It was Fordus, he was certain. The slight blond woman who stood beside him in the firelight spoke in sign language-a strangely inflected version, but easy enough to interpret.

And there was the hawk, perched on a ring near her!

She had called the man "Commander." Called him "Prophet."

Vincus rose to his knees, peering through the last stretch of darkness toward the firelight. Not yet, he told himself. I will wait here for a while. For there is something more I am supposed to know.

"Bring me water!" Fordus commanded, his voice deep and melodious and a little too loud. "Bring meat, and a cup of wine as well."

A young man leapt at his command and rushed off into the darkness.

"Where is that boy? Where is the wine?" Fordus asked, much too soon. His followers stood about him uncomfortably, averting their eyes as he stared at each of them.

Finally, Fordus turned in Vincus's direction.

Though Vincus was well out of sight, hidden by tall grass and shadow, the firelight showed him the full face of the Prophet-the handsome, windburnt features and the auburn beard.

Unusual for a Plainsman. As were the eyes.

Vincus had seen that color before. Sky-blue? Sea-blue? Had seen it in Istar …

At the School of the Games? No. It must have been at the Kingpriest's Tower.

Barely had the name crossed through his thoughts than Vincus remembered. The hushed room of the great Council Hall, the man almost swallowed by a globe of brilliant white light, reflected off the pol shy;ished marble and the luminous pellidryn stones that spangled the Imperial Throne.

The Kingpriest. The Kingpriest had eyes like that.

And the other features. The thin aristocratic nose, the high cheekbones, and even the auburn hair. The resemblance was uncanny. Fordus might have been the Kingpriest's brother. Or …

Vincus's thoughts recoiled from the prospect. The priesthood of Istar was austere and proper. Suppose the Kingpriest…

It was a thought he could not even finish.

For a moment he lay silent in the darkness, his thoughts far away-on Vaananen, on those in ser shy;vice to the Tower and the city. He had come a long way with a single message of great importance.

But now, having seen what he had seen, would he deliver that message?

He would think on this a while, find a sheltered place in a greater darkness. He would have the night, at least, perhaps until sunrise. Then he would decide whether to approach the Water Prophet, or

go-He started to back away from the firelight, intent on losing himself somewhere outside the encircled tents. But suddenly, rough hands seized him by the shoulders and jerked him to his feet. Vincus spun around, but his attacker caught his arm and, with a flawless wrestler's maneuver, twisted it behind his back.

Hot pain shot through Vincus's shoulder, and he looked into the face of his assailant.

A Lucanesti elf, his arms encrusted with the first bejewellings of middle age, regarded Vincus calmly. "I am not sure whether your intentions are good or ill," the elf whispered. "But perhaps by other fires and among other people, we can find out just who you are, and why you spy on Fordus Firesoul."

* * * * *

The elf's name was Stormlight. He was a lieu shy;tenant of the War Prophet, but had fallen from favor in some recent dispute of policy.

After he seized Vineus near Fordus's fire and tents, Stormlight had taken his captive to the other side of the encampment entirely-to quiet quarters, where a half dozen veteran Plainsmen waited in silence.

Stormlight had questioned Vincus, and when he failed to understand the sign language, had reluc shy;tantly sent for the woman, the one with the yellow hair, whose name was Larken. With her odd, alien gestures, she translated Vincus's signs in her own silence.

"What proof have you that you were a slave in Istar?" Stormlight asked finally, regarding Vincus with a stare that was melancholy but not unkind.

Vincus showed him the collar, how the pieces fit together, how they spelled his name. Stormlight nodded, placed the pieces around Vincus's neck, and was satisfied they fit. He started to ask another question, then fell silent.

"How did you find us?" he asked finally, and Vin shy;cus told of his journey, of the pass through the mountains and his guidance by the benevolent hawk.

It was a god, he signed. / am sure it was a god taking the bird's form to guide me. He camps with you? I saw him perched by your fire.

Larken smiled as she translated his gestures for Stormlight.

The elf's expression softened.

"And why have you found us?" he asked. "What do you ask of us? Or what do you bring us?"

Vincus gestured excitedly, knelt on the ground. Stormlight dropped beside him, and the Plainsmen, Larken, and Gormion stood above them, watching curiously and intently.

Though he had mistrusted Fordus from the start, Vincus felt surprisingly safe in the company of the elf. He knew that Vaananen's glyphs were meant for this man, for Stormlight was one who asked instead of commanded.

To Vincus, that was a sign of wisdom and discern shy;ment. He had heard enough of command in his servitude.

Confidently, he drew the five glyphs on the ground before Stormlight. After he was finished, he looked up.

Stormlight stared at the glyphs intently.

"Desert's Edge," he said. "Sixth Day of Lunitari. No Wind."

It seemed to be nothing new to him until he reached the fourth glyph.

"The Leopard? And … there is a fifth one that fol shy;lows. Something dreadfully important here."

I shall bring Fordus, Larken signed, but Stormlight waved the thought away.

"Not this time."

Larken frowned, a question forming in her thoughts.

Stormlight stared at Vincus, and a long moment passed in which the camp lay silent.

"Is the Sixth Legion in Istar, Vincus?" Stormlight asked.

Elatedly, Vincus nodded, gesturing excitedly as Larken struggled to translate his account of his own discoveries, of conveying the news to Vaananen, of the whole series of events that boded danger for For shy;dus and the rebels.

Stormlight leaned back, his face lost for a moment in the shadow. Then, craning toward the fifth glyph, he read it and proclaimed: "Beware the dark man."

He looked up at Vincus, then at Larken. A crooked, bemused smile played at the corner of his mouth.

"Hear the word of the Prophet," he whispered, with a laugh.

"Beware the lady," he said flatly. For a while he knelt before the fifth glyph, tracing its outline with a callused finger.

"I see," he murmured. "I should have known by the amber eyes. Tamex . . . Tanila . . . They looked alike. Reptilian.

"And then … the dragon tracks through the Tears of Mishakal!"

* * * * *

"One will ask for it soon," Vaananen had said. "And you will know it is right to give the book to that person." •

So Vincus gave the book to Stormlight, trusting the same instinct that had guided him through the desert and steered him from Fordus at the last moment.

After all, the book was written in Lucanesti. What other sign could a man expect?

Together, the elf and the bard puzzled over the ancient text, Larken frowning at the complexities of the scattered, angular script, but Stormlight nod shy;ding, reading…

Until he came to the lost passages. Gray dust eddied in the hands of the elf as he knelt at the campsite, spreading the opened book before him.

Stormlight bowed over the page and inspected it for a long time. "Perhaps," he murmured, "it is in my language, and it is prophecy as well."

"The Anlage …" he murmured. "The oldest see shy;ing."

Long before the first migrations of the Lucanesti across the Istarian desert, before the first discoveries of glain opal, and perhaps even before the time when the elders of that dwindling people had dis shy;covered the powers of the lucerna, another deeper way of seeing had been encoded in their thoughts and memory.