The speculation was merely cultural, they told themselves. It could be of interest to the Nerakan wives and mothers as to how a wealthy Solamnic girl might dress, especially since she hailed from one of the more ancient and honored cities of that western country.

The interest was academic, they told themselves, at least for now, while the sergeant's orders were strict. The temple clerics had told him not to lay a hostile hand on the girl. Not until Takhisis had given them a sign as to her fate.

So for now, the interest was academic, and their attentions as well. They winked in a most scholarly fashion, holding their breath as they quietly peeked through the curtain. It was a far better job than guarding a foul-smelling band of fifty ogres.

Aglaca climbed higher through the tough entanglements, hands clutching at coarse, sandy root, the leavings of guano, and silt and gravelly dust. Finally, balanced a dozen feet above Verminaard, he could reach no farther. The crumbling ceiling of the cave dipped directly above, and the sound of the girl's muffled words reached him through the thin layer of dirt and rock.

He gritted his teeth and began to dig-slowly and cautiously at first, but with rising urgency as he heard the murmuring cease, heard the girl's voice clearly for the first time: "What in the name of Branchala …"

Then there was light, and the torn edge of a wooden tub hovering over him. The water swirled and trickled above him, yet he remained dry.

"By Paladine!" he breathed.

The water pooled and was caught on some strange shimmering tension in the air. It was like looking at a rain-

storm through glass or ice, and for a moment, Aglaca thought that indeed it was glass above him. He weaved a moment on his ladder of rough roots, clutching for purchase in the fractured dark.

"Who-who are you?" the girl whispered, peering through the puddle. He recognized the face, the lavender gown she clutched to her breast, the brilliant blue-lavender eyes.

"Y-Your rescuer, by Paladine's grace! We are two. The other waits below," he muttered triumphantly and vaulted toward the light.

It was then that he discovered the magical shell that lay between him and the astonished girl. The spell-charged air snared him, pushed him back. He fell back into the roots with a crash and an oath, staring stupidly up at her. His hands crackled with sparks as he clutched for balance, and his hair stood on end.

"Do you think a simple line of trees could keep me in?" the girl hissed to Aglaca. "Or keep the guardsmen out, if they fancied to trouble me? The priests in that temple have magicked the Pen with a glyph of warding."

"Glyph of warding?"

"An old sign, it is. Charged with shamanic conjury when the black moon rises."

Aglaca swallowed. This hostage girl knew magic beyond his wildest dreams. "How do we .. ." he began, but a quick wave of her hand urged him to silence.

"I know the countercharm," she whispered. "I didn't go guileless into the mountains, but I need another voice for the casting."

"Another voice? Why?"

"No time. Speak after me. Then stand back. There's a big leak in this bathtub. You're partway under it."

Blushing, his eyes averted and his legs lodged in a chaos of roots, the lad waited for Judyth to dress, then repeated the spinning, incomprehensible Elvish that she

spoke to him. It was a brief verse, its vowels dancing in subtle arrangements, and twice the girl had to stop him, correct him, and start him again in the strange incantation.

But the third time it worked.

In triumph and relief, Aglaca repeated the last line, and the air above him stirred and snapped. A deluge of soapy water tumbled from the broken tub, and Judyth, now fully dressed in the lavender robe, slipped through the wet hole and clutched her rescuer about the waist.

"Hurry!" she ordered through clenched teeth, untangling her sleeve from a stray root tendril. "You've freed more than a damsel in distress."

Verminaard had waited sullenly in the cavern, clutching an oozing shoulder wound he had received from backing into a sharp broken root. Then he heard her voice- hushed and melodious and low, not the high-stringed harp music he had imagined-and it was suddenly drowned by a rumble overhead, a tumult of shouting and screaming and the crashing sound of buildings and lean-tos shaking and toppling.

Judyth quickly descended into the torchlight, Aglaca leading her carefully over and around the latticework of roots. They were both wet, dripping with soapy water, and it would be much later before Verminaard discovered the reason.

Verminaard stepped back indignantly.

It was your plan, the Voice insinuated. Your plan, and a good one, conceived in d noble spirit. . . the'stuff of heroism, all- For a moment, the Voice paused and garbled, as though at the edge of an unpronounceable word. Then it continued. All Huma and lances and glorious victory. It was

your idea and your doing, and who leads the girl forth? And why does he lead her?

The Voice repeated the questions again and again, each time more softly until they merged entirely with Ver-minaard's thoughts, and the lad forgot the Voice altogether, asking the questions himself as he reached out to help the girl through the last of the knotted entanglements.

"Thank you," she breathed, and brushed back her hood.

Behind her, a stalactite crashed to the cavern floor.

For the first time, Verminaard looked into the face of the girl he had dreamt of and pursued through two seasons. Her dark hair shone like obsidian in the guttering lamplight; it was not the spun gold he had imagined. And though her skin was flawless, the touch of her hand like fine silk or velvet, that hand was dark, not porcelain or alabaster as the poems had told him it would be, should be.

And the eyes. Deep and lavender, a strange blue, bright and fathomless. Like the eye of that daylily.

She was not the girl he had imagined at all.

Behind her, a rockslide opened the cavern to a shifting, misty light from above. She shoved Verminaard toward the cave entrance and shouted as he staggered back in amazement.

"Don't stand there gawking or we'll all be crushed! Get us out of here!"

They emerged from the cavern just as it collapsed behind them. Verminaard wheeled about, open-mouthed, as the passage behind him caved in with a dusty crash, the plateau collapsing, concentrically spreading all the way to

the base of the Nerakan walls, toppling tents and lean-tos and makeshift cottages in a matter of seconds.