"I once walked among you as Tree Friend. Then, when fate and the Prophecy of the Destroyer rrieant that I had to *684.

leave you and follow the StarMan to Gorgrael's Ice Fortress, I left you in the capable hands of Shra, who in turn was to hand responsibility over to my son.

"'That," she pointed at Isfrael, now more than halfway towards her, "is no more my son than Gorgrael was ever my true lover."

"Silence!" Isfrael roared. Fury rippled off him, and made him appear twice his normal size.

Faraday did not back down. "If you were the true son of Faraday Tree Friend," she said quietly, "you would have led these people into Sanctuary long before now."

Isfrael stopped a pace away. His face was flushed, his chest heaving, his fists clenched by his sides. About them the Avar also tensed, ready to leap to Faraday's defence if need be. For days now they'd been uncomfortable with Isfrael's decision to reject Sanctuary, and had met with him this evening to try to change his mind.

"We can survive these TimeKeepers," Isfrael growled. "The trees will protect us. There is no threat!"

Where had she heard these words before? Faraday wondered.

"No threat?" she said, and she turned slightly so she was directly facing the Earth Tree. "Then what is that?"

Isfrael jerked, as if he was going to lunge for her, but before he could move a ghostly apparition appeared under the stone circle and walked forward so it could address the Avar.

It was Barsarbe, once senior Bane of the Avar, and champion of the idea that the Avar could wait out the time of Gorgrael within the safety of their forests without aiding the StarMan.

The apparition opened her mouth, and spoke. "My people, is this our fight? We have the Avarinheim, and now we have Minstrelsea to the south. The Earth Tree sings, and the forests sing with her. We are safe.

Gorgrael cannot touch us!"

Barsarbe spread her arms wide, hands and voice entreating. "Don't we have what we wanted? So why help * 685 .

Axis? It will surely only bring further pain to our people, and Mother knows we have endured enough pain. We have what we want," she repeated slowly, lowering her hands, her voice becoming strident. "I say we have the choice of refusing the StarMan."

She lowered her arms, and grinned in triumph. "And further I say, why not let Gorgrael have the plains. Why care we? We will be safe here."

Isfrael stared horrified at the shade which, now that she'd finished her piece, slowly faded.

"If I didn't know better, Isfrael," Faraday said softly, "I could swear that you were Barsarbe's son, not mine. What has happened to you? Does absolute power corrupt absolutely?

"My friends." Now Faraday turned to the Avar and spread her arms wide in entreaty as Barsarbe had. She closed her eyes briefly, and prayed for strength.

"My friends. You cannot hide here. When Qeteb rises he will tear these forests apart as a child will tear apart a pastry tart. See."

The entire grove was overwhelmed in vision.

A mighty wind blew in from the west. It billowed with clouds of grey dust and flames of fire, and among the wind strode a giant who reached to the sky. With one step he was over the Nordra, and with another he straddled the Plains of Tare. The next step brought his foot crashing down in the Silent Woman Woods.

Trees splintered and screamed. Fire leapt from grove to grove. The giant roared, and when he roared the entire forest disintegrated.

There was nothing left save splinters of wood littering the bared soil.

Nothing, save the huddled ma.s.ses of the Avar.

The giant bellowed again, and lifted his foot to bring it roaring down on a hapless Clan group. It was enough. Faraday ended the vision.

* 686.

"Qeteb will destroy you," she said softly. "I present you with a choice. Take the path I will make for you into Sanctuary, and perhaps have the chance to rebuild. Or die here, and die knowing that everything you love will die with you."

Isfrael stared at her. "You are no longer Tree Friend," he said. "You relinquished that right when you went -"

"She never relinquished that right in our hearts."

A grey-bearded man stood carefully upright, using the shoulder of his daughter to steady himself. "I remember you, Faraday Tree Friend," he said, "although I was but a hotheaded young man when you stood here in this grove and gave us the StarMan. Faraday . . . Faraday . . . then you told us that you would not lead us into the future. Now?"

"Now?" Faraday glanced at Isfrael, then looked back at the old man. ''Then I said I would provide you with the path. I thought that path was to be Isfrael. I was wrong."

Isfrael went rigid in disbelief. With those words Faraday had effectively disinherited him! Hatred surged through him, but Isfrael did not speak.

"Here," Faraday withdrew the cube of light from her pocket and expanded it into the doorway, "is the beginning of the path. As yet I do not know where it will lead, but I ask you to trust me, and to trust in the future."

The grey-beard looked at the doorway, then he bent, took the hand of his daughter, and raised her up.

Without hesitation, they both stepped through the doorway.

A silence, and a moment of decision.

Then, almost as if of the one mind, the entire Avar nation rose to their feet and, one by one, stepped through the door.

"No," Isfrael shouted. "No, this is madness! We can survive, I guarantee it!"

"Isfrael." Faraday's soft voice.

"Isfrael," she repeated, and he raised his eyes to hers.

She opened her arms. "I love you, Isfrael. Do you not remember me saying those words to you?"

687 =."It's too late," he said. "Way too late."

The line of Avar moved rapidly through the door. To one side stood Faraday, to the other, Isfrael. They stared at each other, neither willing to let go the other's eyes, the shifting Avar flickering shadows over their faces.

Why don't you let me love you? Faraday thought, but all she received in reply was a wall of implacable silent hatred from her son. She had abandoned him, and now she had disinherited him, and Faraday knew she had undoubtedly alienated her son forever.

