A spurt of severed arteries, a gurgle of vocal chords that had lost all connection with the lungs that had given them voice, and Helwych's head dropped to the floor. The eyes .closed. The darkness evaporated.

Seena was curled up on the floor, fetal, sobbing, her hands pressed tightly to her head. "My children . . . my children ..."

The captain fell to her knees beside her. "My queen, Alouzon told us what Helwych did. We shall do everything we can. Kyria is a powerful sorceress, and I am sure that-"

But her rea.s.surances were cut short by the detonation of a sh.e.l.l in the street outside the Hall, and the wall nearest the blast buckled inward, showering the interior with thatch and filling the air with the dust of pulverized mud and plaster. Another blast followed quickly after. Splinters and stone fragments spattered down like rain.

Seena writhed free of Relys's arms, picked herself up, and stumbled towards the door that led to the inner corridor. "Ayya! Vill!"

Beslimed with the sorcerer's blood, Relys struggled to her feet. "Wykla, Manda: protect the queen," she shouted, and then she ran for the door of the hall with Gelyya and Timbrin following.

Sh.e.l.ls were falling on Kingsbury, powdering the wood and mud of the refugee hovels. Between the detonations, Relys heard the sounds of grenades and machine guns, saw, inexplicably, tracers directed into the town.

A group of Grayfaces suddenly rounded the corner, gleaming shadows slipping through the darkness. They saw Relys and her companions and leveled their weapons, but when Gelyya let off five rounds in a chattering burst, they ducked for cover.

Calmly, Gelyya slung her rifle, slipped a fragmentation grenade from her belt, pulled the pin. The strength of her arm was no match for that of a man, but she gave the bomb plenty of loft. It plummeted to the ground just behind the soldiers, and as she and her comrades dropped flat, it mingled its detonation with that of a mortar round.

In the darkness, the town was bright with explosions and fire. Mortars were pounding their way along the street, sending houses and shops tumbling to the ground, burying whatever inhabitants-alive or dead- remained within them. A burst from an M60 chain-sawed its way through the wood of the palisade, and now the hounds were coming too, pouring over the street like a river of slime.

And now more Grayfaces. And planes. And artillery. From out of the distance came the sound of the detonation of five hundred and thousand pound bombs as the B52s began a pa.s.s. The earth shuddered. The Grayfaces and hounds closed on the Hall.

But a violet lance darted suddenly up from somewhere just inside the city walls and filled the night sky with the glowing fragments of bombers, and the approaching Grayfaces found themselves being ridden down by the First and Second Wartroops. Marrha's blond braid was as bright as Santhe's curls as, side by side, they led their men and women straight into the gas-masked soldiers, who, taken off guard, had no chance to lift their weapons before the horses' hooves crushed them and the riders' swords found their marks.

Relys was staring at Marrha. Wife and mother she was: she could have stayed away from the battle. But instead, she was here, in the middle of a town that was swiftly being destroyed by explosives and bullets.

Her eyes teared. Marrha. A woman. Maybe- Another wave of bombs began to track in along the distant fields, making its way straight for the hill.

Baying. Howls. Now Kyria was galloping along the street, heading for the Hall, pursued by a pack of hounds. Eyes the color of a gas flame were barely ten yards from her, eager and hungry; but she pulled her horse up short, wheeled, and pointed. The sea of white light that flowed from her hand submerged the hounds and left nothing behind.

The B52s were still coming, the hill shaking with the advancing detonations as though it would split.

"We have taken the walls of the city," the sorceress gasped. "But everything has gone mad!"

Marrha turned her gaze on Relys. "Captain?"

Still dazzled by her former commander, Relys could not, for a moment, find words. "Helwych is dead," she said at last, and she remembered to spit after uttering the name.

Kyria sagged at the news. "Then the Specter is in control now. And the Grayfaces will do as they please. And Alouzon ..."

The bombs were approaching, sweeping towards the town like a wrecking ball. Kyria dismounted and lifted her arms, but Relys sensed that it was going to be useless. This battle would go on and on, increasing in ferocity and bloodshed until there was nothing left.

But, abruptly, there was silence.

The bombs and the bombers vanished. The gunshots faded. The mortars ceased. The Grayfaces and hounds evaporated. In a moment, the only sound was that of the wind blowing through the splintered ruins. The town, the world, the heavens . . . all seemed hushed, as though poised between two futures, two fates. Even the screams of the wounded were no more. But there was no sense of death: only of waiting.

Waiting . . .

Kyria, shaking, slowly bent her knee and bowed her head. "O most Sacred Cup," she said softly, "accept that through the blood of many has the soul of one been purified."

