THE BLACK BAND crossed the step-back stones into the Anarchies after a brief but confused battle that left several men injured and one dead. The half-dozen brigands originally from the hunting clans refused to cross at all. The rest had caught the scent of blood, however, and pressed on, all the more eagerly because of the reward that Bortis had first offered in Peshtar. The blind bandit chief himself led the way with his Grindark tracker. When he thought about what he would do to the fugitives, especially to Jame, he drooled a bit and lashed at the bound, hobbled Grindark to make him go faster.
The woods took the brigands by surprise. They were used to the evergreen forests of the Ebonbane, but the expanse and quality of the silence under these green leaves awed them. Bortis didn't have to tell them to move quietly. Only once was the silence broken, when they heard the crash of a tree falling somewhere in the distance.
"It's them!" exclaimed one man excitedly, and the next moment went down with a grunt under Bortis's hammerlike fist.
"Quiet, you half-wit. D'you think they've taken up lumbering to pass the time?"
They continued, foraging as they went. One man handy with a sling had already brought down a number of gray birds. Now another bandit saw what appeared to be a giant puff-ball mushroom, but when he reached for it, the fungus cap turned itself inside out around his hand. His cry of surprise turned to one of pain. The others cut it away to reveal a hand covered with small punctures like wasp stings, but ringed with orange-tinged flesh. The fingers had already begun to swell.
By dusk, it was fairly clear to everyone but Bortis that they were lost. Their only hope lay in the tracker, who still seemed to have some intermittent idea of where he was going. At nightfall, they built a large fire and roasted the birds on spits. Then they tore down boughs and uprooted ferns from a nearby hillock to make their beds.
All slept deep that night, including those assigned to keep guard. Through all their dreams ran the steady sound of munching.
In the morning, several men could not be awakened, and the four who had lain down against the denuded hillock were simply gone. That reduced the Black Band to fourteen men, including the one who had been attacked by the puff-ball. The others found him already awake, staring with rapt, almost greedy attention at his hand. The fingers now were so swollen that they seemed to merge. The skin was puffy and orange. He backed away from the other brigands, holding his bloated hand against his chest.
"You can't have it! I found it. It's mine, mine!"
He sank his teeth into the spongy mass and tore off a strip.
"It's mine!" he muttered again, chewing furiously. "Find your own!" With that, he darted off into the woods with his prize. The others didn't follow.
"Up!" said Bortis harshly to the Grindark, jerking him to his feet.
"But what about them?" protested one man, indicating the half-dozen brigands who slept on as if drugged.
"Leave them. They're no good to me like that."
"Yeah?" said another brigand. "And what good will that reward of yours be to any of us if we never get out of here to claim it? I say turn back, and if you won't," he finished, belligerently, glancing at the others, "we will."
"Oh, will you?" Bortis gave a nasty laugh. "Then go. I can't stop you. I can't even see you. But you know who can, and what he'll do to you if you break faith with me."
To a man, the bandits glanced up with apprehension at the canopy of leaves that hid the sky. They hadn't seen the changer since the previous day, but not one of them doubted that he was up there somewhere or that he would deal with them as viciously as he had with others in the past who had challenged Bortis's orders.
The brigand chief waited, a growing sneer on his lips. "What, no more debate? Then come on, you gallows-bait. Just think how rich you'll be when we catch that Kencyr brat, and how well entertained."
AFTER A NIGHT of dark dreams, Jame woke to find the woods swept clean of shadows, aglow with golden light. It must be near dawn. Marc and Jorin slept on, both snoring faintly. The ounce lay stretched out on his back, head cushioned on the Kendar's arm, paws curled over his chest. When Jame put her hand on the warm cream-colored fur of his stomach, his respiration changed into a sleepy purr, but he didn't wake. She lay back, wondering at her own uneasiness. It seemed to her that in her dreams she had been warned, but by whom and against what? Here with Marc, she felt quite safe, but then he often had that effect on her, as if there was some innate quality in the big man that shielded him from evil. Even the Earth Wife had sensed it. But she couldn't spend her life in his shadow. Even now, thirst made her slip away from him and rise. Now, where was that brook?
She followed its sound, moving in quite a different direction from the previous night. Then too, it was—or seemed—farther away. Perhaps she was simply approaching it at a different point. She scrambled down to it through the bushes and knelt on the grassy bank about a foot above the water. As she leaned over to scoop up a handful, the ground suddenly gave way under her.
Jame surfaced, sputtering. The water was only chest deep, but shockingly cold, and the current made it hard to stand. Of all the clumsy, fumble-footed accidents. . . . She clutched at the bank. It crumbled away. Downstream a few steps, a bush overhung the water. Jame let herself be carried down to it and grabbed a branch, only to let go immediately with a startled exclamation. Blood from a deep puncture stained the thumb of her glove. She saw then that each branch ended in a blunt, blind head, green barked, with thorns instead of fangs. Every head was turned toward her. Downstream, similar bushes on both banks closed over the water . . . and upstream, too. Surely those hadn't been there before, nor the ones surrounding her now. She felt a chill that had nothing to do with the icy waters. They were closing in.
Jame backed into midstream, bracing herself against the current.
"Marc!" The name came out in a croak, but loud enough, surely, to wake the Kendar. "Marc!" No answer. Then she remembered his deep, slow breathing. Somehow, dwar sleep or something very similar had claimed him. He would not hear her now, even if she screamed.
The branches were closer now, rustling. They would arch over her, press down. She would tear her hands to bloody rags on them, then drown beneath their slight weight.
A gray bird landed on a nearby tree branch and spread its wings. The two feathered eyes regarded her unblinkingly, as if the entire forest were watching. The Anarchies had tried and condemned her, Jame thought wildly. But why? She had played by the rules, harming nothing. It could only be because she really was a darkling, as the Arrin-ken had said, and the Anarchies hated anything with the darkling taint. Marc couldn't help her now. Her own god wouldn't even if, as she half doubted, his power did extend to this strange place. But did that deprive her all protection?
Slowly she reached underwater and drew the imu medallion out of her pocket. She held it up to the feathered eyes of the gray bird.
"I-I have the Earth Wife's favor."
