"Their work?"

"Revelation."

Jordam was still, sprawled upon the shore, and the Northchildren moved in closer, reaching out. Their hands moved over his body busily, as if testing every seam and thread.

"What's happening?"

"Beyond the Wall's protection, Northchildren wear gowns to shield them from the Seers' corruption. Their deaths are behind them, the poisons drawn out." She sighed. "If mystery commands, they'll unstitch Jordam and bear him away." She shuddered and clutched again at her side. "As they did for me once. Someday you'll know. Sometimes the sky calls."

"If mystery commands."

"Yes."

This Keeper, settling in the waterfall's crash, spoke in a voice like an orchestra of horns, and the report echoed from the mountainsides. Then it lowered its great head to the shore, resting the bristles of its long gator smile against the pebbles, shells, and whiteshards that appeared to be bones. Its ears twitched and lay back as it slipped armored fingers beneath Jordam's form and lifted him up.

"They didn't unstitch him," Auralia gasped.

The Keeper raised its head, raised its forelegs, spread its tremendous wings, and was carried quietly from the ground as if by invisible strings. It hovered a moment, turning slowly as if to take in the view for sheer pleasure. When it saw Auralia, a burst of fire escaped its nostrils and then-there was no mistaking it-it purred a long and rolling song of delight. Driving back its wings, it shot up through the air, sleek and swift, carrying Jordam away, back over the Forbidding Wall.

"What curse?" Cal-raven found himself saying. The lake shone like fire, and exotic birds drifted on its surface like a fleet of ships. Enormous fish leapt from its depths in perfect arcs like dancers. And the lights blazing at the base of the mountain were fierce, burning mist from the lake.

"The lake does not flood its banks, but look at all the waterfalls."

"It drains into many rivers. Underground. To go out across the world." Auralia's breathing came short and quick as if she were forcing herself to bear some secret wound.

"No one who stands here goes back alive, do they?" Cal-raven whispered as Auralia gripped his arm.

"Some do," she said. "But they're changed. And likely to be tolerated as fools."

Cal-raven looked at Ryllion's shell.

"Don't be afraid. It's only the outermost, which grows from the thread of mystery within. That thread is ever more important than just the mind or heart, which are so easily poisoned. But the heart, the mind, the senses-any beauty they feel and remember is given to that innermost thread, which the Northchildren withdraw and the Keepers bear away for restoration."

"How do you know all of this?"

"I'm remembering. Here. In the mist."

"Auralia." He was dizzy, his strength bleeding out. "You're not leaving me. Not a second time."

She looked up. "The first time I went out, I refused the Northchildren's gown of protection. I wanted to do more than witness. I wanted to search for my brother, to remind him how to play. So I set aside my memories and put on the shell of a child. Children can play without the older folks thinking them mad. To play there, with deep memories of the mountain's colors, I thought I might recover some of those colors from the Seers' corruption and tease them to light in the dark. Maybe my brother would notice. And what better place to reveal the colors than a house that has lost them?" Auralia tried to laugh, but it became a choke. As Cal-raven kept her from falling, she whispered, "But when you cross over, you give up your memories. And I guess I never found him. Maybe the colors will."

"So why did you come back again?"

She smiled. "It was nothing quite so selfless, I'm afraid."

He held her, felt her warmth against him. "You were born this time for me. And we've found each other. We have everything we need, Auralia. To build your house."

"It's not for us to decide."

He looked back. Billowing clouds flung themselves against the harsh stone of the northern mountainsides. "Will it play out like this forever?"

"The old song says that when the story is told, all broken threads will be reconciled. The runaways will see what they have wrought-that a hand cannot be a body, and if it tries, it dies. They will remember the joys of good work, of making things with mystery. The Northchildren will go out through time, out through the worlds. We sit in circles and tell stories of all we behold. And so we exalt the mystery. For this was ever the end of all work-to witness, remember, and illuminate." Salt glistened on her cheeks.

A sudden clamor of birds drew their attention to a small, struggling form far away on the shore.

Cal-raven staggered toward the edge of the blazing lake's frothy tide. Auralia stayed behind, and with fear in her voice, she shouted, "Oh please! Oh no!"

A boy, his clothes in rags, flesh burnt to crimson and cracked in intricate lines, was trying to crawl away from the lake and back toward the mountains.

