"We have boats," said Pellam, "and quick and agile they are. If you are willing, I will send several out to examine the curtain. "Us afraid I am that no more can be done at present."

"No," said Darham. "There is more that can be done." He stood, his arms folded, and looked out over the young men he had brought from Corrin. "The beings you call Grayfaces are gone for now, but the hounds continue to roam. If Vaylle cannot fight, then Corrin will fight for Vaylle."

Cvinthil stirred. What would Vorya do? He was suddenly struck by the fact that it did not matter. It was what Cvinthil would do that mattered. He would not- could not-compete with a ghost. "Aye," he said, feeling stronger. "And Gryylth too. Kyria offered her service. I will ask that our blades be enchanted, and we will make this land as secure as possible before we must leave it.'' He stood up shakily and bowed to Pel-lam. "For your kind offer, friend Pellam, my deepest thanks. We came to do violence, and you have given us friendship in return. It will never be said that Gryylth does not protect its friends."

He looked up, out toward the east. There, far away, he could feel the shroud of darkness pulsing, roiling.

He dropped his eyes. His shame still cut deeply, but if Vaylle taught lessons, it would find him willing to learn.

The birth had been long and difficult-breech, the cord tangled, the mother frightened-but though all had gone well in the end, it was not until nearly dawn that Kallye, carrying her lamp and her bundle, left Anyyi's house and made her way through the rain and the muddy streets that led to her own bed.

This birth, though, could not but remind her of two others. Once, she had worked with Seena to bring a son and daughter into the world; and now Ayya and Vill lay motionless in Hall Kingsbury, seemingly neither alive nor dead. If what was called birth was, as she believed, only the first of the unfoldings and flowerings that made up the continuing birth called life, then those two births were in grave danger, and Kallye's midwife instincts made her worry and fret constantly both about them and about her inability to offer any aid or a.s.sistance.

In fact, she had not been allowed to see the children since the night she had first examined them. She had gone to Hall Kingsbury, had asked for permission to visit the queen, but her requests had been denied. Somewhere-behind the guards, within the palisade- Seena sorrowed and cared for her children, and all three were as far away from Kallye's help and support as they would have been had they been imprisoned.

Timbrin, though accessible, seemed equally beyond help. Kallye had stopped in on her frequently since that first morning, but the lieutenant had remained much the same: terrified, shocky, her speech confined to halting monosyllables. Paia and her daughters were taking good care of her, though, treating her like a member of the family, and Kallye hoped that such unstinting affection might eventually soothe whatever wounds she had sustained.

Ayya. Vill. Seena. Timbrin. Kallye no longer had any doubt that Helwych stood at the root of all four afflictions. And as the thunder dwindled to a far-off rumble and the lightning grew faint and intermittent, she could not help but wonder whether Helwych was behind even the workings of the weather, whether the sorcerer and his magic had twined-like the cord about the neck of Anyyi's child-throughout all of Gryylth.

She sloshed across the deserted market square, picking her way carefully. The worst of the storm had abated, but the rain was still falling, and the puddles were deep. Her cloak was sodden and cold, and it would be good to dry off and lie down for a few hours before-inevitably-she was called out to attend to another laboring woman. Maybe Gelyya could handle the next baby alone. Maybe- Across the square, movement. Kallye stopped, peered through the falling rain, lifted her lamp a little higher. Faintly, very faintly, she made out the huddled shape of a figure crouched in the shelter of some rough lumber that had been left leaning against one of the houses. Curious and concerned both, she approached, made out pale skin and dark hair, realized mat it was a naked woman.

And her stomach twisted when she saw that it was Relys.

She ran to the captain and dropped to her knees beside her. Relys was a ma.s.s of damage. Her groin ran with blood, and her right hand looked as though it had been chewed by wild beasts. Her face was bruised, likewise her belly and b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and her skin was frigid to the touch. She hardly seemed aware of Kallye's presence.

"Relys!" said the midwife. "Relys!"

In the distance, she heard the sound of footsteps. Two men, perhaps three. Relys's eyes flickered open and focused with an- effort on Kallye's face. Her lips moved soundlessly: Help me . . . please . . .

"Oh, dear G.o.ds." Kallye knew what had happened. She did not know why-but it did not matter why.

The footsteps drew nearer, approached the square.

"Child," said Kallye, "can you stand?"

Relys made futile movements with her arms and legs. Blood loss as well as emotional devastation had weakened her, but Kallye saw her straining against her injuries and pain, and gradually, with the soldiers drawing ever closer, she staggered to her feet.

"I must take you to my house," said Kallye. Relys stared with hollow eyes. "Immediately. But there are soldiers coming. Are they looking for you?"

Relys's eyes indicated that she did not know. Perhaps they said also that she did not care.

