The stairway looked long and dark, the corridor above wreathed in shadow. Cobweb ran up the stairs, his flesh p.r.i.c.kling. He did not like to feel the house so disturbed. It should be a safe haven and that night it did not feel safe, despite all the precautions he'd taken. He went to his room and gratefully opened the door. Beyond, a dim lamp was lit next to the bed, and a shadowy figure stood in the bay of the window.

Cobweb was momentarily paralyzed. He remembered the nights when Terzian had come to him in that room, and had stood looking out of the window in just that way, his hands clasped behind his back.

'Swift...' Cobweb said, and waited for the figure to turn to him, to reveal itself as known and ordinary. But instead, he found himself looking only at an empty s.p.a.ce. There was nohar there.

That night, he dreamed of Terzian. In the dream Terzian was not dead. He came back to Forever, having been lost on a long journey. He said to Cobweb, 'You have betrayed me. I will not forgive you. I must take from you all that you love.'

And Cobweb saw a hill where once a home had stood, and it had become a pyre, its summit a ma.s.s of roaring flame.

Tyson could not feel things the way Cobweb did. He was impatient with having been hauled from a convivial evening at the barracks in Galhea and could see no reason for it. Cobweb was spooked. So what? Seel had been visiting friends, and he also appeared to be slightly put out at having been ordered home. For once, Seel and Tyson were in accord.

'What's this all about?' Tyson asked Seel.

Seel shrugged. 'Can't say. I hope that Cobweb is wrong, that's all. We should all hope that.'

In the morning, all seemed normal. Tyson went down to the dining room for breakfast where Cobweb, Swift and Seel had already gathered. 'Has the storm of ghosts pa.s.sed?' Tyson asked Cobweb.

'The air feels a little better today,' Cobweb said. 'Take that look off your face, Ty. I wasn't wrong last night.'

Tyson sat down. 'I was on a winning streak at cards when I was dragged back here. The next time I might not be so lucky and I shall hold you responsible.'

'If that's the worst that can come from last night, I will be happy,' Cobweb said. 'Where are Azriel and Aleeme?'

'Sleeping late,' Swift said. 'Perhaps they were on ghost watch all night.'

Tyson laughed and even Seel grinned into his coffee.

'Go and rouse them, Ty,' Cobweb said.

Tyson rolled his eyes, 'Oh, for the Ag's sake, why? Let them sleep.'

'Tyson!'

Tyson sighed and got to his feet. 'OK, OK, I'm going.'

At Azriel's door, Tyson knocked and called out, 'Stop whatever you're doing, if you're doing anything. Cobweb has summoned you.'

No voices answered him.

Tyson knocked again. 'Az?'

Again, silence. Tyson opened the door. It took a moment for what he saw to register. He didn't go inside.

Tyson's feet barely touched the stairs as he ran back to the dining-room. 'Swift!' he cried.

Swift was on his feet in an instant and together he and Tyson ran back upstairs. They didn't speak. They didn't need to.

The room was a mess. All the windows were broken and ragged drapes flapped against the shattered frames. Half the furniture was turned over, and the floor was covered in ripped bedclothes and shards of gla.s.s. The bare mattress was daubed in gouts of red.

'Search,' Swift said.

Tyson obeyed this command without question. He felt light-headed. This wasn't real.

Cobweb and Seel appeared at the threshold and Cobweb uttered a strange hoa.r.s.e cry.

'They're not here,' Swift said. 'They're not here.'

'This isn't possible,' Seel said. 'Where are they? What happened?'

'Your father....' Cobweb said. He was hanging onto the door frame as if he were trapped on a sinking ship.

'What?' Swift barked.

Cobweb shook his head. 'He was here. Your father.'

'No,' Swift said. 'No ghost did this. Stop it, Cobweb.' He rubbed his face with both hands. 'Did any of you hear anything last night?'

'No,' Seel said. 'Nothing.'

Swift touched the broken window frame. 'Somehar or something broke in, that's obvious. Why didn't we hear anything?'

'Oh G.o.d,' Seel said, using an oath that was little heard nowadays. 'It's happened again.'

'What?' Swift snapped. 'Speak.'

'When Cal killed Orien... In Saltrock. None of us heard it. It was like a bewitchment.'

'No!' Swift said. 'Not that. No more of that. The past is done. This is now. Tyson?'

'What are you asking me?'

'You and I are the only ones not squirming beneath a ton of history,' he said. 'What do you think? Tell me.'

'I think somehar broke in and... oh, how should I know? Have they been kidnapped, murdered?'

Swift pushed past the others, making for the stairs. 'We'll search the grounds. Come. Hurry. All of us. I'll fetch Ithiel.'

