While we covered him, White Crow repacked Bes's saddle, adjusting straps and other harness until he was satisfied that all was secure. The canoe would now act to guard our backs.

I kept the new party at a distance with my bow. Their own arrows could be shot back, but not with any great power as they were too short. Ayanawatta's arrows, however, were perfect. Slender and long, they were a joy to use. They were so accurate that they might have been charmed. But there were not enough. Fewer and fewer were being shot back by the Pukawatchi. Slowly they were closing the circle.

White Crow adjusted the copper mesh protecting Bes's front and head. She kneeled for us.

White Crow shouted for us to get onto the mammoth, and we scrambled into that massive saddle. We pushed the maddened ' pygmies back with our bowstaves.

Ayanawatta was the last to come up, his twin war clubs cracking skulls and bones so rapidly that it sounded like the popping of a hot fire made with damp wood. He worked with astonishing skill and delicacy, knowing exactly which part of each club would land where. Those dense skulls were hard to crack, but he fought to kill. Each single blow economically took a life. When Bes moved away from the tumbled corpses towards the pygmy archers, they scattered back.

The remains of Klosterheim's band continued to stalk in our wake, but they, too, had few arrows left. They followed like coyotes tracking a cougar, as if they hoped we would lead them to fresh meat.

Their numbers were now badly reduced. They must have been debating the wisdom of continuing with this war party. Klosterheim had not delivered what he had promised them. The Two Tongues probably had some self-interest in leaguing himself with my husband's old enemy. If he had expected Klosterheim to know how to defeat us, he had been disappointed.

I was surprised when they began to drop back. They were soon far behind us. No doubt they were discussing fresh strategies. Klosterheim would, for his part, insist on the pursuit. I understood him well enough to know that.

The woodlands were sparser now, breaking into isolated thickets as the undulating grasslands opened up before us. Huge mountains dominated the distant landscape. The pygmies were among the grasses and wild corn. The smoke we saw behind us showed that at least some of them had made camp. White Crow remained suspicious. He said it was an old trick of theirs to leave one man making smoke while the rest continued in pursuit. After studying it for a while though, he decided most of the Pukawatchi were there preparing food. He could tell by the quality of the smoke that they had made a good kill. This would be the message any stragglers would see, and it would bring them into the camp. Ayanawatta said the Pukawatchi were a civilized people and would feel shame if they ate their meat raw. The fire told of a beast serving the whole party. While this was not a deliberate message, the Pukawatchi would know how friend and enemy alike would read it. They had called off hunting us, at least for the moment.

"And a big deer will fill a lot of little stomachs! " Ayanawatta laughed. I asked him if there were many people of Pukawatchi height, and he seemed surprised at my question. "In their own lands, all is to their stature. Even their monsters are smaller! "

"That is what made it both easy and hard for me, " chimed in White Crow. "I was easy to see but hard to kill! "

The Pukawatchi were cliff dwellers from the southwest living in sophisticated cave-towns. Most of their civic life was conducted inside. When he had visited Ipkeptemi the Wise, their greatest medicine chief, White Crow had experienced some difficulty crawling through the city's smaller tunnels.

"And did you steal their treasures?" I asked. I had, of course, a specific interest in the black blade.

"I am charged to bring important medicine back to the Kakatanawa. Only I can handle the metal, since they lost their previous White Crow."

"Who was their previous White Crow man?" I asked almost hesitantly. I could not help fearing this road of inquiry would take me somewhere I did not want to go. His answer was not the one I had anticipated.

"My father, " he said.

"And his name?" I asked.

White Crow looked at me in some surprise. "That is still his own, " he said. I had offended some protocol and fell silent by way of apology. In this strange world where dream-logic must be followed or consign you forever to limbo I swam again in familiar supernatural waters, ready for all experience. Old disciplines returned. I was prepared to make the most of what I could. Even the most dedicated adventurers accepted how form and ritual were essential to this life. A game of cards depends upon chance, but can only be played if strict rules are followed.

We played the ball game that evening after we had made early camp. It was a form of backgammon but required more memory and skill. Such games were cultivated by Ayanawatta's people, he said. Those who played them well had special status and a name. They were called wabenosee or, more humorously, sheshebuwak, which meant 'ducks' and was also the nickname for the balls used in their game.

"Presumably we are at the mercy of fate, like the rattling balls, " I said. "Do we control anything? Do we not merely maintain the status quo as best we can?" Ayanawatta was not sure. "I envy you your skills, Countess Oona. I still yearn to walk the white path between the realms, but until now my dream-journeys, dangerous and enlightening as they have been, have been accomplished by other means."

He did not know if I was any more or less at the mercy of fate than himself. He longed to make just one such walk, he said, before his spirit passed into its next state.

I laughed and made an easy promise. "If I ever can, I'll take you, " I said. "Every sentient creature should look once upon the constantly weaving and separating moonbeam roads." The women of my kind, of course, constantly crossed and recrossed them. And in our actions, in the stories we played out, we wove the web and woof of the multiverse, the fabric of time and space. From the original matter, acted upon by our dreams and desires, by our stories, came the substance and structure of the whole.

"Divine simplicity, " I said. With it came the full understanding of one's value as an individual, the understanding that every action taken in the common cause is an action taken for oneself and vice versa. "The moonbeam roads are at once the subtlest and easiest of routes. Sometimes I feel almost guilty at the ease with which I move between the realms." All other adepts hoped to achieve the ability, natural to dreamthieves and free dream-travelers, of walking between the worlds. Our unconscious skills made us powerful, and they made us dangerous but also highly endangered, especially when the likes of Gaynor chose to challenge the very core of belief upon which all our other realities depended. "The path is not always easy and not always straight, " I told him. "Sometimes it takes the whole of one's life to walk quite a short distance. Sometimes all you do is return to where you began."

"Circumstances determine action? Context defines?" Grinning, White Crow made several quick movements with his fingers. Balls rattled and danced like planets for a moment and then were still. He had won the game. "Is that what you learned at your musram?" And he darted me a quick, sardonic look, to show me that he could use more than one vocabulary if he wished. Most of us know several symbolic languages, which affords us few problems with the logic and sound of spoken language. We are equally alert to the language of street and forest. We are often scarcely aware which language we use, and it never takes us long to learn a new one. These skills are primitive compared to our monstrous talent for manipulating the natural world, which makes shape-taking almost second nature. Quietly, however, White Crow was reminding me that he, too, was an adept. "To wander the paths between the worlds at will, " he said, "is not the destiny of a Kakatanawa White Crow man."