She approached, threw back her hood. "The Queen of Gryylth."

"My lady, I-"

She fixed him with a glance. Her children were all but dead, Gryylth might be dying, and a man who seemed made of equal parts madness and foolishness was sitting in her husband's chair. "You will be silent, sir," she said. "You will open this gate, and you will let me out. And when I return, you will open it again, let me in, and say nothing of it."

"My queen-"

"The penalty for treason, sir, is death."

He stared at her. The moon-a few days past full-shone straight down upon her, and she knew her eyes were defiant and commanding.

He let her out.

For an hour, Seena wandered the streets of Kings-bury, alone, undetected. She peered at the hovels, listened to the gasping breaths of the dying, smelled the odors of rot, corruption, and plague. Wanting to scream, wanting nothing so much as to run back to the Hall and rend the sorcerer with her hands, Seena forced herself to walk carefully, un.o.btrusively. She was a Gryylthan woman: she knew how not to be noticed.

But when she re-entered Hall Kingsbury, she went not to her chambers, but to the main room. This late, it was empty, and she wanted to think.

What would Cvinthil do? Vorya? Alouzon? Seena was but one woman, alone and unarmed-her very upbringing, in fact, had conditioned her to eschew anything more deadly than an eating knife-surrounded by men and weapons and magic. What could she do?

Very little, it seemed. But she had seen enough of Kingsbury and had inferred enough about Gryylth to know that doing nothing would be far worse.

Still wrapped in her cloak, she sagged against the wall, sat down on the floor, buried her face in her knees. "O G.o.ds," she said. "Help me. Help my people. Help my children."

There was no answer. But when, discouraged, despairing, she dropped her hands, her fingers touched something cold and hard that lay in the shadows and rushes against the wall. Curious, trembling, she groped at the thing, learned its shape; and at last she took it up and lifted it.

It was a sword. Not a man's sword, though. Slender and light, it seemed meant for the hand of a woman.

But only the First Wartroop carries weapons like this.

Whose was it? What had happened? With a sudden dizziness, Seena recalled that Relys and Timbrin had stayed behind when the troops had left for Vaylle. She had seen neither of them for months. Where were they now? And how had one of them willingly allowed her sword to be tossed so carelessly away?

Footsteps. Seena recognized the heavy, even tread of Gray faces, and she rose and hurried off down the corridor: back to her rooms, back to her children. But she took the sword with her.

At Highland, elaborate landscaping and topiary gave way to neatly trimmed lawns. Here was archetypal Los Angeles: small bungalows of imitation Spanish design-white walls and red tile roofs-the depression-era housing projects of what had been a modest, Southern California city serviced by the Red Car lines until the automobile had declared its ascendancy amid the growing urban sprawl.

Kyria's shields were holding admirably, and the sorceress had made herself a constant, cheerful presence among the troops. Somehow, she kept up her spells while trotting along the columns, chatting with the warriors, asking questions of the harpers and healers. It was a long hard march-the heat wave had not abated in the slightest, and asphalt and concrete were unfriendly and unyielding surfaces for feet and hooves both-but Kyria kept everyone's spirits up; and her pale face, lit by an open smile, cheered even Alouzon, who was still wondering what would happen if the Specter suddenly appeared.

Kyria, I hope you've got something up your sleeve, because I sure as h.e.l.l don't.

Past La Brea, the street was flanked by undistinguished apartment buildings, and the traffic and noise increased. There was little danger of odd sounds attracting attention here, and Kyria asked for a tune from the harpers.

"Give us something joyful," she called. A convertible raced by, leaving behind a trail of blaring rock and roll. Kyria winced, sighed, shoved a tendril of sweat-dampened hair out of her face. "Surely," she said, "we can do better than that."

The harpers conferred among themselves for a moment, then struck up what turned out to be a hymn to the G.o.ddess.

Though I am a harper and a singer I know not how to praise you, O Great Lady. Therefore, direct me, that I might bring To my music a power mightier than my own.

Kyria smiled. Dindrane nodded. Alouzon felt herself growing warmer than could be accounted for by the heat wave alone.

By midnight, they were approaching San Vicente Boulevard, which terminated many of the smaller east-west streets, Sixth among them. Here, Sixth was dark and quiet, and the harpers had fallen once again into silence.

Alouzon deliberated. "Kyria?"

The sorceress rode up. "Is something amiss?"

"We have to turn north here somewhere to get up to Sunset. Sweetzer looks okay, but I'm not sure, and we don't have time to get lost. Do you remember?"

