He shook his head gently. 'We will go. But you have not seen what will await us.' He moved toward another of the flickering glassy surfaces of the seeing devices with which the tower was furnished. It seemed to show nothing except open sky above the valley, but then she saw wings, serpent necks with narrow, fanged heads, tails with curved blades of chitin upon them, deadly as scorpion tails.

'When did these come?'

'The red-robed ones rode in upon them. Others came then, larger ones. We do not know how many.'

'The Remnant? Your people? Did they ...'

'They got away unseen, Lady. Went like the wind, east and north to Tchent, there to stop from purpose of their own, then perhaps to go even beyond the Concealment. No, these air serpents came after, we think.'

'The sky is full of them.' She brooded over the sight, then turned again to the great drum. The hammer was inching upward once again. Behind them in the valley rose the song of the massed Choirs, a music as much felt as heard. One of the people watching on the devices in the tower room said 'Ahhh' in satisfaction as the mists on the western cliffs grew quiet. The haihmer came up a bit more.

'You did not tell me about the winged things. They are half dragon, half scorpion. Hideous. You did not tell me.'

'There was nothing we could do. If it had been important, you would have known of it. The Crown would have told you.'

Leona shook her head, felt a boiling mixture of laughter and tears threatening to come bubbling out of her throat. 'Oh, Hazliah, I do not believe it is the Crown of Wisdom at all. Either that or no one can be wise in such a trap. I would trade all its wisdom if we might only be invisible.'

And she turned again to watch the hammer inch upward toward the top of its cradle.

In Tharliezalor, Medlo's horse had reached an outlying street of the city: cracked and fissured pavement, dusty growth furring the breaks with nettles. Ancient arches gaped at them, windows stared after them, ghosts of movement caught at the corners of their eyes. They heard spirits of sound down empty streets, a high keening which made the skin ache but barely reached the ears. Jaer and Medlo rode with naked blades in their hands, Terascouros between them. Two of the horses trembled, but Jaer's tall black beast looked calmly at the world from yellow eyes and paced steadily forward.

At some corners, the black horse would not move in the way Jaer desired. It backed away, turning into other streets. Jaer allowed herself to be taken, hearing behind her in the streets they had not entered a humming sound, as though some monstrous harp string had been plucked.

Terascouros reached out to them blindly, her eyes unfocused. 'Shhh, they are coming. Lead my horse.' She began to sing in her high, whispery old voice, very softly.

They did come, pouring out of every opening like serpents from a burst sack; grey, fanged, silent. They came very near, just outside the circle of Terascouros's song, eyes burning with hunger. They heaped upon one another, scrambling toward the trio. The horses moved within a circle scarcely two man heights wide, walked among fiery eyes and dripping teeth and shrill screaming, but they did walk while Terascouros sang.

Medlo thought, 'This is impossible. Her voice is only a whisper, and yet I hear it in harmony, strong as though it were many voices.'

The answer came from Jaer. 'Old Aunt. The Sisterhood of Gerenhodh. They are here, singing us forward. They have sent their mind to watch over us. They will not abandon their Ahl di. I am to go find them their way, will I ornilll.'

It came to Medlo as a revelation. This was why Terascouros had come, of course, to serve as an outlet for those voices, a focus which they might use. Well, he could help them. He brought the jangle from his back to rest it on the horse's neck, setting his mind and heart into the song, joining it, remembering all he had learned in the vaults under the Hill.

They turned into the wide avenue which led to the bridge. Medlo bit back an exclamation of horror, for it stretched ahead of them in a living carpet of serim which the song must hold at bay. They went forward, slow step by slow step, a distance of hours a distance of forever.

