"Just stop," Florimel said in his ear. "You will do no good, Paul."

Azador had pulled Jongleur back out of Paul's reach. "Why are you doing this?" the Gypsy demanded. "You are my good friend, Ionas. But this man, too, he is my friend. Why should friends fight?"

Paul heard Azador's words but could make no sense of them. He stared at Jongleur with helpless hatred. The older man returned his look, his face a mask of placid contempt, a trickle of blood from his nose the only sign of what had happened.

"Martine?" someone asked. Paul realized for the first time that the blind woman was part of the crowd pinioning him. "Martine?"

"What is it, Sam?"

"I can't find him, Martine." Sam Fredericks looked pale even in the odd, metallic light from the great pit. "He's gone somewhere—gone!"

"Who are you talking about?" Martine asked. Some of the people holding Paul began to loosen their grips, although the two Gypsy men still held him securely. "Who's gone?"

"!Xabbu," Sam said miserably. "He got up from the campfire but he never came back. And now I can't find him anywhere."

Watching the others split up into pairs to search for !Xabbu should have made Sam feel better, but it didn't. Something in the suddenness of his disappearance made her certain that what had happened to him was much worse than simply wandering off or getting lost.

!Xabbu doesn't get lost, she told herself and was miserable again.

She knew she couldn't just stand and wait for the others to come back, but she had no idea of where else to look. She had already been all along the fringes of the Gypsy camp, calling the small man's name into the press of refugees beyond the circled wagons, and that was probably what Martine and the rest were doing right now, too, but she could think of no better way to spend her time. Anything was better than just sitting here, cooling her heels at the end of the world.

When she turned she almost tripped over the Stone Girl.

"Your name is Sam, right?" the little girl asked.

Much as she wanted to right now, she couldn't just ignore the child. "Yes, I'm Sam."

"Your friend wanted me to tell you something."

"My friend?" She squatted beside her, suddenly intent. "What friend?"

"The man with curly hair and no shirt." The Stone Girl looked worried. "Isn't he your friend?"

"What did he say? Tell me!"

"I have to remember." The little girl wrinkled her loamy forehead. The poked holes that were her eyes squinted in concentration. "He said . . . he said. . . ."

"Come on!"

The Stone Girl shot her an offended look. "I'm thinking! He said . . . that you were with friends now so he could leave and he'd know you were all right." The frown turned into a pleased smile. "That's what he said! I remembered!"

"Leave to do what? Where did he go?" Sam grabbed the little girl's arm. "Did he tell you? Did you see which direction he went?"

She shook her head. "No. He pointed to where you were and told me to hurry up and go." The Stone Girl turned and indicated a spot far down the shoreline of the great pit. "He was over there."

And then Sam remembered. "Oh, fenfen! He thinks Renie's down there—he said he was going to go find her!" The Stone Girl looked at her curiously but Sam had no more time to talk. She sprinted across the long, gradual slope of the Gypsy camp, away from the wall of wagons and the campfires, down toward the uneven shore.

I should get the others, she thought. Paul and Martine—I couldn't stop him by myself. . . . But already she saw a slender figure silhouetted at the pulsing edge of the Well, familiar despite the unsteadiness of the outline. She knew she would never reach the others and get back in time.

"!Xabbu!" she shouted. "Wait!"

If he heard her he gave no sign. He stood a moment longer, poised at the edge of the glimmering ocean of blue and pale yellow and misty silver light, then took a few steps forward and jumped into the pit. It was not a dive but a suicide's staggering leap, the first graceless thing she had ever seen !Xabbu do.

"No! Noooo!"

Within seconds she had reached the spot where he had stood. There was no sign of him, only the strange ferment of light in motion.

He told me he was so scared of the water. But he jumped into . . . this. . . . She went cold from her feet to her head. He must have been so afraid. . . !

She knew that if she considered for another second her better sense would take charge—she would turn and walk back to the Gypsy camp with a hole right through the middle of herself. Lost Orlando, she thought wildly. And Renie. Not !Xabbu, too! She tottered on the edge for an instant, then flung herself after him.

It was not water that rose up to claim her but something far more strange—a vibrant, fizzing, electrical wash that seemed to flow right through her. Her eyes popped open as if yanked by strings but there was no depth or breadth, nothing at all to see but an impossible simultaneity of blackness and blinding light.

How can I find him. . . ? she wondered, but only for a second. The scintillant ocean contracted around her, squeezing her up and out like a bar of wet soap from a fist. Orlando said . . . it didn't want me. . . . Then she was lying stunned and twitching on the bank, unable to do anything but stare at the Well as lazy bubbles of light formed and burst beneath the surface. She watched them with a strange detachment, wondering if this was what it felt like to die. Voices were coming closer, Florimel's and Martine's and others, all shouting something that must be her name, but she could feel nothing except the uncommon sensation of having been tasted and then spat out again.

Paul knelt down beside Florimel. "Is Fredericks all right? What's wrong with her?"

Despite all that had happened, Florimel had not lost her distinctive bedside manner. "How in the devil's name should I know? She is breathing. She is semiconscious. God alone knows what caused this."

"Jumped," T4b said. "Just jumped in, all sayee lo. Saw it, me."

"But why?" Paul asked.

Martine was squinting out toward the pulsating lights with the expression of someone leaning into a terrible windstorm. "She was searching for !Xabbu. . . ."

"Jesus, does that mean. . . ?" Paul's stomach lurched—to find them both after all this time, then to lose one of them so quickly, maybe both of them. . . .

Martine abruptly swung around, putting her back to the unstable sea. Her face was haggard. "We have a greater problem now," she said.

"What?" Paul stared at the Well, but saw nothing different. He turned until he was facing the same direction as Martine, looking out across the plain. "Oh. Oh, damn."

It was only a distant speck and should have been invisible in the deep twilight, but the man-shape had a disturbing negative radiance of its own, as if it were not entirely part of the world through which it passed.

"He's not a giant anymore," Paul said. That startling change should have given him hope, but there was something so horridly fascinating about the thing named Dread walking toward them across the dead gray land, stride after measured stride, that it seemed to make no difference. Fear washed through Paul, a sick, paralyzing terror as powerful as the aura around the Twins, but somehow even worse: where those two were cruel and destructive, this lightless specter seemed a thing of pure, focused evil.

"He has shed what was unnecessary," Martine said. "He has been burned and battered until he has hardened like a black diamond. But it is him." Her voice was listless with horror. "The Other could not keep him out."