Fire In The Darkness

                         Prologue

Darkness's Unfolding Rose

    There was a song in the woods tonight.  
    Kenniel opened her eyes slowly and turned her head in 
that direction. She had been trying to get to sleep for 
some time now, but the music, flitting in and out of her 
consciousness, would not let her. Undoubtedly it was only 
another group of merchants playing a harp or singing 
somewhere in the forest, but she should have been able to 
see the glow of their lamps. That no cool blue glow from 
the captured shiners radiated through the tight-packed 
trees disturbed her.    
    But then, she had never been able to sleep well or 
long with light shining on her. It had been a relief when 
the captain of the merchants she traveled with released 
the shiners at last and let the thick, unbroken darkness 
return. There was not even a moon tonight. She should have 
been able to sleep better. The music was not that loud. 
Kenniel rolled over again and punched the pillow the 
captain had lent her. She should be sleeping.
    And yet....
    Why should sleep matter so to her? She had slept well 
the night before, had even slept in the light of the Sun 
this morning. It was all right to lie awake for a while 
and listen to the music if she wanted to do it.
    She closed her eyes after all, and was drifting 
towards the farther shore of the world when a stray 
thought hit her across the face like an errant shiner and 
caused her to awaken abruptly. Her eyes flew open, and she 
gasped, though quietly, so as not to awaken the women who 
slept on either side of her.
    The moon had been full last night.
    There was no reason why there should be no bold and 
brilliant silver light shining tonight.     
    Kenniel rose to her knees and stared in the direction 
of the music. Still nothing that she could see, except 
very faint ripples of movement like leaves stirring in the 
wind. Except that it was new spring, with snow still lying 
on the ground in the most sheltered places, and there was 
no leaf to rustle in the wind.
    Her breath came faster now.
    She hesitated, looking back towards the other people 
in the camp, and then rose to her feet and made her way 
slowly in the direction of the music.
    It was louder now, with a sound as of both voices and 
instruments together, blended in a way that she did not 
know, and yet a way that seemed as familiar to her as the 
sound of her own name. It led her on until she found 
herself standing at the edge of the wide clearing she had 
guided the caravan to, staring into the thickness of the 
Great Wood. There was nothing to fear there. The caravan 
needed a guide only because they did not know the trails.
    Kenniel blinked, unable to say why a vision had 
suddenly passed through her head, a vision of animals she 
did not know darting through the trees and snapping at 
each other. Snapping? None of the animals with the 
caravans snapped at each other, save the horses when the 
stallions quarreled over the mares in mating season, and 
then they were more likely to conduct a sort of ritualized 
contest with stones and bits of twig and colored feather 
instead of fighting. They said fighting was only a remnant 
of the past, something they could not always control. 
Ridiculous to have a picture of animals snapping at each 
other in her head.
    As ridiculous as hearing the song she heard?
    Perhaps.
    But the song was still there.   
    After a long, undecided moment, Kenniel left the true 
path she had trod and entered the quiet, wild ways of the 
Great Wood. The trees slid easily past her small, lithe 
form, their bark not darker than her own skin, or the 
clouded tangle of black hair that trailed behind her. She 
felt a twinge of pride as she wrestled her way past a 
thicket of brambles that reared before her like a wall. 
None of the larger people who traveled with the caravan 
would have been able to slip past this. Their too-thick 
clothes, their clumsy arms and legs, even the shape of 
their faces, she felt- rounded instead of sharp as hers 
was- would have stopped them.
    Something in the forest tonight made her 
extraordinarily conscious of who and what she was. 
Something in the forest tonight required that she be this 
way.
    Kenniel stepped past yet another thicket, sliding like 
air, and paused. Before her reared two trees she had never 
seen before, though she had explored this part of the 
Great Wood as much as any other. They leaned across her 
path, supporting each other, branches intertwined. She 
checked the undergrowth on either side, and found that she 
could not slip through that tangle. She would have to go 
between them.
    Beyond the gate was only darkness.
    She sucked in a breath and glided through the arch.
    At once, the darkness, always amenable to her eyes, 
seemed to turn as clear as the moon and slip away on 
either side of her. She found herself standing in a place 
she knew she had not seen in the Great Wood, and that no 
songbird or other flyer had ever seen either, because they 
would have told the humans about it. It could not be seen 
from the air, or the sides... it did not exist, then.
    But the enormous clearing before her, the grass 
shorter and smoother beneath her feet than any place she 
had ever seen, did exist. She could smell it, feel it, 
taste it. She knelt briefly, dark fingers splayed on the 
grass, and then touched her hand to her nose and lips. 
Yes, she could taste wild chives in it. Never had she 
dreamed with such accuracy.    
    What was this place?
    A storm of singing from ahead answered her. That was 
the only thing she could compare it to, a storm, so 
suddenly did the sound break on her. And now, ahead, she 
could see rippling shapes drifting around and around, and 
she could see something shining in the middle of them, 
larger and brighter than any small insect they might have 
captured. And it was red.  
    Warily, she approached, wishing for the undergrowth of 
the forest back. Yet no magic appeared to fulfill the 
wish. The grass remained short and sharp, and when she 
looked back over her shoulder, she could not see the gate 
that had led her to this place. No trees in sight. She 
stood on a flat and level plain such as she had heard lay 
over the Northwall Mountains. Grass, and more grass, and 
the figures dancing and singing in the middle of the 
plain, around a-
    A fire?
    Kenniel stopped, and stared. A fire, yes, and she felt 
a violent shivering creep up her spine and spread over 
her. Music, even music that seemed to banish the moon, was 
one thing. Taming fire was another thing altogether, a 
dangerous thing, something she had never seen, and that 
made her swallow the dangerous prickles of awe and fear 
and wonder trying to pierce the sides of her throat.    
    Then she began paying attention to the dancers 
themselves. Fear reared and fell like a stallion caught in 
a rockslide under the onslaught of laughter.
    Why, these were her own people, the people of the 
Great Wood! Let the southerners look at them askance and 
wonder about them, whisper tales so old that they were 
little more than rumor and no one knew the right words for 
them anymore. These were only her own people. 
    Would her own people have a fire?
    Would they be singing like this?    
    And Kenniel stood and shivered, because the same 
impulse that had prompted her to leave the path and follow 
the song answered that, yes, her own people would have a 
fire like this and sing like this, even though she knew 
she had never seen anyone disobey one of the Great Laws or 
heard anyone sing like this in her life.
    The dancers themselves were small and lithe like her, 
dark of feature and hair, their arms thin and slender, 
their bodies scarcely thicker than their arms or legs. 
Their hair flew longer and wilder than hers, though, in 
tangled curls rather than the slightly curling locks every 
Great Wooder she had ever known had possessed. Their faces 
were sharp and wild, the set of bone like a knitting 
needle's, without the slight trace of roundness that she 
had grown used to seeing in the faces of the southerners 
lately. And their eyes...
    Their eyes!
    Dark, blacker than their skin, as hers were, so that 
some said they were half-deer, the people of the Great 
Wood, and others called them elk. But these were wilder, 
and there was a light in them, a picture, that she had 
never seen.
    It was as if there were many silver fires burning in 
the distance, and she had a sudden sharp picture, as 
sudden as the vision of snapping animals, of what the sky 
would look like with many silver fires spread out over it, 
less brilliant and more distant and more disturbing than 
the moon.
    She shivered. 
    One of the dancers whirled away from the fire then, 
and stood looking at her, arm outstretched to her. Kenniel 
tried to speak, but words were caught in her throat. She 
could only manage a dry gabble. 
    But not through fear.
    Words and images were flooding her, ancient words for 
things she did not know but had never forgotten, images of 
things that she had never seen and yet which had the same 
familiarity that the song did. Tears ran down her face as 
she knelt, to bring herself to the darkling's eye level- 
for so they taught her they were called- and she reached 
out to embrace her and put her head on her shoulder.
    A small hand rose to caress her hair, and a voice 
whispered her name.
    Something vanished in her, and when she rose again she 
knew how to make fire.


Eyes of Starlight and Midnight

    By the Light, I am dizzy with joy!
    I ran through the meadow this morning, turning and 
spreading my arms so that I could feel as if I were 
flying, and then falling to the ground again panting and 
laughing, the world spinning around me, so that it felt as 
if I had flown. I rolled on my back, not caring that the 
grass smudged my dress so badly that I might as well have 
stripped it off, dropped it in the dirt, and stamped on 
it. I didn't care, just this once.
    My father had just told me that he thought I had done 
a good job on the painting I did to sell at the fair next 
month.
    I can assure you, Stelana, that I never thought he 
would say such a thing. He has always said so little about 
my paintings. I know they hurt him. My mother had the same 
skill, and she died of it finally. I would never do it if 
they did not call me so. Just as he does not wear the 
medallion that my mother's parents gave him on their 
wedding day, out of respect for the dead and so that they 
would not have to be reminded of it every time that they 
see him, I would not paint and remind him of the dead in 
that way if...
    But he knows now. He felt it. He stood in front of my 
painting of myself and the horse who calls herself Aleetha 
and he understood at last. He reached out and ran his 
fingers over the painting, and I knew that he felt the 
warmth of the mane under his hands, the muscles shifting 
under palomino hide, and that he even smelled the musky 
scent she sheds when she has worked herself into a lather 
for long enough. And then he looked at me and nodded, with 
tears shining in his eyes.
    "It is very good, Isola," he said quietly. "You have 
so much of your mother in you."
    And that was the very first time- the very first time, 
Stelana- that he has ever said it with pride instead of 
pain!
    So I ran into the middle of this meadow, and I am 
writing to you even though I know that you might not want 
to spend the whole of the letter reading about a painting 
that you will not see for months. But cousin, I thought 
you had to know, so that you could tell me about the grass 
stains on my dress if nothing else and how they will 
distress my poor nurse, and you could know why I had grass 
stains on my dress...