On the ramparts above Orena the hammer reached the top of its cradle. A red-clad arm gestured sharply downward. The hammer fell upon the great drum to cry DOOM upon the cliffs, in echo repeating and growing across the valley to return once more; DOOM to crash among the pillars of immemorial stone which stood at the gates of the valley, making them crack and shatter, raining boulders upon the walls and the gates of the highway, echoing back once more; DOOM against the high tower of the Temple so that it shivered beneath the sound, reverberating within in the place the Choirs were assembled; DOOM upon the voices of the maidens and the Sisters; DOOM upon the song of the Choirs of Taniel so that they were deafened and made mute so that silence came.

Then the ghosts of Gahl upon the cliffs were restrained no more but boiled into hideous life, pouring over the cliffs like a rain of bats onto the valley floor. Lithos and Sybil turned aside from the great hammer, mounted upon two of the winged beasts and swept away to the north. Behind them on the heights, the Tharnel worms reared into towers of segmented, grisly death. Along the walls, guardsmen shouted and screamed, ran for the safety of the enclosed towers. Doors slammed shut, weapons masters sweated and swore in the half light of the screens, rays of red light flicked from the towers. Where the worms were directly hit they glowed, burned, and died, but between the worms and die weapon intruded those bulks of shadowy darkness, shapeless and edgeless, into which the burning lights fell as dew into a pond. Into these shadows were guardsmen sucked up and lost as though they had never been.

Leona watched it all, heartsick and unable to turn aside from it. This vaunted Crown does not help us,' she whispered to Hazliah, 'except to make me sure we must not be taken by those shadows while we live.' Behind them in the valley the song of the Choirs rose once more, faltering and hesitant. Still, it was enough to slow the advance of the mists on the valley floor, to slow the shadows on the heights so that weapons could fall upon the worms and their masters once more. To the rear of the massed hordes of Gahl, a curious turbulence began, a whirling movement, a troubling upon the ramparts as in a confusion of ants when their nest is destroyed. 'Hazliah? Are they being attacked? Have we guardsmen behind them?'

'You know we have not, Lady. No man, however armoured, can stand against the worms or pull them down.'

'They are being pulled down, nonetheless. Look for yourself.' She thrust him toward the screen of the seeing device where the distorted, jerking images swayed and spun. Even through the thick walls of the tower they could hear a change in the sounds outside. Then they heard nothing, for the great hammer had fallen again, DOOM reverberating across the shivering valley, the song from the Temple shattered into silence once more, and away to the west the mists piled into tottering towers which fell and rebuilt themselves and fell again, forward, toward the city.

The song rose once more, haltingly. For the moment the bulks of darkness which had swallowed the ramparts to either side of the tower were dissipated. Leona eased through the door to peer at the confused struggle going on among the rocks, unable to see more from that vantage point than she had in the screens within. Men were shouting. Not the Gahlians, who fought silently and fell as silently into fog. She watched them fall, watched the mist ooze away from each fallen, black-robed heap, running like living slime against the tug of the earth, uphill to the cliff edge to fall in terrible rain on the rocks beneath, to assemble, to flow again to the west of the valley where the other mists towered and fell like knotted measuring worms. Where they passed no herb grew green, no branch showed leaf, no small furry thing hidden in the thickets lived on. Only bones showed there, gnawed and grey, powdery as dust.

The shouts grew louder, were lost once more in the monstrous call of the drum, DOOM onto the Temple recincts and the city. There in the streets people fell eneath the stroke of that drum. The sound of the Choirs began waveringly once more, so weakly that those on the heights could see the mists still moving, unslowed.

On the ramparts, Leona could hear the shouting voices clearly now. They were separated from her by only one last spine of standing stones. 'Widon, Widon, Widon.' She glimpsed a knot of warriors, green-clad as in spring leaf, burnished and mailed, glittering behind blades which made a terrible tally of the hosts of Gahl. The warriors were pressing toward the great drum, leaving behind them piled heaps of the dead. Around the drum, the struggle increased, and Leona darted into the tower to hang over the screen once more, hearing the sounds of battle swell through the open door behind her. From the clustered warriors a mighty form leapt up to "catch the edge of the drum with hooked fingers, huge legs kicking at the black robes dancing in fury below. He rolled onto the drum head, thrust down with a spear blade, then ran across the drum, slitting it from edge to edge with a sound like cracking earth. He stood triumphant at the edge of the drum as the great hammer fell againto crash wood upon metal as the mallet broke and made no sound, no sound as the hosts of Gahl fell in their thousands, no sound as the Tharnel worms were cut to pieces by ten thousand blades, each the very likeness and image of the blade carried by the warrior on the drum, no sound but the shout of ten thousand voices, Thew-son, Thew-son, Thew-son!'

