Coda, Chapter Twelve: Prophecies

The portal dropped Nagual in mid-air, as if he had stepped down onto a step that wasn't there, and he fell lightly to the ground, ran forward, and turned. And lowered his eyes again, pretending to adjust his gauntlet; the place was full of people, chiefly the long-tailed Tonk, running here and there, fetching and carrying and building, within a palisade of tall sharpened stakes. Within it, tall trees stood a few paces apart, with houses on platforms, or platforms without houses, high on their branches. Rope bridges ran between them. There was a whole other city high above the one on the ground.

"Excuse me!" cried a Tonk carrying a load of long spearshafts over his shoulder, and Nagual stepped aside.

"Sorry. I'm lost. Is this Hakata?"

"Yeah."

"Can you tell me how to get to the Aulatah Colossus?"

"Oh, yes." The Tonk put down his load and pointed. "That's in the Kydi Delta. Take the Ikeras portal over there. That'll drop you inside Fort Ariaki, which is huge. Head southwest; you'll pass the Lifestone and the Zu portal, and the last portal before you get to the west wall is the Mayoi portal. Take that and then one ringway stop, and up the hill and take a left. Follow the road up hill and down dale and when you get to a crossroads, left again. That's if you want to get to the bottom. For the top, go straight at the crossroads, up the hill, and then bear north when you can."

"I need the bottom; thanks." The Tonk waved and picked up his bundle of shafts. Nagual also waved, and turned toward the portal.

Three Humans, a Tonk, and a Yalaini were building a platform under the portal that hung in the air, more to mark its position (so it seemed) than to generate it. He had no idea what generated it, nor cared at this stage. "Excuse me, may I get through?" The workmen stepped aside and let him pass, his face carefully averted from the Yalaini who might glimpse his eyes.

Fort Ariaki was more Tonks, more bustle, more building, but in a larger space, under the gaze of several great cloud-piercing peaks to the southeast. He stopped midway and touched the Lifestone, glowing green, floating above a pit of fire. He gasped with surprise as a great shower of blue light fell upon him, like snowflakes, like stars. But now he was bound there --- he ran on past the Zu portal --- and, if he understood it all correctly, could never be slain: if he died, he would return to life there inside the fortress. Reserving for another time the question of how often he could die and with what result, he ran through the portal whose label, inscribed in letters of gold upon its pillars, read Mayoi.

Away across the valley, under the clustered trees, a few Tonks stood. None came near him, and he took a moment to catch his breath and steady his thoughts. He was not sure what he thought of the Tonks. He had expected them to be barely articulate half-animals. Instead, they seemed coherent, rational --- and the one who had spoken to him, polite and friendly, almost a person.

There was the ringway portal, like the others but with shorter pillars, down the hill. He stepped through. He was standing among huge trees like pillars, with tree-houses high around their trunks, like the ones in Hakata, and flimsy-looking rope bridges linking them; they must be the standard Tonk construction. The place looked dilapidated and seemed to have no inhabitants. The thought of living high in a tree made him dizzy; or perhaps it was just the taking of so many portals so quickly. He found the road leading uphill, followed it to a T-intersection and turned east.

There was strange wildlife on the road: a little two-legged thing with a mouth but no head, a taller filmy-crested two-legged thing that waved a rattle at him and whistled; a thing with no legs at all that floated in the air overhead and waved ragged claws at him: but nothing that could touch him as long as he kept moving. He climbed a hill, passed another deserted tree-house settlement, down a steep slope to the crossroads.

The trees were not as thick as he remembered from his dream, and he could see the waterfall long before he reached it. But the figure at the top was shrouded in mist, and he had reached the water's edge, where the shattered remnants of a Lifestone lay, before he could see the colossus clearly. High above the stream it stood, right arm raised, holding out (yes, Aracoeli had been right) the head of a creature not quite like itself. The head was rounder, without the long fanged snout; it lacked the long mobile ears of the Tonk he had seen. Perhaps the other tribe, the Hea, had suffered some deformity? But then why had the Aun king, Aulatah, been willing to take them back?