    This is a letter that you will never read, Stelana, 
but I need to write it because I cannot believe what just 
happened, and you are always the one I write to when I 
need to write anything, and I must write it. The call is 
as strong as it is when I know that I have something to 
paint, and I know just where to find the berries to mix 
the paints. This... it is wondrous, and I know just the 
words to use.
    I glanced up from my other letter to you, and I heard 
something like thunder. But oh, the world was as cloudless 
as my mood this morning, and I knew there was no storm on 
the horizon. I tilted my head and listened as closely as I 
could. Then I finally made out the sound of hooves.
    A little annoyed, I wondered if my father had missed 
me already and sent one of the horses to fetch me. 
    But no, there were too many hooves. The whole herd 
would not follow Aleetha- the whole herd has never 
followed Aleetha- and she was the only one in the corral 
this morning who would have agreed to undertake the duty. 
    It was a whole herd of brinden, and they came whipping 
out of the east, blowing and snorting in fear. Their 
hooves flew, and their golden horns tossed the Sun back in 
blinding flashes, and their short brown and gold coats 
heaved like the grass they ran over. I had never seen them 
so frightened, even of a storm. They were not even 
bounding as they usually do, when they are more concerned 
with the grace of their run than the time it takes. This 
was running. Full and flat out. I have only ever seen 
horses run that way, in the most serious mating 
competitions.  
    But no wonder.
    Oh, Stelana, the tears are in my eyes still, and how I 
wish that you could read this!
    I, Isola Suneyes, daughter of Lady Endira Suneyes and 
Lord Berean Mashar, have served the Light all my life. But 
I saw something not of the Light this morning, and so help 
me all the suns that shine beyond Arion, it was beautiful.
    Following the brinden was a great cloud of animals 
running low to the ground. They had no horns, and paws 
instead of hooves. I could not believe them when I first 
saw them. I could not understand why they would need the 
thick coats of fur that bristled all over them. And such 
coats of fur, in all colors! The only furred animals that 
regularly frequent the meadows are ground squirrels, and 
they are always red or gray. These animals were black and 
silver, white and brown, fawn and golden as the brinden- 
and, yes, red and gray. I know that you would insist on me 
putting the detail in if you were reading this letter, 
Stelana, and so I will put it in for you- and because I 
want to get this image clear in my mind before I forget.
    Light! As if I could ever forget it. 
    Heavy bodies, yet lithe. Furry tails that bristled out 
from their bottoms as their fur bristled out from their 
bodies. Heavy muzzles, and when I first saw their teeth 
flash, I winced. What in the name of the Light would they 
need such sharp teeth for?
    I soon found out.   
    Two of them led the others, heavy animals standing 
perhaps four feet at their shoulders. One of them was 
male, and black, with silver eyes. The other was female, 
and silver, with black eyes. They ran side by side, never 
varying in step. They soon caught up with the last 
brinden, fast though they were running, and they were 
almost directly opposite me when they leapt. I thought 
they were playing a game, jumping over the back of the 
brinden. I could not have been more wrong.
    The male- and I know that you will not believe this, 
or would never believe this, Stelana- closed his jaws on 
the brinden's left hind heel. The female did the same with 
the other leg; they needed to leap at all only because the 
brinden was going so fast that his legs had begun to leave 
the ground. Both of them locked their teeth down like 
thorns gripping clothing and tore out the tendons that run 
there. The brinden lurched, screaming in terror, and I 
would have gone to him. But the male leapt in the next 
moment, and his teeth tore out the throat the same way. I 
have never seen so much blood.
    Then the whole herd fell upon the brinden, except for 
a few others who knocked a few more of them down. I feel 
frustrated writing this, because that is not what they 
did, but I do not have the words for tearing out the 
throat of something and then proceeding to eat the flesh, 
which was what they did.
    And then the male leader turned and walked towards me, 
carrying something heavy and dripping in his jaws. He set 
it down on my lap, soaking my dress with blood, and stared 
at me with silver eyes for a long moment. I found myself 
reaching out and setting a hand on the side of his head. 
He snapped at my hand for a moment, almost playfully, and 
then he turned and trotted back to join the rest of the 
herd.    
    I am not going to rest tonight, I know. I will search 
the old manuscripts to find out what these creatures are, 
and the proper words for what they do. And I will know it, 
even if they are not of the Light. 

    -Bad news, Stelana. I am afraid that I tore my hand 
open on a branch as I was coming back, and my dress is 
completely ruined by the blood that spilled. I hope that 
you will be able to give me some advice on cleaning it.
    I cannot wait to see you!
    -Your loving cousin,
    Isola Suneyes.

    -I found the words. In the very oldest books, I knew 
that I would find them, and I did. These creatures once 
ran beneath the sun of Arion, as much a part of the world 
as the brinden. What they did was called killing. They do 
it to eat. They feed on the brinden and other animals as 
the brinden feed on grass.    
    They are called wolves.
    I am going back to the meadow tomorrow. I know that 
you would grieve for me, Stelana, but please do not. I 
want to find them again. I have to find out why they are 
so beautiful, these creatures that are part of the Dark.
    Yes, I found that word too.
    -Isola.