The wings beat once, eyes blinking, then again and again. The bird soared off between the trees. The bush's nearest blind head took the medallion from Jame's hand. It was passed back through the bush from mouth to mouth, and the branches withdrew in its wake. She scrambled back onto the bank. On the far side, a green head offered the medallion back to her. She took it. There was blood on the imu's lips again—her blood this time from her thorn-stabbed finger. She collapsed on the grass, shaking first with cold and then with helpless laughter. Saved by a pun! She wondered what the Earth Wife had done to her imp when she discovered that the medallion was missing. Finally getting a grip on herself, she rose and went back to the ring of diamantine stones.
Marc and Jorin still slept. Jame changed into dry clothes, then paused, looking down at them. Perhaps the Kendar had somehow fallen into dwar sleep, but the ounce, too? Frightened now, she shook them and called their names. They woke, slowly, reluctantly. Marc stretched.
"Ah, lass, you should have gotten me up sooner. We had better eat our breakfast on the move." He rose and looked about, in a puzzled way. "That's odd. I could have sworn that group of trees was over there. Everything seems to be turned around. Hello, what's that?" He turned sharply, then shook his head, even more perplexed. "Gone."
"What is?"
"Something gray. I only saw it out of the corner of my eye. A bird, maybe. Now, which way did we come?"
They couldn't tell. Nothing seemed to be where it had been the night before, and the mist so diffused the morning light that they couldn't even be sure in which direction the sun rose. Jorin was confused, too. Jame circled the clearing with him, and as far as the ounce's keen nose could tell, they had never entered the ring of stones at all.
"So much for Bortis's tracker too, I hope," she said, then turned abruptly. "There, again, by that larch! No, it's gone." Or was it? When she looked directly at the tree, nothing was there, but at the edge of her field of vision she saw . . . what?
"A figure, wearing a gray hooded cloak," said Marc. He had caught the trick, too. "Why, it's no bigger than a child."
"And it's beckoning to us. I think it wants us to follow. Should we?"
Marc considered this briefly, then nodded. "Maybe it can lead us out of here. It's worth a try, anyway."
They collected their gear and followed, with no idea if their spectral guide was conducting them out of the Anarchies or farther in. It wasn't even easy to keep that gray figure in sight.
"I've lost him again," said Jame, for the third time in half an hour. "This undergrowth is too dense."
In fact, they had gotten into a real thicket now, flourishing under the arched boughs of the trees. Dark leaves surrounded them, edged here and there with the rose and hectic red of autumn, hung with berries bright as drops of blood. A breeze rustled through the dense foliage. Like all sounds in this strange place, it seemed to come from every direction at once in a flurry of crosscurrents. Jorin stiffened, his nose twitching. The fur down his back slowly rose. Then Jame caught a sharp, tangy scent that made her own nose itch and startled a host of fragmentary, fleeting images.
"What is it?" Marc asked in a low voice.
"I . . . don't know. Something very close, very wild . . ."
She slipped away through the bushes without waiting for an answer, hardly knowing if she fled this unknown thing or sought it. Branches closed about her. The breeze made them dip and sway, surrounding her with shifting planes of green. For a moment Jame hesitated, completely disoriented. The wind died. She forged ahead, suddenly emerging on the edge of a small glade. Across it, beside a small hillock from which most of the greenery had been stripped, stood a rathorn.
Jame's first impression was of a black stallion wearing elaborate ivory armor, and then of some fantastic cross between a horse and a dragon. The creature was tall and finely made, with slender legs and a broad chest tapering back to powerful hindquarters. His arched, almost serpentine neck supported a small head encased in an ivory mask, out of which grew the nasal tusk and curved horn of a rathorn stallion. Ivory plates curved around his neck, chest, and abdomen. More ivory sheathed his forelegs like a pair of greaves. His white mane and tail hung against his ebony coat like falls of heavy silk. He stood absolutely motionless, staring at her. She stared back, only dimly aware that the four mares of his rage were behind him with their heads up, also watching her. A man lay in the grass at one of the mare's feet. His belly had been ripped open. In all that glade, the only movement was of his blood slowly spiraling down the mare's tusk.
The rathorn scent hung heavy as incense in the still air, numbing the mind, making the senses hum. It drew Jame forward one halting step, then another. Under its hypnotic lure, she felt a hunger for young meat, fresh meat, that was not her own.
Then, from everywhere and nowhere, came a moaning cry. It rose, faltered, sank into a series of deep sobs. A shriller voice echoed it, note for despairing note.
The rathorns' armored heads turned as one. Between one blink and the next, the mares had disappeared in a blur of ivory and ebony. The stallion backed away, ears flat in their mask grooves, then pivoted in one supple, flowing motion and sprang after his rage.
"That was close," said Marc's voice behind her.
Jame drew a deep, shaky breath. The world seemed to redefine itself around her. "Yes. But what on earth would frighten a rathorn like that? Marc, there's a body in the grass. Several of them." She started forward, but he caught her arm.
"Wait a minute."
They waited. When the terrible cry wasn't repeated, they went cautiously out into the clearing.
"Why, these are some of Bortis's brigands," said Jame, crouching beside one while Jorin sniffed at him warily. "This man seems to be asleep."
"These, too." Marc shook one bandit, then another and another, without result. Jame remembered how deep in sleep she had found her friend earlier and shuddered.
"There must be something in the air."
"Phew!" said the Kendar, straightening. "There certainly is. What's that stink?"
They circled the hillock. On the far side were three skeletons jumbled together, covered with green slimy mold. The hill made a sound that was half rumble, half gurgle, and excreted a fourth skeleton from a foul-smelling hole hidden under a fringe of its few remaining ferns. Jame backed away, holding her nose.
"What a charming place. D'you suppose our friend in gray brought us here on purpose?"
"A trap, you mean? It could be and yet, somehow, I don't think so. Do you?"
"Somehow, no. Trinity!"
The cry had come again, closer, double-noted. It wasn't a sound so much to inspire fear, Jame decided, as utter, hopeless misery. The wretchedness of it was almost contagious. For a moment, curiosity tugged at her, but then that terrible moan sounded a third time, almost in her ear, and nearby leaves began to wither on the bough.
"I have an idea," she said to Marc. "Let's go someplace else."
Since their gray guide was still nowhere in sight, they followed the path beaten through the thicket by the rathorns. They had just gotten clear of the bushes when the sound of other cries and then of screams reached them, apparently from ahead.
"Trouble," said the big Kendar tersely. He unslung his war-axe and loped off between the trees toward the source of the commotion. Jame and Jorin ran after him.
"Marc, wait! What if it's the Black Band?"