It was not his concern, not at present. If he lived long enough --- and at this point, he might live long enough --- he might find a chance to ask some knowledgeable Tonk in peace, what it had all been about.

He drew the sword and saluted the mighty figure above the falls. Whatever his deeds, he had been remembered with honor by his people who had built him this memorial. Now, he must take the sword under the falls ... was there a way he could walk into them? No, he must swim. Sword in hand, a little clumsily, he swam under the cascading water, dim with trapped bubbles, till he reached the cliff-face behind them. Was there any exit? He could feel none with his free hand ---

Then the stone seemed to give way, and he swam through into a pool of dark water, utterly dark, but there was a faint light coming from somewhere above --- from the sword he held in his hand. And by its light he could see that there was a slope to ascend out of the dark pool, and a tunnel ahead, and at its end another light, faintly red.

There was a tiny crack in the cavern's ceiling, and in it someone had set a red jewel. Through that descended a single shaft of light, red as blood, that dissipated in the dark air before it reached the dark floor. Nagual held up the sword to catch the light, and briefly saw it flash blood-red as it had appeared in his dream. He drew it back: it still shone faintly, not blood-red, not pale red-grey as he had found it, but with so pale a light that he could distinguish no color at all.

And now what? Return the way he had come? He must now make his way to the Great Deru Tree, wherever that was, and let the sword take on its green light. There was green light in the back of his mind somewhere, like a half-forgotten memory, and he teased at it and tugged at it until the memory came clear: the green Lifestone to which he had bound himself to return on death. In the chambers of his mind it seemed almost real and solid, and something that was himself reached out to touch it. And he was swallowed up in portalspace.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

"He took the Cragstone Hall portal," Thromer said, "and another portal immediately after that, a summoned portal which has expired. I can't trace him past that."

"He asked after three sites he'd seen in a dream," Aracoeli said, on the verge of tears. "I told him what they were, but not where. He may be searching for them, but he doesn't know where to go."

"I've just been in the Hall asking about him," Tapuaua said. "Everyone said, 'What Falatacot?' It would seem nobody noticed him; they don't look all that different from Yalaini. What places did he want to know about?"

"Aun Aulatah's Colossus, the Great Deru Tree, the Water Temple in Nanto. I didn't say Nanto."

"Let him go," Asheron said. He stretched out his hands like sunbeams toward the shoulders of the two women, even though he could not touch them. "He is following his destiny; so is the Blood-Mother."

"If you say so, my Lord," Tapuaua said. "We'll let him go." And in her own mind, "I did not say I would let him alone."

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

With the purple-grey of portalspace swirling about her, Helethiska marshalled her wits. It had taken her longer than she had expected to remember the ritus that would reverse the last portal she had taken, return her to its origin; but then if she had remembered it swiftly she would have missed that astonishing interview ... the question now was how far back the reversing ritus would transport her. If it took her all the way back to the grey world, at least she would be safe for the moment.

But it dropped her inside the fortress at the foot of the great wall, to which the tunnel had led (she had never determined what had made that tunnel, though her best guess was the insects, possibly under Ju'xatl's urging). There were the usual mixed bag of five races stationed there, armed and armored, and she unarmed --- but none of them raised a cry, none of them tried to apprehend her. Perhaps these were on a different duty shift, and had not seen her the previous day. She turned to the nearest, a massive Lugian, and said, "Excuse me. Can you tell me if there's a Loremaster in camp?"

"There's Shi Kelinua, in the tent there," the Lugian said. She thanked him and passed by the sentry outside the tent without speaking.

"I've been studying some ancient texts," she said, "and I've found what appears to be a prophecy. Who was it, who was called the Child of Light?"

The battered old Tonk stared at her. "You, an Empyrean, ask that? The Child of Light was Asheron, who cared for us and defended us against so many foes, and whom the Order of Dereth serves and follows, even though he is gone."