Obsessions

    The clatter of the hooves was the only sound echoing 
and rebounding back from the peaks. It was not really very 
loud, and yet Hardovra flinched. She felt as if she were 
breaking silence that had been left to lie undisturbed for 
thousands of years.
    As it had been.
    She drew a harsh breath through her nostrils and shook 
her head to banish the thoughts from her mind. Then she 
tapped the horse carrying her on the neck and clucked her 
tongue. The chestnut mare nodded, lifted her head from the 
small brave patch of grass that had managed to wriggle 
through a crack in the stone, and continued up the small 
trail that led deeper and deeper into the haven of the 
mountains.   
    Hardovra ducked her head as they passed through a 
natural arch in the stone, and then looked back at it. Her 
lips twitched a little in a smile of acknowledgment as she 
saw that there were characters etched deep in the stone of 
the arch, letters that she could not read but could 
recognize as symbols.     
    Not of words, but of the end of her journey.    
    Stroking the mare on the neck again, to quell the 
horse's uneasiness at being in this place- her people had 
some memory of it still running in their blood, which was 
more than Hardovra could say about humans- she nudged and 
urged and coaxed her up the trail that wound more and 
more, was almost a ledge at times, with soft words. "Think 
of it, Shanari. What we find at the end of this will bring 
peace and rest back to our home. Will that not be 
wonderful?"
    Shanari snorted and threw her back into the work, 
letting her hooves dance among the loose stones with more 
grace and artistry than any mere human foot would have 
been able to manage. She was more than willing to risk 
this if it meant that she could spend the winter in a 
peaceful home again, Hardovra knew. She did not really 
understand what the human woman she had made the Covenant 
with had become obsessed with, and she did not want to 
know. She wanted to do this, whatever it was, and then 
return to the lowlands and the warmer times again.     
    It did not escape Hardovra's sense of irony that it 
was a horse, one of the race that had been among the 
strongest and staunchest allies of Lleyn Fiadar, who was 
going to help her bring the Dark back to the world. They 
had fought so long and hard for the Light. Now one of them 
was going to help her destroy the endless dominance that 
Lleyn had allowed to the Sun, a dominance that had 
banished the stars beyond any sight of the world and so 
banished the wolves, the darklings, the darkdrakes...
    She had never even seen a star or a wolf. She wanted 
to, so badly that she could taste it. But that was not the 
reason she was doing this.
    Unwillingly, she let her mind dwell on the reason she 
was here.
    She would have to do it, if in the end her anger and 
need was going to overcome the spells of fear that Lleyn 
was sure to have laid on this place.    
    Lleyn Fiadar.    
    If he had never done what he had done- gathered the 
Light and everyone who chose it into a great war to end 
all wars, stolen the Nightstone and sent the Dark fleeing 
from the world, and stolen all the magic that the Dark 
allowed to the world by banishing the knowledge of 
everything that could kill- her husband would still be 
alive.    
    Hardovra's eyes, the pale blue-green of the highest 
stone in the ancient western mines, closed in agony, and 
she drove Shanari on until the horse snorted in pain. It 
was not fair to make the mare share this, though she could 
feel the shaking of her rider's body with the sobs. 
Hardovra eased back on the urging of her hands on the mane 
and the squeeze of her heels on the mare's sides, 
listening intently to the song of the memory in her ears 
but letting Shanari negotiate the last bits of the path 
slowly.
     Terranan had lain on the bed, sick after many days of 
the pox and now slowly wasting away from one of the 
diseases of the lungs that had followed in its wake. He 
would have thrown this off like a horse shaking off a 
shiner in the most ordinary of times, but not when his 
face was still scabbed with the sores that had risen and 
then burst, not when he was gasping for breath as 
something slowly and surely took possession of him, not 
when he had spent four days running a fever and vomiting 
before the sores had even appeared.
    Not when he was sick.    
    Hardovra had sat by the side of the bed and stroked 
his hand, his forehead, and called out to the Light again 
and again. None of the small magic she knew was useful, 
and neither were the herbs she knew. Her reading had 
suggested that a certain herb known as landora might help, 
and she had scouted feverishly for that before realizing, 
from another book she kept but had never let her husband 
see that landora did not exist any more. Its other name 
was horsebane, and it had been banished from the world 
with the rest of the Dark when Lleyn Fiadar had his great 
war. Anything that was evil, in his eyes, he had sent away 
from the world, and then destroyed the key that opened 
that door. He had wanted a perfect world where people 
lived in peace, without fire or weapons or any of the 
other things that Hardovra had read of and that could 
kill.      
    But he had not been able to fight disease. He had not 
wanted to fight disease. He did not know what caused it, 
and he had said it was necessary to kill trees that lived 
too long, or animals that lived too long. He had not taken 
death away from the world because, he said, death was part 
of life.      
    He had just taken away all the means of causing death, 
or of preventing it.      
    Hardovra had been compelled to sit there and watch her 
Terranan waste away, while she knew everything necessary 
to save him. But she had been denied the chance to use 
that knowledge, because of one man's old obsession. Light 
and Dark had shared the world of Arion since the birth of 
time, and never had one destroyed the other or tried to 
destroy it.
    But it had happened, because of one man's obsession, a 
dream that he had wanted to last forever. "Three thousand 
years," Hardovra murmured as Shanari reached a plateau and 
could run for a little while, her mane and tail, and 
Hardovra's own hair, exactly matched in color, streaming 
behind them. "That is long enough."      
    Then the path straightened out, and Hardovra felt the 
first onset of fear. She closed her eyes, clamped down 
around her misery and pain, and rode Shanari through it. 
It did not affect horses, who had all allied to the Light 
long ago because they ate grass- just humans, who had 
remained divided in their allegiance to Light and Dark 
even in the days of the great war.      
    Illusions.
    The feel of rats running over her legs.         
    Illusions.   
    The feel of shiners battering her face, buzzing around 
her ears, the instinctively irritating sensation that 
would make a human swat even though there was nothing to 
be afraid of.     
    Illusion.        
    The fear that she might fall over a cliff, something 
that Lleyn had not been able to prevent because he could 
not destroy the mountains.
    Lleyn Fiadar.
    Dark, she hated the man.     
    And then she was through, as if hatred had been the 
key that would unlock the door of the illusions.    
    Hardovra blinked and lifted her head and opened her 
eyes, and found herself in a small meadow of stone, fenced 
around with gleaming walls of rock that were tinted a soft 
malachite hue as the sun lifted high enough to send the 
shining colors of dawn spinning down the walls.
    And in one wall...
    Lleyn had counted on his dream lasting forever. Dark, 
anyone could have opened this long ago if they had known 
it was here. But only Hardovra and a few others like her 
knew that there had been a war between Light and Dark at 
all, that the Dark had ever existed. Lleyn had thought 
forgetting, ignorance, better than constant vigilance 
against the Dark's return. It was never going to return, 
after all. The door could not be opened from that side.
    But it could be opened from this side.
    Hardovra rode confidently for the green door in the 
side of the mountain, and paused to study the characters 
on the stone. Excitement flooded her as she realized what 
they represented. Visual pictures of things described in 
her books, things she had only been able to imagine until 
now but recognized at once when she saw them.      
    Such instant knowledge confirmed to her that she was a 
true servant of the Dark. Only someone like that could 
know this.     
    She reached out, and grasped the heavy handle, and 
pulled. The door swung past her with a heavy thump that 
told of finely balanced mechanisms the ungrateful man who 
set himself up as god of the Light had adopted from the 
Dark. Hardovra shook her head and reached in, scooping up 
the cloth-wrapped bundle that lay inside. It was large, 
filling her arms completely, but soft and warm as summer 
night.       
    Summer night without a moon, of course.
    She unwrapped the folds of cloth, and gazed at the 
prize. It did not bring the Dark back to the world at 
once, of course, but this was the Nightstone, a deep 
blue-black and as finely cut as the ancient diamonds in 
the illuminations of the books she read. No one could do 
work like this now, because no one could forge the metal 
needed for the tools, because no one could use fire.
    No one had been able to use fire.    
    Hardovra threw back her head and laughed, then started 
to fold the cloth over the Stone again, marveling that 
Shanari had not tossed her head and run at the feel of the 
Dark. It was so long that horses had forgotten they ever 
had a choice. They did not feel the Dark because they did 
not even feel the Light anymore. They just knew the world 
the way it was, and they could not even imagine anything 
different.    
    Something stopped her, a movement under the surface of 
the stone, like a movement under the surface of water.    
    Hardovra stared at the thing that moved, an actual 
image, and tried her best to read it. But if that ancient 
art had ever really existed, she was not in possession of 
it. She could not tell what was happening, except...      
    As the image showed her.     
    She wheeled Shanari and drove her forward, shouting, 
knowing even as the horse ran that it was going to be too 
late.     
    Behind her, the door glowed white and shut, vanishing 
into the mountain with no sign that it had ever been 
there. 


Pieces
    
    Arana had tripped for the fifteenth time and fallen to 
the ground hard enough to scrape her elbow open this time, 
but she did not care.  She was not ever going to care 
about anything again.    
    With all the sullen determination of an enraged 
fifteen-year-old, she picked herself up again and ran on. 
That was the one thing she was good at, running away from 
things, she thought, with fierce outrage shining just 
below the surface of the pride in the thought. She would 
never have had to run if they had just told her the truth 
about her mother from the beginning. She would never have 
had to hate her father.  
    This was all his fault!
    Why hadn't they told her that she was a clanless 
bastard, that she would never have anything because her 
mother had no clan and no female could inherit from a 
male? She had thought she knew what the rest of her life 
would be like. She would have the small farm that had been 
her mother's, and she would have to work hard, but she 
would have it. She would always be just secure enough.
    Now...
    Her father had told her, bluntly, simply, that her 
mother had not known who she was and had been looking for 
her clan all her life. Her father and a few of the friends 
her mother had made had helped her buy the farm and keep 
it up. Now that she was dead, though, it would be parceled 
up and handed out to the people whose money had gone into 
it. That was the law, and there were no exceptions to it. 
A mother had to provide for her daughters, a father for 
his sons. Inheritance could pass only in a direct male or 
female line, to descendants of the same sex. Not even her 
mother's stones could be hers, because without a clan to 
confirm it, she was not the daughter of her mother.
    Her father had argued, fought, had called in the 
wandering Judges who knew the law better than anyone else 
to try and save the farm for Arana. But he had been told, 
as bluntly as he had been forced to reveal the truth to 
his daughter, that there was nothing that could be done. 
He could help Arana with money, as he had helped Liliarn, 
until she could find her clan. But he could not give her 
the same land, and he could not give her any of the land 
that he held. That had to belong to her brother. Anything 
given to her, beyond coined money, would see her father 
executed.
    Arana had raged, and one of the Judges had looked at 
her stonily and said that it had to be that way.
    "Why?"
    "Because that is the way it is," had been the fussy 
response. The Judge had then gone on to suggest that 
Arana's mother had abandoned her clan or been exiled, and 
that in such a case, the woman should not have been able 
to hold land anyway. He had been on the point of 
suggesting the taint of whatever crime she had committed 
had been passed on to her daughter, when her father 
stepped in and forced him to leave.
    She had stormed at her father and raced out of the 
room. If he had told her this from the beginning, she 
could have been prepared. She could have helped her mother 
to search all the old genealogies so that she would know 
who she was, and if Liliarn had been undercutting the 
search on purpose so that her clan would never find her, 
then Arana could have done the real work. Or she could at 
least have known from the beginning, and apprenticed 
herself to some trader or sea-merchant or tree-toucher so 
that she would have money.
    She was fifteen now, too old for any apprenticeship 
she knew, and when her father could no longer afford to 
support her, she was simply going to fail in the way that 
her mother must have failed.
    She didn't have even a talent to sustain her. Her 
copying of manuscripts was shaky at best, her singing 
sounded like the rattle of stones, and no one would give 
her money just because she asked for it. There were such 
people in the great cities, but out here, where wooden 
coins were in fact worth more than the food and clothes 
and bedding they paid for, she could not survive as a 
beggar.
    She stumbled again, but caught herself this time 
before she hit anything. She was slowly growing too tired 
for even the anger to have any effect, tired enough for 
the despair and hopelessness to set in. She stopped 
running at last on a small ledge to which the trail led, 
and sat there with her head resting on her knees, her arms 
folded around the long dark fall of her hair and her eyes 
angry and grieving.
    Except that no one could see them. They had stopped 
following her a long time ago, when she had told them she 
wanted to be alone when she went into the mountains.
    Arana could hardly change her mind and ask them to 
accompany her now, but part of her wished that someone 
would follow her. She wanted to be alone, but it would 
feel so good to have someone to scream at.
    Even her father.
    She curled herself as tightly as she could and cried.   
----------------------------------------------------------
    It seemed that had been going on longer than she could 
have tears when something startled her. She raised her 
head and wiped tears from her eyes, sniffling. The first 
thing she noticed was the sinking sun beyond the nearest 
peaks, and then the long darkness that crept slowly across 
the rocks. It was going to be a full-moon night or near 
it, but still, she didn't want to try to find her way back 
in the dark. The moon wasn't all that bright compared to 
the Sun, and besides, she didn't like the dark.
    The second thing she noticed was that there was an 
unusual rock formation in front of her, something she had 
not seen before. She stared at it, fascinated. The one 
thing she did know something about, beyond farming and 
helping horses, was stone, and this wasn't a kind that she 
had ever seen before- dark, a flow on top of the more 
ordinary granite that made up this particular cliff. 
Basalt, it looked like, but it was smooth as jet, not 
pitted. She reached out and ran a hand down it, wondering-
    Arana yelped and jerked her hand back, staring, eyes 
wide. The stone had stung her hand, she thought 
indignantly as she sucked at the red, aching place that 
felt like a bite. There must have been an insect on it 
that she didn't feel.
    Save that, when she reached out again, it still stung 
her. And it was hot. That was it. It must have been the 
heat that stung her. "Burned," she murmured, after a 
moment of struggle to recall the correct word.
    The rock formation swung.
    Arana ducked just in time, and the thing, shaped like 
a pendulum, cut over her head and smashed into the stone. 
There was a loud hiss, and when the thing drew back again, 
she could see small droplets of melted rock clinging to 
it. Her stomach churned, and she leaned to the side,  
about to lose everything she had eaten that day.
    But then she recognized the thing fully, and the ledge 
beneath her stirred at the same moment, distracting her. 
It was a tail, and the ledge beneath her felt just as 
smooth, just as hot, just as alive as the tail had. It was 
going to burn her if she did not stand and move quickly.   
    Arana stood, but found all the stone about her 
darkening and segmenting, as if every small rock were 
turning into a worm. The hard plates of stone grew smooth 
and alive to the touch, as she found when forced to lean 
on them, and they seemed to be growing in a sinuous circle 
that thickened and then turned impossibly slender, forming 
the outline of a long-necked living creature.
    She fought herself free of the darkness at last, and 
stood on the cliff above, watching in disbelief as, 
beneath her, something separated itself from the stone.
    Its head was rather like a horse's, but longer and 
smoother, as was the case all over its body. The segments 
had become overlapping scales, stronger and tougher than 
the scales of the goldfish she had watched lying beside 
her father's pool. The neck swung the head a great 
distance above the body, and the body itself, darting like 
a lizard's but blooming at the back into enormous wings, 
blazed black, with a kind of subdued red tint to many of 
the scales, as though she were seeing the shadow of a 
creature swimming in magma.
    The thing at last was free, clinging to the depression 
its body had made in the side of the mountain. She saw it 
spread its wings and shake them, slowly, once, as she had 
seen a butterfly awaken from its cocoon. Clawed paws 
gripped and flexed, and then suddenly it sprang into the 
air, wings sweeping down and creating a wind that knocked 
her to the ground. All the scrapes she had taken unnoticed 
in her wild rush to reach this place suddenly flared up 
again in protest, and she cried out.
    A hot shadow fell over her, and she opened her eyes, 
terrified, expecting to see the great tail swinging just 
above her-
    But she met its eyes instead.
    Oh, by the Light!
    Cold and searing pain broke out in part of her, and 
yet it was not a physical pain. Something beyond her 
chest, inside her wildly beating heart, was pulled free. 
It flew into the creature's eyes, and the firelight around 
its scales darkened and turned black again. It cried out 
and wheeled into the darkening sky, wings spread wide and 
head tossing, curved horns sprouting from the smooth 
surface even as she watched. Then it was gone, a shadow 
over the hills to the west, flying so fast that Arana knew 
she could never chase it and retrieve whatever it had 
stolen from her.
    She lay there, crying, until a pair of arms folded 
around her and a voice with the accents of the lower hill 
country whispered in her ear, "It's all right. It's all 
right."
    "It's not!" sobbed Arana, burying her head in her arms 
out of pain and fear this time, and refusing to look up at 
her comforter. "It took something from me. It's never 
going to be all right again!"
    "I'm sorry," said the voice, with a personal guilt she 
could not understand. "But know this: Few even in the 
ancient days faced a darkdrake and survived. You are very 
special, chosen by the Dark-"        
    "I don't want to be!"
    "Do you want the part of your soul back?"
    Arana hesitated. Then she lifted her head at last and 
nodded. The woman kneeling with her arms around her 
shoulders- an older but still pretty woman, with bird's 
egg eyes and long brown hair- smiled.
    "Good. We will need the help of others to find your 
darkdrake, but we will find it." She turned her gaze to 
the west, where the creature had gone, and shivered a 
little, though Arana did not think it was from fear. "And 
if this means what I think it means, then you will become 
someone very powerful and important."
    Arana gasped, clinging to the promise of a future. "I 
will?" she whispered. "There is something I can do?"
    The woman's gaze came back to hers. "Yes, many things. 
Even if this does not mean what I think it means, you will 
have to go on a quest to find the drake, and that is 
something that you can do."
    "Thank you," said Arana. "My name is Arana. What is 
yours?"
    The woman dipped her head, smiling a little. "My honor 
to meet you, Arana. My name is Hardovra."