Leona vaulted from the wall, ran through clots of struggling bodies toward that triumphant figure dancing victory upon the drum rim. Thewson! You come timely! We had no hope, but you have come....' Then, when he had dropped to her side, she added, 'Though I fear you have slain one army only to build another.'

'We have slain more than one,' he grumbled, wiping the blade of his spear. 'Stony heads. Worms from the stone city. Black things with no shape. Those fuxlus of Gahl. No, Leona, these do not make more ghosts. See. The are dead. It is my spear. It is the Sword of Sud-Akwith, they said that. All this time I had it. In the northlands we melted it in the great crucible with the metal for ten thousand others, so now Sud-Akwith's sword is in every sword, and we kill these things dead.' He glowed at her with enormous complacency. 'AH the time hurry to get here in time, with the boats against the wind on the river and battle march the whole way. Well. We are here.'

'Is Jasmine with you?'

He gestured over his shoulder toward the north. 'In the boat. On the river with no name. I say, "Stay in Tanner, where no black robe is." But no. They would not. They would come here. Jasmine. Her girl child. The people from Gerenhodh. The small people.'

'I would they were not so near, Thewson, for I do not believe even the Sword of Sud-Akwith will prevail against ghosts already made. Song was to have saved us, but it comes haltingly.'

'There will be victory,' he announced. 'Why did the bird bid me bring warriors else? My gods would not do such foolishness. Ranamu-ah alumya! Listen, you high god!' Then for the first time, he saw the tottering towers of mist in the valley below them. 'Aaah. Who will kill that if the swords cannot? The singers?'

'They will not, Thewson. After everything that has happened, still they will not. Walls will not stop the mists. Weapons will not wound it. Come to the city. You will see for yourself.'

They came up out of the tunnel into the armouries below the Temple, up into chaos. Sisters lay as though slain, blood trickling from their ears, some moaning, some silent, healers scurrying among them with drugs to aid the pain. Bombaroba threw himself into Leona's arms. 'It was the drum. It got louder and louder in the echoes, louder and louder. Some of the singers fell down. Some stopped their ears, but then it was hard for them to sing. Oh, Lady, have they made the drum stop?'

She knelt beside him. 'This is Thewson, Bomba. A very mighty warrior. He has come from the northlands with thousands, and they have killed the drum. Go, tell the Sisters. Tell everyone. Ask one of the Choir leaders to come talk to me.' He went away, wiping tears, too busy for the moment to remember his fear.

The Choir leader came, hair dishevelled, face spotted with blood her own or someone else's lines graven between her eyes. 'Only one in ten is able to sing now,' she said. 'Perhaps that many more after a few hours' rest. Those singing now will soon need rest. We cannot hold the ghosts.'

Leona took the Vessel of Healing from her belt, handed it to Hazliah who stood nearby watching Thewson with a curious intensity. 'Hazliah, fill this with wine and give it to the wounded, then fill again, and again. You know what it is and what it will do, but it will take time. How long until the ghosts reach the city?'

'They are moving slowly. Perhaps some hours yet.'

Thewson shifted irritably. 'You cannot take the people away from here?'

'Where? How? We can send some to the ramparts, now that the mists are here. The children, perhaps, but only a few in the time we have.'

'Then you get strong and sing these mists gone,' he said to the Choir leader. 'You must.'

