My legs were tired, and the air was fetid. I was feeling my fifty-seven years.

After a while, our wandering became an issue. There in the bare corridors, I completely abandoned my hope in my brother's judgment.

"Suppose with me for a second, Brithelm," I suggested as we came puffing to a junction of tunnel and tunnel. "Just suppose. What if… those rooms are no longer a Namer hideaway of sorts? What if they're used for something entirely different? Or used not at all-those rooms you read about?"

"It will not matter," Brithelm stated flatly, coming to a sudden stop in the corridor so that I nearly ran into him. "It will not matter, because this is not the way to the rooms I read about."

He turned to me sheepishly.

I imagined us there in the corridor-lost entirely and completely and no doubt forever, white bones moldering into the history of the caverns and tunnels as our small intrusion into the lives of the Que-Tana faded to a footnote in one of the massive histories we had seen in the Porch of Memory.

I hadn't the heart to rail at Brithelm, who could not be blamed that his readings had gone awry. Our mission, I am afraid, was further imperiled by the fact that we had no weapons. In our ignited exit from the Porch of Memory, we had left anything fit for menace lying among papers and crumpled Que-Tana.

"There is, however, another way to find the path to Firebrand," Brithelm said, squinting into the corridor ahead of us.

I looked at him expectantly.

"Let us stand here until we can figure out what it is," he suggested. He sat calmly on the floor of the corridor, drew forth his spectacles, and put them on.

"Brithelm, I really think that-"

"Hush, Brother. Hush. Sit here and join me."

I seated myself at his side. I fidgeted as I thought of the Namer somewhere, fixing the stones into his crown, preparing to receive the power of life and death while I joined my brother in wool-gathering.

"Have you a scarf, Galen?" Brithelm whispered.

"I beg your pardon?"

"A scarf," Brithelm repeated, graciously but firmly. "Or a bandanna. Or even a sleeve that you do not need."

"No, I'm afraid I- Stop it!"

I clutched him by the shoulders and spun him around to face me.

"Listen to me, Brithelm! We are not in the best of straits here. There are a thousand Que-Tana who would gladly skin us alive, and their leader is somewhere on these premises thinking he's about to translate himself into a deity and is ready to destroy the lot of us in the whole harebrained venture, and we are the only ones who can stop him, and we are seated in the middle of an empty corridor discussing fabric and accessories like a damned pair of ladies-in-waiting!"

"I want you to blindfold me, Brother," Brithelm replied serenely. "If scholarship alone does not work, I shall have to recreate the circumstances under which I visited the Namer's quarters. It is the best of our hopes."

In resignation, in fatigue, perhaps in a bit of despair, I lay back on the floor of the corridor, resting my head against cool stone for a moment.

Then voices arose-a strange echoing in the rock, rising

from the stone itself, as voices in a closed room will reach you when you set the mouth of a ceramic cup to the door and listen.

Voices I could not untangle from each other.

"Nor will we tarry that long before the light returns and the mountains settle…

"Here the text speaks of fire, of fire and stone and memory…"

"They are not edible, those tenebrals, and the sooner you…"

"… and of course it will be the best of hunts, for you are sturdy and strong and of age and a chieftain's son…"

"It is pretty bad, Weasel…"

Then, above all of these, a last voice rising shrill and mournful and filled with the music of a cold, impassable desert.

"… does not lie. But this might be the first. Oh, find them, find them. Together we will learn their language. Together the darkness will take away shame and fire and the hurt, hurt, hurt in your eye and spreading through your veins now, so that you cannot eat. And when you have found the stones, when you have found them, none may return to tell them where you are. At least for the girl and the old blind man, make it painless as the god has taught you…"

I started to my feet, and the voices stopped.

There was no waiting this out.

"Just close your eyes, idiot!" I snapped. "Close your eyes and follow your homing instincts, and if we survive this and you ever breathe a word of it to anyone in the Order or out of it, for that matter, I shall… I shall… fashion something that makes igniting Gileandos look like a purification ritual!"

"Now," Brithelm whispered, and closed his eyes as he stood up. The faintest green glow arose from his hands, which were clasped behind him as casually as if he were out for a morning stroll.

Where we were going, and what it had to do with Firebrand, for that matter, I had yet to figure out. But I followed my brother's lead, the luminous green hands stretched out ahead of me, weaving and floating like a tenebral.

It was no more than a brief span before the outline of my brother-shoulders, shadowy robe, jungle of unkempt hair-rose out of the darkness in complete silhouette. Which meant, of course, that somewhere ahead of us was another source of light.

It shone from beneath a warped oaken door, marred by stain and rot, by what time and water do to the things we build. The door was barely ajar and probably could never be closed completely anymore.

Frantically I watched as closely as I could-for details, for signs, for clues as to what we might be up against-and awaited my brother's direction.

"I do not know what we have been led to," Brithelm cautioned from the murk ahead of me, "but it's as likely the Namer's quarters as anything."

By the dim light, I saw him drop to his knees and crawl forward until he reached the door. There he stayed for the longest while, his face turned from me.

From his posture, I assumed he was praying, meditating, or otherwise observing, so I waited the proper and reverent time, though I must confess that I grew impatient.

"Remember us also in your prayers, Brother," I urged. 'Then remember us here, if you would, for I await your instruction."

"Firebrand is behind the door," Brithelm whispered without turning to face me. "He is alone and reveling, having affixed most of the stones to his crown."

"Why, that's… astounding, Brithelm!" I breathed. "How… how can you be so sure? Visions? Augury? Some kind of telepathic trance?"

He turned to me, smiling, a short beam of light cast across his face as if it rose from the door itself.

"Keyholes, Galen. The future unfolds through keyholes. I would have thought you remembered that much."

Outside the door, we readied ourselves. Brithelm crouched again in the keyhole light, while I searched the walls and floors for substantial stones-stones for throwing, in case the circumstances called for such.

"It has been my experience," Brithelm whispered, "that surprise will succeed on almost any front, in almost any circumstance. And usually weapons are not needed."

"I do not recall asking you to draw on your considerable battle experience, Brithelm," I hissed.

We both stood silent outside the door of Firebrand's chambers. From within, the light dipped and altered as someone passed between it and the door-someone moving in directions and paths we could not see, intoning something dreadfully important, no doubt.

I could swear there were two voices in the room.

"It's like Father says, Galen," Brithelm offered, moving toward me in a rustle of red robe, placing his hand on my shoulder.

"I know, I know," I muttered, eyes on the stone floor, which I feared would soon pool with my blood.