It was the Band, but by the time the two Kencyr reached it, none of its members was in a position to do them any harm. The slashed, trampled bodies lay on ground soggy with blood, among white flowers slowly turning pink, then red. The rathorns' trail led through this carnage and beyond.
"So much for that," said Jame.
Marc looked slightly surprised at hearing her dismiss a dozen lives so casually. All he said, though, was, "Not necessarily. Bortis isn't here, and neither is the Grindark."
"Perhaps they didn't make it this far."
"Perhaps. But then there's still the changer, and our mist cover is beginning to wear thin in patches."
As if on cue, sunlight brightened around them, startling a flash of white beyond the nearby trees.
"That looks like a building," said Jame. "What on earth is one doing here?"
Marc shook his head. "I can't imagine."
They went toward it through the trees, still following the rathorns' trampled path. More white showed through the leaves, resolving itself into a low, vine-draped wall, which stretched about one hundred yards in either direction. Beyond, rose a jumble of white buildings, the tallest of them barely over fifteen feet high. The rathorns had apparently leaped the wall. Jame, Marc, and Jorin followed until they came to a postern so low and narrow that the Kendar almost got stuck as he squeezed through it.
Inside, an equally narrow lane zigzagged back between the buildings. Crosswalks spanned it here and there, connecting second or third stories. Only Jorin could walk under the former without ducking. Overhead, circular windows glazed with crystal and rimmed with decorative motifs faced each other across the way.
They soon came to what appeared to be the main thoroughfare. Like the other streets, it was very narrow. Unlike them, no walkways spanned it, and it was paved with the cross-sections of diamantine lithons quarried, perhaps, from the broken ring where they had spent the previous night. The glowing stones were worn down to a groove as if by the passage of many feet, or hooves. The smell of rathorn clung to the walls. At a guess, the rage had also come this way, still in full flight. The two Kencyr followed warily.
They began to pass doorways opening into rooms lit by diamantine blocks set in the walls. The lighted, empty interiors gave Jame the uncanny feeling that at any moment some diminutive householder might lean over his door jamb to invite them in. The sense of arrested life was strong in this place, but so was the feeling that everything had stopped here long, long ago.
Marc had also been looking about. "Now, that's odd," he said. "See that decorative band up there, the one with alternating rathorn skull-masks and imu faces? The faces parody the masks. I've seen lots of imus in my time, but never before one that was used to make a joke. Who could have built this, anyway?"
"Apparently someone who knew how to make a step-back ring. Why seal off the Anarchies unless to protect this place?"
The Kendar shook his head in wonder. "They had more than their share of nerve, then. Imagine laying a claim here. But what could have happened to them?"
"Look!" said Jame sharply, catching his arm.
In the far corner of a lighted entry hall hung something gray.
"Oh," she said, disappointed. "I thought for a moment that it was our guide. That does look like his cloak, though."
"Maybe he got home before us," said Marc, half joking.
"I wonder."
She ducked under the low lintel. White stone dust rattled down on her head and shoulders. The interior walls, she saw, were shot with deep cracks, radiating out from the diamantine blocks.
"Careful," said Marc, bending to peer in after her.
"I think it must be safe enough or Jorin wouldn't have come in here with me."
She crossed over to the gray object. It looked exactly like their erstwhile guide's hooded cape, but when she touched it, it crumbled to dust. Beside the hook where it had hung was a narrow hallway that had been quite invisible from the door. It led back into the house. Jame wrestled briefly with temptation and lost.
"Marc, I'm going to do a fast bit of exploring."
"If you like. I'll wait out here and spare my old back the stooping. Be quick, though."
Jame stepped into the hall. As in the first room, the ceiling was barely five feet high, forcing her to keep her head well down. The corridor seemed to extend quite a preposterous distance, one hundred yards at least, when the entire house could hardly be more than forty feet square. Her first step took her a good fifty feet down the passageway. So, whoever had built this place liked to play with spatial distortions.
A few more steps, and here was a doorway opening into a fair-sized room with a ceiling at least twice as high as the corridor's. The only piece of furniture was a long marble table about two feet high, apparently standing on the left hand wall. Jame stared at it. Could something so massive be bolted to the wall? The threshold was at a forty-five degree angle, but it felt level as she stepped on it. So did the floor . . . but it wasn't the floor, or at least it hadn't been a moment ago. Set in the far wall was a large oval window. The right half of it was dark with the trees of the Anarchies, all horizontal. The bright left half was the misty sky. Jame shut her eyes hastily. The sense of vertigo disappeared at once. Yes, she was standing on the wall beside the table, and it felt perfectly natural.
"What a place for a party!" she said out loud.
In fact, it looked as if there had been one, Trinity only knew how many years, or centuries, or millennia ago. At one end of the table was a litter of small bottles. One of them still contained some clear liquid, which instantly broke down into crystals when Jame touched the glass. On impulse, she emptied the bottle's dehydrated contents into an inner pocket lined with waterproof silk. Who knew, someday she might find someone she disliked enough to test the stuff on.
She left the room, stepping down to the hall floor, and went on up the passageway. Within a few steps, the corridor turned. Although it still looked perfectly flat, Jame felt a strain in her leg muscles as she went on and wasn't surprised, when she came to a window, to find herself on the second floor.
Here there were several rooms that once might have been living quarters; but a window had broken, and the wind, blowing through, had long since reduced everything to dust.
At the end of the corridor was one last door, made of iron-wood, with three massive locks. It stood ajar. Jame pushed it open cautiously and paused on the threshold, startled. The rest of the house had been bright with sunlight and diamantine reflecting off white walls. This last room seemed to be hewn out of a dark, half-familiar stone shot with luminous green veins. The moss covering the floor also glowed faintly. What little other light there was came from a large oval window set in the far wall. Like those below, it was sealed with rock crystal; unlike them, heavy bars also crossed it. Beyond was a sullen sky, the color of a bruised plum, and a deep valley overgrown with luminous vegetation. The ruins of a white walled city lay in the valley's folds. Vines had almost consumed it, but enough remained to show its resemblance to the miniature city of which this house was part.
But those ruins clearly weren't in the Anarchies, or even anywhere in Rathillien. This entire room must be made of step-back stones, stepped all the way back to some fallen world far down the Chain of Creation, deep within the coils of Perimal Darkling. Why cling to such a dissolute view? Why, unless that distant, lost world was somehow precious. Unless, perhaps, it was home.
