"What if he decides that he wants it back?"

"That'll be just too bad. The House is mine now, Althalus. If Deiwos wants a House, he can go make another one someplace else-on the moon, maybe."

"Does he know that you feel that way about him?"

"He should. I've told him often enough. He made this world and peopled it. That's all he's supposed to do. It's mine now, and he's just underfoot."

"We won't be leaving until spring, will we?"

"The seasons aren't really all that relevant here, pet. You should know that by now. We'll leave when we're ready."

"We can't travel in the dead of winter, Em."

"How much would you care to wager on that, Althalus?" she asked slyly.

"Before much longer, the snow's going to be fifteen feet deep, and the sun won't come up anymore. I'd say that more or less pens us up in here."

"Not really. Watch, Althalus. Watch and learn."

"That's really irritating, Em."

"I'm glad you liked it," she replied smugly.

"Is this going to go on much longer, Master Althalus?" Gher asked quietly while they were eating lunch a few days later.

"This what, Gher?"

"All this business about who was doing what thousands of years ago in places I never heard of before. You don't have to tell Emmy I said this, but it's getting awfully boring. Who cares about what happened in the Deikan Empire five thousand years ago?"

"I went there once," Althalus told the boy. "That was before I came here and Emmy got her paws on me. The merchants of Deika were all very rich, but they didn't have very good sense. I sort of thought that might provide all kinds of opportunities for somebody in our profession. The idea of stupid rich men gives me a warm little glow."

"What happened?" Gher asked eagerly.

Althalus told him a much-embroidered version of the adventure in Kweso's house. Gher proved to be a perfect audience, and Althalus was enjoying himself enormously when Dweia suggested that it was time to go back to work.

As they started up the stairs, Althalus noticed that Andine had a sly little smirk on her face, and he remembered that the girl had drawn Dweia off to one side before they'd all sat down to lunch. A faint smile was also playing about the corners of Dweia's lips. Something was obviously afoot here.

"There's something I don't quite understand," Bheid said while Dweia was recounting the history of Treborea. "You've hinted several times that the coastline of the southern sea has been changing."

"Yes, it has."

"What can possibly change a coastline? I'd always thought that things like mountains and coastlines were fixed and immutable."

"Oh, good grief no, Bheid," Dweia replied, laughing. "They change all the time. The whole world's in a constant state of flux. Mountains rise and fall like the tides, and the slightest change of climate can move a coastline hundreds of miles. An individual man's not alive long enough to see those changes, but they are taking place. The southern coast's been expanding for over two thousand years now." Then she turned and pointed toward the north window. "It's because of that ice up there."

"How can ice this far north have any effect on the southern coast?"

"Ice is frozen water, isn't it?"

"Of course."

"There's only so much water. The amount's constant. Some of it's in the seas, some's in the air as rain clouds, and some's locked up in the glaciers. Every so often there's a change in the weather. It gets colder, and the glaciers start to grow. More and more of the world's water is locked up in the glaciers, and there's less and less water in the seas or in the clouds. It doesn't rain as much anymore, and the sea level starts to drop. That's what changes the coastline. The seas off the south coast have always been shallow, so as the water recedes, more and more land is exposed."

"The works of God are wondrous," Bheid recited sententiously.

"I'm sure my brother would be pleased to hear that," Dweia said drily.

"Deiwos rules."

"I was talking about my other brother."

Bheid stared at her in horror.

"This particular change in the weather is Daeva's doing," she told him. "These are interesting times. Daeva's gathered up his people, and I've gathered mine. We're standing right on the brink of a very nice war, Bheid, and Daeva's doing everything he possibly can to give Ghend the advantage. The seas are running away, and when those glaciers start to move, the mountains are going to be ground down into mole hills. The drought will bring famine, and empires will collapse. Isn't that exciting?"

"It's the end of the world!" Bheid exclaimed.

"Not if we win, it won't be."

"Gives you a nice, warm sense of your own importance, doesn't it, Bheid?" Leitha suggested slyly. "Save the world, boy! Save! Save!"

"That'll do, Leitha," Dweia scolded the pale girl.

"It was too good an opportunity to pass up, Dweia," Leitha apologized.

"Isn't it just about time for-?" Eliar started.

Andine was sitting in the chair beside his, and Althalus had noticed that she'd been watching the young Arum quite closely all afternoon. She touched his wrist with one hand and offered him a fairly large piece of cheese with the other. Eliar took the cheese almost absently and began to eat.

Andine's little smile was rather like the sun coming up.

Dweia flicked a quick glance at Althalus, and her purring thought came into his mind. 'You saw that, didn't you?' she asked.

'Of course,' he silently replied. 'Did you tell her to do that?'

'It was actually her own idea. She has a little bag of tidbits under her chair. Every time Eliar's stomach starts to growl, she's going to feed him. If you look closely, you'll probably notice that he doesn't even realize that he's eating. Andine said that she came up with the notion as a way to keep him from interrupting, but I think there might be a little more to it than that. In a peculiar sort of way, it's something along the lines of Gher's haircut.'

