Twilight was settling down over the foothills of western Kweron when they rejoined Eliar, Andine, and Gher at the camp back in the trees.

"Is she the one?" Gher asked Althalus.

"Emmy seems to think so," Althalus replied.

"She's awfully pretty, isn't she?"

"Yes, she is. That almost got her burned alive. The priest in her village had a habit of burning pretty girls at the stake. Pretty girls gave him naughty thoughts, and he seemed to believe that using them for firewood was the best way to get rid of those thoughts."

"Did you kill him?" Gher demanded fiercely.

"I gave it some thought, but Emmy talked me out of it. I love Emmy dearly, but she can get so unreasonable sometimes. She doesn't approve of killing anything you don't plan to eat."

"If you want me to, I'll talk with Eliar. Then you could sort of distract Emmy, and Eliar and I could sneak back to that village and kill the priest."

"She'd find out," Althalus said rather sadly. "Then she'd yell at us for at least a week."

'I heard that, Althalus.' Emmy's voice was accusatory.

'I'm not at all surprised, Em. If you'd keep your nose out of things that don't concern you, you wouldn't hear so much that offends you.'

'Do you think you could shorten Gher's leash just a bit? He's an absolute savage.'

'I rather like him. Do we want to have Leitha read the Knife this evening?'

'Let's wait until morning. I think I'd better work on her just a bit. She really doesn't want any part of what we're doing.'

'Did any of us?'

'Behave yourself, pet.'

'Yes, dear.'

The forest was dark and tangled, and the sky was steely grey. Althalus had lost his way, though he could not remember exactly where he'd been going before he'd entered this gloomy wood. His mind seemed to wander, and each time he tried to bring it back into focus, the hollow sound of wailing blotted out his thoughts, leaving him to grope mindlessly through the tangled vines and brush. It seemed that there was no end to this forbidding forest, Gut with a kind of helpless resignation he grimly pushed on.

His mind became suddenly alert, and he struggled up through thought and memory as tangled as the dark wood itself even as the hollow wail pulled him back into the depths of the world Ghend had woven about him like the web of some dark spider.

"She comes," the trees sang. "She comes," the vines replied. "She comes!" the hollow sky shrieked. "Fall down before her in abject surrender!"

And Ghend walked once more through the wood and across the plain as the day wore on back to sunrise. "And how shall you greet her, my thief?" Ghend demanded of Althalus as his eyes took fire.

"I shall defy her," the thief replied, "even as I defy you, and even as I defy your master."

"Your Puny defiance is of no moment, Althalus," Ghend of the burning eyes declared in tones of deepest contempt. "For Gelta, Queen of the Night, shall overcome you, and I, servant of Darkness, shall bear you down into the pit, and Daeva, master of all, shall claim your soul."

And Althalus laughed. "Your illusion has no truth, Ghend, but clinge to it if you must. Hold your illusion tightly to your breast, and be as wary as a man can be. But in spite of all your care, I shall filch your illusion from out of your arms and turn the sun once more into its proper course. Time will not return to the place it has left behind. Your illusions are folly, and your curses hollow. I cast my defiance into the teeth of the Queen of the Night, and I cast my defiance into your teeth, servant of Darkness, and even more I cast my defiance into the teeth of him who is your master, but never mine."

And Ghend screamed.

And Althalus woke up.

'Are you mad?' Emmy almost shrieked at him, her voice reverberating inside his head.

'That's a little hard for me to know, Em,' he replied calmly. 'Crazy people don't know that they're crazy, do they? I think we talked about that back in the House a few times. I just thought it might be sort of interesting to turn the tables on Ghend. He's trying to play with reality, but I'm a master at that. I know all sorts of ways to change the rules of any game he can devise.'

'You shouldn't be so surprised, Dweia,' Leitha's soft voice murmured. 'Isn't this why you hired him in the first place?'

'You're not supposed to be in here, Leitha!' Emmy said sharply.

'Just curious, Dweia,' Leitha replied. 'You can't really keep me out, you know.'

"Do you ladies suppose you could go someplace else to discuss this?" Althalus asked. "I'd like to get some sleep, and you're making a great deal of noise in there."

The sun was coming up when they awoke again, and Althalus took Eliar and Bheid out into the woods to make a quick search of the surrounding area. "This isn't exactly friendly territory, gentlemen," he cautioned them. "The Kwerons themselves don't pose much of a threat, but we're a little too close to Nekweros for my comfort." He'd decided to keep Ghend's visit during the night to himself.

When they returned to camp, they found Andine and Leitha deep in some kind of discussion and Gher sitting nearby with a bored look on his face. The boy's face brightened when he saw them. "Did you find anything?" he asked hopefully.

"We saw a deer," Eliar replied. "No people, though."

"Let's feed the horses, gentlemen," Althalus suggested. "Then I'll see about some breakfast."

"I was starting to think you'd forgotten," Eliar said. "I was just about to remind you."

"What are the ladies talking about, Gher?" Bheid asked as they walked over to where the horses were picketed.

"Clothes, mostly," Gher replied. "Before that, they were talking about hair. They seem to be getting along fairly well. Of course, Emmy's lying in Andine's lap, so she might be keeping them from getting into any arguments."

"Emmy is a girl cat, Gher," Eliar reminded him. "She might be interested in clothes and hair, too."

After they'd tended to the horses, they rejoined the ladies, and Althalus made breakfast for them.

"Isn't that the strangest thing you ever saw?" Eliar said to Leitha.

"Very peculiar," she agreed, watching with a certain surprise as Eliar fell on his breakfast enthusiastically.

"He's a growing boy," Bheid explained to her.