Powers Dark And Wild

    Shush-slap, shush-slap.
    Darstan lay listening to the sound of the waves, a 
melody that had lulled him to sleep for far longer than he 
could remember. His eyes fell closed, and he turned over 
to lie more fully on his side. The dream would come to him 
again tonight, he thought in the sleepy moment before his 
mind followed the example of his eyes and shut.
    And it did.

    In the dream he was standing on the beach, at night, 
and the sky was filled with moonlight, clear and pure and 
beautiful. Then the moon went behind a cloud, but for some 
reason he still cast a shadow.
    And he could see. The sea, leaping at the edges of the 
beach, had the green radiance that it only possessed, so 
far as he knew, in the tropical sea he had sailed only 
once, when he was a boy. He had been frightened by the 
green night-light of the seas then, instead of fascinated 
by it. The light did not shine here; it was too cold.
    But here it did not frighten him. He stood watching as 
the green color changed to silver, and then to black, 
feeling quiet anticipation well in him. He knew what was 
coming next, what had brought him to the beach.
    Then the moment came.
    The leaping sea radiance changed to blue-black, and 
the moon vanished altogether. If he looked up, the sky was 
alive with alien silver light, sparks of trailing 
lightning burning so far away that he thought not even a 
breaching whale could reach them. He knew that he would 
not remember their name when he woke up, but for now he 
knew and accepted that they were stars, and their shining 
on the world was natural and right. The dream usually 
tried to tell him the name of the enemy who had banished 
them, but he never paid attention, as he did not this 
night. He had something more important to do.
    He turned and strode to the edge of the surf, waiting 
only a moment to be sure that the light on the waves was 
truly blue-black, the color of the sapphires his uncle 
handled with such care and reverence, and then strode into 
the water. The sea was cold all about him, but it drew 
back so that none of the cold touched him. He might have 
been walking in heavy air, such was the combination of 
pressure and freedom. Darstan drew a deep breath, 
remembered his name, and used it in his mind again, as he 
pulled off his tunic and undershirt and flung them onto 
the beach behind him. Wearing only the pants that he 
needed to protect himself from being frozen completely by 
the waves, he dove into the water and swam out, pushing 
against the incoming tide, shoving hard against the slap 
of the waves.
    Then he came into a place that seemed all calm water, 
and it was easier. He knew that it must be a sandbar, but 
that did not matter. Not in the dream, he thought as he 
gained the sandbar and stood, breathing lightly, leaning 
over with his hands on his knees and his arms aching and 
biting. They felt the cold even if the rest of him was too 
focused on a task to do it.
    What task?
    The water raced shallowly over his feet here. Darstan 
ignored it and stared at the horizon. A trail of silvery 
light shimmered across the ocean into infinity, even 
though the moon was gone. He glanced up at the stars, his 
gaze being drawn to one that pulsed with a deep, steadily 
growing reddish light. It was the eye of the constellation 
that the sailor-traders had called the Dolphin in a time 
out of mind.
    But the constellation looked different in his dream. 
He could see more stars, dim ones, or there were more 
stars there that those ancient sailors had ignored. They 
made the body of the dolphin thicker. They formed scales. 
They gave more depth and height to the flukes of the tail 
and the dorsal fin. Darstan stared until the light had 
spread from the eye to every star of the constellation 
above him, and was no longer reddish but deep green.
    Then dark green light fell upon the water, and he knew 
that it was time. He could see the darting forms. He 
reached into a pocket of his pants and pulled out a small 
piece of stone that could not have been there earlier, 
because he would have felt it jabbing him as he swam. But 
in the dream he had no such concerns, and the stone was 
there.
    He lifted it high as the forms swam towards him.        