Kallye cast a glance over her shoulder. The soldiers had not entered the square yet. She put her midwife's bundle into Relys's good hand. "Hold it against your belly, child. Tight. It will help the pain, and it will help us both also."

While Relys struggled to do as she was told, Kallye cast her cloak about the captain's shoulders, made the clasp fast at her throat, and pulled the hood up. With the bulk of the bundle standing out from her belly, Relys looked vaguely pregnant-close enough to deceive those who knew nothing of womanly concerns, who cared little about them, who were, Kallye knew, a little afraid of such things.

She had barely finished when two men clumped into the market square. As she had expected, they were of the King's Guard.

King's Guard? More likely Helwych's Guard now.

Kallye leaned towards Relys's hood-shrouded face. "Say nothing," she whispered. "Just do as I say."

And as the soldiers approached, Kallye began to pull Relys across the square. "Rayyel!" she exclaimed. "Just look at you! Your child coming in the dead of night and you wandering about looking for me! You should have sent your husband to fetch me: you are in no condition to be out.''

' 'Midwife?'' boomed one of the men.

"Yes," said Kallye. "It is I."

"What are you doing out?"

Kallye did not flinch. "I was attending a birth, and on my way home, I find another lady in need of my skills."

The soldier strode up to the women. The rain ran down their faces, spattered and hissed in the torch they carried. "Who is this?" one said, pointing at Relys.

"This is Rayyel, wife of Carren," said the midwife promptly, grateful that these men from distant towns did not know the people of Kingsbury very well. "She is very near to giving birth and she-" She broke off. "Oh, Rayyel, you are bleeding! The baby cannot be far behind!"

And, true, blood was pooling in the mud at Relys's feet. It had nothing to do with impending delivery, but Kallye knew that the soldiers were ignorant of that. As she fussed over Relys, she stole a glance at the soldiers and saw them looking at one another in obvious revulsion.

She continued to fuss. Messy things, births. Not at all to the taste of soldiers.

"I need to get you home quickly," she said. She turned to the soldiers. "Can you help us? Please? We do not have much time.''

But the soldiers plainly wanted nothing to do with a woman who was close to giving birth. They backed up a pace, mumbled something about orders, escorted Kallye and her charge to the other side of the square, and then left.

Kallye wanted nothing more. She would, in fact, have been satisfied with a good deal less. Talking soothingly, cajoling, ordering and dragging when gentler methods failed, she managed to get Relys as far as the doorstep of her house; but there the captain's knees buckled, and she collapsed in a wet and b.l.o.o.d.y heap.

Kallye pounded on the door. "Gelyya! Open up!" Relys's right hand had fallen out of the cloak. The little finger and side of the palm were completely missing. Blood was running out, staining the puddles and mud. "Quickly! Help!"

Gelyya flung the door open and cried out at the sight; but in a moment she was helping Kallye to carry the captain in. Relys's eyes were gla.s.sy, unseeing, and though the room was clean and warm, as was the bed in which they laid her, she had already slipped into the merciful release of unconsciousness and knew nothing of either.

* CHAPTER 10 *

Alouzon spent a long time luxuriating in the shower with soap and shampoo that seemed to her as much a miracle as the hot coffee and bagels she had for breakfast. By the time she gathered up the papers and books she had promised Brian, it was late enough in the morning that the traffic on Sunset Boulevard had settled into an order and predictability that allowed for contemplation; and as she skirted the northern border of the campus-just another Los Angeles driver on this hot October day-she recalled the dream that had come to her in the course of what she had discovered was forty-eight hours of unbroken sleep.

The Grail. The Grail had come. It had been shrouded, true, but that was to be expected. The important thing was that it had come, willingly, helpfully . . . even, she suspected, eagerly. As much as she needed its wholeness, the Grail wanted her to have it. She had suspected as much since the council in Kings-bury, but now she knew it for a fact: in the midst of her trials and difficulties, it had vouchsafed to her a partial vision of its glory so as to strengthen and nurture her.

And Solomon-no, not the Specter, Solomon-had once again returned from the dead. His sins were manifold, his hates and anger a plexed concatenation of emotions and failings that resonated too tellingly with her own. Perhaps for that very reason he had made her his confessor; but though he had not found final absolution at her hands, he had found enough peace so that he could turn his head at the very end and promise help.

Help? What kind of help could a corpse give?

She did not know, but as she pulled into a s.p.a.ce in the teaching a.s.sistant section of the parking structure, she was deeply grateful for help in any form, from any hands. G.o.ddess she might be, but in spite of the Grail's manifestation, the t.i.tle sounded terribly hollow to her as she climbed out of the VW and removed the two boxes of paper and books.