Dindrane was still losing blood by the dishful, but she pulled Alouzon in the direction of the Tower. "Come, G.o.ddess. Please ..."

Tearing her eyes away from the sight of the grave that was glowing as if filled to the brim with white hot magma, Alouzon followed her priestess, at first blindly and in shock, then, as her awareness of what was happening increased, willingly. Finally, she ran, leading Dindrane, dragging her along until they reached the far side of the cemetery.

A wrought iron fence again barred the way, but Alouzon did not hesitate, and the Dragonsword cut through the iron bars effortlessly. And although she heard police sirens screaming up the normally tranquil avenues of the cemetery-racing to cut her off-she knew that the Grail would allow no mundane forces to interfere with what lay ahead. If there was to be a final test, it would be through the choice and methods of the Sacred Cup itself.

She clambered through the fence and drew Dindrane after her. The priestess' skin was as white as alabaster from blood loss, but she followed; and together the two women began to struggle up the slope towards the vision of golden radiance that had appeared above them.

Alouzon climbed, breaking a path for Dindrane, but the scrub oak and sage of the California mountains were gone, replaced now by twining thorns that dug into her clothes and flesh, ripping with points as sharp as sorrow, methodically stripping her of everything save the Dragonsword. But she struggled on, and when, naked, bleeding, exhausted, she felt that surely no more could be taken from her, the thorns dug even deeper: into her thoughts, into her memory.

Here was a thicket that took away Joe Epstein. Here a knot that rooted out the other faceless and nameless men who had shared her bed and had gone away with small pieces of her heart and soul. Here was a ravine- steep-sided and wide-filled with twisted branches and long, eager spikes: it grappled with her abortion, her despair, and the empty apartment that had been waiting for her on a rainy afternoon in Dallas.

It had hurt then. It hurt now. But she kept climbing, leaving past pain and old memory hanging in shreds on the reddened thorns.

In spite of her torment, she was mildly surprised that the thorns were not reaching for Kent. But after a time, after the anger had been taken, after the last shreds of resentment had been spitted like a shrike's victim, she realized that those memories of death were, in their own way, empowering her, strengthening her. And so, paradoxically, she struggled to the top of the thorn-studded slope and stood at last at the edge of the wide lawn surrounding the Tower, buoyed and fired by a belief and an urge for creation and re-creation that took for its roots the utter despair and sorrow that was Kent State.

There had been hope once. There would be hope again. She could not resurrect her cla.s.smates or undo the grief, but she could make a world live.

The Tower rose up: white, unblemished. Alouzon's skin was a tapestry of deep red wounds, and her hair was matted with blood and dust. Dindrane, who had been allowed to pa.s.s through the thorns unscathed, stepped up beside her, as pale as the Tower. "I can heal you, G.o.ddess," she said softly.

"Nah ..." Alouzon shook her head. "We don't have the time. Besides ..." She tipped her head back, gazed at the single window of the Tower. ". . . it's gonna have to take me as I am. None of this s.h.i.t about white samite robes."

And, with Dindrane, she stepped onto the lawn.

The sirens and the sounds of the helicopters cut off as though a switch had been thrown. The Dragon and the Worm, still locked in battle that could only lead to mutual negation, vanished. Los Angeles disappeared. The Tower stood on a sunlit hilltop surrounded by mist.

Dindrane was murmuring. "A time that is not a time, and a place that is not a place ..."

The door to the tower was unfigured. There was nothing left for it to depict. Only a single carved word appeared in the middle of the expanse of dark wood: Listinoise.

Alouzon stared at it for a moment, traced it with her finger. What would this door say for the next Grail-seeker? Los Angeles? Probably.

Without a word, she turned the latch and pushed into the white marble room beyond. The air was filled with a golden glow like a mist, but the floor was stained with blood and with the pa.s.sage of muddy feet; and when she had climbed to the top of the stairs, she found the landing strewn with splintered wood and broken gla.s.s.

And from the door ...

Light. Light so bright, so radiant that it had long since pa.s.sed from the visible to the invisible, a flow of quintessential luminescence that, ephemeral though it was, formed nonetheless a harrowing torrent that flowed through Alouzon and blurred her vision with the pain of imminent fulfillment.

She stood at the threshold. She did not look. It was not time to look yet.

She took off her sword and put it into Dindrane's hands. "Take it," she said. "I'm not going to need it anymore. Take it. It ... it might help you."

"I shall guard it well, G.o.ddess."

