"So, too," said the Dwarf softly, "is the name of Aideen."

"What?"

Matt's gaze was unwavering. "She betrayed her mage," he said. "In the laws of our Order, there is no crime so deep. None. No matter what the cause. Every year Loren and I curse her memory at midwinter and we do so truly. And every year," he added, very low, very gently, "when the snows melt in the spring, we lay the first of the wildflowers on her grave."

From that composed glance, Jennifer turned her head away. She felt close to tears. She was too far from home, and it was all so difficult and so strange. Why should such a woman be cursed? It was too hard. What she needed, she realized, was exercise, fifty hard laps in a pool to clear her head, or else, and better still...

"Oh, Matt," she said. "I need to move, to do something. Are there horses for us to ride?"

And of all things, that cracked the solid composure of the Dwarf. Astonishingly, he flushed. "There are horses, of course," he said awkwardly, "but I fear I will not join you-Dwarves do not ride for pleasure. Why don't you go with Laesha and Drance, though?"

"Okay," she said, but then lingered, unwilling, suddenly, to leave him.

"I'm sorry if I have troubled you," Matt said. "It is a difficult story."

Jennifer shook her head. "More for you, surely, than for me. Thank you for sharing it. Thanks for a lot." And, bending swiftly, she kissed him on the cheek and ran from the hall to find Laesha, leaving a normally phlegmatic Dwarf in a remarkably unsettled state.

And so did it come to pass, three hours later, that the two women had galloped with Diarmuid's man to the crest of a ridge east of the town, where they stilled their tired horses in disbelief, as a small party of ethereal figures ascended the slope towards them, their tread so light the grass seemed not to bend beneath their feet.

"Welcome!" said their leader as he stopped before them. He bowed, his long silver hair glinting in the light. "This hour is brightly woven." His voice was like music in a high place. He spoke directly to Jennifer. She was aware that Drance beside her, the prosaic soldier, had tears shining on his transfigured face.

"Will you come down among the trees and feast with us this evening?" the silver-haired figure asked. "You are most welcome. My name is Brendel of the Kestrel Mark, from Daniloth. We are the lios alfar."

The return to Brennin was almost effortless, as if they were being propelled homeward by a following wind. Erron, fluid and agile, went first again on the climb back up the cliff, and he hammered iron spikes into the rock face for the rest of them.

They came again to the horses, mounted, and began galloping north once more on the dusty roads of the High Kingdom. The mood was exhilarated and chaotic. Joining in the bawdy chorus of a song Coll was leading, Kevin couldn't remember feeling happier; after the incident on the river, he and Paul seemed to have been completely accepted by the band, and because he respected these men, that acceptance mattered. Erron was becoming a friend, and so, too, was Carde, singing away on Kevin's left side. Paul, on the other side, wasn't singing, but he didn't seem unhappy, and he had a lousy voice anyway.

Just past midday they came to the same inn where they had stopped before. Diarmuid called a halt for lunch and a quick beer, which became, given the prevailing mood, several slow beers. Coll, Kevin noticed, had disappeared.

The extended break meant that they were going to miss the banquet in the Great Hall that night. Diarmuid didn't seem to care.

"It's the Black Boar tonight, my friends," he announced, glittering and exhilarated at the head of the table. "I'm in no mood for court manners. Tonight I celebrate with you and let the manners look after themselves. Tonight we take our pleasure. Will you drink with me to the Dark Rose of Cathal?"

Kevin cheered with the others, drank with the others.

Kimberly had dreamt again. The same one at first: the stones, the ring, the wind-and the same grief in her heart. And again she woke just as the words of power reached her lips.

This time, though, she had fallen asleep again, to find another dream waiting, as if at the bottom of a pool.

She was in the room of Ailell the King. She saw him tossing restlessly on his bed, saw the young page asleep on his pallet. Even as she watched, Ailell woke in the dark of his chamber. A long time he lay still, breathing raggedly, then she saw him rise painfully, as if against his own desire. He lit a candle and carried it to an inner doorway in the room, through which he passed. Invisible, insubstantial, she followed the King down a corridor lit only by the weaving candle he bore, and she paused with him before another door, into which was set a sliding view-hole.

When Ailell put his eyes to the aperture, somehow she was looking with him, seeing what he saw, and Kimberly saw with the High King the white naal fire and the deep blue shining of Ginserat's stone, set into the top of its pillar.

Only after a long time did Ailell withdraw, and in the dream Kim saw herself move to look again, standing on tiptoe to gaze with her own eyes into the room of the stone.