    And that was all.
    That was the point where he always woke up, Darstan 
thought as he rolled on his back and stared up at the 
ceiling of the small hut where he lay.
    With half an ear, he listened to the ocean, the 
familiar rhythm he heard at night on the shore as he heard 
it all day against the sides of ships.
    Shush-slap, shush-slap. Shush-
    Then something interrupted the rhythm. There was a 
jarring grate, as of a coracle beaching.
    Darstan sat up and stared out the window, wondering if 
there was a boat coming in late, or a visitor, already 
reaching for the lamp of shiners he would need to coax 
awake if it was a visitor. To him went all the welcoming 
duties for a year after his seventeenth naming-day, to 
show that he was a man now.
    But his hand bumped against something sharp that 
sliced his skin and caused him to bleed. The lamp was not 
on the table. The piece of stone from his dream was.
    And there was no boat on the beach. There was 
something leaping in the waves beyond it- a dolphin, he 
would have said, but the body was thicker, the tail was 
wrong, the dorsal fin was higher, and there was a sudden 
thick taste of excitement in his throat that he knew did 
not come from seeing a messenger.
    He rose to his feet and moved slowly out of the hut 
and down the beach to the water, the wind stirring his 
thick blond hair. The thing leaped again, and then it 
lifted its head out of the water to stare at him.
    Heavy, pointed head, massive jaws, and flat, dull eyes 
that had never looked, lively and intelligent, out of a 
dolphin's face. The body flipped and flopped awkwardly 
back into the deeper ocean as its owner saw that he had 
Darstan's attention. Once in the water, though he had 
looked like a fish on land, he swam faster than a dolphin 
in a circle, his body cleaving the water as the piece of 
stone had cleft his skin.
    Darstan drew a breath and pulled off his tunic and 
undershirt, dropping them behind him on the beach. He did 
not need to swim to a sandbar, but he knew that his arms 
and chest would have to be bare.
    He ran down the beach and into the water, wading deep 
enough that he did have to abandon his footing and tread 
water.
    The immense shape exploded out of the water right in 
front of him. The dull eyes locked with his, and he found 
himself spinning into the depths of another mind, 
something that was supposed to be impossible. Animals must 
learn the language of humans to speak with Darstan's 
people. No human could speak the language of an animal, 
mind to mind and silent, full of impressions and emotions-
    Save that he was, now.
    Darkness and deep water and long sleep, the leaden 
weight of sleep slowing fins and stopping the flow of 
water through gills that needed it. A faint and far memory 
of racing free in the ocean, having limitless territory to 
wander. Once they had been widespread in the seas of 
Arion, but long-time-gone they had faded and faltered and 
sunk into the mud of the world-water to sleep.
    Mud, settling like stars on the sky, settling over 
them, burying them. They could not move, could not swim. 
They slept. They had been locked behind a door, and there 
was no passing back through that door.
    And the door had still not been unlocked; it could not 
be. The ancient enemy had planned too well for that.
    But something had brought them back, even though they 
could not tell him what it was. Darkness and deep water 
and wildness and blood.
    Darstan gasped and fell to one knee, but he did 
understand what the shark- that was the name of this one's 
people- before him wanted from him now. Hands shaking, he 
turned the piece of the stone and widened the cut that it 
had made in the heel of his hand before. It was not much, 
but it was acceptable. Blood spilled into the water.
    The shark exploded out of the water once again, 
snapping at him, teeth and scale alike tearing away his 
skin. Darstan sucked in a sharp breath and turned his head 
the other direction, staring at the trail of silver light. 
He could not bear to watch as the shark ate what had 
fallen into the water, and then the great jaws reached up 
and closed on his arm.
    He felt the shark tear it off, and screamed in pain 
and terror, crumpling into the sea as the other sharks 
came racing towards the scent of blood and leapt and 
danced all about him, tearing off pieces and eating him, 
abrading his mind as surely as their skin abraded his, 
hitting him with blast after blast of power so dark and 
wild that he did not know how he would retain his sanity 
in the middle of it.
    But he did, somehow, and found himself lying on the 
beach, at last, with less clothing and skin than he had 
had before, but with both his arms back. He had died and 
been reborn, his body somehow miraculously restored, 
turned into something that could feed the sharks again and 
again. He could still see and feel them just beyond the 
edge of the beach, where the water grew too shallow for 
them to venture, snapping at the bloodied water and each 
other, caught in the middle of a feeding frenzy. Soaring, 
dipping, graceful bodies, masters of the water in a way 
that not even the dolphins could be- and he had always 
thought them the birds of the sea.
    The shark who had called him leaped out of the water. 
His eyes locked with Darstan's, and the dark purple 
maelstrom whirled across his mind again.
    Must leave. Must go. The water was too cold for 
sharks, and they needed the tropical seas. He would see 
them there again, hunting dolphins and fish and feeding as 
they had been meant to feed. And he would see them rising 
to fight the great war again, to bring back what had been 
lost. They had been the fiercest warriors in the old days, 
and even the whales had been afraid of them.
    What warriors? Darstan asked groggily. He could 
understand the concept of war now, as gained from their 
minds. War was a spilling of blood when all the world 
acted like the sharks. But he could not understand when 
one would have been fought, and though he could see the 
images they flooded his mind with, he could not really 
comprehend them, or understand how they would bring them 
to life.
    You will bring them to life, the shark told him with 
all confidence. Darstan would find a way to make sure the 
Dark entered the world and stayed, as it was supposed to, 
this time.
    Why?
    For the sake of seeing sharks fly.
    The one leapt a last time, in farewell, and then he 
was gone, sliding back into the deeper waters and swimming 
hard and fast to the south. The last thought that Darstan 
received from him was a sense of power and wonder, 
absolute heady confidence. He was going home again. His 
waters would not have forgotten him. The dolphins would 
learn again what it was to be afraid, and all the 
creatures of the Light.
    Darstan could feel the others dispersing. And, if he 
closed his eyes and cast himself into the proper frame of 
mind, the one who had come to him with the dream, and 
reached out with his mind to the sharks...
    He could feel all of them rising, all at once, in a 
great upward migration, from the bed of the sea and 
towards the surface. They slid through the dark green 
water, impelled and pulled by something above them. They 
leaped above the water long enough to see the Sharkcaller 
on the shore and the light that had called them high 
above, and then all of them were gone, moving so fast 
that...
    Darstan blinked tears from his eyes.
    The shark who had called him was right. He would dare 
anything, do anything, to make sure that sharks swam the 
seas again.
    He ran lightly and swiftly back to his hut, wrote a 
note for his uncle, and then flung the few things that he 
would need into the pack that he slung over his back. It 
had not been meant for traveling long distances over land, 
only on a ship, but he would not feel right taking one of 
the boats, and he could not find food in the middle of the 
ocean in any case. He would simply have to find a way to 
replace the soft and worn cotton of the bag soon.
    He thought he knew a way, but he let the thought lie 
dormant for a little while. He did not wish to shock 
himself further.
    He took the piece of bloodied stone with him, the few 
changes of clothes he possessed, the water flask and the 
bread and cheese that his uncle had meant him to eat on 
the ship with him that day. Nothing else was necessary, 
not given who he was now, what he had become on the beach 
this night.
    He left the hut as the Sun was rising, but soon enough 
to note something was different and glance up.
    The softening night sky was filled with stars, for the 
first time since the sharks had been buried and the Dark 
had been banished. For the first time in three thousand 
years.




