Over the green land the spectral army stamped, armor ablaze, pennants snapping.

Moving a foot and more above the ground.

And as they thundered past in blazing splendor, the rose shrubs beside the moat seemed to straighten, to raise their branches and climb up into walls of blue-gray and green, their foliage twisted like some wild, living thing.

The leader raised a sword of steel and crystal, then cried a single word of command-low and rich, the remnant of some old, forgotten tongue.

Gray shivered and drew her hands across her watering eyes, even then unable to tear her gaze away.

As she watched, speechless, the foliage formed a living arch above the riders" heads. Every stem burst into wild bloom-crimson, fuchsia and white scattered against a vivid sea of green.

She caught back a moan. Dropping her sketch pad, she stumbled to her feet and spun around, putting her back to the moat.

A dream. A mirage. Merely a trick of light and shadow, just as Marston had warned her...

Behind her came a wild, excited shout as the phantom company thundered onward, ever closer to the steps of the gatehouse, where the great oak door creaked open in welcome.

And then there was a new sound, a high female cry.

Shivering, Gray opened her eyes.

A woman ran from the opened gate, her long gown gleaming golden in the sunlight. The man at the front of the line let out a shout and shot forward, bending low and swinging her up before him on the saddle.

Suddenly Gray felt a savage pain tear at her heart, a raw anguish such as she had never known before.

Tears began to flood down her face. Her breath came sharp and ragged as she swayed beneath a flood of churning emotions beyond logic or comprehension.

"N-no! It-it"s a dream, all of it!"

Fingers trembling, Gray rubbed her eyes willing the madness to pass.

Overhead she heard the shrill cry of a kestrel. An errant gust of wind played through her long hair.

Slowly she opened her eyes.

The parade was gone, the bank empty. Only the roses moved now, their dense petals nodding sleepily on the far shore.

Gray fought back a sob, wrenched by a raw, ineffable longing. For what, she could not say.

Clenching her fingers, she stared at the sunny ground. "Way too much sun and fresh air for you, Gray Mackenzie, to say nothing of Marston"s excellent cooking! But now the hocus-pocus is over. It"s time to get back to work."

With a sigh, she looked down at the sketchbook dangling from her fingers. At least this one was passable. But the sketch still lacked something.

She yawned, brushing a glistening strand of hair from her eyes.

Pondering the problem, she sank down against a sun-washed boulder and braced her back.

She stifled another yawn and smoothed the half-finished sheet. Yes, there was something decidedly troubling about that south tower jutting out over the moat. The proportions were all wrong...

And that was Gray"s last clear thought.

A moment later, her eyes blinked, then fluttered shut.

Her head eased back against the sun-warmed stone. Unnoticed, the charcoal pencil slipped from her fingers.

HE SLID OUT OF THEshimmering noonday heat, his face angular, brooding.

In taut silence he stood, an imposing figure in dark clothes that seemed ill-suited to his powerful frame. His face was bronzed, carved with deep lines. Smaller lines of laughter, care and concentration radiated out from the corners of his glittering eyes.

It was his eyes that moved now, hooded yet keen, blazing from slate-gray depths. They flowed over the woman before him, anger and resentment warring with even more primitive emotions.

Why are you here?It was a silent shout of frustration. Of confusion. Of something that bordered on pain.

And Adrian Draycott was not used to being confused about anything.

Another test? he asked himself, as the wind tossed silky auburn strands about her shoulders.

Damn and blast, he had not known it could be so troubling, so personal, so intenselyphysical to return this way!

Frowning, Adrian stared down at his arms and legs, slanting a look of particular disgust at his dusty shoes.

By heaven, there was no dignity in such clothes! No beauty. No grace whatsoever.

But your velvets and lace were put down centuries ago. Right now they lie hidden in dusty, forgotten chests, fallen to threads and fragments.

Slowly Adrian dragged a hand through his long black hair. Yes, this new age, this garish, clamorous age, called for different clothes and he must adopt them or withdraw.

Suddenly a sleek shadow loomed at his feet, long tail at witch.

"What of the danger, old friend?" he asked of the animal beside him.

The cat meowed softly, his amber eyes never leaving Adrian"s face.

"So bad as that?" For a moment, rage coursed through the abbey"s dark-clad guardian. If only he could see more clearly! In the past, he had always been able to summon up at least some intuition of the dangers that threatened his beloved home.

But not now. Not withher on Draycott lands.

With her before him, Adrian found he couldn"t think normally at all. All he could do wasfeel.

All he could do was drown in the sweet scent of her, in the silver heat that spiraled through him as he watched the soft rise and fall of her breasts.

Her hair was really quite extraordinary, he thought, fighting an urge to run his hand along its silken length. In the sunlight the auburn strands flashed in a thousand shades of red and bronze.

The wind caught a thick curl and tossed it playfully about her cheek. Adrian felt a sharp prick of jealousy that he could not do the same, burying his fingers in those gleaming depths.

His hands curled into fists as he was rocked by a knifelike desire. Bone by bone, it slammed down his spine, from his head to his feet.

He stumbled backward, breathless, fighting for control.