"Ah," she said. "Of course. Thank you." She bowed, and the old Tonk turned back to pore over his map table, allowing Helethiska as she left to filch a lightweight Celestrum from the rack of weapons by his door. It was not very powerful, but it was better than going completely unarmed. She passed through the inner gate, casually saluted the sentries on watch between the walls --- there was no sign of the tunnel through when she and Nagual had come; the northerners must have filled it in --- and passed through the outer gate into the open. The grass was growing nicely, and the flowers blooming, and someone had planted a vine at the base of a dead tree, so that it would soon be covered in green again. She strolled over the ridge into the barren lands where the insects ranged, checked the position of the sun in the sky to make sure she was facing south, took a deep breath, and began to run.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

The portal had indeed taken Nagual back to the Ikeras Lifestone inside Fort Ariaki. Avoiding two Yalaini who might be likelier than other races to know a Falatacot when they saw one, he approached a Drudge who was sharpening with a long file a nail thrust through a board, and asked it the way to the Great Deru Tree. "Ah," the Drudge said. "Rakani portal. Go past Hakata portal, take Rakani portal, that way." It gestured toward the northwest with its file.

"Thank you. And after that?"

The Drudge looked at him strangely. "You know it when you see it," it said, and returned to its nail. Nagual set off for the Rakani portal.

The portal deposited him on a grassy bank thick with wildflowers of a dozen kinds, tall red-and-orange cockscombs, rose-and-white plumes, tall grasses topped with tufts of lavender, little stalks thick with crimson bells, and one astonishing thing as tall as he was, with buds and flowers and fruits in shades of blue and pink, that swayed constantly in the breeze. It was almost overpowering. He had lived his life on the white world and the grey world, and had visited the yellow sand world once in the line of duty, and they all had tiny gardens outside the commanders' headquarters, but nothing like this. Then he turned and looked down the slope, down onto the crowns of the trees that housed the town, and up the slope again to the Tree, rising like a tower into the sky.

It took some time for his feet to find a way to follow his eyes; in the end he took Aracoeli's hinted advance and followed every watercourse upstream till he found their source in the roots of the Tree. And feet had worn a path along the bark, here and there, leading upwards into the limbs.

The path diverged, once he was aloft, and he followed a few trails to dead ends before he realized that he must take the right-hand path whenever there was a choice. Worn bark under his feet gave way to springy, close-packed leaves, and there was the final path along a short branch that led up to the crown of the tree.

There was a small pedestal there, and on it a small image of the Tree itself, its roots extending over the base of the pedestal, its jade-green leaves distilling sweet-smelling vapors. He drew the sword, its faint light hardly visible under the westering sun, and laid it upon the base, over two of the curving roots.

A voice spoke in his mind. "I give you my blessing, by Leaf, Limb, and Root. Take this thing you carry; plunge it into the waters of my Roots, and be purified."

He bowed, and turned away. So far, this was following the dream. He must dive into the water --- he looked over the edge of the Tree's tight-packed crown, and his heart almost quailed. It was a very long fall. But he must do it; and if he died in the doing, he would not have to find his way down the Tree's trunk again. He held out the sword before him, and leaped into space.

He plunged into deep water, and rose to the surface, coughing and spluttering, and, astonishingly, still alive. But up ahead the water made a close horizon; there was another fall; gasping for breath, he went over the edge and fell down, down, down, and the water hit him like a bludgeon. For an instant he saw himself lying dead, floating down the current of a stream like a mirror that reflected tall cliffs above him, depositing him on a muddy bank sprinkled with mosses and ferns and liverworts. And then he was in portalspace again.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Helethiska could not always keep her straight southward course, and for that matter the Lyceum did not lie due south of the fortress on the wall. When she had to choose between two paths around a steep hill or an insect mound, she bore to the right and the southwest. Once she found a network of roads that started nowhere and led nowhere, their destinations completely wiped out by centuries of insect and fungus. But the True Falatacot from the south up, and the northerners from the wall down, were beginning to nibble away at their domain. I am beginning to think of the northerners as allies, she thought, but the first shock of the thought was past, and her steady pace did not falter. The occasional insect attempted to strike at her, but most of them she could simply run past and ignore.