Some pieces of the puzzle began to click together. The Anarchies had been sealed off some three thousand years ago by people who knew how to use step-back stones and who quite possibly weren't native to Rathillien. Neither were the mysterious and elusive Builders, who at approximately the same time had been erecting the Kencyr temples using a host of architectural tricks including both step-back and -forward stones. It seemed very likely, then, that this city too was Builders' work. It might even have been their headquarters on Rathillien, despite its distance from all of their building projects. The seclusion of the Anarchies would certainly have appealed to them, and they might well have believed themselves more than a match for the land's strangeness.
But if so, what had happened to them? When their work on Rathillien was complete, had they simply moved on to the next threshold world as they had done so often before? That was possible, but it hardly explained the odd atmosphere of this city, as if life here had stopped suddenly, unexpectedly.
Jame shrugged. The puzzle still lacked too many pieces, and perhaps always would. She turned to go, and stopped short. In the corner, in the door's shadow, lay a pile of bones. They looked nearly human. The skull wasn't quite the right shape, though, and the entire skeleton reassembled would barely have come to her waist. So. Wherever the rest of the city's diminutive occupants had gone, here was one at least who hadn't gotten very far.
Jame knelt by the bones, feeling awed. Could this possibly have been a Builder? In all the long history of her people, no Kencyr had ever even seen one before, much less come so close. The dark behind those large eye sockets was like the darkness of this room, as if it held the secret of an entire race, obscured now forever.
Looking closer, she saw that most of the bones were shot with hairline cracks like those that fissured the walls. She touched the skull tentatively. It fell into fragments. The rest of the skeleton followed, crumbling bone by bone. Jorin sneezed, and bone dust filled the air. Jame sat back on her heels, rueful. She'd done it again, destroying where she had only meant to investigate. But then among the ruins she spotted one bone that hadn't disintegrated. It was a third phalange, the tip of a finger, twice as long as her own. She picked it up gingerly, marveling at its delicate structure. Here was something, at least, saved for the pyre. She carefully wrapped it in a handkerchief and slipped it into her pocket. Now to rejoin Marc, who probably thought she and Jorin had fallen down a hole somewhere.
But down in the narrow street, there was no sign of her friend.
"Marc!"
Echoes answered her, and wisps of mist drifting around the next corner. The silence rang. Jorin pressed against her knee, uneasy. Other doorways opened off the street, their interiors glowing softly, invitingly, but with no sign of life.
"Marc!"
This time she thought she heard an answer, toward the heart of the city. She followed it, calling again, hearing the same faint, distorted reply. The mist grew denser with each turn. Jame ran one hand along the nearest wall while keeping the other on Jorin's head to guide him. Suddenly he slipped away. She called after him with voice and mind, but neither brought a response. Damn their mind-link anyway for being so unreliable. But a moment later there he was again, chirping anxiously, running nose first into her knee. She took a firm grip on his golden ruff.
"Hush, kitten. Listen."
That voice called again, closer now. It did sound like Marc, but there was something odd about it, something almost mocking.
Jame felt Jorin's fur bristle under her hand. He knew that voice, and suddenly so did she. Bortis. They went on, stalking more than seeking now, but still blind in the swirling mist. The glow of the diamantine pavement faded away underfoot, and then Jame's hand lost contact with the wall. She groped for it, without success. The city must be built around some kind of open space. A half-dozen more blind steps and her foot struck something a ringing blow. Someone nearby chuckled.
"Brave Talisman, pretty eyes," crooned that hated voice, making no effort now to disguise itself. "How does it feel to be lost and blind?"
The sound seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Jame felt her sense of direction slip away. She heard stealthy movements in the mist, growing louder, nearer, seeming to surround her. She crouched, arms around Jorin. The cat's ears pricked, but he clearly had no idea which way to turn. Hopefully, neither did Bortis, but if he still had the Grindark tracker and they were approaching from downwind . . .
A low, wailing cry cut through the opaque air; its shrill double note echoing sharply back as though from close-set walls. The nameless thing that had put to flight an entire rage of rathorns was in the city, drawing closer. Someone almost at Jame's elbow gave a hoarse exclamation. Two pairs of footsteps crashed away, apparently in all directions at once. She and Jorin must flee too, but which way? A black despair, not her own, gnawed at the edges of her mind. The closer that thing came, the more likely that they would run straight into it. What to do? The cry came again, closer, paralyzing in its misery. In a moment of near panic, Jame felt again how out of place she was here, how unable even to understand this land's threats, much less to cope with them. But she still had the imu, whose power was somehow linked to this strange place. She drew the medallion out with unsteady fingers.
"Help us," she whispered to it.
Nothing happened. Had it lost its potency or had she forgotten something? Yes, damnit: the thing had to be fed. She thrust the edge of her hand against the imu's mouth. A sharp pain made her gasp and she jerked her hand away. A small crescent had been bitten out of it right through the leather glove. For one startled moment, she watched blood well out of the tiny wound before wondering why she could see it so clearly. The mist swirled as densely as before around them, but not in front of the imu. She turned the medallion's face outward. A path opened before her as if a beam of light had transfixed the mist and burned it off, but there was neither light nor heat, only a shaft of clear air lit through the mist by the morning sun riding high above.
At Jame's feet lay the skeleton of a rathorn. She had accidently kicked one of its ivory belly plates, which still curved around emptiness to meet the cage of overlapping ribs. The skull mask was twisted toward her, the impotence of death rendering its frozen fury all the more savage. Its massive horn had curved all the way around the beast's head and split its skull open from behind. There was another skeleton beyond it, and another and another, a fortune in ivory, a wilderness of death.
Jame picked her way through them, her hand again on Jorin's head. She saw a glow in the mist before her, and a few moments later came up to a pair of diamantine stones each a good nine feet tall. Stepping between them, she found herself in a circle some fifty feet across, ringed with standing stones. No mist came here. It formed a shining roof over the circle and walled it, but Jame could clearly see the huge, gape-mouthed imu faces on the far side, thrusting out of the diamantine lithons. Each stone's internal cloudiness had been freed by nature to take its natural form so that she seemed to stand in a ring of tall, narrow heads, their chins sunk in the ground. Only two were different. One had a sort of leathery caul on top of it. The other's mouth had been hollowed out so deeply that darkness gathered in the heart of the shining stone.