"Some days, Alouzon, I am not sure I can remember where the San Diego Freeway goes. But I think I can recall a few things. I seem to remember riding a bicycle in this area for a long time. Solomon ..." Kyria's eyes clouded, but she shook off the pain: it belonged to another life, to another person. "Solomon kept the car by the terms of the divorce, and the settlement money was slow in coming. So Helen had to make do with two wheels for a time." She eyed the surrounding buildings-little chateau-styled apartments with gingerbread and turrets-and folded her arms. "You did not bring a map?"

"Nah. I had one in the car, but the Specter was on our tail. We didn't even have time to bring our armor."

"Indeed."

"By the way, do you have any idea what you're going to do if the Sp-?"

But Kyria had turned thoughtful, necessity forcing her to reach into an old discarded life just as Alouzon had been compelled to carry a driver's license with another woman's name on it. "I think we would do best to cut north along Sweetzer, then cross San Vicente at Drexel."

"Traffic."

"Well, yes ..." Kyria frowned.

"Never mind," Alouzon said. "We can cross in small groups. Go on."

Kyria's brow furrowed with the strain. "I think that Elevado would be best to take to the west, once we have traveled northward enough on ... say . . . Almont or Lapeer ..." She shook her head with what appeared to be an almost physical pain, but forced herself onward. "We can take Crescent or Rexford to the north. We will reach Sunset near Will Rogers Park."

"And then," said Alouzon, "it's a pretty straight shot down Sunset.''

"And then into the campus?"

"I figured we'd go down Hilgard and cut in just south of MacGowan Hall."

Following Kyria's route, the columns reached Will Rogers Park at about three in the morning. Sunset was broad, the gra.s.s on the center divider lush, and though the automatic sprinklers came on and soaked the warriors, the heat was such that no one seemed to mind save the harpers, who yelped in alarm and scrambled to cover their precious instruments.

Off to the right, the Beverly Hills Hotel was set back behind tall pines and palms, floodlights bathing its pink stucco in a daylight glow.

"Is that a king's house, Alouzon?" asked Cvinthil.

"Well . . . some rich people live there. It's actually more of an inn."

The king's eyebrows lifted. "How do they sleep with all these lights? "

"Dunno . . . I prefer Kingsbury."

"As do I, Dragonmaster." Cvinthil squinted at the sky, but in the constant false dawn maintained by the city lights, the stars were invisible. "How much further have we to travel?''

"A few miles. We're making pretty good time."

Traffic on Sunset, as Alouzon had expected, was light, but heavier than on the side streets. Fortunately, there was plenty of room on the center divider, and by breaking the columns into short lengths, she managed to keep them on the move with little interference from red lights and cross traffic.

Now the city was hidden by trees and high hedges, and aside from the cars and the washed-out sky, the way might have been taking them along a forested section of Gryylth. The troops relaxed. But at Whittier Drive the center divider ended, and the columns bunched up once again on the sidewalk and in the left lane.

Kyria looked worried. "I am just glad that there are two lanes in each direction," she said. "It is hard enough to divert these drivers." A Porsche whined by close enough that even the sorceress jumped. The car pa.s.sed, and she mopped her forehead, thoroughly wilted.

"And they're all smoking dope, too, right?" said Alouzon.

"Aye. And that makes it far worse."

No sidewalk now, but broad lawns. The way wound on past Beverly Glen, where a tall gate announced the entrance to Bel Air estates.

Kyria stopped before the gate, and as the columns pa.s.sed her by, Alouzon saw the soft shake of her head. Helen was dead. The hag was gone. Bel Air lay far in the past, but the sorceress still had a few memories left of her old home, and at least some of them were good.

Kyria bent her head quickly as though to hide tears. How many times had she driven up Beverly Glen, proud of her success and her triumphs, and spun her car into the circular driveway in front of her house? Hundreds, maybe thousands. Alouzon could not guess. But she understood Kyria's feelings, for she herself had felt something similar when, closing the door of Suzanne's apartment for the last time, she had allowed Manda and Wykla to go on ahead so that she could bid, in private, a last farewell to a lifetime.

Kyria stayed at the corner of Sunset and Beverly Glen for a long time. Alouzon was about to turn around and go to her, but with a quick clatter of hooves, Santhe appeared, and after a moment, Kyria lifted her eyes, smiled at the man she had chosen, reached out. Santhe took her hand and kissed it. Together, they rode off into the darkness that lay to the west.

When she had ridden into MacArthur Park, Alouzon had determined to pace herself and to take things calmly, but she was shaking with strain by the time the army reached Hilgard, and the sight of the large sign on the corner made her want to cry. Even at night, the letters, carved in stone, stood out in deep relief. UCLA A turn to the south. "Keep to the right now," she ordered, trying to suppress the tremor in her voice. "The entrance I want to use is just past Comstock . . . I mean ... uh ..." Curious glances from the men and women. "Never mind. Just keep right. I'll tell you where to cut in."