And looking in, she saw no stone at all, and the room was dark.

Wheeling in terror, she saw the High King walking back towards his chamber, and waiting there for him in the doorway was a shadowed figure that she knew.

His face rigid as if it were stone, Paul Schafer stood before Ailell, and he was holding a chess piece in his outstretched hand, and coming nearer to them, Kim saw that it was the white king, and it was broken. There was a music all about them that she couldn't recognize, although she knew she should. Ailell spoke words she could not hear because the music was too loud, and then Paul spoke, and she needed desperately to hear, but the music... And then the King held high his candle and began to speak again, and she could not, could not, could not.

Then everything was blasted to nothingness by the howling of a dog, so loud it filled the universe.

And she awoke to the morning sunlight and the smell of food frying over the cooking fire.

"Good morning," said Ysanne. "Come and eat, before Malka steals it all. Then I have something to show you."

Coll rejoined them on the road north of the town. Paul Schafer eased his horse over to the roan stallion the big man rode.

"Being discreet?" he asked.

Above his broken nose Coil's eyes were guarded. "Not exactly. But he wanted to do something."

"Which means?"

"The man had to die, but his wife and children can be helped."

"So you've paid them. Is that why he delayed just now in the tavern? To give you time? It wasn't just because he felt like drinking, was it?"

Coll nodded. "He often feels like drinking," he said wryly, "but he very rarely acts without reason. Tell me," he went on, as Schafer remained silent, "Do you think he did wrong?"

Paul's expression was unreadable.

"Gorlaes would have hanged him," Coll pressed, "and had the body torn apart. His family would have been dispossessed of their land. Now his eldest son is going to South Keep to be trained as one of us. Do you really think he did wrong?"

"No," said Schafer slowly, "I'm just thinking that with everyone else starving, that farmer's treason was probably the best way he could find to take care of his family. Do you have a family, Coll?"

To which Diarmuid's lieutenant, who didn't, and who was still trying to like this strange visitor, had no reply at all. They rode north through the heat of the afternoon, the dry fields baking on either side, the far hills shimmering like mirages, or the hope of rain.

The trap door under the table had been invisible until Ysanne, kneeling, had laid her hand on the floor and spoken a word of power. There were ten stairs leading down; on either side the rough stone walls were damp to the touch. There were brackets set into the walls, but no torches, because from the bottom of the stairs came a pale glow of light. Wondering, Kim followed the Seer and Malka, the cat, as they went down.

The chamber was small, more a cave than a room. Another bed, a desk, a chair, a woven carpet on the stone floor. Some parchments and books, very old by the look of them, on the desk. Only one thing more: against the far wall was set a cabinet with glass doors, and within the cabinet, like a captured star, lay the source of light.

There was awe in the Seer's voice when she broke the silence. "Every time I see this..." Ysanne murmured. "It is the Circlet of Lisen," she said, walking forward. "It was made for her by the lios alfar in the days when Pendaran Wood was not yet a place of dread. She bound it on her brow after they built the Anor for her, and she stood in that tower by the sea, a light like a star on her brow, to show Amairgen the way home from Cader Sedat."

"And he never came." Kim's voice, though she whispered, felt harsh to her own ears. "Eilathen showed me. I saw her die." The Circlet, she saw, was purest gold, but the light set within it was gentler than moonfall.

"She died, and Pendaran does not forgive. It is one of the deep sorrows of the world. So much changed... even the light. It was brighter once, the color of hope, they said when it was made. Then Lisen died, and the Wood changed, and the world changed, and now it seems to shine with loss. It is the most fair thing I know in all the world. It is the Light against the Dark."

Kim looked at the white-haired figure beside her. "Why is it here?" she asked. "Why hidden underground?"

"Raederth brought it to me the year before he died. Where he went to find it, I know not-for it was lost when Lisen fell. Lost long years, and he never told me the tale of where he went to bring it back. It aged him, though. Something happened on the journey of which he could never speak. He asked me to guard it here, with the two other things of power, until their place should be dreamt. 'Who shall wear this next,' he said, 'after Lisen, shall have the darkest road to walk of any child of earth or stars.' And he said nothing more. It waits here, for the dreaming."

Kimberly shivered, for something new within her, a singing in the blood, told her that the words of the dead mage were true prophecy. She felt weighted, burdened. This was getting to be too much. She tore her eyes away from the Circlet. "What are the other two things?" she asked.

"The Baelrath, of course. The stone on your finger."

