Blade nodded grumpily. Edyrn was a good lad and, at the moment, Blade's right hand. He had honest blue eyes and a flaxen poll and knew how to handle a sword and lance. He was short and bandy-legged, but well muscled and something of a favorite with Juna's ladies. There was something of a mystery as to how Edyrn had become attached to the party, but Blade did not press it. The boy had brains and he was loyal-so far, at least-and Blade looked no further. He badly needed a lieutenant, a man who could understand and carry out orders, and Edyrn was the only such person available.

At the moment Blade was in no mood to talk to a crazy old woman. He pointed his sword at the ancient figure making her way so painfully toward them and nodded at the boy. «Go see what she wants, Edyrn. Keep her away from me. I have more important things to do than listen to tales told by stones-chiefly to get some fish from this ocean so that, when and if, help comes from Patmos we will be strong enough to board ship. Not that I put much faith in that tale, either, for I cannot see how ships from Patmos can break through the Samostan coast patrol. Go, boy. Leave me to think on matters.»

Edyrn went off to do as he was bid. Blade scratched his ragged black beard and watched with a grim smile as the boy took the old woman's arm and led her away. She went under duress, hanging back and wailing and pointing again and again at Blade.

He forgot her and went back to gazing at the sea. He scratched again. He had bathed in the sea, and so gotten rid of many layers of sewer slime, but now he itched intolerably. He scratched and listened to the wail of the wind in the stones and thought that they could make a net of rushes and so catch enough fish to keep from starving. He did not fear attack from the rear-Hectoris had not bothered to send troops, either foot or cavalry, into the marshes after the little party. Possibly the Samostan chief had reckoned on the marsh, the quicksands and the snakes and insects and wild animals doing the job for him.

There came a momentary break in the mist. Blade, who chanced to be staring straight out to sea, saw the flicker of a sail. That, the coastal patrol set up by the Samostans, was no accident. Blade doubted that Hectoris had thought of it himself. Ptol. The fat priest. Blade had bilked him, cheated and humiliated him and cut off his hand in the bargain. Blade had snatched Juna from the fiery helmet-there had been times during the past four days when he had had second, and dubious, thoughts about that-but he had done it and Ptol was still alive. He had not seen the last of Ptol. Blade, amid the desolation of sky, sea, sand and marsh, cursed himself heartily. He should have killed the little bastard when he had the chance. But for sudden misadventure, the other black robe flinging an arm and tripping him-

Blade jabbed his sword fiercely into the sand. No use crying over blood that had not been spilled. He must pull himself together. Get matters organized and moving again. He had a mission, a duty to perform, and so best get on with it.

Again, as he had many times in the past few days, he pushed back the thought that he would not greatly mind, would in fact welcome, the head pains that presaged a return through the computer to Home Dimension. He roused himself, stood up and stretched his massive limbs. He did not like the way he felt-it bordered on shirking duty, even on disloyalty and, if you stretched it a point, treason. Yet there it was. His heart was not in the mission; over him there hung a strange lethargy and, name it, fear! He did not understand it at all-yet knew it was unhealthy, could be fatal, and something must be done at once. What he needed was action, to be rid of his role of nursemaid to women and eunuchs and a beautiful, and impossible, female who still thought of herself as a goddess.

He thought of Nob and could grin. There was a man he could have used. The words came unbidden to his lips and he flung them into the scouring wind. «By Juna's tits, Blade, snap out of it. Do what you must do and stop feeling sorry for yourself!»

He felt better already. Edyrn found him smiling when he returned with the message from old Kron. Blade still smiled, but he listened. He had been making mistakesmistakes he must not repeat. He had been forgetting that he was in Dimension X, where anything was possible.

The message sent by Kron, that ancient witchlike creature, was cryptic. Edym, his blue eyes wide with wonder and something of awe, repeated it word for word.

«The singing stones have sung to me and on the winds there came these words-seek you on the sands for him who was sent but did not go. Seek for the house that contains a message that will not be delivered. Seek not far from here a new house, built of bone from the old, and now inhabited by clawed things. Seek this and find this and you shall also find doom and hope. The stones are silent. .»

Blade listened carefully. He made Edyrn repeat it three times. Blade ran his big fingers through his black jungle of beard and shook his head. «I make no sense of it, lad. Do you?»

Edyrn, in turn fingering the silky down on his cheeks, likewise shook his head. «None, sire. But it must have meaning-old Kron has been future-sayer to Juna since Thyme was only a village of mud in a desert march. She has more years than she can remember and she is never wrong. There is truth in her words if we can but fathom it, sire.»

Blade nearly said, «Bah-humbug,» or a more profane version of the same, but remembered in time his promise to himself. He was in DX. Very well. Act like it.

«Fetch me the goddess Juna,» he told Edym. «I wish to see her at once. Here.»

Edym was back in a few minutes. «Juna sends her greetings, sire, and-«

Blade exploded. «I did not send you for her greetings! Where is she?»

The lad shrank from the blast, retreating a pace. But he spoke up bravely enough. «Juna says she cannot come to you. She is no servant to be summoned thus. She commands, if the matter be really important enough, that you come to her. She hopes that it is important-she is with her ladies now and does not wish to be disturbed for a trifie.»

Blade opened his mouth, then closed it. He narrowed his eyes at Edym. The boy took another step back and waited, flinching visibly. But when Blade spoke his tone was calm.

«Go to Juna again, lad. Say this, my exact wordsshe is to come to me at once at this place. If she does not I will come for her, and she knows what that means. I doubt that she has a mirror in this wilderness, but remind her to use a pool of water or the eyes of one of her ladies, and to look again at the mark she carries on her backside. My mark! Say that if she does not come immediately she will have a mate for it. Go and tell her all that.»

As he waited Blade fell to thinking on the hag's cryptic words. «. . seek you on the sands for him who was sent but did not go. .»

Blade snapped his fingers, grinned and stared up and down the strip of beach. Nothing moved on the lonely sands, they stretched away to desolation in either direction, there was only the sound of wind and water with no dirt or call of seabirds.

«. for him who was sent but did not go. .'.'

It might be all mumbo-jumbo, still Kron was an ancient witch who would not risk her reputation as a seer for a whim. Blade combed his beard with his fingers and was thoughtful-Kron had been wandering aimlessly about since their arrival on the coast. No one paid her much attention, much less did Blade. She could have found something. But what? Where? He stared down the beach again, this time to his left and just as the haze shifted a bit. There was a point of land there, a promontory shouldering out into the sea. It was just possible- '

Edym came back with the girl. She wore a purple cloak over a simple shift of white, and high laced sandals. Her ladies had bathed her and arranged her hair and bound it with ribbons. Blade had seen the leather chests carried by her retainers and had permitted it because the eunuchs were good for nothing else. We have gewgaws and ribbons, he thought bitterly, and powders and face paint, but no arms or food and no fighting men.