There was not much farther to go, and a good thing that was, because even now the sky to the east was beginning to lighten. Silent once again save for the clop of hooves and the creak of wagon wheels, the columns entered the campus. The gra.s.s of the Sculpture Garden cushioned foot fall and hoof fall, and the trickle of the fountains was a welcome relief after the dinning noise of traffic and aircraft.

Bunche Hall. The concrete underpa.s.s resounded with the movement of warriors, healers, and harpers; and more than one looked up at the pile of gla.s.s and concrete above them as though afraid that the slender supports would not prove adequate to the load.

Haines Hall appeared on the right as the columns tramped along the street that bordered d.i.c.kson Court. The flagpole at the center of the old campus held the Stars and Stripes aloft in the glare of floodlights, and beyond the glare, swimming up out of the darkness, was Kinsey Hall.

"Keep them moving, Kyria," said Alouzon, and she dropped to the ground, handed Jia's reins to one of Cvinthil's guards, and ran for the north door of the hall.

She crossed the lawn, bounded up the steps. The door was locked.

"s.h.i.t!"

Kyria appeared a moment later and laid her hands on the lock. With an audible snap, the latch opened. She bowed. "Forgive me for not following orders, Alouzon. I suspected this might be the case."

Alouzon shook her head. "I can't keep track of everything, Kyria. I can't even remember that doors in L.A. get locked. How the h.e.l.l am I supposed to handle being a G.o.d?"

Kyria shrugged softly. "And how was Marrha supposed to handle being a woman, or pregnant? And Wykla? What did you tell them in those days after their transformation?"

' 'I told them that they couldn't fight it, so they just had to go with it."

Kyria nodded. '' Exactly.''

"Yeah ..." Alouzon looked back across the lawn. She saw nothing. No horses, no columns of marching pikemen, no harpers and healers in bright Vayllen livery. Nothing. "You're right . . . but ..."

But Kyria had turned back to the invisible army, and Alouzon, recalling the imminence of sunrise, took the stairs to the second floor two at a time and burst out of the north stairwell hoping that no professors had decided to get an early start on their work this morning. But the office was deserted. The door was as she had left it hours-days-before.

With a murmured thank-you to the Grail, Alouzon entered, darted down the inner corridor and swung the door open. The gate was still there, shimmering with the glow of plexed dimensions, but the clock on one of the solid walls said 6:00.

She ran back downstairs. The lawn, while still appearing vacant at first, filled with men and women and horses and wagons as she crossed towards Haines Hall. The columns had broken up into smaller teams that were separating the supplies into easily carried bundles; and the wagons, designed to break down for travel by ship, were quickly disa.s.sembled into sections that could pa.s.s through the doors and stairwells of the hall.

The first group entered the pa.s.sage between the worlds at 6:15. More followed quickly. Men and women, already worn out with the night's exertions, puffed up the stairs carrying wheels and boards and supplies. Under the care of the priestesses of Vaylle, horses climbed docilely in threes and fours and threaded single file through the inner corridor of the archaeology office.

Marrha and Karthin stood at the north door, directing the steady stream up to Wykla, who took over at the foot of the stairs to the second floor. Manda had stationed herself in the corridor outside the office, Dindrane at the mouth of the gate. Kyria was everywhere, reinforcing the shields when the campus security trucks drove by, quickening the steps of the fatigued warriors with encouraging words, darting in and out of the gate to see that the lines were moving steadily along the interdimensional pa.s.sage.

By 6:40, the lawn was almost empty. Santhe and the Second Wartroop, acting as a rear guard, were just a.s.sembling their horses in preparation for the pa.s.sage, and the First Wartroop was climbing the stairs. Alouzon ran a hand back through her sweat-soaked hair. Almost finished. And sunrise was a good twenty minutes away. There was plenty of time for- A howl like the blast of a klaxon suddenly rang across the lawn, answered immediately by chorus of eager yelps. Glowing eyes flashed out of the bushes and paths of d.i.c.kson Court, and milling shapes appeared in the dark pa.s.sage between Royce and Haines Halls: leprous yellow bodies, mouths that glowed as with the phosphor of rotten corpses.

* CHAPTER 21 *

Alouzon was already running down the stairs. With most of the army either in transit or already in Gryylth, the hounds could not have appeared at a worse time. But what added a weight of sickness to her worry was the thought that, with this many hounds suddenly materializing, the Specter could not be far away.

The beasts milled briefly and then, in spite of Kyria's shields, charged directly at the warriors left on the lawn between the halls. Alouzon estimated their number at well over fifty, and they were ma.s.sive creatures: a few were actually the same size as the Gryylthan war horses.

