It was larger than he had estimated. It reared at least two hundred feet into the air, and stretched back out of sight over the lip of the flat space surrounding it. It was very old and time-worn. The once deeply carven features were all but invisible now.

He paid little heed to the stone figure. His eyes were all for the scraggly trees around the fabulous creature's fore-paws.

The sun beat at his naked back, igniting new agonies. Though he fell more and more often, he pressed on. Crawling, he dragged himself onto the flat area.

Water! A shallow pool lay between the monster's feet... He heaved himself upright and tottered forward, fell on his face half in and half out of the moisture in the depression. He gulped the algae-thick, stagnant water till his belly ached.

Only minutes later he heaved it up again.

He waited, and drank more, though sparingly this time. Then he splashed across the pool into a shadow that looked like it would persist all day. He collapsed into a fetal ball and slept.

He dreamed strange and powerful dreams.

The woman in white came. She examined his hurts. Where her fingers touched the pain went away. He looked on himself and found that he had healed. He tried to mask his nakedness with his hands. She smiled gently and went to stand between the monster's paws. She stared at the moon lifting out of the sea, limning the fortress riding the spine of the island off the coast.

Ethrian joined her. He gazed upon the desert, and saw it as it might have been. Lush, rich, peopled by an industrious, pious race... But there were fires burning on the island. There were ships upon the sea. They were so numerous their sails masked the waves. And there were columns of smoke on the land, and dragons in the sky. Fell wraiths bestrode the thunderous lizards, raining destruction from the firmament. The armies of Nawami fought, were defeated, and fell back to reform their companies. The woman in white summoned dread sorceries with which to lend them aid. Even that was not enough.

Then the stone beast spoke. It opened its mouth and said a Word. The Word called forth thunder and doom. Skull-faced wraiths plummeted from the sky. Dragons screamed and clawed their ears. The invaders fled to their ships.

They did not remain gone. A Power dwelt on the island in the east. Ethrian could feel it, could sense its name. Nahaman the Odite. A woman of great evil and great Power, possessed by hatred, obsessed with a need to destroy Nawami.

Nahaman rallied her armies and struck again. They rolled across the land and descended from the clouds. Neither the witchery of the woman in white nor the Word of the stone beast could shatter the countless waves of them. Each time they came, their attack crested a little nearer the stone beast's mountain.

Ethrian soon realized he was seeing generations of struggle condensed into a night, an age of warfare reduced to its high points.

The hordes of the Odite did come to the mountain. They destroyed everything they could, and silenced the stone beast's mouth.

Nahaman came ashore. With the aid of her skull-faced wraiths she smote the land barren. The woman in white and the monster of stone could do naught but watch. The beast's mouth was his Power and her life. Nawami's sole preservation, in the beast's wan power, lay between those great rock paws.

Nahaman and the survivors of her host withdrew to the island, and thence overseas, and darkened the shores of Nawami no more.

Ethrian was puzzled. All that drama and violence, just to sail away? What was it all about?

The woman in white became older. He felt her despair.

Long had she lived. Long had the mouth of the stone beast preserved her youth and beauty. Now she aged. She withered. She became a crone. She begged for death. The beast would not let her die. Her body became old dry sticks. Even that faded away, till she was no more than an aching spirit fluttering the slopes of the beast's mountain.

Ethrian wakened to the light of dawn. He had slept the clock around. He smelled sweet water. He scrambled to the pool.

Not till he had slaked his thirst did he notice that his hands no longer ached. They remained raw, but seemed on their way to a miraculous healing.

He stood and examined himself. His feet, too, were improving rapidly. His knees were better. Even the sting of the sunburn had disappeared.

He whirled around, suddenly frightened.

Near where he had slept lay a pair of sandals, a neatly folded toga, and a leaf on which stood a stack of seedcakes.

Fear and hunger warred within him. Hunger won. He seized the cakes, fled to the pool, alternately ate and drank. When he finished, he clothed himself. Sandals and toga fit perfectly.

He began exploring. Try as he might, he found no evidence of any presence but his own. He stared at the stone beast. Was there a ghost of a smile on those weathered lips?

He climbed the monster and looked round from the peak of its great head.

For as far as he could see this country was lifeless. The flatter land was ochre and rust. The mountains were bare grey stone.

He knew he would never leave. No mere mortal could storm that wasteland and hope to evade the Dark Lady's eternal embrace.

That old man had not done him much of a favor.

He tried calling the woman in white, the stone beast, even Nahaman the Odite. His shouts did nothing but stir muted echoes.

Some seemed echoes of timeless mirth.

He returned to his place by the pool.

"Deliverer."

The voice came to him out of dream. The woman was beside him, but the word had not come from her. It had whispered down from above.

"What?"

"Deliverer. The one foretold. The one whose coming I prophesied in the hour of our despair. He who shall deliver us from the curse of Nahaman and restore to us the days of glory."

Ethrian was thoroughly baffled.

"Long have we awaited your coming, our powers dwindling to a ghost of what once was. Free us of our shackles and we will grant your every whim. Unchain us and we will make of you a Lord of the earth, as were our servants of old, before Nahaman rebelled and flung her dark horde against us."

Ethrian did not feel like anyone's savior. He felt like what he was, a confused, frightened boy. He had stumbled onto something bigger than he, something beyond comprehension. He was interested in surviving, finding his way home, and getting back at his enemies. In that order.

"You have fears and hatreds within you, Deliverer. We see them. We read them as a scribe reads the leaves of a book. We say, free us. Together shall we trample your enemies into the dust. Indite. Reveal unto the Deliverer the chained might of Nawami, that shall be his to wield as a spear of revenge."

The woman in white walked into the darkness between the beast's paws.

Ethrian envisioned those who had imprisoned him, those who had carried off his mother and made insupportable demands upon his father. Only Lord Chin had perished. His henchmen remained alive. Shinsan, the Dread Empire, was their spawning ground. He would destroy Shinsan if the power came to his hand.

"That power is yours now, Deliverer. You need but accept it. Follow Sahmanan. Let her become your first minister in the restoration of Nawami."

The woman in white beckoned from the shadows. Ethrian walked toward her. She preceded him into darkness.

That darkness grew more intense, more tangible with every step. He extended a hand, expecting to encounter the stone between the beast's huge forelegs.

He walked many times that distance. He encountered no barrier. The woman vanished. He kept touch only by pursuing a sort of wordless whisper she trailed behind. He could not take her hand. Unlike the stone beast, she had no substance.

Suddenly, he stepped into light.

He gaped. And a tale came back, told him by his father's erstwhile friend, Bragi Ragnarson, the godfather who might have conspired in the destruction of his godson's family.