"I . . ." The Grail was within sight. All she had to do was look, enter, take. But she had responsibilities to those who loved her, to whose whom she, in turn, loved. This was the first. There were many others. And she would fulfill them all. "I don't know what's gonna happen when I go in there," she said. "I don't know what'll happen to you. I . . ."

The door. And then the Grail. And after that her knowledge ended. All knowledge ended. She wanted to say something rea.s.suring, could think of nothing. She did not know. She could not lie.

"I'll try to make sure you get home, Dindrane."

The priestess-pale, her arm still streaming-was nodding. " 'Tis without regret I will be in any case, Great Lady. I am your priestess. I have performed my duty. I am satisfied."

"Yeah ..." The radiance was stripping away even more than the thorns. Alouzon was no longer sure of her own name, no longer certain of her past; but, holding to the redeeming memory of murders a decade old, she stooped and kissed Dindrane on the forehead. "Love you, kiddo."

And then she turned, groped her way to the door, stepped through.

The light dimmed so that she could see, but the torrent remained. Ahead of her, floating just above the surface of a simple stone altar, beating like a live thing, was a Cup the color of a hand held up to the sun. Its bowl as broad as the welcoming arms of a young child, it was br.i.m.m.i.n.g with water, overflowing with water, streaming with water.

Alouzon approached. She might have knelt, but the action would have been superfluous. She might have prayed, but she had no one to whom to address a supplication. She was, and the Grail was, and that was all.

But she remembered that there were words that she had to speak, and, standing before the Cup, she spoke them.

"I know who You are," she said. "I know Whom You serve. You called Me. I'm here."

Take.

She was not even trembling as she bent, reached, gathered the Grail into her arms as one might lift a sleeping infant, cuddling the smooth baby-flesh soothingly so as not to disturb a gentle sleep more sacred than shouts, cries, gurgles ...

The water flowed over her arms, over her body. The wounds from the thorns vanished at its touch. She felt warm.

Drink.

"Yeah," she murmured. "Yeah, that's it."

The bowl was filled with stars, suns, worlds-all shimmering in liquescent motion. There were continents, lovers' wondering eyes, blessings, hope, expiation ...

. . . redemption ...

"Yeah ..."

And she lifted the Grail and let the waters cascade into her mouth, into her heart, into her soul. They swept through her and widened her, stretched her affections and her powers out to contain the universe, then folded them back inward to swaddle the world she had guarded and guided, the world she had chosen, the world that had chosen her. And when the flood was done, there was no one left who could call herself Alouzon or Suzanne, no Kent or Vietnam, no Dragon, no Worm, no Specter-nothing, in fact, save quiet divinity and omnipotent, unconditional love.

* CHAPTER 25 *

Kingsbury was silent. The stars were bright. In the east, the thin crescent of a waning moon cast halfhearted shadows on the tumbled remains of the hovels, the bombed-out earthworks and palisades, the cratered streets, the burned and empty buildings.

And beyond the town, Kyria knew, was a pocked and half vitrified hill. And beyond that was a rolling, lifeless waste that went on and on. And beyond that . . .

She sat down on a pile of rubble and covered her face. It was not just the town. It was not the fires and the wounded and the peaked faces of the refugees whose last meal had been a crumb of bread three days before. It was the fact that the destruction and famine and death continued for miles and leagues, spreading like a metastasked cancer throughout the body of Gryylth.

The hooves of Cvinthil's horse made hollow clop-ping sounds as he rode towards Hall Kingsbury, and Darham rode at his side, shaking his head dejectedly while he attempted to wrap a strip of bandage about a particularly grievous wound. Like the Corrinian, Cvinthil was wounded, b.l.o.o.d.y, his bare arms and legs scored and smoking from hounds' teeth, his skin spattered by flying shrapnel. But even had he been unscathed, the look in his eyes and the set of his shoulders were such that what refugees were left alive and willing to stand up would have stared at him with no more recognition on their faces than there was now.

But Helwych's men knew him and, disarmed and under the impa.s.sive eyes of the First and Second War-troops, they shrank back at his approach. Cvinthil paused before them, regarded them evenly, handed his cloak to an attendant. There was no haste in his manner. There was no anger. Both had been burned out of him as though one of the white phosphorus bombs that had scarred his land had found a mark in his own heart. Quietly, almost politely, he asked the prisoners if they would surrender to his mercy, and when they had said yes in scattered whispers, he told the war-troops to keep them under guard until he was prepared to pa.s.s judgment.

Darham spoke. "Treason is a deadly crime, brother."

