits with their teeth. They went hastily on into the high grasses of the land between the rivers, pushing their way through dried tufts higher than their heads, seeds shedding from the plumes to coat them with itchy chaff and scratchy barbs. By midafternoon they were exhausted, so sore that each movement was torture. Jaer pulled up, half fell from the saddle to sprawl foolishly among the grasses, still holding the reins in lax fingers. Medlo dismounted stiffly, stumbled away to picket the animals. Kelner spiraled down to land beside them.

'You are resting?'

'Oh, Powers. We must,' said Terascouros. 'I have not ridden for many years. I had forgotten what it felt like.'

'One forgets,' said Medlow. 'One grows soft.'

'One simply hurts,' said Jaer without expression.

'I ask,' said the bird, 'because a mist moves from the Hill. A walking fog. It goes on and on.'

'Oh, tashas,' snarled Jaer. Terascouros looked shocked while Medlo barked quick laughter.

'Where did you learn that language?'

'From a drover. Now a man of the Hill. Why? Is it unlike me?'

'Unlike the Jaer we knew, yes. Like a drover, yes. I suppose you are both, or think you are.'

Jaer regarded him with a measure of anger. Medlo had been behaving since her awakening as though nothing had happened, that Jaer was as before, i am a drover, yes. And a midwife, pulling at reluctant twins in some hamlet near Enterling. And a man at arms of some place far to the south in Dantland, aching from long marches. And a woman of Owbel Bay, one dedicated to the Stones who was rescued from that horror to come into the Hill, instead. Oh, Lord of Fire, Medlo. I am a thousand, Jaer of the Thousand Lives. Why pretend it is not so? Now those foul mists move again. Where? I do not believe they will follow us!'

Kelner opined that the mists came no nearer. 'But the Gahlians have come to the Hill. They are within it. Like ants.' His beak stabbed down to come up with a wriggling tininess. 'Like black ants.'

Terascouros nodded. That is why the mist has moved again. Deep in the Hill, the Choir must sing its own invisibility, must create a curtain of concealment between them and the hordes. To do that, they would need to stop the song which quieted the mists. So now the mists move once again.'

'South,' said Kelner. 'That is the way they go. South.'

'Will Sybil find them, Teras? Does she know enough?'

'My daughter has never trusted her, remembering her treatment of Mawen. Teraspelion has kept the deep ways her own. I do not know what Teraspelion knows, but we may all pray that she knows enough to keep them safe.'

They rested in the tall grass, too weary to eat or drink. Terascouros spoke somewhat of the rule of Taniel, connecting that to Sybil, and the talk started some small searcher scurrying endlessly through Jaer's head, a seeker for clues to mysteries. In Jaer's weariness, the lives within her began to grow and swirl, to discourse among themselves, build relationships anew, discover common knowledge. Jaer fought them down. Out of the wallet at her side she took the quest book to read it with ostentatious concentration. 'I will be Jaer,' she said to herself. 'For a time, only Jaer. I will not be some mythic thing for them to follow like a beacon.' In her fatigue, she believed these thoughts were hers alone. She did not follow the image of the beacon into the mind of the mariner who had given it; instead, she read the book which she already knew from memory.

Meanwhile, Terascouros crouched across her bent knees, eyes shielded beneath her arms, trying to send her mind up and out to search the area behind them. There was a pressure, a great and hideous weight which bore her down. She struggled against it, straining, rose at last to bob upon the surface of whatever it was which oppressed her. On this surface she could move away toward Gerenhodh, could come close enough to see the outer halls.

There was only cold emptiness filled with automatons, black-robed ciphers moving endlessly through the abandoned corridors, faceless processions without beginnings, bodies pressing into every crevasse of stone. Each face was a blank circle of flesh, as alike to the next as though stamped out by a machine, teratoid and horrible. The weight found her once more, crushing her soul from her. An intention had found her, a someone, a something. She gasped, felt arms around her as Medlo and Jaer drew her out of the trance and into the grassland once more. She clung to them.

'Oh, they are there,' she gasped. 'The halls are full of them, but I cannot see clearly. Something prevents me.' Exhausted, she sank into sudden sleep. They wrapped her in a blanket and pulled her near the fire they had built. Even in her sleep she could sense the presence which searched for her, heavy and indomitable. In her sleep she vowed against it. 'You do not want me to see,' she dreamed. 'But I will see, in spite of you.' Dreams went into the void, and she only slept, mouth open, breath rasping in the quiet air.

Far behind them in the deep caverns of the Hill, others sent their minds roving into the dusk behind a screen of song. Old Aunt and her Council joined together to thrust through the weight above them, to see those who stood on the slope of the Hill, lit by torchlight, red robes in red light, red like blood, the colour of new wounds. With them was a woman, fury boiling from her like steam.

