Gyrentikh let out a great shout. "Shikrar! Shikrar, quickly, here!"

I leapt into the air, blessing the work of Vilkas and Aral as I climbed just a few tens of feet that I might see Gyrentikh. I might have saved myself the effort. He was at the center of a circle of the strange creatures. None came closer than one of their own body lengths, but every pair of dull eyes was focussed unblinking on—Gyrentikh?

No. On that which he guarded.

I backwinged in shock, fool that I was, stalled, and fell to the ground. I hadn't done that since before I had seen seventy winters.

"Shikrar!" cried Varien. "Shikrar, what—"

"The Lost. The soulgems of the Lost!" I shouted, climbing to my feet. "That's why they're here." I stood now beside Gyrentikh, facing all those desperately intent beasts, and I shook to my bones. "Name of the Winds, Akhor. What are we to do?"

I found that I was shouting, for the whispering was turned now to yells, and it was coming from the golden cask over which Gyrentikh still bravely stood guard.

I could hear words now. Cursing, screaming, wordless shouts, and one cry repeated over and over.

"LET US OUT! LET US OUT! LET US OUT!"

I hadn't the faintest idea what was going on. I was about to try to push my way into the midst of that unnatural crowd when Salera came running up, Will trailing behind her.

"Lord, these are the Hollow Ones!" cried Salera, terribly distressed. "They have our shape but they are beasts. They know neither speech nor reason. Beware, they have killed our kind before!"

"Whence came they?' I asked. "Quickly, Salera!"

"I was following Lord Kedra when several of my people hailed me," she said rapidly. "I had only begun to speak to them of true-speech when we all became aware of a terrible darkness below. We have had to fly from the Hollow Ones before, but only ever in ones and twos. This—this is very wrong." She shivered. "We all chose different directions and scattered, but the Hollow Ones followed me. I thought my death had chosen me. What is it they seek, Lord? What has called them here?"

"The soulgems of the Lost, it seems. Why, I have no idea."

Maran strode up, her pack on her back, Rella, ViL and Aral behind her. Maran's eyes were fixed on the dark agitated crowd of the Hollow Ones. There was now a great fluttering of wings among them, that in the Kantri denotes rising anger.

"What in all the Hells is this about?" asked Maran quietly.

I opened my mind to bespeak Shikrar and staggered from the noise.

"LET US OUT!"

I could bear the shouting in my mind no longer. I could think of nothing else to do, so I picked up the golden cask that contained the soulgems of the Lost. Instantly there was silence, from the beasts and in my head.

"Go, Gyrentikh," I commanded him quietly. 'They are not come for you." He walked slowly through the beasts, who ignored him, while I tried desperately to think.

When one of the Kantri dies, the soulgem remains. It shrinks to half its size in life and is preserved with all honour in the Chamber of Souls, in appearance like a great gem. These gems are dark until the Keeper of Souls has cause to summon an Ancestor. At such times, the soulgem of the particular Ancestor will glow gently as it did in life, until the Summoning is over.

When last the Kantri lived in Kolmar, five thousand years before, a great and nameless Demonlord had arisen. In the terrible battle that ended in his death, we found to our despair that he had learned how to destroy us. A single word, a single gesture from the Nameless One, and one of the Kantri would fall from the sky: they dwindled to the size of younglings and their soulgems were ripped from them. Even after the Demonlord was dead, we could find no way to restore those who had been defiled. They were become as beasts, and their soulgems never turned dull as with deatli—ever they flickered, neither alive nor dead. We came to call them, our family, our dear friends now taken, the Lost. That we might not take our revenge from the innocent Gedri who remained, we flew west, to the Isle of Exile, taking with us the soulgems. None now lived, or had for three and a half thousand years, who had known any of the Lost in life. Since the day it happened we had tried to restore the Lost, to no avail.

I had no idea what was happening now or why, but in the silence of my heart I was forced to admit that there was nothing to lose.

I lifted the cask high and with one talon incised a circle in the top of the golden cask in which we had carried the soulgems with us across the Great Sea. I gently removed the circle and dropped it in the grass.

The soulgems of the Lost were not flickering, as they had for so many centuries. They were blazing.

The soulless creatures surged towards me. Had we been of a size, I had surely been overwhelmed, but I am the Eldest and thus the largest of the Kantri. They were like so many younglings.

I was uncertain of what to do next when a cry of pain drew my attention.

It was Maran.

I had ignored the rising heat at my back until that big dragon opened that damned golden egg. In the instant I felt as if my back were on fire. I threw my pack from my back and turned to stare at it.

The leather was burning. In a circle.

In moments the Farseer was revealed, a globe of smoky glass about the size of a small melon. I gingerly moved my hand towards it, expecting extreme heat—but there was nothing. I touched it, picked it up: no heat at all.

When I looked up, the Farseer in both hands, I was confronted by a sea of blank faces. The little dull dragons, though they stayed in a circle around the big dragon—was he called Shikar, something like that?—they were staring at me now.

"Hells' teeth, what's in that dirty great golden bowl?" I asked anyone who would listen.

And there at my elbow, with several other people, was the silver-haired man my Lanen had married, telling me swiftly about those he called the Lost.

As he spoke, as I forced myself to listen and to ignore the fact that I still didn't know his name, something chimed in my memory. I had studied the disciplines of the Lady—at one time I thought I'd have to become a Servant to escape the demons—but I couldn't remember. Something about balance.

As if he read my mind, the tall young lad with the silly beard stepped forward. "By the Goddess, it just might be," he said, his eyes alight with possibility. "The Lost were dragons transformed by the Demonlord, a man who sold his true name and his very soul to demons. It took all three races together to create the Lost. Perhaps..."

"Perhaps it will take all three to restore them," said the silver one, his glorious voice deep and resonant and full of a wild hope. His eyes were gleaming and he was shaking with excitement, and I have to admit I caught some of it. "Come, Maran, perhaps your Raksha-taint will serve us after all!" he cried, pulling me with him into the middle of that uncanny circle of creatures. "You as well, Vilkas," he cried, and the tall lad followed.

As I came close to Shikrar the beasts started fluttering their wings again, a dry rattle that sent a shiver down my back.

"Shikrar, put them down," I said quietly. "Vilkas thinks—it might be—we may be able to do it, Shikrar, at last. Restore the Lost."

"What must I do, Akhor?" he asked softly, laying the cask on the grass at his feet. His control was extraordinary. His voice hardly trembled at all.

"Lift out a single soulgem," I said, my eyes never leaving the beast-eyes that stared intently at the three of us. Shikrar reverently picked up a blazing violet gem. A single creature stepped forward—it happened to be the nearest—and lowered its head. There in the faceplate was a shallow depression. I took the soul-gem from Shikrar and, shaking, placed it in the hollow.