The leader pressed her hands to her forehead in anguish. 'We may not. We dare not. It has been forbidden.'

He struck the floor with his spear, resoundingly. 'See this. You do not sing them gone. All die. You do sing them gone. Wa'osu it may be all die. What is the difference?'

Leona laughed without humour. 'Thewson, I will make you a gift. Long have you sought it, my friend. Long have I borne it. It is no help to me; perhaps it may aid you.' Too quickly for him to protest, she took the circlet from her head and set it upon his. He put up a puzzled hand to take it away, then stayed, frozen in place, an expression of curious concentration knotting his face.

'There,' she said. 'I need no longer feel responsible for this. Not for this, nor what is to come. You tell us what to do. You argue with the Choirs.'

Beneath the Crown, Thewson listened to a distant whirr of jewelled bird god wings, a jubilant whisper, 'Thew-son, Thew-son.'

'I will not argue,' he said presently. 'It is right what they do. They may not sing the mists gone.'

'Well, so much for practicality. Then guide us. What shall we do now?'

'West and south are mists; above are the winged things. If you fly there, they are many and you are few. Do not fly. Not yet. Wisdom says this.'

Hazliah made a mocking face. 'Then so much for wisdom. What may we do?'

'The people are many. They cannot flee. We cannot move ourselves. Other places, others move. Wisdom says this, and wisdom says we wait.'

'If we must merely wait, may we do it upon the city walls?' Leona could not remain longer under a roof. The gryphon within her lusted to be free of the walls, longed for the sky Thewson had forbidden her. 'Let us go to the walls.'

Thewson nodded soberly. 'We may go there. To wait.'

In Tharliezalor, Jaer let the black horse carry her while she clung to the saddle, using both hands. Within her, the multitude was silent, as though they had never been, but the pattern they had built stretched from edge to edge of her being, a single structure, an enigmatic, brooding potentiality which was as ominous in its way as the serim piled before them. Puckered tentacles of hunger and threat plucked at her. Whatever inhabited the dome had found er and now hammered at her with an almost physical force. Her skin flinched and her body shuddered; her eyes watered, her stomach heaved with nausea, but the labyrinthine pattern within her mind stood like a mighty fortress, impregnable, unmoved.

They had struggled step by step down the long avenue, sometimes pressing against a weight of serim which they could feel, though the beasts never came closer than the song-charmed circle they moved within. Now they came to a broad plaza from which a bridge sprang up and outward toward the distant dome. Among the serim moved edgeless bulks which drew the eye and thought as magnets draw iron. Medlo forced his eyes down onto the jangle, playing with concentration. Into his thought, unbidden, came the song heard within the curtain of the Concealment. 'Camped on fear's ground ... in terror's tents ...' Almost his fingers began to play it; almost his voice began to sing it. He bit his lips, thrust the jangle away while the words sang in his head. Something wanted him to sing that. He would not. 'Drinking alone from horror's cup...' No! Grinly he brought his mind back to the song which protected them, a shackle song, a constraining song, millennia old, magically powerful, the same that was being sung in Orena, though he was not to know that.

Upon the walls of Orena, a muffled exclamation from Hazliah drew their attention to the sky where huge bat wings circled down toward the heaped and tumbling ghosts. One, two, five, a dozen. The venomous beasts landed just ahead of the mists, departed again to leave their burdens behind. Thewson drew a horrified breath as he recognized those figures.

'Jasmine,' he cried. 'The child, the little ones!'

'Behind them,' grated Leona. 'On the dragon beast. Sybil, and that other one.'

There on the plain before the city the mists drew into a towering wall, a marching wall, moving with slow, inexorable pace toward the city where the thousands watched. And before the mists marched those others, tiny at the distance, leashed by heavy chains to the two red-robed ones who drove them. There was Jasmine, Hu'ao, Po-Bee, Doh-ti, Hanna-lil, Dhariat.