Unable to figure out an excuse for transporting the Dragonsword across campus, she left it and her armor on the back seat. She kicked the door closed, and, balancing the heavy boxes one on top of the other, she descended the stairs and started across the warm lawn. The flip-flops she had dredged out of the back of the closet made limp noises on feet that were accustomed to boots, but though-tall, tanned, and attractive-she pa.s.sed as a coed in the eyes of the students who crossed to and from cla.s.s, her thoughts were of another world and another people, of past blood, and of memories of murder that were only exacerbated by the clothing that necessity had forced upon her.

Nothing she had found in Suzanne's closet had fit her, and Alouzon had been unwilling to don any of the oversized caftans that the plump little earth mother had been affecting for the last two years. But a decade ago, Suzanne h.e.l.ling had been thinner, and in a cardboard box at the back of her closet were the clothes she had been wearing when blood had spilled across the R-58 parking lot. The elastic yoke of the peasant blouse now accommodated Alouzon's broad shoulders, and though the jeans had proved too short, a pair of scissors had turned them into respectable cut-offs.

But Alouzon felt as though she had cut up her past, and the faint blood stains on the blouse reproached her for her sacrilege. Suzanne had preserved these clothes as a reminder of the killings; and now, like everything else in her life, they had been sacrificed to Gryylth, to Vaylle, to all the urgent concerns that made up the workings of a world.

Alouzon scuffed up the steps to the north door of Kinsey Hall, having no idea what she would do in Los Angeles, or how she might ever return to Gryylth, or whether there might be anything for her to return to if she actually did. She wore these clothes, but her old life had been cast off like the chrysalis of a b.u.t.terfly.

b.u.t.terflies don't live very long, though . . .

"Hey, mama, you lookin' good!"

She set her back against the heavy gla.s.s doors and mustered a smile at the black student who was crossing the rectangular lawn that lay between Kinsey and Haines Halls. His compliment, earthy and sincere, was a welcome tonic this morning. "Have a good one, guy."

"You need some help with those?"

"Nan. I'm OK." She pushed open the door and entered, murmuring: "Considering the circ.u.mstances, I guess."

She climbed the inner stairs into a world of fluorescent lights, beige walls, and inst.i.tutional linoleum. Double doors stood open before her, and she pa.s.sed through them and climbed the stairs to the second floor.

Suzanne h.e.l.ling had felt alienated from the current generation of students and their ways, but Alouzon Dragonmaster had no business even setting foot on a modern campus. Her existence was, in fact, impossible, and she would not have been overly surprised had she faded into mist when, bracing the boxes against the wall outside the door marked 288, she touched something as concrete and prosaic as a door k.n.o.b.

But she remained as she was: Alouzon. As she shouldered the door open, the secretary, not recognizing her, jumped up from her desk and held it wide, and Alouzon went down the inner corridor as though Dragonmasters who were a combination of fifth century history and contemporary wish fulfillment were a common presence at UCLA.

Happens all the time. Sure. Like exchange students.

Brian's office lay at the end of the hall, but for a moment she stopped at another door. Beyond the thickly varnished wood lay the room in which Solomon Braithwaite had worked, tyrannized over his graduate students, and alternately dreamed and raged. There, Suzanne had resented him, argued with him, and finally departed for Gryylth with him.

If Alouzon Dragonmaster had a birthplace, it was here. Now, though, another professor occupied the office, the mahogany desk was gone, and the old man was as dead and buried as his status would allow.

"I suppose someone ought to put up a plaque or something," she said softly, and she was about to turn away when something held her. It was no more than a faint feeling, but it rooted her, for she had experienced it twice before-at Solomon's grave and at Helen's house-and it smacked both of unreality and absolute being, as though a door had opened into another world and a strange, impossible breeze were blowing through.

No howls this time, no wings, no glowing eyes; but Alouzon knew that there was something here. Supporting the boxes with a lifted knee, she knocked tentatively. No one was in. She tried the k.n.o.b, and the door, unlocked, swung open to reveal a relatively ordinary office. Metal desk. File folders. Books. A picture of a man and woman embracing. An eighth generation Xerox of a crudely drawn cartoon with the caption: "I think I'm a mushroom. Everybody keeps me in the dark and feeds me bulls.h.i.t. "

"Yeah," said Alouzon. "I know exactly what you mean."

But though the sense of unreality persisted, she saw nothing unusual. Walls were solid, likewise floor and ceiling. No ocean lapped at the linoleum, and the windows gave a view only of Haines Hall.

"Miss?"

Alouzon jerked her head out of the office. "Uh . . . isn't this Brian's office?"

The secretary approached and shut the door. "Dr. O'Hara's office is at the end of the hall," she said helpfully. "On the right."

The woman obviously noticed nothing strange about the room. Alouzon feigned embarra.s.sment and surprise. "Oh. Oh, yeah. Sorry."

But as she continue'd down the hall, the oddness glowed at her back like a hot furnace. Something. Something was going on.

Brian, thin and academic, looked up from his desk when she entered. "Hi," he said, rising. "I'm Dr. O'Hara. You must be Suzanne's friend."