                        Chapter 1
                        Fiordatha
    Coming along the rocky, curving trail that led to the 
city, she supposed, someone might not hear the sounds of 
shouts and calls, the pleading of tree-touchers and the 
rolling of stones, until she was quite close. It would be 
hard for a human to hear much of anything, of course. They 
were deficient in that way.
    But, even if her ears hadn't been much better than any 
human's, she would have had a better view. Coming in from 
above, Alsona was laid out in a wheel. It was planned that 
way, of course, but not obvious to any person on the 
ground. From up here, the dazzling white stones and the 
slightly shabbier wood buildings flashed in the light of 
the Sun.
    Fiordatha swung as she came around the far edge of the 
city, banking in perfect time with the two other 
brightdrakes following her. Telleirin looked sullen as 
usual. She had wanted to lead this morning, but it was 
Fiordatha's turn, and she, young though she was, was 
bigger than most of her other brightdrake sisters and 
brothers. Telleirin resented that, along with most 
everything else.
    Stolid Siomath followed as usual, without a word of 
complaint. Fiordatha would have been happier about that if 
she hadn't thought that it meant her brother was off 
daydreaming, as usual, instead of just being patient. She 
snapped her spine, making her scales rattle like falling 
hail, and Siomath came awake and glanced at her as if he 
had been paying attention all along.
    "I don't want you crashing into the Lleyn Tower, which 
is assuredly what you will do if you  continue flying the 
way you are," Fiordatha told him coldly.
    Her brother was impossible to make angry. He only 
smiled at her and lapsed back into his dreaming, staring 
out over the mountains they had just flown from, as if he 
was looking back to the Blazehold and the mate he had left 
behind.
    Fiordatha shook her paws and then slanted down, her 
wings cupping and scooping the air, throwing it behind her 
as the Lleyni would throw the water until they found just 
the right amount for their Seeings. Telleirin followed 
her, briefly pulling ahead, but falling back when 
Fiordatha snarled at her. She was apt to challenge 
authority, but not yet a fool. 
    Fiordatha glanced down, and saw some humans- Lleyni, 
most likely- rushing to the center of the wheel of the 
city, named Fiadar after the greatest hero of the Light, 
to welcome them. Some shielded their eyes, and she self- 
consciously tried to keep the sun from blazing on her 
vanes as she backwinged. The light from a brightdrake's 
golden scales could blind a human at times.
    Siomath appeared in the corner of her eye, and she saw 
to her relief that he wasn't going to crash into the Lleyn 
Tower. She aimed herself for the center of the Fiadar, 
then, no longer worrying about what the others on either 
side of her were doing so much as concentrating on her own 
landing.
    Chopping the air, she landed without much grace, 
skidding along the Fiadar and tossing dust into the air. 
This center of the wheel, as all the city, would be paved 
with stone crushed by the claws of her kind when all was 
done, but for the moment, there was just enough laid down 
to insure that she got a good deal of it in her nose, 
eyes, and jaws. She coughed and spat, a gout of light 
flying from her and landing some yards away.
    The man walking up to her skipped and dodged the bolt, 
then looked up at her with an expression of respect 
faintly touched by amusement in his eyes. "Great One," he 
said, with a little bow. "I am Brother in the Light Reyn 
Mountainshield. Is there ought that I may do for you?"
    Fiordatha studied him for a moment. He stood as high 
as her knee, perhaps, with deep green eyes and golden hair 
with a hint of red in it. She clenched her uplifted claw 
briefly across her breast as she noticed that, warding off 
the unluckiness that red could create as the color of 
forbidden fire. "Brother," she said, dipping her head. "I 
am Sister in the Light Fiordatha, of Summit Blazehold. 
These," she added, turning to look behind her, "are Sister 
Telleirin and Brother Siomath, both of the same Blazehold 
that I am."
    Siomath nodded his head amiably to the greeting, and 
then went back to scratching tiny flakes of stone out of 
his eyes. Telleirin lifted her chin and turned her head to 
look the other way.
    Reyn seemed to shrug and look away from them without 
taking much notice, while at the same time taking in 
everything about them that mattered. Fiordatha was 
impressed, and a little wary. Despite the arrogance that 
the keeping of his former clan name once he had been sworn 
to the Light implied, he was clearly intelligent. He might 
understand the warning she bore, too well.
    "Brother," she said, to draw his eyes back to her, 
although they had returned there already, "have you heard 
of the Blazehold Bells?"
    "Yes," said Reyn almost at once, leaning against a 
back of stone that was yet to be broken up for the 
covering on the Fiadar. "They were supposed to ring in 
times of attack by the Dark, before the Great Banishing. 
Lleyn Fiadar himself invented them."
    Fiordatha blinked. Despite everything, there was a 
softening of the lines of his mouth when he spoke of Lleyn 
Fiadar and a hunger in his eyes that was positively 
Lleyna. Perhaps he might be the kind of human that she 
needed to hear the message after all, she dared to hope. 
Perhaps she had not made a mistake in volunteering to bear 
the message to the first Lleyna her eyes should light upon 
after all, as the Shath-a-Della had said.
    "Yes," she said. "And, of late, they have been 
ringing. We thought it was the vibration of the wind at 
first; the bells never ring for long before falling 
silent." She shifted a little at the look Reyn gave her, 
as if to say: How could you have ignored them? But she 
went gamely on. "But our blazemothers have become 
convinced it is something else. The Shath-a-Della said 
that someone must bear the warning to Alsona and speak to 
the first Lleyna her eyes should light upon- that only in 
this way would the message be truly understood."
    Reyn stood poised as if he were a deer listening for a 
sight or sound of man. "I think I do understand," he 
whispered, his eyes on the ground, but his voice low and 
intent as she could have wished. "I- think I do, but I am 
not sure. Great One, can you tell me on what side of the 
Blazehold the bells are ringing?"
    "What does that matter?" asked Telleirin loudly from 
behind Fiordatha.
    Fiordatha lashed her tail without even looking, and 
knocked the smaller brightdrake sprawling to the ground. 
Brightdrakes and humans working all over the city looked 
up at the crash, but went back to work when they saw that 
Fiordatha wasn't pursuing it. Fights were only a cause for 
concern- a violation of the Great Laws- if pursued by a 
leader instead of a subordinate. "It matters," she said, 
inclining her head to Reyn. "And it means that you are 
more well-read than I thought you were, if you know to ask 
at all."
    Reyn shrugged as if modest. "I have been scouring 
histories of the Great Banishing, the Last Stand, the 
Blaze Wars."
    "Why?" Fiordatha could not have said why she was 
interested in the answer, but she was.
    "I thought it mattered. I don't know why."
    Fiordatha smiled. That was the same way she had felt 
about wanting to know how he knew. "The bells have been 
ringing on the east side."
    Reyn smiled. "In that case, I can forgive you for 
having let it go so long, Sister in the Light."
    Fiordatha clenched her claw near her breast again, 
this time to concentrate on something besides the urge to 
laugh. Reyn was arrogant, calling her by the title that he 
would call another Lleyna instead of the "Great One" title 
that he had been using until now and which properly 
belonged to a brightdrake. But he was amusing all the 
same. "Yes. And why does that matter?"
    "Because the east is the direction of the Sunrise, the 
direction of the Light," said Reyn softly. "It is the 
direction that Lleyn Fiadar began walking from during the 
Great Banishing, following the track of the Sun. If the 
bells are ringing from that direction, it means hope for 
the Light and little for the Dark."
    Fiordatha nodded. "The Shath-a-Della said the warning 
must be given, or we would not have troubled to come. The 
Dark does this every so often. The Nightstone testing its 
bonds, most likely."
    "Should you be speaking the name aloud, Sister?" asked 
the Lleyna. His smile was gone, flashing from his face 
like the jerboa it resembled. "Trouble follows where that 
name is spoken."
    "Forgive me," said Fiordatha, dipping her head low and 
spreading her wings, making some of the Lleyni who had 
come crowding up about the newly landed brightdrakes back 
away hastily. "But I do not think that it will follow 
here. The Nightstone is followed and watched wherever it 
goes. Even if it escaped, it could not bring the Dark 
back. Lleyn Fiadar made sure of that."
    Reyn nodded slowly. "I am very interested in things 
like this, Great One." Fiordatha lashed her tail, 
scattering stone dust, and more humans. She was sorry for 
that, but this laugh would have burst forth, so strong was 
the desire to make it, if she had not made a stronger 
gesture to contain it than just the clench of her claw. 
That he was calling her this meant that he was about to 
ask her for something.
    The arrogant, but somehow entertaining, Lleyna did not 
disappoint her. Meeting her eyes, he asked boldly, "If you 
see more- some evidence that the Dark is loose, and 
rising- will you tell me?"
    Fiordatha bowed. "I will be honored to come back to 
Alsona and tell you, Brother."
    "You did not seem so eager to come today."
    "There is a Rebirthing ceremony that I was anxious to 
attend," said Fiordatha, and ignored Telleirin's angry 
gasp from behind her. It was for Telleirin's mother, and 
that meant, in her eyes, that it shouldn't be mentioned in 
front of anyone who didn't already know about it on the 
day of the ceremony itself. But there were traditions that 
Fiordatha just wasn't interested in keeping. "I pray that 
you will forgive me; Alsona is a beautiful city, and I 
will return eagerly to help build it, and to converse with 
you again." This time, Reyn was the one who couldn't hide 
his amusement. Fiordatha held his eyes, acknowledging the 
challenge and the amusement both. "But for now, I should 
return to my Blazehold as soon as possible."
    Reyn bowed to her. "Then you should go, Great One. I 
am pleased that you came here to deliver the message, and 
I will take into it into consideration."
    Fiordatha gaped at him. "You?"
    "Yes. You didn't know that you were talking to the 
Lord of the Lleyni in Alsona?" Reyn's mouth and eyes were 
both smiling. "I would have thought a brightdrake, no 
matter how young, would know that. This is only the tenth 
city to be built in all Arion, after all."
    This time, it was Fiordatha's turn to bow to him. 
"Well scored," she said softly. "I should indeed have 
known, and I will tell the others at the Blazehold that 
the message was delivered propitiously."
    "Very well." Reyn bowed once more, this time touching 
a hand to his throat as he did so. "May the Light that 
shines in the life of every being under the Sun go with 
you," he said formally. 
    Fiordatha's smile became one of admiration. The salute 
would ordinarily be made touching the hair, but he must 
have realized that, given the unlucky color of his, that 
would make her uncomfortable. Or he had simply noted her 
earlier discomfort.
    Truly, he was remarkable, the Lord of the Lleyni of 
Alsona. The kind of man that they would need, if the Dark 
did come rising again. He could put it down with a minimum 
of blood, she was sure.
    "May the Sun shine in your eyes, on your face, and in 
your heart." She answered with the proper response for the 
salute he had given her, and then turned and began pacing 
across the Fiadar. Reyn backed off and watched with a kind 
of dreamy expression on his face, much like Siomath's, as 
Fiordatha began to run forward.
    He was devoted to the Light, thought Fiordatha. If 
someone asked for her opinion on whether he should be 
removed for reasons of arrogance, she already knew what 
her answer would be. Love of the Light and one's brothers 
and sisters in creation mattered more than a few little 
character faults.
    "Did someone like what she saw?" Telleirin asked, once 
they were above the city and winging their way back to the 
mountains. Alsona flashed once and fell behind them.
    Fiordatha snarled at her again. "Those tales of 
brightdrakes and humans wedding are just tales. It doesn't 
happen now."
    "That doesn't mean that someone doesn't like what she 
saw."
    Fiordatha hit her from above, knocking her briefly 
into a spin. Telleirin squawked and did her best to regain 
her balance and her dignity, both at once.
    On the other hand, Fiordatha thought in satisfaction 
as she turned back to the Blazehold once more, there were 
times when character faults did outweigh the love of the 
Light.
    "Did you see what she did to me, Siomath?"
    "Who did what?"
    Sun, there were times that those faults were even 
useful.
----------------------------------------------------------
    "And as the Heart of Light blazes, so blaze our 
hearts, our wings, our souls. The heart is the heart of 
all, the heart of Light, the keeper of our true 
intentions, that we may never stray from the ways that our 
ancestors have lived.
    "The wings are those which lift us into the sky, those 
which guide us and make us of the earth and yet not of it, 
for we can spurn it at a moment's glance.
    "The soul is the soul of a brightdrake, the soul of a 
guardian of the Light, standing ever against the Dark. 
Into the light that soul can go, borne upon the wings of 
the heart, and emerge, new and yet whole. Reborn. This is 
the principle of the Rebirthing, this the continuation of 
brightdrakes yet unborn."
    Fiordatha closed her eyes as the words washed over 
her. It didn't matter how many times she heard them, 
either aloud or in the perfect memory she possessed, which 
included even misty memories of that brightdrake she had 
been before her own latest Rebirthing. They never failed 
to inspire a solemn awe in her.
    The brightdrakes alone of all the races in the world 
since the Great Banishing could Rebirth. It was a wonder 
that should never be denied nor forsaken.
    "As the Shath-a-Della goes, so goes the brightdrake 
race," finished the last, solemn phrase, the one that no 