Cal-raven shouted in dismay. He raised his sword and, in a blaze of searing stonemastery, drove its blade deep into one of the boulders on the shore. The sword stood, hilt gleaming in the mountain's light, anchored in the stone and irremovable.

But Auralia ran past him and got to the ale boy first. Setting down the trumpet, she caught him up in an embrace, seeking to calm him, urging him to stop his striving.

But the boy, his eyes wide and unseeing, fought her. "Let me go," he said in a voice as forceful as a fallen soldier's. "Get away, Northchild. There's more to do. It's not right yet. I can make it better. It's what I'm for."

"Shhh," she said quietly. "I am not a Northchild. Not yet. Dear boy, the more you strive, the more broken threads you'll find. It is beyond our capacity to reconcile them all."

Clouds cast cool blankets over them that dissolved in swirls of vapor.

"But I know how to reach them. I must find Auralia, and together we can-"

"Ale boy," she said gently. "You've done enough. You brought the slaves out of captivity. You led them to Inius Throan. They will live on as artists and prophets."

"But she's out there, and I have to be with her."

"Ale boy," she whispered, her tears splashing against his face. "She is here."

"She is out there," he insisted. "I told them I wouldn't leave until I found her." She put her hands on the sides of his face. "Pin," she said.

He went still.

She kissed his cheeks, then cradled his head in her hands. He relaxed. "Auralia," he sighed, exhausted.

She took the glass trumpet and folded his hands around it. "Do you feel this? It's perfect. It will make a perfect sound."

His fingers traced its lines. He lifted it, arms trembling, and aimed it at the sky, setting his lips against the mouthpiece, which was bright as a glowing coal.

"Go on. For all who are listening."

With a deep and shuddering breath, the ale boy released a high, piercing arrow of sound that flared from the trumpet's bright bell.

The sound-a cry of desire-brought Cal-raven to his knees beside them. As he put his hand to the boy's forehead, he saw a line of dark blood run down from Auralia's sleeve and fill her open hand. "You're hurt!" He reached for her robe and drew it off over her shoulders, leaving her draped in a fragile, silk nightgown. Through it he could see the wound-three deep gashes in her side.

"There was a viscorclaw by the river before we went through the gate," she whispered.

He shouted up at the clouds, but she seized his wrist. "Don't be afraid," she said. At her touch he began to tremble, for she was more beautiful than ever, her tenderness toward the child all the more affecting for the ugliness of the wound she'd suffered.

The trumpet blast still sang in the air, and the ale boy seemed to be listening to see just how long the clouds would sustain it.

Then came an answering note from the mountain above. The great darkness, framed by the green fringe of the hanging gardens, began to glow with the heat of a furnace. Sweeping arches of color were flung in all directions through the clouds, which were drifting down now in ever greater density.

"Listen." Auralia's gaze met Cal-raven's. "The Witnesses are singing. One of the Seers has given himself up. The Keeper has carried him home."

In that moment the clouds rolled and curled around them like waves, soft as feathers.

Together they watched a shadow appear, descending on a vast array of wings.

"It's time," said Auralia. "Look. One of the mystery's greatest dancers."

The ale boy closed his eyes, his hands still clasping the king's trumpet as if he were gathering the strength to sound another summons.

"So I wasn't fooling myself, following the Keeper's tracks."

Auralia touched Cal-raven's chest. "You've been faithful." She slid her fingers up into his hair, then leaned up into his kiss.

Cal-raven looked up again. "For one of us, this is farewell, then."

He saw with a measure of relief that it was familiar, bearing the shape he had sculpted a hundred times. And yet, there was something oddly indefinite about it as it passed between the shining light and the clouds, for it cast shadows in many directions, each one different, each one strange.

As the singing witnesses surrounded them with a song of sorrow and joy, the chorus full of voices that sounded strangely familiar, something changed.

The magnificent shadow above him divided.

Auralia and Cal-raven breathed dissonant gasps. For there was not one Keeper descending, but two.

Once again Cal-raven found that what he had perceived and said was not precisely true, and what unfolded was rather a wondrous surprise.

EPILOGUE.

any days later Kar-balter and Em-emyt took a shift guarding the black gate beneath House Auralia's kitchens.