Then she got into an area inhabited by stronger insects, Brood Matrons with their strange long necks and Swarm Royal Guards with their sickle-shaped claws, and must actually pause from time to time to kill one that would not give up the chase. After each insect died the others seized on it and tore it to pieces; perhaps they were short of protein in their diet, or their grubs were.

Finally she reached the coast, and turned west, being certain that the Lyceum lay in that direction. Here she must leap into a deep ravine that cut into the coastline, and clamber up the other side. From here, she could at last make out the outline of a ridge of hills to her west that must surely be the site of the Lyceum and the other Yalaini ruins ---

And a great sleek dark head raised itself out of the rocky landscape and looked at her with violet eyes. She had run up almost within striking distance of it before she could stop, and from where she stood she could see the great wings outspread, reaching a bowshot away in either direction.

Nuanni. Gromnatross, the Child of Light had called them. The True Falatacot had scorned them, deeming them inferior to the Old Ones and even to themselves. That opinion burst like a bubble upon seeing one. The shining violet eyes held a depth of intelligence and wisdom that she could not attempt to measure. She remembered the tale told her that morning, of the evil woman who had claimed to rule in the name of the Light, and how her minions, the blood of slaughter still red on their hands, had climbed to the aerie of the last Nuannu, and the creature had slain them all before departing Auberean. The steady gaze was judging her as well, weighing her heart in a balance, as the old songs said, lest it be found heavier than a feather. The long neck was arched like a swan's, and the massive jaws could easily bite her in two.

Then the Nuannu lowered its head and breathed upon her, with a scent not like blood but like the wildflowers that grew south of the wall, and lifted its wings and was gone. Helethiska fell to her knees and wept, partially from relief. After a few minutes she got up and ran again, toward the Lyceum whose spires were glinting in the falling sun.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Nagual saw himself again, lying beside the Lifestone; and then he was inside his body again, his head aching, his lungs still laboring for breath. He got up, feeling weak in the knees. The sword was still clutched in his hand. When he held it at just the right angle, he could see a faint green shimmer along the blade. What was next? The Water Temple, wherever that was, and underground to boot....

"Hello," a voice said, and he turned. A green-furred Tonk was squatting beside the Lifestone, her long delicate fingers folded over her shell-ringed drum. "What killed you?"

"I fell off the Deru Tree," he said, hoping it was the sort of thing a northerner might do by accident.

"That'll do it," the Tonk commented. She rose and beat her drum, and suddenly his head stopped aching. "Better?"

"Yes, thank you." He looked at the Tonk sharply, but its face betrayed nothing but friendly interest. "Could I ask you two questions? One of which may be rude; if so, I apologize. I don't know your customs."

The Tonk laughed shrilly, displaying a great many sharp teeth. "Try me."

"Are you a male or a female? How does one tell?"

The Tonk laughed again. "Female," she said. "There are two ways to tell. First, tail spikes." She turned her back toward him, and he saw that in addition to the soft short green fur she had several tufts of long black hair, like the stuff on her head, growing from the tailtip and glued together somehow into three flattish spikes. "Males don't have tail spikes. The other clue is that they have fur in warm colors, red and gold and brown. Females come in green and blue and violet. Clear now? What's the other question?"

"Where's the Water Temple?"

"Nanto. Do you know where that is? Do you know the combination to the portal? I'll take you; it's easier than telling you. Come on." She loped southwestward at an easy pace toward the Mayoi portal. They stepped through, and she pointed to a road leading north between two steep banks. "That way; we take that road for a while." He followed her in silence, up the road and down again and northward.

Something lunged across the road, a great serpent, its forepart rising from the ground, its head hooded, brandishing a double-bladed axe in its slender arms. They both dodged easily, and it soon fell behind. "Whatever was that?"

"That's a Sclavus. It's a descendant of the reptiles that the Falatacot brought to Auberean, long ago, and mixed with their own gene plasm to create servants for their temples: they were man-shaped, with scales and hoods. But what with the Black Breath and the Cataclysm and four hundred years of neglect, they've devolved back to something like their original form, as you see --- all that remains of their Falatacot ancestry is those little arms. Now, those --- she pointed downhill to where a pair of the little crested bipeds were waving their rattles and whistling --- "those are the other descendants of the Sclavi, the Mimbu, and as you see they've reverted mostly to the Empyrean shape."