Kim looked down. The Warstone had grown brighter as they spoke, the dull, blood-dark lustre giving way to a pulsating sheen.

"I think the Circlet speaks to it," Ysanne went on. "It always shone so in this room. I kept it here beside the other, until the night I dreamt you wearing it. From that time I knew its hour was coming, and I feared the wakening power would call forces I could not ward. So I summoned Eilathen again, and bound him to guard the stone by the red at the heart of the bannion."

"When was this?"

"Twenty-five years ago, now. A little more."

"But-I wasn't even born!"

"I know, child. I dreamt your parents first, the day they met. Then you with the Baelrath on your hand. Our gift as Seers is to walk the twists that lie in the weave of time and bring their secrets back. It is no easy power, and you know already that it cannot always be controlled."

Kim pushed her brown hair back with both hands. Her forehead was creased with anxiety, the grey eyes were those of someone being pursued. "I do know that," she said. "I'm trying to handle it. What I can't... I don't understand why you are showing me Lisen's Light."

"Not true," the Seer replied. "If you stop to think, you will understand. You are being shown the Circlet because it may fall to you to dream who is to wear it next."

There was a silence. Then, "Ysanne, I don't live here."

"There is a bridge between our worlds. Child, I am telling you that which you know already."

"But that's just it! I'm beginning to understand what I am. I saw what Eilathen spun. But I'm not of this world, it isn't in my blood, I don't know its roots the way you do, the way all the Seers must have known. How should... how could I ever presume to say who is to bear the Circlet of Lisen? I'm a stranger, Ysanne!"

She was breathing hard. The old woman looked at her a long time, then she smiled. "Now you are. You have just come. You are right about being incomplete, but be easy. It is only time." Her voice, like her eyes, was gentle as she told her second lie, and shielded it.

"Time!" Kimberly burst out. "Don't you understand? I'm only here two weeks. As soon as they find Dave, we're going home."

"Perhaps. There is still a bridge, and I did dream the Baelrath on your hand. It is in my heart as well-an old woman's heart, not a Seer's vision-that there may be need of a Dreamer in your world, too, before what is to come is full-woven on the Loom."

Kimberly opened her mouth, and closed it again, speechless. Because now it was too much: too many things, too quickly and too hard.

"I'm sorry," she managed to gasp, and then, whirling, ran up the stone stairs and out the doorway of the cottage to where there was sunlight and a blue sky. Trees, too, and a path down which she could run to the edge of a lake. Alone, because no one was pursuing her, she could stand there throwing pebbles into the water, knowing that they were pebbles, only pebbles, and that no green spirit, water dripping from his hair, would rise in answer from the lake to change her life again.

In the chamber from which she had fled, the light continued to shine. Power and hope and loss were in the radiance that bathed Ysanne as she sat at the desk, stroking the cat in her lap, her eyes unfocused and blind.

"Ah, Malka," she murmured at last, "I wish I were wiser. What is the use of living so long if one hasn't grown wise?"

The cat pricked up her ears, but preferred to continue licking a paw rather than address herself to so thorny a question.

At length the Seer rose, lowering the affronted Malka to the floor, and she walked slowly to the cabinet wherein the Circlet shone. Opening the glass door, she reached in and took out an object half hidden on a lower shelf, then she stood there a long time, gazing at what lay in her hand.

The third thing of power: the one that Kimberly, throwing pebbles by the lake, had not seen.

"Ah, Malka," the Seer said again, and drew the dagger from its sheath. A sound like a plucked harpstring ran through the room.

A thousand years before, in the days after the Bael Rangat, when all the free peoples of Fionavar had gathered before the Mountain to see Ginserat's stones, the Dwarves of Banir Lok had shaped a crafting of their own as a gift for the new High King of Brennin.

With thieren had they wrought, rarest of metals, found only at the roots of their twin mountains, most precious gift of earth to them, blue-veined silver of Eridu.

And for Colan the Beloved they had taken thought and fashioned a blade, with runes upon the sheath to bind it, and an old, dark magic spun in their caverns to make a knife unlike any other in all the worlds, and they named it Lokdal.

Very low bowed Conary's son when they handed it to him, and silently he listened, wiser than his years, as Seithr the Dwarf-King told him what had been laid upon the blade. Then he bowed again, lower yet, when Seithr, too, fell silent.

"I thank you," Colan said, and his eyes flashed as he spoke. "Double-edged the knife, and double-edged the gift. Mornir grant us the sight to use it truly." And he placed Lokdal in his belt and bore it south away.