After Eliar's third helping of breakfast, Emmy spoke briefly to Althalus. 'Let's show Leitha the Knife, pet,' she suggested. 'I'm almost certain I know where we're supposed to go next, but let's play by the rules.'

'All right, dear,' he replied. He looked at Leitha. "We've got a little formality we should get out of the way, Leitha," he told her. "You're supposed to read the Knife along about now"

"It won't really hurt, Leitha," Andine told her new friend. "It's a little surprising, that's all. It made me a little dizzy, but it didn't seem to bother Gher at all. Do you know how to read?"

"Yes," Leitha replied. "The script I read isn't quite the same as yours, but I don't think that's going to make any difference."

Eliar wiped his mouth on his sleeve and took out the Knife. "I'm not threatening you or anything, Leitha," he assured her. "There's something written on the blade that you're supposed to read."

"Yes," she said. "Show it to me."

Eliar held the Knife out to her in his left hand.

"You've got it upside down," she told him.

"Oh," he replied, switching hands. "Sorry. What does it say to you?"

" 'Listen,' " she replied quite simply.

The song of the Knife seemed somehow richer this time, and even more profound. Eliar looked just a bit startled.

Then Leitha reached out and laid her hand on his wrist. "Don't take it away just yet," she said, still looking intently at the shining blade.

Then she began to tremble, and she swayed as if about to fall.

Bheid quickly caught her.

"Don't do that, Leitha," Emmy scolded, usurping Althalus' voice.

"I'm sorry, Dweia," Leitha replied in a shaken voice. "I had to know. There's so much there."

"Too much to take in all at once, dear," Emmy replied. "I was right, Althalus. It's time for us to go back home."

"That's a long way, Em," he said dubiously, "and winter's not very far off."

"I have it on the very best authority that we'll make it, pet."

"I made it almost too easy for Ambho back in Peteleya," Leitha was telling Andine as they rode up into the mountains. "I amused the other village girls by telling their fortunes. I knew what they were thinking and what they really wanted, so I could go a little further than promising them all rich husbands, fine houses, and whole platoons of children. Ambho twisted that around to convince the village elders that I was a witch."

"What's it like?" Andine asked curiously. "Hearing the thoughts of others, I mean?"

"Disturbing," Leitha replied. "What people say and what they're thinking don't always exactly match. We're much closer to being animals than most of us would care to admit." She looked around to make sure that Eliar was ahead and well out of earshot. "Your feelings about him are very confused, aren't they, Andine? One side of your thought wants to slaughter him because he killed your father, but another side finds him physically very attractive."

"I do not!" Andine protested, blushing furiously.

"Yes you do, Andine." Leitha smiled. "It's not your fault, you know. This is what I was talking about when I told you that we're all part animal. Maybe someday we should talk it over with Dweia. She's the one who arranges those things-or so I understand." Leitha looked over at Emmy, who was watching and listening with a great deal of interest from her usual place in Althalus' hood. "Did you want to join in, Dweia?" she asked with artful innocence.

'Never mind,' Emmy replied shortly.

"Why do you use that other name when you talk to Emmy?" Andine asked curiously.

"It's who she really is, Andine," Leitha said, shrugging, "and she's not really a cat. In her own reality, she looks much as we do-except that she's much more beautiful."

"She cheats."

"Of course she does," Leitha replied. "Don't we all? Don't we put soot on our eyelashes to make them look longer? Don't we pinch our cheeks to make them look rosier? Dweia's a girl, the same as you and I are. She's a much better cheat than we are, though."

'That will do, Leitha,' Emmy said quite firmly.

"Well, aren't you?" Leitha's blue eyes went innocently wide.

'I said that will do!'

"Yes, ma'am." Then Leitha laughed.

'I don't want any clever remarks from you either, Althalus.'

"I didn't say anything, Em."

'Well, don't.'

They crossed the mountains of Kweron and rode down into Hule without incident. Despite Emmy's reassurances, Althalus pushed their horses as much as he dared. The idea of being caught by an early snowstorm in northern Kagwher didn't appeal to him very much. Better, he felt, to arrive a week or so early than half a year late.

They avoided the few settlements in Hule and made good time. Despite his objections to "civilization," Althalus was forced to admit that roads did make travel somewhat easier and much faster.

It was late autumn by the time they reached the foothills of Kagwher, and they'd been together as a group for more than a month now. They'd all grown accustomed to Andine's vocal extremes and to Eliar's overwhelming interest in food. Althalus and Bheid had smoothed over some of Gher's rough edges, and on several occasions they'd found Leitha's special ability quite useful, particularly when they wanted to avoid contact with local inhabitants. Leitha's melancholy was no longer quite so pronounced, and she and the sometimes explosive Andine had grown very attached to each other.

They turned toward the northeast at the indistinct frontier between Hule and Kagwher, and they more or less followed the same route Althalus had taken some twenty-five centuries earlier on his journey to the House at the End of the World.

"Things were a lot different then," he reminisced to Bheid one afternoon when they were nearing the precipice he still thought of as "the Edge of the World."

"It was quite a while back, Althalus," Bheid noted.

"Why, I do believe you're right," Althalus replied in mock astonishment.

"All right," Bheid said, laughing. "I was being obvious, wasn't I? Sometimes I get this overpowering urge to preach little homilies."

"When we get to the House, the Book may cure you of that." Then Althalus remembered something. "Are you still examining the stars every night, Bheid?" he asked, trying to make the question sound casual.

"It's a habit, I guess. I still can't quite shake off the notion that the stars control our destinies."

Althalus shrugged. "It's a clean, inexpensive hobby, I suppose, so watch the sky all you want. You might start paying particular attention to the north. I think the northern sky may have a surprise for you before too much longer."

"Oh, I'm very familiar with that part of the sky, Althalus. I'm sure there's not much up there that'll surprise me."