The Falatacot shape. He swallowed hard. Unless the Tonk was mistaken or lying, those things were his distant kin.

They ran downhill to where a waterfall poured down into a gorge, and when they could go no farther forward turned to the right. "The Blue Ghost Falls," the Tonk said. "Before the Cataclysm they fell in two ranks, one above the other, seeping out from groundwater, falling and seeping in again, falling a second time into a pool. It was a favorite place to hold weddings, they tell me. Now there's one falling to each side of the Temple --- which is up this way." She led the way across a slender, dangerous-looking rope bridge. "Don't worry, this one's safe; we maintain it."

They ran past an ancient building, its windows broken and several holes in its roof, but otherwise sound. "These are the ruins of Nanto," she said. "The Sho lived here, beautiful Humans with golden skins and slanting eyes. There's the other branch of the Falls." They stood a moment, since there were no creatures hiding among the ruins, to watch the blue water falling deep into the gorge. Further up, there were more tree-houses. "And these are where the Tonk lived in Nanto, after Palenqual was lost. We had about twenty years together, before the Nemeses attacked, and we did very well really. Someday, Light willing, we'll live in these towns again. Up this way."

They ran up a narrow path, brushing aside random creatures, and plunged into the open vault of a low stone building atop the hill. Nagual realized, when they were inside, that the whole hill was filled with the shafts and chambers of the Water Temple --- perhaps rather than excavating it, the long-ago Yalaini had built it and piled the earth over it. However they had done it, parts of it at least were beautiful: here a stone bridge led over an empty space below, while six streams of water poured from above and fell past them into the depths. "We could jump from here, but it's not really faster," the Tonk said. "This way." She led him down and around, down and around, and under a portcullis that rose at her touch. Beneath them, a wide staircase descended into a large hall lined with pillars: three of them, larger than the rest, stood together at the far end.

"Ignore the Mimbu," she said, as the little bipeds came surging around them, rattling and whistling. "We have to touch the pillars in a certain order, just follow me." She led the way through the complaining Mimbu to the center pillar, and touched it. Nagual did the same, and heard a faint click. "Now this one." She led him through a sequence of a dozen clicks, and with the last one he was caught up into portalspace again.

He was dropped before another portcullis, which rose at a touch. Down and around the stairs, and here was the pit he had seen in his dream, with the fountain in its depths, and the pool into which the fountain poured its endless streams. And something the color of water, that moved. "Oh. There is a Guardian."

"Oh, yes, but don't worry, I can handle him." She leapt into the pit, and he heard the sound of her drum beating. He followed her down, and landed hip-deep in the water. A million little bubbles ran up his legs and back, and his body tingled. He drew the sword. In the subdued light he could see it glowing faintly green. He raised the sword in salute to the fountain, and lowered it into the water.

The water seethed; the light grew; his fingers tingled till only his eyes could tell him that he was still holding the sword. Across the way, the Tonk felled the water spirit, the Guardian, with a final stroke of her drum and turned to watch him. There were sounds in the air not made by drum or water: sounds as of trumpets blowing for the return of a victorious army. Every pillar in the room seemed to be singing with its own note, and the bubbles broke around his hands with a chime like little bells. When the sounds, and the tingling, began to die away he lifted the sword out of the water. It shone now with a clear white light, as if it had been forged from the body of one bright star.

"Yes," the Tonk said. "Let me cast a portal to take us out of here," and she beat her drum, and presently a rosy glow appeared in the air between them, and they stepped through.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

They stood in the ruins of what had once been a great cathedral. Now its high-vaulted ceilings were hung with spiderwebs, its walls knocked out between its pillars, the soft rain drifting in filling the holes in the floor.

In the grey, shadowed interior, the sword he held shone like a star, turning the webs to silver, shimmering reflected in all the puddles. "What is this thing?" he whispered.

