"If you speak with one voice for all, Qua," he returned, "then put your fears to rest. This is not the first time Langrone has stood alone. Valfor bore green wings—and went to his brave ending because of that. However, we intend no ending. Langrone lives, under the ancient rule, as long as either of us flies—" He drew Atra a little closer. "If you covet our Two Plains and the river land, then take it, Qua. We shall not dispute you for them. But neither shall we be forgotten when the Great Summons goes forth at Year's Ending.

Remember that, Qua!" Farree now looked beyond the Lanquar to the others who were waiting. "And you, Slitha,"—he looked toward a slender wingling with a queen's proud stance and wings of gold—"and Usern,"—blue wings quivered as his thought struck home—"and Cambar." The pinions of that leader were grey shading to white and he was much darker of countenance, thicker of body, than the others.

"Remember!" Atra's reinforcement of his speech was more than a warning, it was an order.

Qua stared at the girl and then he smiled as coldly as she had done earlier. "There is now a common enemy; we fly no direction but that." He, too, might be only giving a reminder, but Farree was certain that there was also a warning to be read there.

"As Glasrant has already done!" she flashed. What more the spokesman for the winglings might have said was never uttered, for Maelen opened her eyes, and the skin tightly covering the eye caverns in Fragon's face quivered and also showed a slit break.

"It is done!" Both voice and thought came from Maelen. "Their beacon has been quenched, and even more, many of those traps and defenses set up by Them are gone. And the dream holds those two we need to make trouble for each other in thrall!"

Selrena spoke to the unmasked one.

"Loose your followers now, Sorwin!"

The robed one raised both hands to mouth and with them shaped a hollow like a horn. The puffed cheeks expanded even more and from that horn there pulsed a cry which echoed through Farree's head. It had savagery in it, a lust and a hunger which was like a call of doom. Groundlings growled and left with a rush and a slapping of huge bare feet, and after them came a following of things whose very bodies, swinging and swaying, seemed to alter as they went—and always the forms they wore, forms which slipped from one to another and then another, were those of the blackest terrors any night might know. Ironically it was true that those who were fashioned as entirely threatening to each other marched now against a single enemy.

They were gone, and it seemed to Farree that the whole of the crystal cavern was the lighter for their going. He wondered what harm they might wreak on the invaders, for many of those who had swept on seemed hardly more solid than a cloud of that haze which could spring into being at command of the Darda.

The Zacanthan moved for the first time, turning his sharp-jawed head to watch their going. Farree knew that Zoror was filing in his head all which chanced here. What names would he give to those who had just gone? How many more were there that had long ago been listed in the records he thought he knew so well?

However, if there was an exit of a force there was also an entrance. Farree heard the now-familiar tinkle of flute notes. So heralded came Vestrum. Gone was the clothing he had worn before. In its place he wore silver fashioned in small supple rings so that it moved even at his breathing. He carried a length of crystal rod which was headed by a hilt much like that of the sword which was never far from Fragon's hands. The flutist scampered back and forth as might an eager hound only waiting to be dispatched against some quarry, while the two women who walked a pace of so behind had laid aside their filmy robes and flower ribbons. They, too, wore chain mail and on the out-held right wrist of each there sat a flying lizard, smaller than that which had accompanied Farree on his first trip across this land, but manifestly of the same breed.

Neither was this all of the party, for Vorlund followed but a little behind the Darda and, with him, two of the giant folk, bending heads as they strode ponderously, striving to avoid and painful meeting with down-pointing crystals.

Vestrum spoke, but he did not seem to address any particular one of them but rather the whole company, from Fragon to the smallest of the winglings.

"This one"—he indicated Vorlund, but as if there was nothing in truth between them but what might be a distant enmity—"has done as he swore that he would—he has launched forth his messenger."

"And you, Vestrum, how has it been with you?" Selrena was the first to break the silence on the tail of that message.

"I made sure that there was no treachery in what was wrought!" returned the Darda coldly. Now his eye caught on Farree for the first time, and with a lightning-swift gesture the hiked rod swung up, its end aimed for Farree's head. Along the length of that sped a dot of rainbow light. More memory moved in Farree. He took two steps forward and his bandaged hand swung up, his fingers caught and held the end of the rod. It was chill, seeming to generate a cold which bit into his flesh, but he did not loose it for ten long-drawn breaths. Then his hand dropped and he met the measuring stare of Vestrum with as level and probing a gaze.

Was there a faint trace of disappointment in the Darda's tight held eye to eye measurement? Farree could not be sure, he only held a suspicion.

"Well and now, Vestrum." This time it was Atra who broke thought silence just as the capering flutist settled down at the Darda's feet and made the instrument it carried give forth a trill of notes. "Do you believe? Or is it your claim next that Glasrant has power to hide the cast of all his thoughts from you?"

"Have done!" For the first time Farree saw Fragon rise to his feet. Standing, he was near as tall as he was spare, almost shoulder to shoulder with the giants who had come with Vorlund. "What may have been in these two—it is gone. This night Glasrant has done what Valfor in his day might have lifted hand to—save that, mighty as our Elders were in their own time, they had not the knowledge of Them. We have been given that which we have not held to us since the days of incoming upon this world. We have lived, we have built, we dwindle, we earth dwell or keep jealous council with one race, even one kin, only our kind. We have lost much and now we are too old and few even to defend ourselves against Them. How many more times must their star ships come—each adding death to death? They are as many as a hundred times the number of sand grains now under our feet. There will always be more to come and less of us at their going, If they go, for their signal was set to guide others this time. Look to your delving in the ancient knowledge, Vestrum. What discoveries have you made? Small things, things of half life– Can you bring forth that which is no larger than your hand but can rock a star ship?"

The trickle of notes from the flute ascended higher and higher—until they sounded almost like a cry for help. The Darda in his coat of mail stood frowning, his two hands sliding back and forth along his hiked rod.

"And you, Sorwin." Fragon thrust his head a bit forward, his now widely open eyes seeking out the unmasked one. "Well for you—yes, that has been your thought for a long time. Your groundlings and your wraiths—they have little to fear from Them. You and yours think to go into such hiding that no off-world mind or body can scoop you forth! We already know that is less true than you would like. And I say to you that They have always sought knowledge, more and more of it along paths which we do not or cannot follow. We can summon a storm, set against them the land itself. Only we cannot hold—there are too few of us and we are too wearied with time. What other secrets have They uncovered? Do not think you can lie safe hidden."