Something moved in the shadowy maw of the second stone. Bortis and the Grindark emerged. The latter crouched like some hunted thing brought to bay at last. Bortis stood beside him, keeping a cruelly tight grip on the hillman's surviving forebraid. The blind brigand chief was grinning. Saliva ran down from one corner of his mouth to hang in a glistening thread from his chin.
Jame approached him slowly, moving on the balls of her feet.
"What have you done to Marc?"
Bortis leered crookedly. "So you miss that decrepit boyfriend of yours already, do you? You had young suitors—Bane, that fool Dally—and you killed them. You killed me. Why, Talisman? Are you that afraid of a real man?"
They were circling each other now. The Grindark scuttled sideways, retreating from Jame, but kept in the ring of stone by the bandit's ruthless grasp. The hillman's teeth had begun to rattle together. He could both see and sense what Bortis could not: the inhuman, silver sheen growing in their opponent's eyes, the darkness gathering around her.
"I never went out of my way to hurt you, Bortis." The voice was low, almost purring. "You attacked me. Three times. Does it threaten your manhood that your prey fought back and won? That wasn't supposed to happen, was it? Oh no, not to the great bandit chief. Well, I blinded you once, and by God, I can do it again."
She sprang at them. The tracker recoiled, jerking his captor off balance. Jame caught the brigand's thumb and wrenched it away from the Grindark's hair. Bortis howled. He made a wild grab for her, but she tripped him, and he fell sprawling. The Grindark scrambled clear. Clutching his remaining braid with both hands, he scuttled out into the mist.
Jame circled the fallen brigand. "Now, what have you done to my friend?"
Bortis lay face down on the ground. His shoulders began to shake. He was laughing.
"Oh, it was funny! H-he thought you were calling him.
" 'Marc, oh Marcarn. . . .' " He gave a fair imitation of Jame's voice, spoiled by an attack of giggles. "I lured him into that doll's house and—and pushed a wall over on him. The floor gave way too. He fell down, then sideways—if that whoreson Grindark wasn't lying—straight through another farking wall!" The brigand jerked up his head, wet mouth rimmed with dirt. "You've killed another one!" he crowed. "Get yourself a new lover, Talisman. The old one's worm-bait!"
Something colder even than her building rage chilled Jame. A trick step-back room. Even she wouldn't trust her reflexes, falling into something so unexpected. And Marc, as Bortis kept saying, was no longer young.
Jorin had cowered away from her to the edge of the circle. She remembered how he had darted off minutes before, and felt suddenly sure that it had been because he had caught the Kendar's scent. She had called him off then. Not now.
"Find him," she said to the ounce. "Bring him here . . . if you can."
Blind Jorin gave her a wide moon-opal stare. Then he was gone in a flash of gold.
Jame circled Bortis again, feeling the cold berserker rage rise, savoring it.
"Dear Bortis. Who's worm-bait?"
Someone on the edge of the ring laughed softly.
Jame spun around, Bortis temporarily forgotten. The caul on top of the first stone had raised its head. Diamantine light cast into even greater relief the angry scars that formed the shape of an inverted imu burned into its face. The eyes on either side of it glittered, and the misshapen mouth lifted in a smile.
"Ah, child, how you love your work. What a reaper of souls you will make someday."
Jame recoiled a step. Then she quickly drew out the medallion covered in the changer's skin and held it up as if it were a protective charm.
"You came back, maybe, for your face? Here it is."
"So I see. And you've been feeding it, too. How . . . considerate."
The changer gathered himself as if to spring, then collapsed, panting. His face was gray with exhaustion. Jame slowly lowered the imu. The changer's smile twisted, distorting his warped face even more.
"Quite right. Even if this accursed place wasn't killing me by inches, after two days aloft with barely a breeze for support, I'm in no shape to harm you."
"Why did you want to in the first place? Back in Peshtar, you said that my death would mean the Master's eventual downfall. Sweet Trinity, how?"
"Now, child, no games."
"Damnit, it's true. I don't remember—if I ever knew at all."
"Indeed?" Malice lit his pale eyes. "Now, would it be more amusing to tell you or not? I think not."
His gaze suddenly shifted. Jame heard boot leather scrape on stone behind her and turned, just as Bortis charged at the sound of her voice. He knocked her flat. His weight, crashing down full on top of her, drove the air from her lungs. He had her hands pinned above her head before she recovered. His heavy body shook on top of her as he began to giggle uncontrollably.
"And now," said the changer's cool, malicious voice, "I think that friend Bortis will also amuse himself."
A moaning cry welled up around them, echoed not by walls this time but, it seemed, by the very earth. Bortis started. Jame got free an arm and struck him sharply in the nose with the heel of her hand. His head snapped back. She shoved him off and rolled backward into a fighter's crouch, nails out, ready to defend herself.
"Take her, damn you!" the changer was screaming. "She's right in front of you!"
Bortis ignored them both. He was listening, mouth agape, blood dripping unnoticed onto his chin. The cry came again, all around them. Its desolation seemed to jar something loose in the man's broken mind. He bolted, sobbing, between the lithons, out into the mist.
Some hunter's instinct almost sent Jame after him, but then she shrank back. Two figures had come into the circle. For a moment, Jame had the half-dazed impression that they were human: a woman bent with age and grief, a slender, white-haired child with fierce red eyes. Then she saw that they were both rathorns.
The mare was indeed old. Her coat, nearly hidden by encroaching plates, had faded from black to silver gray. Her slim legs trembled under the ivory's weight, while a massive skull mask bent her head almost to the ground. She breathed in great gasps between bared fangs because the mask's nasal pits had grown shut. So had one eye socket. She was slowly being buried alive in the ivory tomb of her own armor.
Snatches of her scent and the colt's reached Jame, even though this time they weren't directed at her. With each breath she drew, memories not her own swirled around her: the smell of dawn on the wind, the touch of a snowflake on the tongue, the sound of rathorn stallions belling in an autumn wood. Each memory flashed and died, leaving only a sense of infinite loss. The mare was destroying them one by one, ripping apart the vivid tapestry of her past, unmaking herself a bit at a time because she knew of no other way to die.
Jame fought the swift current of the other's memories, but every breath she took plunged her back into it. She began to sense the mare's underlying emotions like great jagged rocks in the riverbed of the rathorn's consciousness: despair, that so long a life had left so many memories to be destroyed; rage, that her own traitor body had made such a destruction necessary; grief, that bit by bit she was losing all the bright, fierce days, all the glowing nights. But most of all she grieved for the colt at her side, her last foal with his white coat and his red, red eyes. Her coming end had put its mark on him even before his birth. Now, the longer she took to die, the longer he was bound to her and her self-destructive agony, the more warped he would become. She foresaw that already no rage would ever accept him. He would grow up bitter and alone, a rogue, a death's-head, her child. She moaned again, and the colt echoed her, furious in his denial:
No, you're not going to die! No, wo . . .