"Ah," the Tonk said. "That is the Sword of Light. Many thousands of years ago, when the Seaborne Empire of Yalain was at its height, it was carried by a great Yalaini general whose name has been lost. When the Hopeslayer rose against the Yalaini, that general was slain by the Shadow lord Omadin, who took the Sword for his own. Its light was dimmed, its blade bent, and they called it the Sword of Night.

"A few centuries later, Omadin himself was slain by the Emperor Caerlin I, but touching the Shadow infected Caerlin with the Ayai Heauviri, the Soulburn Plague, and it blackened his hand and ate away at his flesh, and after years of pain finally killed him. And the Shadows kept the Sword.

"The last of the Hopeslayer's generals, Isin Dule, who had turned away from his master and helped Asheron to defeat him, kept that Sword and other rare artifacts; they were stolen from him by the Living Shadow and recovered by mortals. And for a long time he wondered, and Asheron wondered, how the Sword might be cleansed. How did you come by it?"

"I was imprisoned," he said. "I was escaping, and I had no weapon, and I saw it hanging on the wall. When I brandished it at my pursuers, the cowards fled, and I escaped."

"It was not you they feared, but the Sword," she said. "They knew its history, and feared what it might do. Go on."

"I had had a dream, a vision," he said, "in which I took the dark thing I held to three places of falling water, and washed it clean. And when I was free --- I was not free, for I was compelled to follow my vision, and ---"

"Look out!" the Tonk shouted, and began to beat her drum. Nagual turned. Behind him a flight of stone steps led down to the ground, and a creature was climbing them, a figure out of nightmare.

It had walked on two feet once, and was still trying to walk, but the toes on one distorted foot were all eaten away; the foot and leg were black, and the dark stain went up all the left side of the creature. Its left arm was withered. It let out a howl of despair as its right hand clawed at Nagual.

He slashed at the thing with the sword, but it was already falling before he touched it, and the blade no more than scratched the creature's chest. It fell flat and lay whimpering.

Beside him he heard the Tonk draw in a slow, deep breath. "Look," she said.

Slowly, a fingersbreadth to a heartbeat, the black stain was seeping away from the creature's flesh. The arm filled out, the twisted foot returned to its proper shape. The Tonk beat her drum again: a healing spell, it must be, for the missing toes regenerated.

"What about you?" she said. "Did it touch you?" There was a blue line of blood along his arm. She unfastened his sleeve and revealed a single black line along the skin. "Lay the flat of the Sword along it," she said.

He did this, and when he lifted the blade again, the dark line was gone. He rubbed the place with the heel of his other hand: it felt normal.

"I thank the Light," the Tonk said, "who has given me strength and understanding, yesterday, today, and forever."

"The Yalaini worshipped the Light," Nagual mused," and Au and the stars that embodied it. But we worshipped the earth, Auberean, and the Old Ones who ---" he stopped, realizing what he had said.

"Oh, I know who you are. I am Shi Tapuaua, a follower of Asheron, at your service," she said, bowing. "And you are Nagual Mij'jab, Grand Paragon of the Third Cohort, and the Light chose you to purify the Sword."

"I need to sit down," Nagual said, and turned toward the stairs. While his attention had been elsewhere, the creature he had cured had gone away again. He sat down on the topmost stair and tried to think.

"Is Shi your personal name?" was all he could come up with.

"Tapuaua is my personal name," she said. "I'm Tapu the Elder Shaman of the Shi xuta. All Tonk belong to the Shi now, so we can leave it off, and mostly we do."

"Aun Aulatah," he said, remembering, "the king of the Aun tribe. Is that really his enemy's head he's holding?"

"It's certainly a head," she said. "Probably the head of Hea Arantah, as he called himself, or Hea Aranpuh as the Aun called him. If you're feeling better, will you come with me?"

She led the way down the steps and along a road that curved from north to south around the ruined cathedral and then bore north again through a brush-littered landscape with more of the webfooted creatures. "Moarsmen," Tapuaua said, "whom your cousins the Falatacot who remained here brought from a world called Bur, and made to serve in their temples. And these others are Burun ---" she pointed uphill at a big monster, like a frog that had risen onto its hind legs and put on spiky armor --- "who also came from Bur, much later, after the Falatacot here had all died."

