As the pair dragged me towards the city I lost my senses entirely. By the time I recovered we were behind the tall walls of the Kakatanawa city, and an unexpected security filled me. The youth with my wife's corpse was nowhere to be seen. Indeed, to my astonishment, the great courtyard around the gigantic city was completely deserted. And yet I had noted complex activity earlier as I approached the ziggurat. It seemed that everything had become an inchoate illusion, like a dream without rational meaning. How could such a vast city now give the impression of being empty?

Even the mammoth appeared surprised, lifting her huge trunk, her tusks actually making whistling noises in the air as she raised her head, and trumpeting out a greeting which received no response, save from the echoes among the empty tiers and the distant peaks.

Where were the Kakatanawa, the giant Indians who had brought me to the Chasm of Nihrain and ultimately to this world? I tried to free myself from the friendly hands still holding me. I needed to find someone who would give me the answers. I think I was babbling. At some point thereafter I fell into a deep sleep. But it was not a comforting sleep. My dreams were as disturbed as my life had become, and as mysterious.

In those dreams I saw a thousand incarnations of Oona, of the woman I loved, and in those same dreams I killed her a thousand times in a thousand different ways. I knew a thousand different kinds of remorse, of unbearable grief. But out of all this spiritual agony I seemed to find a tiny thread of hope. I saw it as a thin, grey wire which led from tragedy towards joyous resolution, where all fear was driven away, all terror quietened, all gentle dreams made real. And I wondered if Kakatanawa were just another name for Tanelorn, if here I might rest and have my love and my life restored.

"This is not Tanelorn." I awoke refreshed. The black giant Sepiriz was staring down at me. He held a goblet in his hand which he offered me. Yellow wine. I drank and felt better still. But then memory came back, and I sprang off the dais on which I had been lying. I looked around for my sword. Apart from the platform on which I had slept, the room was entirely empty. I ran into the next room, out of a door, into a corridor. All empty. No furniture. No occupants. "Is this Kakatanawa?"

"It is the city of that people, yes."

"Have they fled? I saw them ..."

"You saw what travelers have seen for centuries now. You saw a memory of the city as she was in her prime. Now she dies, and her people are reduced to those few you have already met."

"And where are they?"

"Returned to their positions."

"My wife?"

"She is not dead."

"Alive? Where?"

Sepiriz tried to comfort me. He offered me more of the wine. "I told you that she was not dead. I did not say she was alive. The tree alone no longer has that power. The bowl alone no longer has that power. The disk itself alone has no power. The staff alone no longer has the power. The blade alone no longer has that power. The stone alone no longer has that power. The pivot is gone. Only if the Balance is restored can she live. Meanwhile, there is some hope. Three by three, the unity."

"Let me see her! "

"No. It is too soon. There is more to do. And unless you play your prescribed role, you will never see her."

I could only trust him, though his assurances had hidden aspects to them. He had promised me I would see Oona again, but he had not told me she might take a different form.

"Do you understand, Count Ulric, that the Lady Oona saved your life?" asked Sepiriz gently. "While you fought Lord Shoashooan most bravely and weakened him considerably, it was the dreamthief's daughter who dealt him the final, dissipating blow, which sent his elements back to the world's twelve corners."

"She shot those arrows, I remember ..."

"And then, after you precipitously attacked the demon duke, thinking you saved her, she aided you again. She at last took the shape of the White Buffalo whose destiny was to make our final road across the ice. She had the greatest tradition of resisting Lord Shoashooan. Do you understand? She became the White Buffalo. The Buffalo is the trail-maker. She can lead the way to new realms. In this realm, she is the only force the wind elementals fear, for she carries the spirit of all the spirits."

"There are more elementals?"

"They combined in Lord Shoashooan, who was ever a powerful lord with many alliances among the air elementals. But now he has taken them in thrall. Although the twelve spirits of the wind are conquered by his powers, they can still re-form. All the winds serve him in this realm. It is why he succeeds so well. He commands those elementals who were once the friends of your people." "Friends no longer?"

"Not while that mad archetype enslaves them. You must know that the elementals serve neither Law nor Chaos, that they have only loyalty to themselves and their friends. Only inadvertently do they serve the Balance. And now, against their will, they serve Lord Shoashooan."

"What is his power over them?"

"He it was who stole the Chaos Shield which should have brought your wife to this place. Lord Shoashooan waylaid her and took the shield. That was all he needed to focus his strength and conquer the winds. Had it not been for Ayanawatta's medicine, she would not have been with us at all! His magic flute has been our greatest friend in this."

"Lord Sepiriz, I undertook to serve your cause because you promised me the return of my wife. You did not tell me I would kill her."

"I was not sure that you would, this time."

"This time?"

"My dear Count Ulric." Prince Lobkowitz had entered the room. "You seem much recovered and ready to continue with this business! "

"Only if I am told more. Do I understand you rightly, Lord Sepiriz? You knew that I would kill my wife?"

The black giant's expression betrayed him, but I saw the sadness that was there also. Any blame I felt towards him dissipated. I sighed. I tried to remember some words I had heard. Was it from Lobkowitz, long ago? We are all echoes of some larger reality, yet every action we take ultimately decides the nature of truth itself.

"Nothing we do is unique. Nothing we do is without meaning or consequence."

Lobkowitz's soft, cultured Austrian accent cut into Sepiriz's silence. The black giant seemed relieved, even grateful. He could not answer my challenge and feared to answer my question.

The ensuing silence was broken by a loud noise from outside. I walked past the dais on which I had been sleeping. I was almost naked, but the room was pleasantly warm. I went to the window. There was a courtyard outside, but we were many stories above it. Old vines, thicker than my legs, climbed up the worn, glittering stonework. Autumn flowers, huge dahlias, vast hydrangeas, roses the span of my shoulders, grew among them, and it was only now I understood how ancient the place must truly be. Now it was a better home to nature than to man.

Large, spreading trees grew in the courtyard, and tall, wild grass. Some distance below on an' other terrace I made out an entire orchard. Elsewhere were fields gone to seed, cattle pens, storehouses. There had been no one here for centuries. I remembered the tales told of the Turks cap-turing Byzantium. They had believed they brought down an em-pire, but instead found a shell, with sheep grazing among the ruins of collapsed palaces. Was this the American Byzantium? In the courtyard the great black mammoth, Bes, was being washed down by the youth, White Crow, and his older companion, Ayanawatta. The two men seemed good friends, and both were in the peak of physical fitness, though White Crow could not have been more than seventeen. His features, of course, were those of an albino. But it was not my family he resembled. It was someone else. Someone I knew well. My urge was to call to him, to ask after Oona, but Sepiriz had already assured me she was no longer dead. I forced myself to accept his leadership. He did not simply know the future-he understood all the futures which might proliferate if any of us strayed too far from the narrative which, like a complicated spell involving dozens of people in dozens of different actions, must be strictly adhered to if we wished to achieve our desire. A game of life or death whose rules you had to guess.