one ever really believed if you spoke to them in private, 
thought Fiordatha, but did if you looked at their faces 
during the Rebirthing. "If it should dim into obscurity, 
then so shall we dim. If it should flare and go out, so 
will we flare and go out. If it should continue shining 
forever, then so will we continue shining forever.
    "Bright Shath-a-Della, bright Heart of Light, O! Shine 
forever in the darkness that you guard against, protect 
against- the darkness of ending, the darkness of losing, 
the darkness of death. No brightdrake in all the world has 
died since the beginning, save by the talons of our 
ancient enemies. No brightdrake has died since the Great 
Banishing. Flare against the Dark, O bright Shath-a-Della, 
and forever shine."
    "Shine forever!" roared out Fiordatha, on cue, with 
all the rest, as the chant came to a close. Eyes turned to 
Telleirin's mother, Aloira, as she came forward to the 
Heart of Light, her eyes half-closed as if to guard her 
against the almost blinding radiance.
    A brightdrake could stare into the heart of the Sun 
and not be blinded, though. Aloira was only closing her 
eyes in reverence, and so that the visions she might see 
in this moment of her Rebirthing would not unduly affect 
her in her next incarnation. It might possibly unbalance a 
youngling, if that youngling had too many memories of that 
life that had come before.
    For all the pride that Fiordatha took in her own 
memory, she was glad that it didn't extend beyond more 
than a few hazy recollections- such as that she had once 
been male, for example. She was her own spirit in this 
incarnation, as she would be in the next, and then the 
next. Thus the brightdrakes kept themselves alive, while 
forever renewing themselves.
    The Heart of Light gleamed like the holy Sun as Aloira 
reached its edge. She paused, gazing around at all the 
eyes lifted in her direction, and then raised both claws 
to her breast, rearing on her haunches so her smooth, 
serpentine neck almost touched the ceiling of the cave. 
One claw was to keep and hold the Light; one was to ward 
off the Dark.
    She spread her wings, rose gracefully into the air, 
levitating rather than flying, and cast herself into the 
Light. One moment, she was a dark shape against it. Then 
she was gone.
    From the middle of the Shath-a-Della came a flare that 
turned the whole cavern golden, banishing even the 
incidental darkness that lurked there. Fiordatha joined in 
the steady hum welling up from the congregation of drakes, 
and spread her wings to bask in that Light, to soak up 
what was worth more than any physical nourishment to her 
kind: the truth and wisdom of immortality.
    Then there came a squalling cry from the center of the 
Heart, and Fiordatha's heart lifted to hear it. She stood 
upright on her own haunches, trying to peer over the edge 
of the seeming sphere of gold, even though she knew it was 
impossible.
    There came a movement, and a tiny, glistening 
drakeling rolled out of the center of the Heart of Light. 
She lay still a moment, and Fiordatha held her breath. The 
brightdrakes had to rise on their own, had to prove they 
were fit to take their place among their own kind without 
help. Otherwise, there was a chance that the Rebirthing 
had failed, and something of the old self, which could 
expect help, still lived. Such a part would be a prime 
target for the Dark.
    In this time, with the eastern Blazehold Bells 
trembling, one couldn't be too careful.
    But the youngling rolled upright, and opened her mouth 
to give another cry that transformed midway through into 
the musical cry of a brightdrake. She looked about for a 
moment, tilting her head this way and that as if she 
thought that she might make a different choice of parents 
than the one that was expected.
    It was only for a moment, though. Then she bounded 
over to Telleirin, who had once done the same to Aloira, 
and her mate, Rasthain. She nuzzled both their feet and 
cried out the choice of her mother and father to all the 
assembly.
    At once, Siomath, who could be a good Light Chanter 
when he put his mind to it, launched into the Song of the 
Heart of Light. Fiordatha sang it along with the others, 
but her mind as well as her eyes were fixed on the new 
little drakeling, wondering if Aloira in this incarnation 
would remember her promise.
    She did.
    The little one- only a hundredth of the size of an 
adult brightdrake- turned and tilted her head up to 
Fiordatha. Her cry came forth thinly again, and she 
thumped the ground with her tail.
    "Fiordatha Blazeheart Kyellin," said Telleirin 
formally, though it obviously grated on her to have to say 
this. "Will you name my child, who was once my mother, who 
before that was my sister, who before that was my father?"
    This was the only part of the Rebirthing Ceremony 
where it was fit to name what the renewed one had once 
been. And even now none of the names were spoken, for fear 
of carrying part of that old spirit and soul forward with 
the new incarnation.
    "I would be honored," said Fiordatha, bringing her 
head down until her own great blue-green eyes were on a 
level with the drakeling's pure golden ones. Those eyes 
stared at her without fear. At the moment, she who had 
been Aloira remembered nothing of the Dark. Even her 
memory of having asking Fiordatha to name her would be 
more on the level of instinct than conscious memory. "Her 
name is Oiratellatha."
    There was a murmur around the cavern. It was customary 
to combine the old name and the namer's own in a new 
fashion. It was almost unheard of to include the new 
mother's or father's name in the designation, but a sign 
of great honor.
    Telleirin stared at her a moment, and then said, in a 
slightly choked voice, "Will you give her her name to all 
the world outside the Blazehold?"
    Fiordatha nodded. The sign of honor was being repaid. 
"Her designation is-"
    Light glowed and enwrapped her, dizzying and dazzling 
her for a moment. When she could see again, she knew that 
she had already spoken the name.
    "Darkfighter?" asked Telleirin.
    No one else complained, though names invoking the Dark 
were supposed to be ill-omened. The Shath-a-Della itself 
had granted it to Fiordatha, and no one could say anything 
of such names other than that they were good-omened, no 
matter what they invoked.
    "Oiratellatha Darkfighter," said Telleirin, and bowed 
her head to her daughter, the spirit and soul she had 
cared for and been cared for by for centuries. "Welcome 
anew into the world. Welcome back."
    Siomath began to sing again, his voice deep and 
booming. The Shath-a-Della flared then, enveloping them 
and taking them back to the surface. When a Rebirthing had 
gone well, it did that so that they would not have to walk 
back to the surface through the darkness.
    Fiordatha shook her wings out as she emerged into the 
light of the setting Sun. That had indeed gone well, and 
no one had complained of either name she gave. The child's 
third name would wait until her adulthood at the age of a 
century, when she would choose the one that pleased her 
best.
    Fiordatha watched the drakeling Oiratellatha walking 
away with her parents for a moment, and her heart burned a 
little in her chest. That could have been her child. In a 
way, it should have been her own child. She was old enough 
now to choose a mate, to claim a child from the Rebirthing 
if she should so desire one. There would be three more 
soon.
    But none from among her own chosen family in this 
incarnation, and- well, she was fussy. She didn't want to 
associate with a spirit whom she hadn't known in other 
lifetimes, though brightdrakes who wanted a family and had 
no one from their own family ready to Rebirth often did. 
She wanted to wait until her sister, or brother, or 
parents, or close friend, passed on.
    "A lovely name, Fiordatha."
    She couldn't help the shiver that traveled down her 
spine, spreading her wings and turning her head under them 
so that she met Sesaethi's gaze. "Thank you," she said, 
cursing herself for the hundredth time. Just because he 
had purple eyes- and had had in every one of his 
incarnations, the only one in their Blazehold to do so- 
was no reason to stare at him.
    "A lovely name," he said again, moving up beside her 
and spreading his own wings so that they overlapped hers.
    Fiordatha knew what came next, and braced herself for 
it. But instead of saying it, Sesaethi only sat there, so 
that it was made more obvious that he thought her lovely, 
as well, without his actually speaking. It reinforced the 
compliment, and set light running in the veins of her 
wings. She shivered, and folded her own wings close back 
to her body so he wouldn't see them glowing.
    "Have you nothing to say to me?" Sesaethi murmured 
after a moment. They were both sitting and staring to the 
west, where already the colors of blood were running down 
the sky. 
    Fiordatha bowed her head. "I'm nothing special, 
Sesaethi," she muttered. She didn't want to sound so 
modest, either, but, like the staring, it was something 
that his presence seemed to enforce on her, will she, nill 
she. "You could choose many others who would do you just 
as well as mates, I am sure- or better."
    "But none of them are you," he said, in a voice like 
sweet fruit.
    "Ah, Sesa."
    "May I call you Datha now?" he asked, with a faint, 
sweet baring of his teeth.
    Fiordatha bowed her head again. She had used the 
shortname without thinking, in the manner of a drakeling 
thanking another for a compliment. But he had meant his. 
Slowly, she tapped one paw in acknowledgement.
    "Good."
    She feared then that he would try to wrap a wing 
around her. But, instead, he leaped into the air and 
coasted off, the colors of the sky, purple and pink and 
gold- no red tonight, she thought in relief- glowing 
through his wings.
    Her gaze followed him, then tugged back down. That was 
probably what he wanted her to do.
    She sprang aloft as well, sweeping with a draft down 
across the canyon where the caves of her Blazehold lay, 
and then out again, into the upper sky. Here the view of 
the sunset was unbounded, and bellow her the Northwall 
Mountains fell away in barren rock and green forest alike. 
She circled to the south, and the bright gold and orange 
sand of the High Desert appeared.
    She flew on and higher, away from the other 
brightdrakes spreading out to hunt for carrion to feast on 
or to bathe in the dying light. Everyone she might meet 
tonight would want to talk, to exchange the formal 
compliments as well as the clever original ones that one 
gave after a Rebirthing. In particular, they would want to 
talk to her, as the Namer and, in particular, one inspired 
by the Shath-a-Della.
    She didn't want to talk to them, though.
    It was skimming close to a violation of the Great 
Laws, but just this once, she didn't think anyone would 
mind or would tell the blazemothers. After all, the Heart 
of Light had just touched her. She had never been farther 
from the taint of the Dark and violence in any of her 
incarnations.
    Incarnations.
    Therein lay part of the problem with Sesaethi's 
courting of her. She knew as well as anyone else that he 
had once been Telleirin's mate, or the mate of she who was 
now Telleirin. Everyone had expected them to choose each 
other again. When Telleirin had chosen Rasthain, Fiordatha 
had been beyond surprised.
    And hopeful, and frightened, all at once. She had 
remained unpartnered in her last three incarnations. 
Beyond that, she could not remember if she had been male 
or female, or who her mates had been, and no one would 
tell her.
    And Sesaethi's course of courting was so strange. He 
didn't ever skim the borders of the Great Laws, no. But he 
didn't fly about her, or pay her the formal compliments, 
or dance for her, either. 
    He would sit and gaze at her for hours, and then tell 
her one thing, and fly away. Or nothing at all, until 
Fiordatha would become uneasy and half-bored, and flit 
away herself. Sometimes, he would come and sit beside her, 
and then go to sleep. When he did speak to her at length, 
it was almost never about something more intimate than the 
latest Rebirthing or the Great Laws, things that all the 
brightdrakes shared.
    Tonight, the exchange of shortnames, was the first 
time he had ever come close to something like normal 
courting.
    And already she was wondering if she should have done 
it.
    It could be the formation of a new bond.
    It could be something different altogether.
    She felt another shiver of mingled excitement and fear 
travel through her, and forced herself to dismiss it for 
the moment and instead pay attention to how richly the 
golden light fell through the sky. She rolled over on her 
back and sculled with lazy pulls of her wings, her 
forelegs folded on her breast like the arms of a sleeping 
maiden in some human story.
    The Bells woke her.
    From up here she could hear them, faint and sharp, 
jangling and jingling. She glanced down, and from flashes 
of light saw them vibrating.
    The east and the south, this time. She studied them, 
but before she could dive and see if they portended a call 
for a Meeting, they stopped. It could have been the winds, 
after all.
    Fiordatha turned and saw the darkness coming on. The 
brilliant glow of the moon was visible in the distance, 
just come rising over the curve of the world.
    Could she face the Dark, if it came?
    The question was there in her mind, sober and serious, 
as if her mother or the Shath-a-Della had asked it. 
Fiordatha forced herself to consider it, instead of 
shoving away from thoughts of the Dark in revulsion as 
almost all of her people were trained to do.
    Even wheeling and looping in great lazy circles, the 
mode of flight most conducive to thought for her, it took 
her a long time to decide she could. She didn't like what 
she had read and heard of wars. She didn't like her own, 
faint memories of the Great Banishing and what had 
followed. She didn't like the Dark, the tales of 
darkdrakes, or the idea that she might find herself facing 
them one day and have to fight.
    But if it came down to it, she would do it, rather 
than suffer the death of her Blazehold and all those she 
loved.
    Resolved, and feeling much better for some reason, she 
gave one more glance into the infinite depths of the sky 
before heading down for food.
    She saw the stars in the same moment that the 
Blazehold Bells began clanging. Already knowing what she 
would see, she glanced down.
    The northern and western Bells were ringing.