The search revealed nothing more than Snake, who was making his way in painful slowness to Forever. Cobweb, who was searching with Swift and Tyson, met him beneath the yews in the gardens. Cobweb went to him at once, in such a state he didn't register the fact that touch-resistant Snake took hold of his hands.

'What has happened?' Snake demanded. 'I feel it. What has happened?'

Cobweb explained as succinctly as he could.

Snake nodded, his expression grim. 'It has come,' he said. 'Our barrier was no match for it.'

'What?' Swift demanded.

'An opposing force,' Snake said shortly, releasing Cobweb's hands. 'An enemy. It comes from the otherlanes. We were negligent last night, Cobweb. The threat was greater than either of us thought. We didn't do enough, didn't investigate the matter as fully as we should have done. We shouldn't have slept. The danger came when we were not alert.'

'That's my thought too,' Cobweb said. 'I'm furious with myself, but that changes nothing. Now we must decide how to act.'

'Why take Azriel and Aleeme?' Swift asked. 'What is the motive? Ransom?'

'A warning,' Snake said. 'That is my opinion. Kind of them. Or perhaps it is simply arrogance.'

'They could be dead,' Cobweb said bitterly. 'I can't tell.'

'If murder had been the objective, surely they'd have left the bodies for us to find,' Swift said. 'No, I think we must a.s.sume that Azriel and Aleeme have been taken as currency.'

Snake made a growling sound in his throat. 'You're right. Muster your forces, Lord Swift. Secure your domain and prepare yourself.'

'For what? Attack? But from who?'

'It will begin here,' Snake said, 'but I believe the real focus is Immanion. Galhea is its strongest ally. Subjugate Parasiel, then move on Imbrilim, and you destroy the heart of the Gelaming's hold in this country. From there, with otherlane access, the way to Almagrabra lies open to you.'

'Who are these enemies?' Swift demanded. 'Do they have the use of sedim? Does that imply they are rogue Gelaming?'

'They're not Gelaming, as far as I can tell,' Snake said. 'My thought is that some remnants of Varr or Uigenna have found their way to a power none of us believed they'd ever possess.'

'How?'

'If I knew that, I would tell you,' Snake said coldly. 'I'm not sure, in any case. It's just a theory. I, more than any of you, know how what is left of my tribe view the Gelaming. Only months ago, I would cheerfully have joined a campaign to oust them myself!'

'Did you contact Pell last night?' Cobweb asked.

Snake frowned. 'I don't know. I tried as best I could. I just hope the message got through.' He smiled without humour. 'I am arrogant myself. I thought that no barrier could hold me back. I was wrong. However, the Gelaming use the otherlanes all the time. We can only trust they have encountered the same phenomenon and are alerted, as we were.'

'I will send a party to Imbrilim today,' Swift said. 'We cannot rely on vague hopes.'

'Is there really any evidence of an imminent attack?' Tyson asked. 'This could be a personal issue, somehar who has a grievance against our House.'

'If that's the case, they also have a grievance against the House of Aralis,' Snake said. 'The taint I feel in the air around me is the same I felt in the apartment of the Tigrina. I also feel power ma.s.sing. It creeps upon us like a slow-moving storm. It's a hurricane over the waters of the otherlanes and soon it will break against the land.' He turned to Cobweb. 'We have much work to do today. I want to see the faces of our enemies. Then we are in a better position to help Azriel and Aleeme, supposing they still live. Help me to the house.'

Chapter Twenty-Two.

Immanion's discovery of the strange otherlane phenomenon was, in fact, far more dramatic than that of Galhea's. As Snake had pointed out, the Gelaming used the otherlanes continually. Therefore, when the blast of hostile energy blocked and destroyed the most familiar of its labyrinthine paths, many Gelaming were in transit. Some were expelled into earthly reality instantaneously, while others were less fortunate. Some were trapped in trackless void, and yet more were killed, the atoms of their being blown apart by the searing energy that hit them. The screams of the sedim gushed out of the otherlanes and rattled the towers of Phaonica. Every har in the city was shaken awake in his bed. The Gelaming woke from dreams into nightmare, into paralyzing fear. Heads sizzled with pain, limbs were numb. Something terrible had happened.

Eyra Fiumara was the member of the Hegemony whose responsibilities revolved mainly around otherlane traffic. His staff was called The Listeners, sensitives of Algoma caste, whose inner eyes and ears were finely tuned to the ethers. Eyra was the greatest of Immanion's seers and he turned up at Pell's apartment in Phaonica before the Tigron had even gathered his wits enough to summon him. The Listeners were already busy working on the problem, trying to unblock the otherlanes in order to rescue trapped Gelaming and discover who or what had instigated the obstacles.