"Where are we going?"

"To the Shrine of Great Sister Wind," she said. "My cousin Rinauri was last seen there."

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

"Blood-Mother!" cried her orderly, as she strode into the library. "Where have you been? I was beginning to worry ---"

"That's kind of you, my child," Helethiska said. "I was exploring, and now I'm back. I need pen and paper." She sat down at her worktable, found her pen, took up the top sheet of the stack the orderly brought her. "Yes, I've eaten; I shall rest in a little while, after I've transcribed a few things from memory. You could bring me a cup of water, if you would." The orderly hurried off. Helethiska began to write.

As darkness draws about light
And all falls to ruin so shall come the star.
The darkness will impart its wisdom,
And the Light shall lose its way.
And blackness shall fall across the land,
And the Light will be hidden above.
Then shall the light gain its wisdom
And Champion.
For Alaidain's blood shall be
The savior of the people
And then Darkness shall send again,
and be beaten
And so it will send again,
and be beaten.

The second, longest and strangest. She drank water from her cup and called upon her memory.

There was but Light and Darkness;
And then Auberean.
Darkness sought to seed Auberean
And climbed within the world
As Light created guardians,
And sent them to defend.
Guardians made war
Against the darkness,
And the darkness drew forth defenders
From the land
To stand against the light,
And the Light called lesser children
To bear itself against Darkness.
And then the war was won.

And the Darkness reached out
And brought forth other worlds;
So too the Light.
Ever Auberean at the heart
Where ever shall rest the war.

There. Now the last, shortest and easiest to remember, because it had metre:

In darkness born, the Child of Light
Within the circles of the world
Shall see the Darkness twice cast down
Before he rises to the Light.

She laid the pen down. Her hands were shaking. If the prophecies were true, the victory was assured. What was still in question was whether she and hers would have any part in it.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

They found Rinauri lying naked in his loincloth at the water's edge, downhill from the Shrine. He had cast aside his armor, perhaps because of fever, and the Ayai Heauviri had caused most of his fur to fall out and blackened his skin. With one hand he scooped water to his parched mouth. Tapuaua made a little sound like a moan, but did not turn her head away: she was a healer. Nagual drew the Sword and laid it along Rinauri's flank.

Again the dark stain seeped away, and the Tonk's skin slowly flushed to the deep red that seemed to be its natural color. After a few minutes he raised his head and looked at them: Tapuaua crouching beside him, looking anxiously into his face, Nagual standing above him, the Sword in his right hand, its blade resting lightly on his forearm. Slowly, with his cousin's help, Rinauri climbed to his feet. "What ---" he began. "Who has brought me out of death?"

"Grand Paragon," Tapuaua said formally, "my cousin, the shaman Shi Rinauri. Rino, I make known to you the Grand Paragon Nagual Mij'jab of the True Falatacot."

Rinauri bowed deeply, and used Tapuaua's supporting arm to pull himself upright again. "I owe you more than my life," he said. "There are other lives at stake, five of them at least who lie ill in Cragstone. Will you go to them?"

"I will," Nagual said. "The Light ---" he looked at the shining blade he held --- "the Light has given me many things. A sword of great power. A deed of great honor. And a responsibility. Take me to Cragstone."

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

There was a slight sound, like a sudden gust of wind, and the papers on Helethiska's desk stirred. She looked up to see Nagual suddenly fade into sight, there in the middle of her library floor. He looked hale, if very solemn, and he wore a baldric across his shoulder, marked with the device of the sun and two moons that she recognized as the Realaidain arms. He shrugged out of it and folded it away in his pouch.

"You got back all right, I see."

"Oh, yes, eventually. B---" his lips formed the sound, but he cut the word short. "Did Asheron give you the means to return to his Tower?"

"You also have seen Asheron? No, he did not."

"I thought not. He gave me these for you." He took from his pouch four small stones, shining like jewels, and gave her two of them. "The bluer one takes us to the Tower; the greenish one returns us here. I have some other things too.

"Mother, I have so much to tell, and there's no one I can tell but you."

"So have I," she said. "You first."