The Anlage. The great mine of elventhought. The shared memory of the race.

In its depths lay the earliest recollections of the mining elves: their wanderings, their departure from Silvanesti. Some even said that, in the hands of a wise and anointed elf, the Anlage could reveal the earliest days-in the Age of Dreams, when the First shy;born of the world opened their eyes to moonlight upon a newly awakened planet.

It was all there. All memory and all imagining.

So the elders had told Stormlight in his childhood and youth, in the long years of wandering before the ambush, his wounding, and his adoption by the Plainsmen. The elders had told him how to draw upon that power as well, and of the danger therein- the risk that the visionary might not return to the waking world, but sleep and sleep until the opales-cence of age covered and swallowed him entirely.

Yet without fear or misgiving, Stormlight sank into these meditations, tunneling deeper and deeper until he reached a level where he knew the thoughts and recollections were no longer his own, and he sank into a cloudy vein of mutual remembrance.

Around him, his Plainsmen companions, Larken, and Vincus watched helplessly, expectantly, as though they stood on the shores of a great ocean, waiting for a distant sail.

But Stormlight was calm, preternaturally alert. No fear, he told himself. No fear is very good.

Mindfully, he explored the shadowy dream, a shifting landscape bedazzled with the light of both . . . no, of three moons. The five elements enfolded him: the fire of the stars, the water in the heart of the earth, the desert and stone, the parched and wander shy;ing air.

And memory. The fifth oi the ancient elements.

Dancing, as the elders said it did, as a gray absorbent light on the margins of vision. Stormlight directed his thought toward that grayness, and it parted before him.

For a moment there were grasslands, the pale face of someone he neither remembered nor knew …

Then forest.

The book, he told himself. Keep your mind on the book.

Briefly, a great darkness yawned to his left, full of flashing color and a strange, seductive beckoning. For a while he stood at the borders of that darkness, which seemed to call to him, promising sleep, an easeful rest.

But that way was dangerous. He would be lost if he entered it.

The book, he told himself. Nothing but the book.

And then it appeared before him, its pages crisp and sharp and entirely intact. Eagerly, he opened the pages with his mind.

He read and remembered.

Finally, Stormlight looked up, and Vincus saw the transformation.

For a moment the elf looked blind, his pale eyes milky and unfocused. Vincus started, believing the book had struck Stormlight sightless, but then the eyes of the elf changed again, a white shell or a pale film dropping out of his gaze and receding beneath his eyelids.

"Come with me, Larken," Stormlight urged. He shot to his feet as though at a call for battle. Grab shy;bing the bard by the arm, he ushered her into the night, whispering a warning or strategy that reached Vincus only in snatches, in fragments.

"Against us" he heard.

"Incarnate. Opals."

"Takhisis."

And "opals" again, the last word swallowed by the rising night.

* * * * *

So the stones that protect us will enable her to enter the world? Larken asked.

Stormlight nodded. "And if we deny her the stones, if we destroy them or hide them, we relin shy;quish our protection."

Together they stood in the twilight not a hundred yards from the fire. Overhead, scarlet Lunitari reeled through the night sky, and the landscape, rock and rubble and distant tent, seemed bathed suddenly in dark blood.

What shall we do, Stormlight?

Her hands did not shake, Stormlight noticed. She was awaiting his command, and was not afraid.

His face softened, and for a long time the elf stood silent. "I am not sure, Larken. Nor were the elves who wrote the manuscript. But the text is clear on one thing. Whatever it takes to stop a goddess will demand our utmost. Something perilous and alto shy;gether new.

"Despite our quarrel, Fordus must know of it. I shall warn him this night." Without further word, the elf stalked off into the darkness, his destination the level plain to the east, the largest circle of camp-fires.

Larken watched as Stormlight receded into the night.

"Something perilous," he had said. "And alto shy;gether new."

She was ready. She had changed. She felt it now, with a slow certainty. Danger and novelty no longer

frightened her. Out of a strange solitude, she awaited the approaching change calmly and with a new eagerness.

Stormlight came back at dawn, a great heaviness in his cold eyes.

He had talked to Fordus, the rumors said. He had told the Prophet the news of the discovered text.

But Fordus had stared beyond him, into the noth shy;ingness of desert and night. Had called Stormlight a dead man, said that his words no longer had life.

Fordus had rejected him, and it was Stormlight now who stood at the edge of the sea, a powerless observer.

By midmorning of the next day, Fordus's group had resumed the march, and by late afternoon, they had reached the foothills of the Istarian Mountains. Stormlight's troops still followed at a distance.

Vincus leaned gratefully against an outcropping of rock, making certain that the ground around him was free of willow branches. It was the best of times to camp, he thought, before darkness fell in the midst of rough and treacherous terrain.

A courier came back from the ranks to Fordus's rear guard, to where Vincus waited with Stormlight and two older Plainsmen, Breeze and Messenger.

It was a man Vincus had never met-a young man named Northstar-who brought the word.

"The Prophet Fordus," Northstar said, speaking the name in quiet and reverent tones, "had a dream in which a dead man visited him with a warning."

Stormlight turned away at these words.

"The dead man told him," Northstar continued, "that Takhisis herself-She of the Many Faces-has arrayed her dark powers against the rebellion, against the Prophet Fordus."

"And what else did the . . . dead man say, North-star?" Stormlight asked bitterly, his back to the mes shy;senger.

"All the rest was lies, says the Prophet Fordus. For Takhisis sends her minions to deceive, to waylay and destroy. Her army is the living and the dead, and none are to be believed. So says the Prophet For shy;dus.

"But the goddess is afraid now. Her warnings and threats are the words of a beast in flight. For if she thought she could defeat the Prophet Fordus …

"She would not let him know of her presence. She would wait, and hide, waylaying him when he least expected, when he stood at the edge of his greatest victory, rather than now, before the war has even begun."

Stormlight shook his head.

Vincus tried to follow the reasoning of the Water Prophet. Perhaps Northstar had not remembered it right, for it seemed cloudy and formless, a poor and shoddy logic.

Yet Northstar was ardent, rapt, fresh from the presence of his hero, his lord.

"We shall continue the assault on Istar," the mes shy;senger proclaimed. "Her threats are the banner of the Kingpriest's fear. So says the Prophet Fordus.

"We shall march through the night, for speed and surprise are our allies, and the mountains will be ours by morning. Through the Central Pass we will go, and let those who dispute the word of the Prophet Fordus stay in their camps and cower.

"We are bound for Istar, and to us will the city belong!"

Having spoken, Northstar wheeled about and raced back up the column, his long strides eager and jubilant. Stormlight turned, an overwhelming sad shy;ness on his face, and stared at Vincus.