'Mum-lil,' mumbled Thewson. 'Lain-achor. Daingol. Sowsie? Where? Fox? Where? Gaffer Gumsuch?'

'Do we still wait?' snapped Leona. 'Or do we rise and fight? Hazliah?'

'When you will, Lady. As you will.'

'No,' cried Thewson thunderously. 'Wait. Even now, wait.'

The tiny figures were driven forward, so close that he could see the tears on Jasmine's face. 'Wait,' he muttered, putting his teeth into his hand so that the blood ran. 'Even now, wait.'

In Tharliezalor the riders were almost across the bridge, almost at the domed building. Behind them was a towering wall of scrambling fury, but before them was only the building and the dome, glowing in rotten light. Still Medlo sang, Terascouros sang, the voices from far-off Gerenhodh sang, and Jaer rode as in a trance, remote and dreaming.

Open doors gave into a wide hallway. The black horse went forward to a central space, open above to the sky. They dismounted and went farther. It seemed to Jaer that the black horse followed them, though she could not hear hooves, and she thought of the horse and of Kelner and knew she would not hear hooves or wings. Terascouros still sang, but the voices from the hill were weakened here. The three peered about themselves uncertainly, come to an end, a goal, not knowing what to do next.

There was a pit of twisted metal, lights flickering at the edge of vision like shifting eyes, a veil of corpse light between grey buttresses, high, narrow tables festooned with dust among a maze of shadows. Then to one side they saw the jar, vast, bound about with hoops of steel. Once having noticed it, they could not look away again, for in it something lived.

Something without colour, without shape. Something which had no right to be, no natural thing. Something which might have been drawn from the depths of an unknown space, too unfamiliar to be horrid, too strange to be totally terrifying. The horror and terror it evoked were of a different kind, a discrepant order. It was there. It knew. It had found them. Now it spoke to each.

'Medlo. Come. We will go to Rhees. I have Separated them all, all the ones you have reason, good reason to hate mother, uncle. You can see for yourself what is left of them, enjoy the sight. You may drink what is left of them like wine, Medlo. You may rule in Rhees. Medlo, Prince. Only lay down that which you carry, Medlo. It is only a burden. You don't need it. Alan, Medlo. Alan will be there, too.'

Medlo's voice dried in his throat. His hands left the strings to hang limply at his sides. He saw Rhees in the brightness of spring, the lawns jewel-green in morning light, River Einnit sparkling beneath the sun. From the streets came laughter. He was dressed in the honour cape of the King, and beside him was Alan ... Alan ...

'Terascouros, you are old, so old. Bones creak and body aches. We don't need it anymore, Terascouros. In me you can live forever. No pain anymore. No body at all. Roam the world, Terascouros. I will give you Sybil for a slave, what is left of her. You may go where you will, see everything, know everything. You have only to stop singing, Terascouros. Only to stop singing.'

Terascouros could feel all her bones, each one with its individual pain. She was old, too old. And yet her restless mind did not wish to go into nothingness, did not wish to die. Ah, to know everything. Ah, to wander and learn without pain ...

'Jaer, I will take all those others inside of you away. You don't need them. It is you who are important, Jaer, not them. I can take them, and you can go back to the tower. Ephraim will be there, and Nathan, and it will all be easy and simple, with the sun warm on the tower steps. I am the Gate, Jaer. I am the Ahl di. You have found me. You have done enough. Give them all up, Jaer. Give them up: Jaer trembled. Ephraim and Nathan were both pleading with her. She was weary, weary of the journey, the uncertainty, the inhabitants within who built of her a pattern she did not understand. She was weary of voices and quests. It would be good, so good to be a child again ...

In Orena, Jasmine walked in chains, her eyes upon Thewson where he stood upon the wall. Behind her, Sybil rode upon the dragon beast and screamed to Thewson in a voice of jagged metal, 'The Sword, Thewson, and the Crown: Put them down, and we will let you have this woman, this child. You may take them to the Lion Courts, Thewson. They call your name in the Lion Courts, to make you Chieftain. No one else. They know of your renown, of your courage, your battles. They have cried Thewson's name along the god trail. Come down and give us the Sword, the Crown in exchange for these.'

