Mine, a voice said on the wind. Damn you. Damn you, Ischade.

It was, delivered out of a witch's power, a curse that wrenched at the locks onhell.

"Fool!" Ischade whirled in the echoing gust and shoved back with all that was inher, keeping that Gate shut. It strained. It manifested, over across the stream,a barred door in the stone cliff beside the stream, a door bent and creakingunder the blows of what might be a shoulder, an arm, a fragment of night itselfreaching for Niko's soul-

"Niko!" she shouted. And: "Roxane, you utter fool!"

Niko's back arched. It was Jihan and Tempus who held him. Molin attempted to gethis jaws open and to stop him choking while an occasional flutter of whitebetokened a priest dithering this way and that in the doorway, between help andhindrance. "Get her!" Molin snarled at the priest, applying all his strength toNiko's spasmed jaws, and nodding with a toss of his head toward the crumpledblack-cloaked form on the floor. "Keep her warm, I don't care if she isn'tbreathing, tie up those wounds, shut her eyes, she'll go blind, for godssakes-"Niko spasmed again and Tempus swore and yelled his name as another staggeringform appeared in the doorway.

Randal came reeling in, with blood all down his chin and down the front of him.

"Nooo!" Randal cried, his eyes lighting suddenly as if they had spied something,and he made a wild lunge toward the desk, but the priest got in his way,staggered him and knocked him reeling into a chair against the wall as somethingwhich was not-there burst with light.

Fire came back, blue and scorching as Randal recoiled out of the chair and threwpower at it. White light blazed out, for a moment illumining a figure thatclutched a Globe in its hands. The Globe spun without moving. It lit the wholeroom.

And when it and the holder vanished the contents of bookshelves came pouring outin a thunderclap.

"He put himself into it," Randal yelled, his hands clenched, his hair standingup in blood-matted spikes. "Into the cabinet! He put himself in and he movedit!"

"I'll get it," Jihan cried, and: "Danunit, no!" Tempus shouted at her, for Nikoflung out the arm she let go: she grabbed it again, grabbed all of him and heldonto him with bonecrushing strength, her unnatural skin aglow and her eyes fullof violence for whoever had done this thing.

It was still going on, in whatever Place that racked body contained or waslinked to: Molin could not describe it. He had only the conviction it existed,and it was coming apart under their hands: Roxane was tearing it apart frominside, he understood that much, while Niko's joints and muscles cracked andstrained. Niko would shatter his own bones, rip tendons from their moorings,break his own spine in the extremity of the convulsions: it was a preternaturalstrength. It destroyed the body it lodged in; and the mind-

A wind was blowing through the room, the air was cold where it met bare skin,and Straton came up from his abyss with a gasp after air and a wild motion ofhis arm that sought after Ischade.

It met chill, empty sheets.

"Damn!" he cried and rolled off the bed, staggering on the rumpled rug and thesheets and the forgotten obstacle of Tas-falen's body lying there stark andcooling with the chill.

It was true. It was all true, what they said about Ischade, she had left himwith her dead and gone off somewhere to sleep it off. He felt of his throat andfelt of his chest with a chilled hand and staggered about with a throbbingheadache and no concept of direction while he got his clothes to rights.

Damn her. Damn, damn, and damn her to bloody hell.

Am I alive? Am I like that poor sod Stilcho, alive-dead, killed and brought backout of hell, o gods-

A door opened downstairs; wind sucked in a chill gust from the window.

"Ischade," he yelled, and flung himself past Tasfalen's corpse, out the door,toward the stairs. He caught himself at the top, looking down on Moria in a tornand muddy gown, on Stilcho standing there ghastly as the truth in that bedroom.

He came down the stairs, broke through between them and headed out the doorwhere the bay horse stood curiously nosing the remnants of an apple core on thewalk. He ran for it, took the reins in his hand with no idea in heaven or hellwhere he was going.

To Crit, maybe, to that place where Crit was waiting for him.

He got his foot in the stirrup and heard a sound he had heard on a score ofbattlefields and a hundred ambushes. An arrow hit the wall and shattered. Hedropped from the stirrup, whacked the bay to get it out of fire, already knowingit was stupid; he should have the horse for cover, the damned, foolish horsewhich was the only thing in all the world which had never betrayed him.

It snorted and shied up and stayed. That was what made him hesitate in his divefor cover, one half-heartbeat of disbelief...

... that persisted when the arrow smashed high into his chest and he staggeredback and fell on the pavings. There was a smell of apples. The pavings werecold. The sky showed a clear, strange glow, going lavenders and white, and theupper stories of the buildings went all dim. It did not particularly hurt. Theysaid those were the really bad ones.

III

Moria saw him fall. She never thought. She ran out onto the walk with Stilchoshouting after her and the bay horse rearing and plunging in hysterics overStraton's body. She ran; and a man's arm grabbed her around the waist and swepther back to the safety of the doorway. In that moment she had time to realizethat she had just risked her life for a man she knew for another of Hers, for aman she had seen only twice in her life, who had burst past her down her ownstairs, shoved her painfully against a wall and run out like the devils of hellwere after him.

She could comprehend pain that strong. Ischade's service was full of it. It wasthat fellowship which sent her pelting out after him, no other reason; and nowStilcho in a terrible slowing of time and motion drew his hands from her waist,turned in a flying of his cloak, a falling of the hood that normally hid hiseye-patched face-for a moment it was the good side toward her, the sighted side,mouth open in a gasp for air, legs already driving in a lunge back to thestreet. He skidded in low almost under the bay's legs, grabbed the Stepson bythe collar and one hand and dragged him toward the door-he looked up as he came,his half-sighted face wild and pale, the dark hair flying, and his mouth opened.

"Get out of there!" he yelled at her, "get out of the way!"

An arrow whisked past with a bloodchilling sound she had heard described andinstantly recognized. She spun back around the comer to the door and the insidewall, and saw the arrow lying spent on the rug as Stilcho dragged the Stepson inpast her to drop him in the hall.

Moria hurled herself at the door and slammed it with all her might, shot thebolt and went and shuttered the drawing-room window in haste, ducking downbeneath to slam the shutters tight and shoot the deadbolts. "Shiey!" shescreamed. "Shutter the downstairs! Quick!"

Something banged back in the kitchens. Outside on the street she heard theclatter of hooves, the horse still outside the window: it whinnied loud andstamped this way and that. Hooves struck stone pavings up close to the window;and another shutter banged shut at the rear of the house.

"Upstairs," Stilcho said. He squatted over the unconscious Stepson. He had aknife out and he was cutting away the cloth from around a wound that might havebeen high enough to miss the lung but which might have cut the great arteryunder the collarbone-there was blood everywhere, on him, on the carpet. Stilcholifted a pale face contorted in haste and effort. "The upstairs shutters, woman!And be careful!"