"No . . ." breathed Jame, and then with a gasp wrenched her mind away from theirs. If she stayed, the rathorn's despair would suck her down as it nearly had the colt. If she ran away . . . but that was unthinkable. Stupid as it probably was, she could no more turn her back on this mare than on one of her own people in agony, pleading for the White Knife. She drew her own blade.
"Don't!" hissed the changer. His voice rose. "You fool, don't . . . !"
Jame sprang forward on the mare's blind side. She caught the tusk and jerked the rathorn's ivory encrusted head around. Like water deep in a well, the mare's sunken eye caught and held a warped reflection of Jame's face. The mirrored lips moved.
If you kill me, said a cold, precise voice in her head, my child will kill you. Kill me.
The eye closed. It was her choice, then, with full knowledge of the consequences. So be it. She drew back her knife to strike.
The colt's furious charge sent her sprawling. He had no tusk as yet and his horn was only a bump, but those small ivory hooves splintered rock beside her head. She rolled clear. He came at her again, bounding on his hind legs with fangs bared and forehooves slashing. His scent, rank with rage, sent a scream lancing through her head:
No, no, no, no . . . !
Jame slipped aside and spun. Her kick caught him just behind the ear between the undeveloped skull mask and the throat plates. He crashed down, stunned. Jame stood over him, panting. She could kill him now. She should, or he would never stop until he had killed her, if not today, then tomorrow, or next week, or next year. Think of him full grown, a rogue, a death's-head, coming to claim the debt of blood . . .
She heard a sharp hiss behind her, almost in her ear. The rathorn's head was poised above her, that ponderous weight of ivory balanced on the serpentine neck, ready to smash downward, to pulp flesh and splinter bone. Jame drew a deep shaky breath.
"All right. I won't hurt him. But if you kill me, I can't help you. Do you still want help?"
For a moment, the rathorn didn't move. Then, with a sigh, she lowered her head until her chin came to rest on Jame's shoulder. Jame had to brace herself as the weight settled. Hesitantly, wonderingly, she ran her fingers along the mare's mark, along the cool ivory. All this beauty and strength, all this proud spirit about to vanish forever. But everything, eventually, comes to an end, and destruction is only one more face of God. Jame took a firmer grip on her knife. Then, with all her strength, she drove the blade through the mare's eye deep into her brain.
The beast screamed. Jarme staggered back, hands over her ears. That terrible piercing cry went on and on as the rathorn slowly collapsed. Her very soul seemed to be tearing its way to freedom, and the diamantine imus gave back the murderous echo. The changer had curled himself up like a spider on top of his stone, but now he plummeted to the ground, shrieking. Blood and gray matter ran out of his ears. He convulsed once, horribly, and lay still. The stones under him began to crack.
Jame took a step toward the edge of the circle and fell, half paralyzed by the noise. The rathorn's scream was bad enough, but the stones' echo was raw power, enough easily to kill.
But what was that? A shadow sped past her across the stones, cast by no seen form. It darted to the hollowed-out imu and back again, away and back. No more gray cloak, because the cape in the entry hall had disintegrated at her touch. No more child-sized figure seen from the corner of the eye, because all his bones but one had turned to dust. But their mysterious guide would still lead her to safety if only she could follow him—but Jame . . . couldn't . . . move . . .
Running footsteps. Someone snatched her up, and she found herself hurling toward the darkness inside the shining stone. The imu's mouth swallowed both her and her rescuer. Inside, the diamantine boomed with the rathorn's scream. Her rescuer stumbled and dropped her. She rolled down steep stairs between booming walls, down into silence.
No, not quite silence. The ringing went on and on, only now it was only in her ears. She was lying on stone pavement. More stone seemed to be heaped on her chest, making it hard to breathe. The weight shifted, and a wet nose anxiously touched hers. She threw her arms around Jorin and hugged him as he burst into a thunderous purr.
A dying murmur from above still echoed in the stairwell. Then, as it faded entirely away, a terrible shriek rose in its place, full of despair, wild for revenge.
Jorin went straight up into the air and came down with all his fur on end. Jame scrambled to her feet. She heard hooves thundering down the stair. Oh God, the colt. She must bar his way, but how? There, folded back against the wall on either side of the stairwell: doors. Their stiffened hinges resisted her at first, but with a final, frantic effort she managed to slam them shut in the colt's very face. A lock clicked. Almost simultaneously, the young rathorn hit the other side with a boom. Jame felt the door shudder. She heard sharp ivory hooves tear at it, but its panels were made of ironwood and they held. One last scream sounded on the other side and then there was silence. Jame leaned against the wood. She knew as surely as if he had shouted it in her ear what that last cry had meant:
If not today, then tomorrow, or next week, or next year. Wait.
Trinity. She had daydreamed about riding a rathorn into battle, but here she was instead, launched into a blood feud with one. Just the same, it would probably be years before the colt was old enough to come after her, and, at this rate, she would be lucky to get as far as tomorrow. Let's just take one crisis at a time, Jame thought, and, for the first time, looked about her.
She was in a fair-sized subterranean chamber lined with close-fitted masonry, dimly lit by patches of luminous moss dotting the floor. It was ringed by open doorways, ten in all. Shining runes marked their lintels. Beside one of them, someone quite large was raising himself on an elbow.
"Marc!" Jame cried, and threw herself into the Kendar's arms. Jorin pounced on both of them. "But how did you get out of Bortis's trap, or cross that killing circle up there, or—"
"Just a minute, lass." The Kendar stuck a finger in first one ear and then the other, dislodging what looked like mud. Jame saw that the little sack of earth from Kithorn was hanging outside his shirt, empty.
"Oh, Marc, your home-soil!"
He shrugged. "I thought it might protect me. Luckily, it did. A good thing I hung on to it these sixty odd years, eh? As for Bortis's trap, a funny business that was, falling first one direction and then the other. But, you know, those cracked walls practically powdered when I hit them. There was no real impact to speak of at all. It took me awhile to climb out; but when I did, there was Jorin, waiting to guide me here."