One child, she thought. Fate gave me but one child, and look what I have done to him!

The last Avar clan group stepped into the doorway, hesitating briefly, as if not wanting to leave these two alone.

Then they were gone.

"You should not have done that," Isfrael said quietly, but with malevolence vibrating through his voice.

"You should not have done that."

And then he, too, was gone.

Gone to nurse his hatred and resentment within Sanctuary.

"Oh, Shra," Faraday whispered into the empty grove. "What have I done?"

Faraday lowered her face and turned it to one side.

When she raised it again she was alone in the grove.

Alone, save for a pleasant-faced woman in late middle age standing just before the circle of stone about the Earth Tree. Her dark brown hair was greying and coiled loosely about Her head. She had cheerful blue eyes and a friendly smile with slightly crooked ivory teeth. She wore a soft pale blue robe, belted about Her waist with a rainbow-striped band.

The Mother.

"Mother?" Faraday said, and suddenly the Mother was before Faraday, and folding her in Her arms.

Faraday wept, and clung tighter.

*688.

"Daughter," the Mother said, "do not grieve."

Faraday leaned back and made a poor effort at wiping the tears from her face. "Do not grieve? The land is desecrated about us, and worse is to follow. These forests will become wasteland, and you . . . you ..." The Mother hugged her again, then took Faraday's face in Her warm hands. "You are a dear girl," She said, "to worry so much about an old woman like Me. Ah."

Her face took on a mock grave expression. "Here you are, lecturing to your son about paths which must be taken, and yet you do not dare the path yourself? You will not open the gate never opened?"

"What do you mean?"

The Mother laid a hand on Faraday's breast. "Follow your own path, Daughter. Follow your heart."

Faraday averted her eyes. "I cannot. If I ... if I allow myself to love Drago, then he will betray me."

The Mother shook Faraday's face slightly until the woman looked back at her. "Trust," She said.

Faraday did not answer.

"If Tencendor is to be redeemed, and brought through the darkness," the Mother said, "then it will need love to do so."

"As Axis betrayed me, so will Drago -"

"Silence!" The Mother frowned in annoyance. "Have you never thought, you simpleton, what rewards an honest love will bring you?"

"Drago says he will never betray me, but he will ... for Tencendor. How can you say he won't?"

"I can only say to you .. . trust. Until you learn to dare, you will never learn to live. What is this you exist in now? Some half-life, not daring a single risk? Faraday . . . take that risk, and learn to laugh!"

"And death is worth that laughter? Noah told me that by aiding Drago I would either gain complete and lasting happiness and peace, or annihilation. I cannot risk annihilation again, Mother! I cannot!"

689.

The Mother's fingers dug deep into Faraday's cheeks, and Faraday gasped in pain.

"Why are you so determined to seek annihilation then, girl? Drago offers you the path to lasting peace and happiness ... yet you are so preoccupied with annihilation you will accomplish it by sheer strength of will!

Curse you, Faraday!"

Faraday was again silent, remembering what Drago had said to her when they'd parted. Your Sanctuary is in my heart.

"If you don't risk it," the Mother said, "then you will surely achieve annihilation. And yet you dare to castigate Isfrael for not daring the unknown and instead choosing the safe path to sure destruction. You are the agent of your own destruction, my girl, no-one else."

Faraday averted her eyes from the Mother.

"Isfrael did not inherit his stubbornness only from his father, methinks," the Mother said softly.

Faraday sighed. "What will happen to you when Qeteb rises? Can he touch you? What about the Earth Tree?"

"The Earth Tree's roots stretch down very, very far ... down to unknown caverns. Do you understand Me?"

"Yes."

"Good. The Earth Tree will watch her daughters burn and crumble into ash, and she will be mightily enraged. But you don't truly believe that everything about this forest will die. Do you?"

Faraday managed a wan grin. "You are a very wily Mother."

The Mother laughed and finally released Faraday. "I will return to the Sacred Groves, and close the paths behind Me. The Demons, even with Qeteb, cannot bother Me there. I shall sit and drink tea with Ur and we shall chat about babies. But here ... I want you to have this."

The Mother unwound the rainbow-striped band from Her waist and belted it loosely about Faraday's.

"Remember me with it."

* 690*

She leaned forward, kissed Faraday softly on the lips, and then She was gone.

Faraday blinked, and realised that cold stars circled about her. She'd been standing all night in the Earth Tree Grove and was chilled through. Shivering, she closed her cloak about her, but as she moved she felt something about her waist.

The Mother's band ... but something more. There was something inside it.

Faraday slowly unwound it.

Nestled inside the band, warm and snug, was the arrow that Drago had shot over the ma.s.s of crazed people in the Western Ranges, its shaft now strangely flexible.

But the arrow was not what made her eyes widen in wonder. Around the arrow's shaft was wound a small and fragile sapling. It had a spray of fine roots at one end, and an equally fine spray of tiny oval-shaped leaves at the other.

Faraday raised her face and looked at the Earth Tree. It was gone.

Mountain, Forest and Marsh Spiredore deposited Gwendylyr on the very peak of Star Finger. Disorientated, for Gwendylyr had never been to Star Finger - or, indeed, the Icescarp Alps - she turned slowly about, studying the view and the flat surfaces about the huge shaft that dropped away into the mountain, then halted abruptly.