And Lithos called to Leona where shfe and Hazliah hung across the battlements, staring in fury. 'I will take you to Fabla, Leona, for she lives. Come down and set your talons into this pretty meat I have for you, and I will take you to Fabla once again. Get the Vessel for us. Trade it, Leona.'

The voices of these two struck Leona in whiplashes of sound. She screamed only once, a gryphon's scream, heard it echoed by Hazliah. Together they lunged upward from the walls, mindless with rage. Thewson could not have held them longer. He bowed beneath their screams, hearing the same sounds coming faintly from the north. There Hazliah's kindred beat toward the city, returned from wherever they had taken the Remnant. Still other cries of fury came from within the city, and those remaining of the gryphons wheeled out from the Temple tower into the battle which tore the sky above the city walls.

Serpent beast and gryphon met above the towers, air shrilling along bat wings, clawed feet slashing, venomed stings snapping and recoiling. Blood rained on the city from their meeting as membranes ripped into tatters; beasts fell in sprawled dragon shapes upon the roofs of Orena. Crippled gryphons planed down, struggling to veer away from the wall of ghosts. Individual battles broke from the mass to spiral away across the valley. Below, the people of Orena poured from every building to stare above them. Onto the walls the Sisters came in their gore-spattered hundreds, standing together in song beneath the blood-curtained sky.

Sybil and Lithos dismounted from their dragon beasts, gestured them upward to join the fray, laughing mockingly as Thewson clenched his fists to hammer them upon the stones. His eyes were locked upon Jasmine's. He tried frantically to devise some plan for her rescue. Bells were ringing. The song rose in power. There was the sound of battle, screaming, the mockery of those red-robed fuxlus. The Crown told him nothing, nothing at all....

Beneath the dome in Tharliezalor a shadow seduced the prince, the singer, and the changeling.

Medlo thought of Alan. No. Of Jaer. As he had seen her outside Murgin, mutilated and broken. That was what Alan was now. That. And Rhees had fallen to the Gahlians. It was all lies and false promises. 'No,' he said to the shadow. 'No.'

Terascouros's voice had faltered, but only for a moment. From far-off Gerenhodh the mind of the Sisterhood reached out to her. 'Teras,' said Old Aunt. 'Behave yourself!' Terascouros laughed in her heart, took up the pain again, and the song.

But Jaer moved to the great jar. She wanted to lay her head against it, let what was within swallow her up together with all her inhabitants. Then, from the silent multitude within her, a voice cried, 'Do not forget me.'

For a moment she did not know whose voice it was. The realization came slowly. Among the multitudes were even those who had died.... Jaer took a deep breath and looked upon the shadow where it dwelt and had dwelt for thousands of years. 'Mother, I will not forget you.'

So saying, she stepped to Medlo's side and lifted the fringed sash over his head, feeling the solid weight of it on her palms, the roughness of the silver thread. She stood to confront the shadow with the sash across her hands.

'I have two weapons,' she whispered. 'I have carried neither. One is the song of Terascouros, which binds for only a time. The other is the Girdle of Chu-Namu, the Girdle of Binding, which binds forever.'

That in the jar struck out at her, a bolt of force thrusting out of blackness. Jaer staggered, went to one knee, still speaking. 'During my long sleep, I learned of this girdle. Jasmine sought it. Medlo carried it. It is destined for this place, to bind ... to bind ... myself?' Her voice broke as the bolt of force came again, darkness spun into a lance of fear and horror, but there was a tall form standing beside her, reaching across her quivering shoulders to stroke the sash which she held while comforting her with glowing yellow eyes.

'No, Not yourself Jaer. Not you. Others.'