She stared at him. He barely came up to her shoulders. "Uh . . . yeah." She plunked the boxes down on a vacant chair beside a cluttered desk covered with Suzanne's work: notes, papers, books. For a moment, she tried to imagine her own hands wielding a pen, or typing, or leafing through the binders. She could not.

Her steel wrist cuffs glinted in the light from the windows, and her hip felt painfully bare without the presence and weight of the Dragonsword. Unnerved by so much that was at once familiar and foreign, she nodded to Brian and turned to go.

But he wanted to talk. He sat down and propped his feet up on his desk. "So what happened with Suzanne?"

She stifled a s.a.d.i.s.tic urge ta tell him. "She went home to her family.''

Brian blinked behind his wire-rimmed gla.s.ses. "Just like that? I mean, she didn't even call."

Alouzon, trying not to look at him, found herself staring with horrified fascination at the poster of the A-4 Skyhawk c.o.c.kpit controls. With a gasp, she tore her eyes away. ' 'It was ... uh ... the weekend. I... I mean we ... I mean she doesn't have your home number.''

Brian sighed in frustration. "I'm really sorry to hear that, Allie."

Alouzon winced.

' 'I mean, she was quite a scholar. She was going to be one of the best. d.a.m.n near lived her work. I suppose I was a little too hard on her." He shrugged. "But, you know, there always seemed to be something that was bothering her. She never told me what it was, though."

The blouse and cut-offs suddenly felt ready to crawl off her body. "She was at Kent State."

"Kent? You mean in Ohio? I don't understand."

No one understood. Vietnam was something everyone tried to forget, something that the men would argue about during half-time, over cold beer and bowls of potato chips and pretzels: I tell you, we coulda won. All we had to do was . . . And the protests and the demonstrations were by now just a bad joke: idealism as silly as the fashions that had accompanied it.

She dropped her eyes. The faint blood stains on the blouse glared at her like a blazon of adultery. "She was there when the National Guard gunned down the students."

Brian was nodding, but he had suddenly averted his eyes. "Oh, yeah. I ... uh ... remember that. Weren't they just a bunch of hippies or something, though?"

Alouzon glared at him, recalling all the lives that she, once a pacifist and a war protester, had taken. The Dremord in the mountains. Bandon. The Circle . . .

Just a bunch of hippies. Just a bunch of Commies. Just a bunch of Dremords. Sure.

"They were people, Brian," she said. "Like you and me."

Brian still did not look at her, and his unease was such that she began to wonder if, maybe, he did indeed understand. Maybe he understood too well. Maybe he understood too much for him to be com- fortable save with the false and vicarious experience of death given him by his research into the Vietnam War. In the 60s, some had gone off to battle, and some had taken to the streets, and others . . . others had hidden behind their books, denying their involvement, denying their concern.

And when the revolution comes, motherf.u.c.ker . , . But the sentiment tasted stale and flat. Alouzon also understood too much now.

"Hey," said Brian after a moment, "I didn't mean to upset you. Were you there too or something?''

She was not sure what to say. "Kinda."

He turned back to his desk with studied casualness. "Well, look, if you happen to talk to Suzi sometime soon, tell her that I'll hold the position open for her until the end of the week. She'd better make up her mind by then, or we'll have to get someone else."

For a brief instant, the utter horror nearly overwhelmed Alouzon, and a part of her was suddenly screaming, clawing its way back towards a familiarity and a security that was now forever out of reach. A sob rose up in her throat, but she forced it down.

"I'll . . . I'll let her know," she said, and she groped her way out of the office and down the hall past the invisible strangeness that still burned at the edges of perception.

I've gotta get back . , .

But for now she was here in Los Angeles. The Dragon-her only link to Gryylth-was gone, and regardless of half-felt perceptions, she had to live, she had to survive.

Suzanne's purse had perished in the destruction of Helen's house, and the only money Alouzon possessed was a little over five dollars in bills and a.s.sorted change that she had scrounged out of the dresser drawers. Five dollars would not buy much food, but it would, along with a birth certificate that was mercifully vague about t.i.tles, G.o.dhood, and current appearances, allow her to procure a replacement driver's license. And with that she could withdraw funds from Suzanne's checking account.

An hour and a half later, sweating as much from the lie she was forced to live as she was from the heat, she was pulling out of the Department of Motor Vehicles lot with a license that blandly insisted that she was Suzanne h.e.l.ling. Armed with a new book of checks from Suzanne's supply, she turned the VW towards the Erewhon Market on Beverly.

She had parked and was halfway out of the car when she realized that Suzanne was too well known at the market. Someone was going to notice that the name on the license did not match the remembered face. Shaking, she sat back down, closed the door, and rested her head on the steering wheel. She felt sick-fevered and cold at the same time.