"Cracked . . ." Jame thought of those shattered walls, the stones breaking under the changer, the fissured bones. The ghost of an idea began to form in her mind, but before it could take on substance, she started violently. Out of one of the doorways, as if from a great distance, had come a voice:
"Hello? Is anyone there?"
Jame sprang to her feet. She had not heard that voice for years, except in dreams, but she had no doubt who was calling to her now.
"Tori! My God, where are you? Answer me!"
She plunged through the nearest doorway into the tunnel beyond, still calling her brother's name. Moss formed a luminous carpet for the first few yards, then broke down into clumps, more and more widely spaced. Beyond lay utter darkness. Jame called again. Only echoes replied. Could she have chosen the wrong door? Yes, easily. She must try again.
Jame turned quickly to retrace her footsteps, and again found nothing but darkness before her. Where was the luminous moss? She could only have come a few yards beyond it, yet now it was nowhere in sight. Marc's voice called her name. How impossibly far away he sounded. She took a hesitant step toward him, and in the distance saw a faint green glow. Of course: the tunnel must be paved with step-forward stones. Another stride or two and . . .
Her foot came down on emptiness.
She pitched forward, twisted, clawed at stone, hung there in space by her fingertips, heart pounding. A rock, dislodged, plummeted away. It never seemed to hit the bottom. Instead, from below came a scuffling, scratching sound, oddly furtive. An exhalation of air cold with earth and deep stone breathed up around her.
Then Jame almost lost her grip as something touched her hand. It was Jorin. A moment later, Marc caught her wrists and pulled her back up onto the path.
"What in Perimal's name is down there?" she demanded.
Steel struck flint. A spark flashed blindingly in the dark and grew as dead moss kindled. Marc rose and kicked the blazing clump over the edge. It fell, revealing a deep, narrow crevasse running parallel to the trail. The chasm's lower reaches were studded with rocks, each one about the size of a clenched fist. A hundred points of light glowed briefly like small feral eyes in their craggy folds, then all blinked out at once. In the utter darkness that followed, the stealthy scratch of claw on stone began again.
"Trocks," said Marc's voice in the dark. "The Builders brought them to Rathillien. Their digestive juices dissolve stone, you see, so they were useful in temple masonry and, I suppose, in hollowing out tunnels like this. We had better go back to that underground chamber. At least there was some light there. . . . Wait."
They listened.
"They're between us and the chamber," said Jame. "Now what—try to make friends?"
"No. These may have been the Builders' pets once, but they've run wild for many a long year now. I shouldn't think even a Builder would care to deal with them now."
"But if they're stone-eaters, surely they won't hurt us."
"Oh, they eat other things as well: lichen, boots, feet. . . . Krothen had an infestation of them in his dungeon at Kothifir once that cleaned out every prisoner he had, not to mention quite a few guards. Most areas around our temples have a problem with them, off and on. They don't like light, though."
Again the click of steel and flint; again, a spark. As moss caught fire, Marc tore up a clump and threw it down the passageway. The path was thick with small gray rocks that certainly hadn't been there before. They covered the moss. As it caught fire under them, the spreading flames kindled the glow of many eyes, and a piping wail arose. Then the fire came leaping back up the tunnel toward Jame and Marc.
They retreated. The walls of the step-forward passage blurred as if they were moving impossibly fast, but the flames followed faster over the carpet of dead moss. Jame and Marc plunged into a side tunnel with Jorin on their heels just as the fire roared past. The dry moss burned fiercely, but not for long, leaving a path strewn with rapidly dying embers. Darkness closed in again.
"We aren't having much luck with fire on this trip," said Jame in a rather shaken voice. "At least I don't hear any more scratching. Marc?" The darkness pressed in around her, more absolute than anything she had ever known. "Where are you?"
"Here." His voice came from somewhere to her right. "We seem to have gotten off the step-forward stones. They probably only line the main passageway."
"But why? Where does it go?"
"Trinity knows. More to the point, where do we go from here? Some light should help."
She heard him draw out his fire making tools again, then give a disgusted grunt. "Dropped them." Joints creaking audibly, he knelt to search the floor.
"Don't bother," said Jame. "I still have mine." She groped in a pocket and pulled them out. The handkerchief-wrapped bone came too and fell before she could catch it. She didn't hear it hit the floor. The next moment, the flint and steel were snatched from her grasp. "Hey! Give me a chance."
"What?" said Marc's voice, still down by the floor.
Jame stood very still. She heard nothing, and yet. . . . "Marc, I don't think we're alone down here."
He rose. "Where are you?"
"Here." She reached out. A hand closed on hers—slim, long fingered, very, very cold. She dropped it with a gasp and sprang back, only to trip over Jorin. That cold grip caught her flailing hand and steadied her.
"What on earth are you doing?" said Marc's voice behind her.
She gulped. "Making someone's acquaintance, I think, someone who apparently doesn't want to be seen and who isn't very tall."
"Our friend in gray?"
"Maybe." That unearthly hand still lay in her grasp. Now its cold fingers tightened and tugged at her. "I think he wants us to go with him. Should we?"
A moment's silence, then: "Yes," said Marc. "After all, we've been following him since this morning. Here." His own hand, huge and warm, closed over hers. "Lead on."
The darkness confused Jame's sense of direction, but she was fairly sure that their guide was taking them back to the main corridor. In confirmation the burnt smell grew and then charred moss crunched underfoot. They turned left, away from the subterranean chamber. Jame went on, one hand gripping the cold fingers that led her, the other engulfed in Marc's warm grasp as he followed in her wake. Only the sound of her boots and his echoed off the walls, sometimes close by, sometimes far off, as if the path momentarily skirted the edge of some vast cavern. There were depths too, or so the faint echoes hinted, occasionally on both sides of the trail at once.
How long had they been walking? Time seemed to slow, almost to stop under the weight of darkness. Where were they going? If the stones underfoot still stepped forward, they must have already come a considerable distance.
Jame's thoughts spun in circles, snatching at answers that the darkness denied her. She remembered how frightened she had been as a child during the dark of the moon. Perimal Darkling gripped that part of Rathillien that overlapped the next threshold world, the one that had fallen with the Master, but the shadows always sought to expand. Someday they might reach from the planet's surface up into the orbit of its single moon. If that happened, Perimal Darkling would swallow the moon and soon after both the sun and stars; that had happened before on other threshold worlds where the Kencyrath had fought and lost. If ever Rathillien's moon disappeared, the Three People would know that they had lost again. But, in the meantime, for five nights out of every forty-day lunar cycle, the moon was dark, and those below waited anxiously for its reappearance, afraid that the end had come with no one the wiser until too late. But even during "the Dark," there was some light. Not so here.
