Kristen was able to make two coffees last an hour, learning everything about him that she could. Serrin, however, could barely keep his eyes open anymore. Ten o'clock here was three in the morning back home, and jet lag was as unfriendly as ever. But she was unwilling to let him go, her questions a torrent, and he was too tired to be careful in his replies.

Finally, he held up one hand, as if defending himself from yet another onslaught.

"I've got to get some sleep," he pleaded. "I'm bagged." He called for the bill. She looked guilty, but was unable to control her great excitement. Completely on impulse, she suddenly leaned forward and attempted to straighten the fraying knot in his tie. Almost reflexively, he raised one hand to stop her. Fingers touched.

His hand registered something like a static shock while his heart seemed to tighten like the feeling he got from too much coffee and one cigarette too many late at night. Startled, he found himself looking into her deep brown eyes, so full of concern for him. It didn't feel like a warning of falling in love, though Serrin's memories of such things were foggy. It felt more important than that; something better, more durable.

She didn't say anything and he didn't ask. He wanted to sleep on it and think it over. When they got back to In-dra's, he determinedly resisted Kristen's attempts to fuss over him.

"I'm going to shower," he said tiredly. "If you want, you can use Michael's room. He won't be back for a while. Um, if you want to stay, you're welcome." He realized that he'd barely asked anything about her, so intently had she interrogated him.

"I got time," she said simply and went off to find him some towels. Serrin sat down on the bed, shaking his head and wondering what on earth he was getting himself into.

"You took a risk by coming here. Even with Mathanas along," the young elf reproached Niall. Seated on one of the largest stones among the castle ruins, the morning just risen around them, he watched idly as a small group of leshy played in the ivy-covered trees at the foot of the slope.

"That's why I need your help," Niall explained. "I am bound to my own place. I cannot move without the Families knowing it. But there are things I will have to do,

places I must go. Events are moving rapidly now. They have brought the seed from Azania, I think. It will not be long before Liitair takes the final steps. Once it is released "

The flaxen-haired young elf sat quietly, rocking to and fro almost imperceptibly. "Are you so sure this is your task?" he asked.

"I cannot sit idly by and allow it to happen," Niall replied.

"Is it more important than your life?"

"Certainly," Niall said without hesitation.

"Is it more important than the calling of your Path?"

"It is more important than all of my lives," Niall said softly. He had thought long and hard about how to say that. When it came time, speaking the words was much simpler and easier than he'd expected. How easy it was to nullify his own being.

"Indeed that is so," said the youth imperturbably. "But I have other visitors who say this is the Ascension." He didn't tell Niall what he thought of that.

"It is wrong," Niall said passionately.

"Are you so much wiser?" the youth said, idly picking at a blade of long grass.

"Lutair is a poisoned spirit," Niall argued. "The Ascension will not spring from one such. He extinguishes the very lives he intends to exalt. That alone is proof that he is a false spirit. If Liam were still among us, acceptance of this evil would be inconceivable."

"Ah, so you know Liam's mind," the youth said cheerily. "Then everything must be so clear to you. Others of us, of course, are not so presumptuous."

"That is not what I meant," Niall pleaded. "Can you help me?" He didn't want to play cat-and-mouse with the Fool any longer. Time was growing too short for his elaborate games.

"There will be a storm tonight," the Fool said with a complete lack of concern. Niall knew what he meant. In the physical world, there would be torrential rain, thunder, lightning, to be sure; but the Fool meant the doineann draoidheil, the terrifying surge of uncontrollable magic that broke into the world at the sacred places, unpredictably and violently. His heart sank as he understood what help the Fool was prepared to offer; only the deliverance of the storm itself. It would be left to Niall and whatever spirits he could find to help him to draw down the power itself.

"Rathcroghan," the Fool said. "At the Palace of the Medb. There will be few of your Family there, I think. Enough to object to your presence, however. On the other hand, they might wisely choose to take refuge from the storm."

Niall knew better than to beg for anything more direct in the way of assistance. Few ever found the Fool in such a generous mood. In his own way, he was a renegade from the same hermetic order Niall had long left behind him, but it didn't do to push too hard. He had pointed Niall to the solution, drawing on the awesome forces of the storm, and now it was left to the mage to take that counsel into himself and use it.

Realizing that his chances of surviving the night were a lot poorer than fifty-fifty, the dispirited mage returned to his spirit and began to plan how to evade the housemages of his Family. Once the storm had begun, they would not dare to approach him. Providing, of course, that none of them was insane enough to be channeling it for his own purposes.

Niall began to tell his ally spirit what to do if he died that night. It wasn't morbid. It was just playing the probabilities.

The Xhosa shaman stared at Tom; he almost had to crick his neck to look up at the troll, but he kept right on staring. Tom didn't know whether it was a challenge or a ritual, whether it was hostile, friendly, or neutral. But he kept his mouth shut and stayed where he was.

The Xhosa man took something green-yellow and gleaming from a pouch at his belt. Continuing to stare up at the troll, he slipped the impossibly thin snakeskin gloves over his stubby fingers and then touched the troll just below the sternum. As if feeling for some flow of energy, some rhythm of life, his hands were drawn to Tom's ribs and down to his right hand. The shaman hissed, sensing the smartgun link and the muscle replacement, but he did not retreat as he looked down at the huge hand, as big as his own skull. Then the shaman lifted his eyes again, boring into the troll, who stared back.

Tom still didn't say anything. He didn't feel anxious, despite the shaman's disapproving sound. The shaman waved his arm to another Xhosa, who sashayed over to also examine the troll.

The shamans spoke in the Xhosa tongue, then one of them took Tom's arm and led him toward the rope, toward the wildness beyond the paths. They might have been leading him to his death, but the troll wanted to trust them. He could feel the power they carried within themselves. Mutely, he followed.

The brittle, crumbling rock felt like fire beneath his feet. The air seemed to grow hazy and oppressive, humid and hard to breathe. He felt his gait growing unsteady as they took him to the edge of the mountain, rising high over the Atlantic and Indian oceans meeting in the endless azure, infinitely far below. His head swam, and he could feel himself falling.

Loud banging at the door woke Serrin with a start. He jumped up and managed to get his pants on before the banging threatened to turn into a full-scale break-in. It was only Michael.

"Wake up, lazy bones," the Englishman said. "You've had five hours. Any more and you won't sleep tonight, and then you'll feel even worse tomorrow."

"Where's Kristen? Where's Tom?" Serrin yawned.

"Isn't he here?" Michael asked, worried. "Damn it. The mountain can't be that interesting. Kristen's around and about downstairs."