                        Chapter 2
                           Reyn
    The night could be beautiful. The moon just now rising 
was soft and brilliant, a lesser Sun in place of the 
vanished lord of day. Her color was soft as well, 
soothing, a white that touched the mind and soul with 
thoughts of sleep. One could call the night beautiful and 
peaceful, if one did not know what had once lived in it.
    If one did not know what he was convinced still did.
    Reyn Mountainshield stood at his window, watching the 
moon rise and thinking thoughts of Light and Dark, good 
and evil, peace and war, until the moon was well above the 
sill. Then he closed the wooden shutters against the 
rising wind and the darkness both, and retired to the 
table in the center of the room, specially commissioned 
from a tree-toucher. It had taken a year to find a cherry- 
tree big enough that the tree-toucher could coax it into 
that shape.
    But it had been worth it. The soft, sweet, constant 
scent that pervaded the room gave him good dreams, Reyn 
was convinced. It helped him sleep, if nothing else.
    Lately, all his dreams had been disturbed by the 
notion that there was something he should be doing, or by 
sounds like the ringing of bells in the distance, or 
sights like the thought of a black brightdrake flying 
across a sky lit with alien silver fire. 
    And now he knew why.
    Reyn shook his head sharply. Lleyni were taught to be 
humble. How would it look if he told his underlings that 
he had been warned of the Dark in his dreams, like some 
kind of Lleyn Fiadar born again?
    The problem was, he could easily be Lleyn Fiadar.
    All the signs were in place. He had been born at the 
rising of the full moon, as Lleyn had. He had been born 
with the slight deformity- in his case, a sixth finger on 
the right hand- that made sure he would be dedicated a 
Lleyna. He had never shrunk from tales of the Dark, as 
other children had; he had wanted to fight it, and had 
even once made a darkdrake out of jumbled black stones and 
thrown other stones at it until his horrified father 
stopped him.
    And now, the dreams.
    Reyn closed his eyes as someone shoved the stone at 
the bottom of his door sharply against it. He would need 
to make sure that he was at his very best and calmest when 
he repeated what the brightdrake had said to his 
underlings. They would take panic as horses did at a 
lightning fire if he wasn't careful.
    "Enter."
    In they came, all of them looking at him abashed from 
the corner of an eye, as if they had been caught 
misbehaving. Reyn had been known to stop in the center of 
a building site and make them recite the Great Laws. He 
conceded, in return, that they had a right to be cautious 
around him, and careful of his temper, as no one could 
tell where it would run today.
    Still, their timidity irritated him.
    "Sit down," he said, almost a snap in his voice. They 
winced, and he made his voice more cordial. "Please, sit 
down. There is a rather serious warning brought today by 
the Great Ones, one that I think you should all hear."
    "What is it?" asked Torella, the member of the Ring 
least cowed by him. She was a Great Wooder, her hair long 
and wild and dark to the middle of her back. She refused 
to cut it no matter how much he advised her about it. She 
sat on two cushions in the chair as well, being so short, 
but refused to allow anyone to make comments about that. 
She had started fights more than once. "Something about 
the Dark come rising?"
    Reyn barely restrained himself from smiling. He didn't 
like Torella that much, but at least she showed some 
fight.
    Even if the fight in this case did come from a Great 
Wooder's usual casual contempt of the Dark and what it 
could do to them.
    "Yes, actually."
    Torella blinked, caught without a word for once. But 
the others began to babble in fright. Reyn waved a hand, 
and all of them went still at once.
    "You first, Rolode."
    The Ringer he pointed to was a tall woman with copper- 
bronze skin from the Kivla Areva, the Summer Isle. She 
nodded once at him, and then burst out, "The Dark cannot 
really come rising, can it? The Lord of Light locked it 
safely away."
    Reyn shook his head. "The Dark is part of the world-"
    They began to babble again, and he realized they had 
misunderstood him. "Part of the world in the sense that it 
was born with Arion," he said, almost but not quite 
shouting to be heard.
    They heard him, and calmed. Reyn went on. "The Lord 
very nearly lost his battle, which was why in the end he 
dared not meet the Dark in open war. He walked across 
Arion to do the Great Banishing, carrying the Nightstone 
and destroying it as he went."
    They were silent by the time he finished. They all 
knew the story, had heard it as children, but he could  
still use it to calm them.
    "Light bless the Lord," murmured Torella, with 
something like piety for once.
    "Yes," said Reyn. "But the Dark might still come back. 
There is always a chance. The Nightstone moves about, and 
in the end the Lord could not destroy all of it. The 
Sister Fiordatha came to tell me that the Bells in Summit 
Blazehold are ringing."
    "What direction?" asked Clireyn, whose voice was low 
and calm, intelligible despite his harelip. He had worked 
most of his life to get around the deformity.
    "East."
    Half the room relaxed. Most of the rest tensed. 
Torella just looked interested, and as if she was about to 
speak. She did remember to give Reyn a glance asking his 
permission, though.
    Reyn nodded.
    "What does it mean that the Bells are ringing at all?" 
asked Torella. "Couldn't it be just the wind, instead of 
the great mighty Dark?"
    "The Dark could destroy you," Reyn felt compelled to 
warn her.
    "I'm Lleyna-trained. It's welcome to try."
    "You should still not leave any holes in your defenses 
that it could exploit."
    Torella paused, looking frustrated. His statement 
obviously meant he could have the last word; she couldn't 
come up with anything to say that wouldn't carry the 
argument into a violation of the Great Laws, or she would 
have said it by now.
    Reyn turned back to the others. "The Bells are ringing 
from the east," he said gravely, "the direction of hope 
and sunrise. But that doesn't mean they won't begin 
ringing from the west."
    The direction of sunset, death, blood, and fire. They 
all knew that much, at least. Reyn was relieved that the 
mention didn't send them into a panic.
    Torella sighed loudly and stood to wander away from 
the table, to the shutters. Reyn studied her, then let her 
go. As long as she was only opening the shutters, to feel 
the night wind on her face as the Great Wooders had some 
kind of unaccountable urge to do, he would permit it.
    "My lord?"
    He turned back. Rolode again, but he permitted it. 
"Yes, my lady?"
    The title was a courtesy that made her flush with 
pleasure. "What would happen if-"
    A cry stopped them all short. Reyn turned as fast as a 
snake, only later thinking that the cry had more of 
ecstasy in it than fear or pain.
    He found Torella standing and staring up at the sky, 
staring up into endless darkness. The image troubled him 
more than he could say, and he spoke more sharply than he 
intended. "Shut the window."
    She turned and looked at him, dark eyes large and 
luminescent. "Come and see, my lord."