This wouldn't do, Jame told herself firmly. If she kept thinking about the darkness, it would consume her. To steady herself, she turned her mind back to the mystery of the cracks, and soon came up with some guesses that made her even more uneasy.
"Marc . . ." she said. "Suppose the Builders did try to claim the Anarchies. Then suppose the rathorns came back, maybe through these tunnels, and . . . and used the imus to scream the city to pieces, with the Builders still in it. I found a skeleton in that house I explored. It wasn't human. There could have been more there, hidden in corners and holes all over the city, where they crawled trying to escape. Perhaps all the Builders are dead, and if they are—"
"There'll be no more temples," Marc finished, his voice echoing hollowly in the darkness. "If we have to retreat to the next threshold world, we'll be completely cut off from our god."
"Oh, I don't like the old grump any more than you do, but without him . . ."
"Or her, or it."
". . . we're helpless."
"So, if the Builders are dead, this is it: Rathillien, the Kencyrath's last battlefield. But if that's true, just who or what is holding onto my hand?"
She didn't get an answer. Jorin had been walking beside her, his shoulder brushing her leg. Suddenly she felt him stop. His keen ears had caught a faint, distant sound. Jame heard it too, somewhat distorted, through his senses: many claws on stone, rapidly getting closer. The cat began to growl.
"Lass?"
"Company, and no more fire to make them welcome."
"Then let's not be at home when they get here."
Their guide seemed to agree for that cold hand tugged impatiently at Jame. They ran, tripping, stumbling in the dark. Behind them, the scratching sound grew closer, louder, and a thin, excited whistling filled the air.
Then between one step and the next, light exploded around them. Half-blinded, Jame skidded to a stop, with Jorin tumbling over her heels. She turned in bewilderment and saw Marc standing behind her, rubbing his eyes. There was a wall close behind him—so close, in fact, that his pack seemed to be embedded in it. Then he gave a startled grunt and rocked back on his heels, as if something had given him a sharp pull from behind. The next moment, he surged away from the wall and hastily shrugged off what was left of his pack. It had been ripped open and its contents half dissolved by a slimy gray substance through which white larvae wriggled.
"It must be the breeding season," said Marc grimly, and kicked the pack back through the apparently solid wall. "I've heard old songs about gateway barriers like this. Ancestors be praised the songs were right. Now, where's our guide? We apparently owe him more than we realized."
But the small gray figure from the Anarchies was nowhere in sight. Then Jame realized that she was still holding something. She opened her hand. In it lay the long, slim finger bone from the Builder's house. It crumbled into dust.
"Good-bye, friend." She let it sift through her fingers. "Now, where on earth are we?"
They were standing on the edge of a large, nine-sided chamber. Its walls were painted in a continuous sylvan mural, and rib girders rose from each angle like tree trunks to meet overhead in a tangle of painted leaves, branches, and sky. From the apex of the ceiling hung a light sphere. Jame had seen others like it in Tai-tastigon, but this one was much larger and dimmer. The blinding glare was actually no more than a twilight glow now that her eyes had adjusted to it, and apparently hadn't been more than that for some time, for the real grass carpeting the room had had begun to die. But what really astonished her was the white, windowless structure standing in the middle of the floor.
"Why, it looks just like a model of our god's temple in Tai-tastigon!" she exclaimed.
"That's no model," said Marc. He looked around in amazement. "I've heard of this room. We're in Karkinaroth, Prince Odalian's palace. But how? That's three hundred leagues south of the Anarchies."
"The step-forward stones! I thought we'd probably gone quite a distance, but this . . . !" She stopped, struck by a thought. "Marc, there are supposed to be nine Kencyr temples on Rathillien, aren't there?"
"Why, yes."
"There were ten doors in that underground chamber."
"Well, there's Wyrden in the Oseen Hills. That's Builders' work, too. Grindark hillmen live there now, but there's a tradition that their ancestors were the Builders' craftsmen."
"So they would have to get to the building sites, too, maybe by a step-forward tunnel to that room under the Anarchies and then on by one of the other nine doors. Well, it's a thought, anyway. It would at least explain how we got here." She approached the miniature temple cautiously, wary as always in the presence of her god. "But are you sure this thing is real? It's so small."
"Only on the outside. The Builders could be very playful about space. Three priests and nine acolytes are supposed to serve here."
"It doesn't look as if anyone has for some time. Why, the door is even bolted shut." She put her hands on it, then jerked them away with a startled exclamation. "There's power in there. Too much of it, barely under control. Where are the priests? Trinity, don't they know how dangerous this could be? Tai-tastigon nearly got ripped apart when the temple there was mismanaged."
"I think I hear someone in there."
They leaned as close to the door as they could without touching it. From inside came a whisper of a voice crying over and over in Kens:
"Let me out! Oh God, let me out, let me out . . ."
Marc pushed Jame aside. He gripped the rod bolted across the door and pitted the whole of his great strength against it. Muscles bulged, bones creaked, but the rod didn't move. He let go and looked rather blankly at his hands, blistered by the power from within the temple.
"This calls for a lever," he said. He unsheathed his war-axe and regarded its wooden shaft critically. "It might hold up against that rod, but then again . . ."
At that moment, three guards wearing the Prince's buff and gold livery entered the room. They carried steel-shafted spears.
"Now, one of those will do nicely," said the big Kendar and stepped forward. "Here, friend, lend me your weapon. Someone is trapped inside . . ."
The guard reversed his spear and struck with its iron shod butt. By skill or luck, he clipped Marc on the head just where Bortis's brigand had hit him four days earlier. The big man crumpled without a sound. Jame found herself facing two poised spears.
"What about the cat?" one man asked another.
"We have no orders about that. Kill it."
"Jorin, run!" Jame cried, and threw herself forward, twisting. One spear point passed under her arm and the other clashed against it as the second guard tried too late to block her. She dropped the first man with an elbow to the throat. The man who had struck Marc tripped her with his spear shaft. She came up rolling and saw Jorin disappear in a golden streak out the door. The next moment, the back of her head seemed to explode.
But these people are supposed to be our allies, she thought with amazement, and then thought nothing more at all.