Whowas this woman? Why did she affect him so? And what, in the name of heaven, was he doing here beside her, with a physical ache that threatened to burst his tenuous control any second?

Only inches away, the subject of these ruminations shifted. Sighing, she turned her head. Her fingers brushed the sun-warmed stone.

As he stared down at her, Adrian felt a need too long suppressed explode to life.

Dear God, he had never expected, never imagined- He caught his hand just as it rose to comb through her hair. To skim the perfect curve of her cheek.

Stay clear!he warned himself grimly, even while his fingers trembled at the effort.Look, advise-assist, even. But she is not for you to touch. For, like the rose, she bears fierce thorns.

Even for a between-worlds creature like yourself.

But still, he stared-and still, he dreamed, pondering the sleeping face before him, luminous in all its innocence and peace.

For a moment, regret clung to him, as raw as a winter wind. His eyes narrowed, dark with regret and a thousand shattered dreams. He shivered, feeling images that were too faint to be called memories press at his head.

But when he tried to seize them, they vanished like thistledown on the wind.

At that moment Adrian"s eyes fell to the sketch pad balanced precariously on Gray"s knees. An odd, sad smile twisted his hard lips.

"So you love my abbey, don"t you, Gray Mackenzie?" His voice was carried in the whisper of the wind, in the drone of the passing bees and the murmur of the moat.

Already he was fading. He could feel the telltale lightening, the not quite painful tingle at wrist and ankle.

Surely not so soon?

He lifted his head to the sun, closed his eyes and centered his thoughts.

Slowly the tingling faded. With a faint sigh, he knelt to study Gray"s sketch more intently.

You"ve come close, woman. Perhaps too close.

Something about the sketch left him distinctly uncomfortable-naked and vulnerable. Perhaps it was because no one had ever before come so close to capturing the abbey"s heart as she had just done.

And in a very real sense, Adrian Draycott knew that the abbey"s heart washis heart.

Yes, you"re good, Gray Mackenzie. You"re more than good.

Nearly as skillful as you are innocent and beautiful, in fact. But that stunning innocence of yours is deadly. Already, it captures me, entraps me, until I can think of nothing else but you.

Is that what you"ve come here for? To threaten every bloody thing I"ve ever loved and valued and fought to protect?

Adrian expected no answer, of course. But as he studied the hot blaze of the sun in her hair, he had the raw certainty that the next hours would bring danger-and a testing such as he had never known before.

Yet even with that knowledge, he could not seem to pull his eyes away.

Catching himself with a muffled curse, Adrian forced himself to look away. As he did so, he saw Gray"s rendering of the south tower. It was slightly off, he realized. The tower"s curve should have been broader and the crenels deeper. The moat, too, was off, twisting to the right where it should have veered slightly toward the left...

A wrenching pain exploded up his spine. The day flashed like lightning before his eyes. He felt reality heave and twist, then slowly begin to fade.

Or perhaps to return.

It was all a question of perspective, after all.

Slowly he bent down, his face lined with pain as he struggled to finish one last task before his vision faded and the darkness reclaimed him.

Grimacing, he shoved the charcoal pencil into Gray"s fingers, circled her hand and began to draw.

THE SUN POUREDlike warm honey onto Gray"s closed eyelids. She swept a hair from her eyes and stretched dreamily.

Her eyes finally opened. She frowned, looking down and searching for her pencil. Everything was blurred, her head throbbing.

Too much sun, she thought, rubbing her stiff neck, feeling as if she"d been asleep for a hundred years.

Eight hundred years, more like.

Now where hadthat thought come from? she wondered. And then she froze, recalling the strange images she had seen across the moat. Wide-eyed, she studied the far bank, recalling her dream of the night before.

Chill darkness lit by a score of beacon fires.

Danger on every side.

She gasped. Could the two things be somehow related?

Her fingers tensed and a moment later, the charcoal pencil in her hand snapped cleanly in two.

Dear Lord, what was happening to her here? What was it about this beautiful, crazy place that affected her so?

A gust of wind eddied up from the moat and tugged at the corner of her sketch pad. Slowly the paper rose. Whispering softly, it fell open to her last sketch.

At least ithad been her sketch. But no longer. Now it showed the mark of a stranger"s powerful hand.

A shiver worked through Gray as she stared down into a landscape of dreams, captured in exquisite, inspired strokes such as she had never seen before in all her years of work and study.

At that moment, Gray realized she was looking down into a distant age and a world long gone.

Into a valiant time, when the world rang to the cries of heroes and magic was commonplace.

Each stroke captured the power of that distant era, suggesting but never quite revealing whence the magic sprung.

More dreams?

She shivered, studying the proud walls sketched upon the paper. Wrought with strength, they were yet insubstantial, their edges softened and blurred. Like poured emotion, like feeling made tangible, they stood with all their textures dreamlike and hazy.

And at the same time stunningly real.

The sketch was utterly different from her own work, which was almost superrealistic. In fact, the sketch was totally unlike any work Gray had ever seen before.

And it was absolutely beautiful, almost alive somehow, a dream spun of charcoal, patience, and love. A love so strong that Gray could almost touch it.