Santhe was barking orders to his men. "Mount! Defensive line!"

Marrha, with Karthin at her side, descended the steps two at a time. "Fighting retreat, Santhe," she shouted as they reached their horses. "We have no time for a battle!"

Santhe's blond curls bounced as he looked up. "Aye," he said. "Ever the wiser in a fight." He brandished his sword. "Fighting retreat," he called, "as the captain orders."

Alouzon summoned Jia with a whistle and rode to help. The wartroops dropped many of the first wave of hounds instantly, but these beasts were large and determined, and by sheer weight of numbers they broke through the line. Most wheeled immediately and set upon the warriors from behind, thereby blocking the planned retreat, but several bolted for Kinsey Hall.

Alouzon severed the spine of a hound that was gathering itself for a spring onto Marrha's back, then helped her deal with the three that were snapping at her from the front. She caught a glimpse of a determined smile from the captain and heard a quick "Hail, Dragonmaster,'' but she was already turning Jia back towards the hall to intercept the hounds heading for the door.

She need not have bothered. When the hounds were halfway up the stairs, they were met by a brilliant burst of violet light, and what was left of them smoked and cartwheeled down the brick steps, leaving nothing more behind than a thin smear of black ash.

Kyria had appeared at the north door, and the cl.u.s.ter of stars at her shoulder scintillated in the light of the approaching dawn as she gathered double handfuls of the night, held them to her breast until they glowed with violet intensity, and flung them at the hounds. Flat-trajectoried and quick, the bolts drove straight into the ma.s.sed cl.u.s.ters of the beasts, and where the energy did not incinerate them on the spot, it tumbled them over the lawn like bowling pins.

But though Kyria could help, she dared not intervene magically when the hounds closed in on the members of the' wartroops. Backing steadily towards the steps of the building, the warriors had to do most of their own fighting.

Alouzon plunged into the thick of the pack, feeling a sense of angry release as she hacked glowing flesh and smashed the Dragonsword's pommel into ranks of needle teeth. These hounds, she knew well, were but symbols of the war she had protested, emblems of all wars and all suffering. At other times, in other conflicts, they stayed out of sight, dragging down the wounded and the innocent invisibly. But in creating Vaylle and Broceliande, she had made them real, visible, physical.

The Hounds of War. The Hounds of h.e.l.l. The craven, b.e.s.t.i.a.l things that made battles and killing what they were. Alouzon slew them without qualm.

If I'm gonna be some kind of G.o.d, this kind of s.h.i.t is gonna end. You hear that?

Jia took a vicious bite in his left shoulder that, placed a few inches farther back, would have severed Alouzon's leg. She felled the hound, but Jia was left limping in pain: the phosphor, saturating the wound, burned its way in slowly.

"Easy boy," she said as she battered away another beast. "We'll get you out of here in one piece."

Time was growing short. Moment by moment, the sun was nearing the horizon, and in another few minutes the pa.s.sageway into Gryylth would dissolve. Under the direction of Santhe and Marrha, the wartroops were keeping the hounds at bay while backing towards the hall, but the glowing beasts were numerous and strong, and there was a good chance that they would follow the warriors into the gate and so continue the battle in the darkness and void between the Worlds.

A flash of incandescent light. Alouzon looked up to see a campus security truck pull down the street that bordered d.i.c.kson Court. It stopped, its tires clawing at the asphalt, and a searchlight stabbed out at the carnage on the lawn.

Faced with battle, Kyria had allowed the shields to dissipate, and Alouzon knew what the officers in the truck were seeing: writhing, dying beasts that looked like nightmares come to life, and, locked in battle with them, sword-wielding warriors and a sorceress who dispensed seething globes of magic like so many water balloons.

The truck spun a quick U-turn and vanished into the darkness, Alouzon could image what the radio operator at the security office was hearing, what, in fact, the Los Angeles Police Department would hear in another minute.

Cursing, she hacked more furiously, leaning down from her saddle to scythe a hound's legs out from under it as it ran at Jia's wounded shoulder. Up at the top of the steps, Kyria was placing her bolts with care. The ranks of the hounds were thinning, but not fast enough.

With the hounds still snapping and biting at them, the First and Second Wartroops had reached the base of the stairs. Here was the worst prospect: a fighting retreat up a long flight of brick and stone steps, with a door at the top that would allow the pa.s.sage of only one warrior at a time. And by Alouzon's watch, barely ten minutes remained before the gate would disappear.

Alouzon galloped onto the carca.s.s-strewn lawn that lay behind the hounds, slashing at hindquarters so as to distract the beasts. Kyria continued with her bolts.