"Zap," said Chestal Thicketsway, as much to break the silence as for any other reason. Almost a minute had passed since Glenshadow's pronouncement, and nobody had said or done anything since. The three creatures around the kender seemed frozen in place – the dwarf standing stunned, trying to understand what he had just been told; the Irda remote and infinitely patient, waiting; the wizard bleak-eyed and gloomy as though he had spoken the prophecy of his own doom.

When none of them reacted to his word, Chess shrugged and prowled about the little building's interior, looking for anything that might be interesting. "Zap," he said again, to himself. "I'll call him Zap. Good a name as any for a spell that hasn't happened."

"Need to happen," something grieved.

"Well, I'd just as soon you detach yourself from me before you do," the kender said. "I don't even know what kind of spell you are."

"Old," something mourned.

"You've made that clear." Chess peered into a shallow cabinet containing many pigeonhole shelves. Shadows made it hard to see what the shelves contained, and he reached toward them, then withdrew his hand when he felt the Irda's eyes on him. He turned. "Just looking," he grinned. "Maybe I should go outside and look around." Kenderlike, the thought immediately became the action. Chess strode to the door of the hut, pushed it open, and darted out, closing it behind him. From his first glimpse of this place, the place of the Irda, Chess had been fascinated by the tall obelisk in the stone-paved clearing. Now he went to it again, directly to its north face where he had found handholds and toeholds leading upward.

He had intended to see where they went, but seeing the Irda had made him forget that, momentarily.

The marks in the north face of the monolith weren't really a stairway, only a series of shallow indentations set at regular intervals up the precipitous stone face. For a curious kender, however, they were ladder enough. Chess slung his hoopak on his back and started climbing.

In the distance, in moon-shadowed forest beyond the Irda's clearing, he could hear the rumbling purr of cats on patrol. And somewhere far away, a hint of sound carried back on errant breezes, a raucous bird-voice cawed,

"Go away!"

The hand-and toeholds went up and up, and Chess clung and climbed. Near the top, he could look out and see the moon-bathed tops of the forest, the dark walls of the valley beyond to east and west. Then, abruptly, there were no more indentations in the face of the cone. With the top of the monument almost within reach – no more than ten feet above – there was only sheer, smooth stone and nothing to cling to. Chess hunted around for something that his fingers could grasp, his toes brace into, or his hoopak reach. There was nothing. In frustration he clung there for long minutes, then sighed and accepted defeat.

"Isn't that just how things go?" he muttered, beginning a reluctant descent. "Probably the most interesting thing in this whole place is right there on top of this spire, just sitting there waiting to be looked at.

Naturally the stairs don't go quite far enough. I wonder what it is, up there…might be something valuable, if a person could just reach it.

What kind of ladder heads for the top of something and then just stops, just that much short? What kind of sense does that make?"

"All things have reason, little one." The voice was the Irda's voice, low and incredibly sweet. Chess nearly lost his hold, turning to look. She stood just below, watching his descent.

The kender scrambled the rest of the way down the cone, dropped light-footed to the pavement, and turned. "I thought I'd take a look at what's up there," he said. "But I couldn't get to the top. What is up there, anyway?"

"Spellbinder," she said.

"Pain and desolation," something seemed to whine.

Chess glanced around, knowing there was no one there to see. "Hush,

Zap," he snapped. Then, to the Irda, "Is it something the gods left lying around?"

The Irda only smiled. "Spellbinder has been forgotten." She nodded. "But what the gods discard, eventually find purposes again."

"Woe and misery," Zap's voiceless voice mourned.

The Irda half-turned, raising her head. She seemed to be listening to something Chess couldn't hear. And there was something odd about the light. The fires still flickered in their sconces on the ring of stones, but feebly now, as if their fuel were giving out. The rose and silver glow cast by the moons Solinari and Lunitari had changed, too. The light glistening on the dark, lovely face of the Irda was almost a bloody light.

Chess stepped from her shadow to look into the sky, and saw a sight he had never seen before. The red and silver moons hung above the wall of the valley, only a handspan apart, but the silver moon was only a crescent. As the kender watched, the crescent diminished as though a blackness had come from the north and was eating it away. Narrower and narrower the crescent grew.

"What is it?" Chess wondered. "What's happening?"

Soft light shone from the Irda's hut, and there were footsteps. A moment later the dwarf and the wizard were beside them, also staring at the strange sky. 'What's happening to the white moon?" the dwarf rumbled.

Glenshadow raised his staff, useless in this place of anti-magic, and pointed it. "Dragonqueen," he hissed.

"The black moon shows itself, and eclipses the white."

"Dragonqueen?" Chess stood on his toes in his excitement, staring. "Do you mean the moon or the goddess?"

"They are the same," the Irda said. "By any name, they are the same.

Queen of Darkness, Dragonqueen, Nilat the Corrupter…"

"Tamex the False Metal," Chane growled. "The evil one."

"She of the Many Faces," the kender chirped. "I've never seen the black moon's shape before – only a hole in the sky where it hides stars. It's a disk, like the other two. Look, it's almost covered the white moon… It has covered it!"

Where the white moon had been was now only a dim ring of brighter stuff in the sky – a hairline circle of radiance, encompassing darkness. The black moon had covered the white one.

At that instant Glenshadow's staff came to life. The crystal in its head, which normally resembled blue ice but which had looked like dull chalk since entering the Valley of Waykeep, blazed brilliant red as if all the luminance of the red moon had condensed in it. A beam of crimson shot from the staff to burn for an instant on the forehead of the astonished dwarf… only for an instant. Then the beam danced away, up the side of the conical tower, right to its top, where it rested, a ruby brilliance at the monolith's peak.

Chane Feldstone stared at the ruby light with eyes not quite the same as his eyes had been before. Without a word he walked to the base of the monolith and found the handholds and toeholds that the kender had found before.

The rest were still staring at the eclipsed white moon, unable to tear their eyes from the omen. Little by little, the dark moon continued its transit, and a crescent of white reappeared – the opposite crescent, emerging.

"The next omen," Glenshadow's voice was as thin and cold as windblown snow. "A portent of great evil."

Something voiceless and terribly sad seemed to say, "The time comes," and Chess glanced around.

"Hush, Zap," the kender said. "Spells should be seen and not heard.

Look, Chane… now where did the dwarf go?"

Again the Irda tilted her lovely head, as though listening. Glenshadow glanced at her and frowned. 'What is it? What do you hear, Irda?"

She shook her head, silver hair dancing in the light that again came from two moons. "Evil," she sang softly. "In the north an evil lives, and one of evil sings. Ogres gloat and goblins march… and I hear the sound of WlllgS.