'She's a very complicated little girl, isn't she?'

'Indeed she is,' Dweia agreed. 'Fun, though.'

"How long have we been here, Althalus?" Eliar asked several days later as they were all going up the stairs to the room in the tower.

"A month at least," Althalus replied.

"That's what I thought, too. Is something peculiar happening outside?"

"Peculiar?"

"The days should be getting shorter, but as nearly as I can tell, they aren't."

"Dweia's playing with things, that's all."

"I don't understand."

"I don't either-not entirely, anyway. She's tampering with time. Most probably what's happening is that we're living the same day over and over again-except that different things happen each time we go through that day."

"Would it do me any good to say that's impossible?"

"Not much, probably. Ghend's moving around out there, and we've got to be ready to spoke his wheel every time he tries something. The trouble is that we aren't ready yet. That's why Dweia brought us back here to the House. Time here moves the way she wants it to. If it takes us years to get ready, she'll give us those years, but when we go back outside, it'll only be a day or so later than it was when we came here."

"Except that we'll all be about fifteen years older."

"I don't think it works that way, Eliar."

"I don't understand."

"Don't feel alone."

"Will you please stop browsing, Leitha?" Dweia said later that morning.

"I can't control it," Leitha confessed, sighing. "I wish I could. As soon as I look at someone or hear someone talking, this whatever it is seems to home in. Then somebody else says something, and it goes after him. I don't want to do it, but it acts on its own."

Dweia opened the Book. "Let's do something about that right now," she said. "Your gift-if we want to call it that-is so completely random that it's totally out of control." She leafed through several of the early pages in the Book. Then she apparently found the page she wanted. "Here we are," she said, lifting out the page. "This is how Deiwos dealt with the same problem. His answer's a little simpler than mine is, so it might be better if you start here. Later on, I'll show you how I do it."

"I'll try anything, Dweia," Leitha said fervently. "I don't want this thing in my mind." She took the crackling parchment sheet from Dweia and looked at it. "I thought I'd be able to read this," she said, frowning. "But the letters aren't the same. I can't make it out at all."

"It's a very archaic form, Leitha," Dweia told her. "There's a faster way. Just lay the sheet down on the Book and then put the palm of your hand down on it."

"You want me to read with my hand?" Leitha asked incredulously.

"Unless you'd rather use your foot. Just try it, Leitha."

The pale blond girl dubiously set the page down on the white-covered Book and placed the palm of her hand on it. Her blue eyes widened as total comprehension filled them. "It can't be that simple," she objected.

"Why not try it and find out?" Dweia suggested.

Leitha sat back and closed her eyes. Her expression became almost inhumanly serene. Then her eyes opened very wide as she drew in a sharp breath.

Then she suddenly screamed.

"You went too far, Leitha," Dweia told her, "and just a little too fast."

"Everything's so empty!" Leitha said in a shuddering voice. "There's nothing there anymore!"

"You just went too high, dear. You want to go above it, but not quite that far above. You'll get better at it with practice. All you're really doing is aiming your gift. You want to point it slightly over the heads of everybody around you. You'll still hear that slight murmur that you've been listening to all your life, but you won't hear the actual thoughts. When you want to hear them, just point your gift straight at the one you want to hear."

Leitha shuddered. "What was that awful emptiness?" she demanded.

"The sound of nothing, Leitha. You were pointing it at the ceiling, you know."

"Did that make any sense to anybody else?" Eliar asked, his expression baffled.

"Leitha's got an extra set of ears, that's all," Gher replied. "She can hear what we're thinking-even when she doesn't want to. Emmy just taught her how to point her ears someplace else. Anybody can see that."

Leitha gave the boy a startled look. "How could you possibly have known that?" she asked.

"I don't know," Gher confessed. "It just seemed to make sense, that's all. Of course, I've been dodging you ever since we first met."

"Dodging?"

"I could feel what you were doing, ma'am, so I'd just step out of your way and let you zing right past me."

Dweia was staring at the boy in absolute astonishment.

"Well, well, well," Althalus murmured.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Dweia demanded.

"Nothing, dear," Althalus replied innocently. "Nothing at all."

"Isn't it just about time for us to-" Eliar started.

Andine gave him a piece of fruit, and he stopped talking.

"Just keep the rest of them entertained, dear heart," Dweia told Althalus. "I'll be taking them aside one by one to explain certain things to them."

He gave her a puzzled look.

"It's faster that way, Althalus. They'll open their hearts to me if we're alone. Doing that in front of others is a little embarrassing. Everyone has flaws they'd prefer not to expose to the whole community."

"I take it that you don't agree with the notion of open confession."

"It's one of man's sillier ideas. Announcing one's sins in public is a form of exhibitionism. It serves no purpose, and it wastes time."

"I thought we had all the time in the world."

"Not that much, we don't."