To the mages he had entrusted it, the blade and the magic locked within it like a blessing or a curse, and twice only in a thousand years had Colan's dagger killed. From First Mage to First Mage it had passed, until the night Raederth died. In the middle of that night, the woman who loved him had had a dream that shook her to the hidden places of her soul. Rising in the darkness, she came to the place where Raederth guarded the blade, and she took it away and hid it from those who succeeded him. Not even Loren Silvercloak, whom she trusted with everything else, knew that Ysanne had Lokdal.

"Who strikes with this blade without love in his heart shall surely die," had said Seithr of the Dwarves. "That is one thing."

And then softly, so that only Colan heard, he had said the other thing.

In her hidden chamber, Ysanne the Seer, dreamer of the dream, turned the bright rippling blade over and over in her hands, so the light glinted from it like blue fire.

On the shore of the lake a young woman stood, power within her, power beneath her, throwing pebbles one by one.

It was cooler in the wood where the lios alfar led them. The food they were offered was delicate and wonderful: strange fruits, rich bread, and a wine that lifted the spirit and sharpened the colors of the sunset.

Throughout, there was music: one of the lios played at a high-toned wind instrument while others sang, their voices twining in the deepening shadows of the trees, as the torches of evening were lit at the edge of the glade.

Laesha and Drance, for whom this was childhood fantasy made true, seemed even more enchanted than Jennifer was, and so when Brendel invited them to stay the night in the wood and watch the lios dance under the stars, it was with wonder and joy that they accepted.

Brendel dispatched someone to ride swiftly to Paras Derval and give private word to the King of their whereabouts. Wrapped in a delicate languor, they watched the messenger, his hair glowing in the light of the setting sun, ride over the hill, and they turned back to the wine and the singing in the glade.

As the shadows lengthened, a grace note of long sorrow seemed to weave its way into the songs of the lios alfar. A myriad of fireflies moved like shining eyes just beyond the torches: lienae they were named, Brendel said. Jennifer sipped the wine he poured for her, and let herself be carried into a rich sweet sadness by the music.

Cresting the hill west of them, the messenger, Tandem of the Kestrel, set his horse into an easy canter towards the walled town and the palace a league away.

He was not quite halfway there when he died.

Soundlessly he fell from his horse, four darts in his throat and back. After a moment the svarts rose from the hollow beside the path and watched in unblinking silence as the wolves padded up from beside them to the body of the lios. When it was clear that he was dead, they, too, went forward and surrounded the fallen rider. Even in death, there was a nimbus of glory clinging to him, but when they were done, when the wet, tearing sounds had ceased and only the quiet stars looked down, there was nothing left that anyone would care to see of Tandem of the lios alfar.

Most hated by the Dark, for their name was Light.

And it was in that moment, away to the north and east, that another solitary rider checked his own mount suddenly. A moment he was motionless, then with a terrible oath, and fear like a fist in his heart, Loren Silvercloak turned his horse and began desperately to thunder home.

In Paras Derval, the King did not attend the banquet, nor did any of the four visitors, which caused more than a little talk. Ailell kept to his chambers and played ta'bael with Gorlaes, the Chancellor. He won easily, as was customary, and with little pleasure, which was also customary. They played very late, and Tarn, the page, was asleep when the interruption came.

As they went through the open doorway of the Black Boar, the noise and smoke were like a wall into which they smashed.

One voice, however, made itself heard in a prodigious bellow that resounded over the pandemonium.

"Diarmuid!" roared Tegid, surging to his feet. Kevin winced at the decibel level engendered. "By the oak and the moon, it's himself!" Tegid howled, as the tavern sounds briefly resolved themselves into shouted greetings.

Diarmuid, in fawn-colored breeches and a blue doublet, stood grinning sardonically in the doorway as the others fanned out into the dense haze of the room. Tegid wove his way unsteadily forward to stand swaying before his Prince.

And hurled the contents of a mug of ale full in Diarmuid's face.

"Wretched Prince!" he screamed. "I shall tear your heart out! I shall send your liver to Gwen Ystrat! How dare you slip off and leave great Tegid behind with the women and the mewling babes?"

Kevin, beside the Prince, had a brief, hysterical vision of Tegid trying to go hand over hand across Saeren, before Diarmuid, dripping wet, reached to the nearest table, grabbed a silver tankard, and threw it violently at Tegid.

Someone screamed as the Prince followed up the throw, which bounced off the big man's shoulder, with a short rush, at the end of which his lowered head intersected effectively with Tegid's massive target of a girth.