Em-emyt disliked Tabor Jan's orders forbidding anyone to go through in search of King Cal-raven, Jordam, Ryllion, and Milora. Discussion of the matter had inspired myriad rumors and theories throughout House Auralia, and its ruler had promised to organize a second search effort, as the first had been a failure.

But Kar-balter was terrified of the black gate, so Em-emyt tried to allay his fears by changing the subject and reviewing all the recent good news, especially the absence of any viscorclaw sightings. As he did, Kar-balter opened the small jars of nuts and berries they'd brought along and were surprised by a pungent wave of slumberseed oil.

"This is unexpected," Em-emyt had time to announce before they were both asleep.

A shaft opened in the stone ceiling. A rope fell through. Knotted at intervals, it gave Luci and Margi, followed by Emeriene, Krawg, and Warney, an easy climb down.

"A few hours," said Emeriene holding her sleeve to her nose. "Thank you, girls. Now, seal up the ceiling, and come back for us when you hear the Late Afternoon Verse."

And that was how Emeriene and the two Gatherers managed to sneak through the gate in search of their friends.

They were astonished at the strange magic at work, that they could step through a door on one side of a mountain range and emerge on the other. Even more astonishing was the thick country of fog.

It was a quiet, still day, and the clouds appeared suspended, unmoving. The landscape ahead seemed only the first cautious outlines of a drawing, save for that clear and shining span of water.

They descended for a while, and then Emeriene, brushing tears from her cheeks, admitted that she could go no farther. She sat under a tree.

Krawg and Warney stared at the tree-a tall conifer, its branches spread and raised as if in praise. A bird with a tail of red ribbons stared down at them in amazement.

"Is that a kite stuck in the branches?" asked Warney. "Certainly is," muttered Krawg. "Who does it belong to, do you suppose?"

"What a mystery," said Emeriene.

"Puzzle, puzzle," said Warney, and that made Emeriene laugh through her tears, which pleased him more than he dared admit.

"What will you do while we're searching?" asked Krawg. "I'll look through the farglass."

"For Cal-raven?"

"For understanding."

Far to the south at Tilianpurth, the aging guard Wilus Caroon awoke suddenly as a massive shadow passed over and eclipsed his sunshine.

He was sitting in his wagonchair on the wall, watching the woods around him-a vast graveyard of fallen trees, where new green shoots were sprouting up with surprising speed and fecundity.

"Wasn't so long ago this place was goin' to pieces," Caroon muttered. "I'll never understand it, but I'm glad it's over."

In the yard below, a new helper-a quiet old fellow who had walked out of the trees and volunteered for service-was lighting torches with sparksticks he kept in the tangles of his beard. Caroon was still uncertain about the stranger, but he worked hard and never complained.

"Say," Caroon shouted down. "What was that shadow just flew over? A big black thing, came straight toward me, and I shooed it away. Didn't get a good look at it."

The volunteer squinted up into the sky and shrugged.

Caroon snorted. "Probably just a bird. But there've been so many rumors of a sky-man that I'm startin' to see things that aren't there." He scowled and notched an arrow to his bow anyway, just in case.

The volunteer marched up the stairs, and reaching into his vest, he offered Caroon a dry bun of bread.

"What's this?" Caroon took the bread and sniffed it.

The man didn't answer. He drew a flask from his vest, poured red wine into a cup, and handed that over.

"I should report you, you know," said Caroon. But he drank the wine anyway. "Aw, never mind. I 'spose I rather pity you. Havin' to live with that and all." He gestured to the hunch between the old man's shoulders. "Must be a burden, carrying that around all the time."

Caroon watched him trudge down to join the Bel Amicans who were working steadily to replant the Tilianpurth gardens and bring the place back to busy life. Then he looked up at the tower.

Old Bauris was back in his chamber, looking out the window and smiling up at the clouds.

Today, Partayn would arrive with a large company. Caroon grumbled to think that they were going to fill this place with beastmen. Wretched, feeble, sickly beastmen at that. "They call 'em patients," he said. "I call them a herd." Here, Cyndere and Myrton would attend to the creatures' malnourished bodies and try to teach them self-discipline.

Cyndere's scouts were combing the newborn woods for another point of access to some kind of stream. Caroon had no idea what that was about. What was wrong with the water from the well inside the bastion?