Pellaz received Eyra in his dressing room, still wearing his night-robe. 'What has caused this?' Pellaz demanded. 'We know so little of the otherlanes. Thiede took too much of his knowledge with him, never having shared it. Is this a natural phenomenon, a disaster that was waiting to happen?'

'That is not my belief,' Eyra said. 'Something has shaken the otherlanes, but from those who managed to escape I've learned they felt a rush of hostile force. It was like a blast of heat to them. They are lucky to be alive.'

'Is there any indication where this hostility came from?'

'Not yet. The ethers are equally in chaos. We can't communicate with any of our settlements or allies. We are, in this instance, alone with the problem.'

'It seems senseless to send ships to Megalithica to give and receive news,' Pellaz said. 'It would take weeks for them to reach it.' He paused. 'What of the sedim? Is there nothing we can learn from them?'

'The sedim have always kept their own counsel,' Eyra replied. 'They communicate with us only to the extent of enabling travel. If they have any other agenda, or even the ability to communicate with us fully, it is unknown.'

Pellaz sat down, frowning. 'If only we knew how Thiede acquired the sedim, or exactly where they came from.' He glanced up at Eyra. 'How many have we lost?'

'Sixteen,' Eyra replied.

Pellaz shook his head and sighed. 'That's far too many. We cannot replace them.'

'We still have over five hundred, tiahaar.'

'Five hundred that are apparently male so cannot breed. If we're under threat, it's not inconceivable an enemy has worked out that the most effective form of aggression would be to disable our transport system. If we lost the sedim we would lose much of our power and virtually all of our mobility. Think of our major settlements. Imbrilim, for example, would be alone, and most of its citizens are refugees, not military.'

Eyra nodded thoughtfully. 'The most distressing aspect of this whole business is that it seems likely somehar or something has access to the otherlanes without sedim. Of course, the threat itself might derive from some other realm. Our incursions into otherlane territory might be perceived as a form of aggression. We have no way of knowing.'

Pellaz remembered when he and Mima had entered another realm via the otherlanes to rescue Lileem and Terez some years back. Nohar knew who or what had built the structures on that world. Perhaps, unwittingly, the invasive presence of Wraeththu had caused this problem. Perhaps the ent.i.ty that had confronted Pellaz in the otherlanes more recently derived from that event. 'I had a strange experience in the otherlanes some time back,' Pellaz said. 'I should have discussed it with the Hegemony, but I didn't foresee the seriousness of the situation. Terez and I were working to discover the cause of the problem, but everything had quietened down.'

'It would perhaps have been wise to inform your colleagues,' Eyra said carefully.

Pellaz ignored the implied criticism. 'We have also to consider whether these events are connected with the attack upon Rue.'

'It is feasible. Whatever attacked him was not of this realm, in my opinion.'

'How can we defend ourselves?' Pellaz asked, thinking aloud. 'We face an enemy that can perhaps strike at any time without warning. What should we expect now?'

'At the very least, we must construct firewalls of protective energy around the city,' Eyra said. 'We have to hope we are given breathing s.p.a.ce, in order to plan and for my hara to conduct their investigations.'

'Messengers must be sent out immediately to all towns and cities,' Pellaz said. 'If they have to ride to Jaddayoth and beyond, then so be it. Late news is better than no news at all. Everyhar in Wraeththudom must be warned to protect themselves in whatever way they can. We don't yet know how great this threat might be, so we should prepare for the worst. We must trust that the Kamagrian are also aware of this problem and are already working, as we are, to solve it.'

Eyra bowed his head. 'The Hegemony must meet as soon as possible. I have already sent messages to summon them.'

'They won't need summoning,' Pellaz said. 'Go to the Hegalion. I'll meet with you there as soon as I can.'

Eyra hesitated before leaving. 'Tiahaar, I don't wish to offend you, but we should perhaps address the possibility that Tigron Calanthe's disappearance is a.s.sociated with this disruption.'

'I'm glad you don't want to offend me,' Pellaz said. 'I will see you shortly, Eyra.'

Pellaz was still dressing when Caeru arrived in his apartments. The Tigron was in no mood to answer the Tigrina's questions, but bit his tongue and reminded himself that Caeru was as much a part of the Hegemony as he was. He relayed all he could remember of his conversation with Eyra, other than the final exchange about Cal.

After he'd finished speaking, Caeru was uncharacteristically quiet.

'What is it?' Pellaz asked. 'What are you thinking? I can tell you're thinking something.'

'I don't want to voice it,' Caeru said. 'But I know I must. Pell, how much can we trust the Hegemony?'