Opaka nodded absently. She had heard such murmurings before today, and she was not sure what to make of them. She hoped they were at least partially true—that Vedek Gar really did believe the time of the D’jarras was past, though the idea still surprised her. She had not yet had time to puzzle out what the greater impact might be. She looked out one of the windows. “It is growing late,” she declared.

“Vedek Opaka, can I offer you a bed for the night? I would be glad to have you take my pallet, and I can sleep up in the loft.” He gestured to a short ladder against the back wall of the cottage, and Sulan regarded it with some curiosity. There was a door at the top of it, in the same place as that inconvenient window of her own house—and it occurred to her that the window had probably once functioned as a door, just like in this house. It probably had been equipped with a loft as well, before the long-ago fire.

“It wouldn’t be any trouble,” Ketauna added. “I take in visitors all the time, especially in the winter. I would enjoy the company, really.”

Opaka smiled. “It’s quite all right, thank you. I’ll return to the village before dark.”

“But it will be dark quite soon,” he protested.

Opaka turned to Shev, who lived in a similar abode just north of Ketauna’s. “Does your house have a sleeping loft like this one? For I believe my old cottage was constructed in a similar manner…and it’s a bit of a coincidence that I should think of it now, for it was often told that Kai Dava himself lived there once.”

Shev answered with enthusiasm. “Ah, yes! The little house just outside the walls of the Naghai Keep—that wasKai Dava’s house. Indeed, my house has a sleeping loft, just as Ketauna’s does.”

“Kai Arin told me that there had been a fire…. It must have destroyed the loft,” Opaka mused. “The door was left behind, but I always thought it was a window.”

Ketauna answered. “Yes, but if you had gone into your cellar, I suspect you would have found that the foundation of the house extended beyond the back, where the raised porch would have been, for in the old times, people used to sleep on those porches in the summertime, raised high above the ground so the tyrfoxes and cadge lupus wouldn’t trouble them.”

“My little house didn’t have a cellar,” Opaka said—

—and she saw something, then, in her mind’s eye, a flash of dream like a memory, so strong and clear that for a moment, she could see nothing else. Ketauna’s small home had disappeared. She saw a man in vedek’s garb looking out over a vast and fiery pit. He wore a mask, and his body shook with some unknown emotion, one that made him tremble in its violence. She recognized the man, recognized Bajor’s fire caves.

“Vedek Opaka, are you all right?”

It’s Gar Osen.She didn’t know how she knew, but she did. He stood behind an open door, his face hidden, the light of open fires dancing across his mask. And she knew things, then, things that she had no worldly way of knowing.

“Sulan?”

The worry in Ketauna’s voice drew her back, back from what she knew had been a vision. A frightening one, but to hear the Prophets once more…to know that They had chosen her for this thing…

“I need to go back to my house,” she said. The cellar.

“You mean…to your tent?” Ketauna asked her, taking her teacup. “At least let me accompany you—”

“No. I mean to my house…my house outside the keep, outside the Kendra Monastery. I need to speak to Vedek Gar. I’m going to go find my son…I will need him to help me.” She spoke her thoughts, as certain of them as she’d ever been of anything.

“Vedek Opaka, can we help?” It was Shev.

Opaka looked up at him. “If you would like to come along, then you may. I believe it might be best to have some help. Yes.”

“I’m coming too,” Ketauna insisted.

“Yes,” Opaka said again, her voice steady. “We’ll all go. There is something in that house that…I must find. I must find it before Vedek Gar does.”

The two men were silent, staring at her with something like awe, but Opaka had closed her eyes. She thanked Them for the burden They had placed upon her shoulders, praying that she would prove worthy.

Natima fumbled with the satchel that was tied around her waist beneath her skirt. Every little noise she made seemed to echo throughout the fetid hole she had been forced into, and she feared the Bajoran who waited for her outside the tunnel would immediately guess what she was up to. There were noises of dripping and sloshing that reverberated from everywhere; she hoped it would drown out her activity. From the satchel she managed to find what she wanted in the near total blackness—Veja’s comm unit, with a direct line to Terok Nor. Veja had asked Natima to carry it for her in her waist-satchel, since she claimed it spoiled the neckline of her dress.

Natima activated the communicator, and waited for Damar’s inevitable answer.

“Veja, do you have any idea what the hour is here on the station?”His voice over the communicator was louder than Natima had expected, and she moved farther down the clammy tunnel as she answered him, fumbling for the volume control.

“Damar! It’s Natima! We’re in trouble!”

“What? Veja, I can’t hear you. Did you say you’re in trouble?”

Still too loud. Natima pressed her fingers over the pinpoint of a speaker and moved even farther into the blackness. She could see nothing, hear nothing but the ever-present liquid sounds that rushed through the tunnels. She counted on the noise to cover her own, but it seemed that Damar couldn’t hear her. She spoke louder.

“Damar! This is Natima Lang! A Bajoran has taken us hostage just outside of Tilar! There are more of them somewhere around here. He was speaking of something to do with balon, I got the impression it was important.” There was no answer. “Can you hear me?”

“I hear you now, Natima, but your signal is weak.”Damar’s voice reflected something like fear. “Is Veja all right?”

“She’s fine, Damar, I will look after her. But you must send someone. Did you hear all that I told you? There are more Bajorans around here, and this man is concealing something about balon.”

“I will send someone immediately.”

A crooked beam of light bounced into the offshoot. Natima whirled around, her fingers closed tightly around the communicator, as the Bajoran, dragging Veja by the arm, lunged at her, trying to get the device. Natima saw her chance and stepped to meet him, grabbing for his weapon, stuck in the waist of his tattered pants. She dropped the communicator but got her hands on the phaser. Veja ran when Seefa let her go to fight Natima for the weapon. The palm beacon fell to the floor, illuminating nothing.

They struggled in the cold dark, Natima’s terror lending her strength—and somehow the thing discharged, a brilliant burst of light and sound that tore into the low ceiling of the tunnel. Debris rained down and Veja screamed—but only once, the sound cutting off abruptly.

Natima still had the weapon. Seefa scooped up the palmlight, moving its beam across the darkness, clouds of dust obscuring its meager light.

Natima trained the weapon on the Bajoran, searching the murky dark for her friend—and let out a cry when she saw the crumpled heap on the muddy ground, pinned beneath a massive mound of ceiling stones. She was not making a sound, but she was alive, her face pulled back in an expression of agony.

“Veja!”

The Bajoran was there even before Natima, scrabbling at the rubble. Only her head and one arm were visible beneath the pile of rocks.

“Help me!” he shouted.

Natima dropped to her knees, tried to keep the weapon trained on the Bajoran as she dug with her free hand.

“You might as well put that thing down,” the man told her, without looking away from his work. “There was only one good blast left in the power cell.”