She was being questioned by a red-robed creature of Gahl, one with a voice like acid. 'There is no place of a Sisterhood here,' it said. 'Nothing here but stony ways. No persons, no maps, no books, no secrets of the ancient times. We have come as we said. Your part of the bargain must be kept.'

'They are here, Lithos,' Sybil snarled. 'I can feel them on my skin like dried candle grease. When I move, I feel them crack and splinter. They are here.'

'Where then? Show us how, where, into what crevasse our creatures must go, into which hallway we do infiltrate our own. Tell us, Singer, and the bargain is kept.'

'I can't tell you. I don't know! They have moved things, changed things. Get the hordes out of here and let me look. Let me search. Your mindless minions can only press and press; they cannot use their eyes.'

'But you can? You can find those who destroyed Murgin? Those our Master has bid us find? That one we seek?'

'I can if you will leave me alone. I can use my vision. I will use it to bring ruin on those who would dare set me to the silence. They have dealt always with sycophants and fools, with grovelling witlings. They have held Power in their hands only for the holding, never for the using. They have not done, planned as I will do. Yes! This vision is something I will use.'

'Ahhh. Then the hordes may move south, to that place they must go, soon, in time. And you will use your vision, in time. When we know that you are truly one of us, Singer, woman, in that you are woman no more ...'

Those below caught only a glimpse of Sybil's face, obdurate, so full of pent fury it did not show fear even now. Then the weight came down upon them, a weight which bore their minds into the deep caverns, no more knowing of their presence than an elephant might be aware as it crushed ants. The Sisters sang, softly, softly, raising the pressure away from themselves, making a safe place beneath that crushing force, a safe, silent, secret place, warm and lamplit beneath the cold horror in the Hill.

Only then did they separate their minds to stare at one another in disgust and sickness.

'Sybil,' said Old Aunt. 'The silence we set her to was as nothing to the silence they will bring upon her.'

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX.

THE NORTHERN WAY.

Days 1-14, Month of Thaw Thewson and Jasmine rode south into a chill morning accompanied by two men and two women from the Hill. The sun rose late through low cloud, and the weight of depression which they had felt while in the Hill rose with it until, when they had come half a day's journey away, it was as though something tangible had been lifted from them. One of the women, a Sister named Dhariat, pulled up her horse to take a deep breath of relief. 'Outside the song some great evil waits,' she said. 'I hope they took refuge in time.'

Their way led along the eastern slope of Gerenhodh, high above the plain of Gomilbata, and around the northeastern flank of the mountain in the Sasavinian Pass which is to say, 'South South Pass,' for the Savus Mountains were the 'Southern' mountains of the old realm of Sud-Akwith, and the pass lay at the extreme southern end of the range. The pass was famed in ancient legend as the site of many battles and heroic exploits of the Akwithian kings, for it linked the rolling, grassy lands of Sorgen to the marshes of Lakland by a direct route. It had been said that he who controlled the Sasavinian controlled the wealth of two provinces, and in ancient times that had been true.

The other woman, whose name was Seuskeigrhe called Sowsie rode scout for them. She ranged far ahead, watching in all directions, only to come pounding back to them at a place where a rocky ledge broke the forest to allow a long view to the east. On the far bank of the Gomilbata they could see a black shadow flowing, myriad black robes moving toward the Hill in an amorphous horde. 'We have been gone such a little time,' Sowsie said. 'They were very near already. They will reach the Hill while it is yet light.'

They moved behind a screeen of trees, not wanting to be seen by that distant horde, and rode on to the north. Thewson rode at Jasmine's side, and she leaned to poke at his iron-hard thigh. 'What do you have to say, warrior. You are silent, as usual.'

He leaned down to stroke her shoulders with a huge hand. 'As Sowsie says, there may be eyes in that shadow yonder. Let us go quiet in trees, like deer. I will think of tender grass, or grazing upon flowers.' He rode slowly ahead along the slope, leaving Jasmine smiling secretly behind him. He had been laughing at her, or with her, though it scarcely seemed a good time for it. Grazing upon flowers! She flushed to catch a knowing look from Dhariat.

'That one,' the woman said, 'is quite fond of you.'

'Perhaps,' Jasmine responded. 'A little.'

'Perhaps,' the woman agreed mockingly. 'And not a bad thing in a dangerous time. I have seen weaker men.'

'The ones who came with us are strong. What Leona would call woodswise.'

'Indeed. They are half brothers. Daingol and Lain-achor. They were born and reared in the north, along the Akwidon above Tanner.'

'The old city? What was it named before? Gombator?'

'Yes. In the time of the D'Zunalor. Daingol says he has travelled to the first fork of the Akwidon. No one in the Hill has been north of that.'

'How did they I mean, I understand how the women came to the Sisterhood, but how do the men ...?

Dhariat laughed softly. 'Oh, some of us bring some of them. And some of them come with trade caravans and choose to stay. And some are born to us, of course.'