They were there suddenly, seven slender forms which burned with anguished fire, blazed with a single purpose. One of them took the sash from Jaer's lax hands, and Jaer wept at the touch, for the agonies of Murgin had been nothing beside this agony. She heard a woman's voice cry, 'Farewell, Urlasthes, my love....' The seven moved toward the black jar.

Time moved away from them into maelstrom, a twisting, vertiginous wracking which wrenched at them until bones screamed with pain and blood started in droplets on their foreheads. Behind them the keening of the serim grew in intensity, higher and higher. Before them the Remnant struggled to encircle the jar, struggled as they were thrust this way and that, thrown by the force as though they had been dolls.

Urlasthes held tightly to the hands of others of the Remnant to left and right. Then his grip was broken. The two ends of the fragile chain were flung aside, lashing like pennants. The circle struggled to close, was broken, struggled again, was broken once more. Dazedly the seven crawled toward the jar to try once more, and were driven once more into the shadows. Within the jar, a paean of awful triumph began.

Jaer clung to the metal table beside her, the multitudes within her tumbled and whipped as though by hurricane, torn into fragments even as the structure they had helped to build began to shine, to glow. Light from it moved into Jaer, coursed through her, into her eyes, her mouth. At once she was aware of the city, the piled serim, the hills and upon those hills the gathered forces she had denied those who had destroyed Murgin, those ancient, awesome, and mighty; the gathered hosts of myth.

'Come,' she cried, in a voice like a great gong struck before a multitude. 'Come. There is need of thee. Thou, dwellers of the world, companions, thou long-denied, there is no need of thee....'

The thundering force from the black jar redoubled at her cry. Her fingers slipped from the table. Terascouros was blown away to crash into a wall, lying sprawled and still. The song from Gerenhodh fell silent.

But then the room began to fill with others. Wings moved above stalking bodies, ivory hooves struck against stone, sounds as of far music rose over the serim cries, terror and joy walked into the room, draperies, leaves, mists, metallic hides spotted with jewels. The sphinx which had marched on Murgin marched once more, eyes fixed on the great jar, seeming hardly to see the pitiful, white-robed figures which the narrowing circle of creatures gathered and thrust before them. Lion forms walked; tree forms; things of ocean and air. Among them was the tall being with yellow eyes, achingly familiar, infinitely strange. They came in a silver flood, lifting the Remnant before them into a circle which tightened upon the shadow. Then the hands of the Remnant were joined, passing the Girdle from hand to hand. The tall figure moved among them, helping to fasten the Girdle at last.

For a moment, words too loathsome to hear screamed at each of them as that fought to stay Separate. Then there was a sound, almost as though thunder muttered for an instant upon a far mountain, then a shattering noise as the great jar broke, its bonds snapped through. Wind rushed by them full of noisome odours, returned fresh with summer. Of the seven, nothing remained. Dust blew in the wind.

Among the shards of the jar lay Medlow's sash, softly gleaming with silver embroidery over its pattern of clouds and rain. It was Jaer who picked it up and placed it in Medlo's hands once more, but it was the voice of the yellow-eyed one which spoke to them.

'The Girdle of Chu-Namu, the Girdle of Binding, given to Our Lady of the Waters in the City of the Mists in a forgotten time, No other than this could have bound the seven to that which they had presumed to cast out, so long ago.'

Then it seemed that the tall, yellow-eyed one left them; the creatures vanished as a cloud vanishes; for they were alone in Thaliezalor with a woman who told them her name was Taniel.

Thewson could not think. In the still air above the valley there was no attempt at thought. There was only rage, fury of wing, talon, beak and fang. Even at that height, Sybil's voice could be heard cawing, 'Die, winged lion, old eagle-beak. Die then as the Sisters and Choirs will die. I mock you as I mock them, those who would have set Sybil to the silence. Who will have power now? Who will rule where the Council once sat. I, winged one, I, I, I, I, I.'

Sybil's voice almost drowned out Litho's muttering, 'Die, die you who are not, are not, are not....'