Cvinthil nodded slowly. "Aye," he said. "And so is stupidity, of which I myself am guilty.'' A gust of wind blew smoke into his eyes, and he paused and wiped them. "There is too much death in this land. I will not add to it now."

Kyria stood up, paced slowly to him, bowed. She was a sorceress and a councilor of Gryylth. She had to say something. "What do you command, my king?"

He stared, unseeing, as if the thought of uttering a command in such a place was obscene. Like death, there had been too many commands in Gryylth. "Bring the supply wagons into the city," he said at last. "Feed the hungry. Heal the sick and injured. Care for everyone as best you can, whether friend or onetime enemy." He looked at Kyria at last. "Where is my wife?"

"In the Hall, my king," she said. "She is alive."

"My children ... are they. . . ?"

She shook her head, trying not to show the sick helplessness with which she had confronted the hideous web of sorcery that had ensnared Ayya and Vill. Helwych-schooled by the Specter, fired by his warped ambition-had done his work well. "Given time, lord, I might ..." She shook her head again. "But not now.''

And beyond Ayya and Vill, even supposing she could unweave Helwych's magic without killing them, there was more. There was the land itself. What could she do for the land?

Cvinthil nodded, his eyes empty. "I will go to them," he said simply, and he rode into the courtyard of the Hall, alone.

Relys was leaning on a sword that still dripped with Helwych's blood. "Sorceress," she said softly, "you can do nothing for the children? "

Kyria turned away. Among the ruined hovels, beneath the shattered buildings, there were people who needed healing, food, rest, and some a.s.surance that the nightmare was over. The first three she could provide. The last, though ...

"I cannot do many things." She felt empty, drained, the flow of magic that had sustained her throughout the battle now replaced by a cold knowledge of inflicted death and a boneweariness that made her want to curl up in a small dark place-away from Santhe, away from friends, away from everything-and cry herself to sleep. She, too, needed some a.s.surance that the nightmare was over.

The men and women of the army were already probing the ruins for survivors, fanning out through the town to tend the wounded. The Vayllens were arriving also: the priestesses with determined steps, the harpers with a song that blended with and soothed the cries of the helpless.

Kyria paused at the nearest building. Of stone and wood, it had caved in beneath a mortar round. A child was crying from somewhere within the wreckage, and, at her side, Relys's womb was an aching void. Why is it always the G.o.ddam kids ?

One of the women of the First Wartroop was calling out from the tumbled stone: "I have found her. Someone give me a bit of rope."

Relys took the coil from Timbrin and went to help. A young girl was dragged from the ruined house. Kyria bent over her, her hands moved with gestures of power, and in a moment, Relys was helping the child to her feet. "Come, Vyyka," said the warrior with uncharacteristic gentleness, "there is food. Come with me."

"Mother ..." Vyyka wept. "They all ..."

"Come." And Relys led the girl off.

Gryylth, as a world, was complete. Alouzon was a G.o.ddess. Silbakor's reason for existence was gone, and so the Great Dragon had faded back into the obscure abstractions of physical law out of which it had sprung. But as Kyria worked among the refugees and warriors-making wounded flesh whole, curing disease, banishing death-she felt the terrible loneliness. Divine Will was a dispa.s.sionate and objective thing, and, in effect, Gryylth, Corrin, and Vaylle were on their own now, left to make what they could of a ruined land, a decimated people, and grieving hearts.

The digging, healing, and harping went on. The dawn brightened. Pink and crimson splashed the eastern sky. And as Kyria finished with a final healing-closing a wound, mending shattered bones-Alouzon's words came back to her softly, like the whisper of a lover: I've always just wanted to be friends with everyone. That's not gonna change.

Kyria lifted a dirty sleeve, wiped at her face. "I would like that," she murmured. "I would like that very much."

The woman she had healed was puzzled. "My lady?"

Kyria shook her head, patted her arm. "Nothing. A hope, that is all."

The rising sun glittered on the eastern horizon as Kyria made her way back to the Hall. She wanted to sleep, but she knew that before bed would come councils, and plans, and suggestions, and desperate strat- egies, and wild hopes. But nothing, not even magic, could change the fact that Gryylth had no food and no hope of growing any for years.

But when she reached what was left of the palisade, she noticed that the shadows were fleeing eastwards, back towards the dawn; and, turning, she saw that there was brightness in the west, a white radiance above the mountains that made even the tarnished and dusty bosses of the warriors' armor glitter as though freshly polished.

Puzzled, wondering, Kyria shaded her eyes against the light, and from the Hall behind her, she heard a child's voice: bright, sudden. "Mama! Mama!"