Recent statements by High Temple Pétlas have done very little to calm the troubles that have consumed Nusgwéden recently. In these statements, he spoke in such violent terms that many fear he is more radical than even the archon. His vision is a reactionary one that would overthrow all the recent triumphs of magic in Ghadáreim, replacing them with a dedication to archaic ways of thought. Indeed, there are some who would go as far as to call him old-eyed. It is fortunate for Nusgwéden and all Ghadárim that we have a champion in Raumuréh. He is the first of a new class of humanity, and we can be certain that he will soon raise the rest of us to the heights that he alone can perceive.

I tremble as I begin to write, wondering how my words can do justice to the things that I have witnessed. How many worlds will I see perish before my eyes? How many friends will I be forced to abandon? I know this much, at least: I will never be parted from Rosédan again.

Of course I saw the dragons leave Mexesnód, and I like everyone else was perplexed and disturbed. Only the archon seemed unmoved. “Heaven has taken away the last pillar of our strength. We have nothing left except vision,” he said. Everyone had theories, of course, particularly Grúlan. The dragons were returning to their home in the land of the dawn. The bargain between the father of the dragon riders and the primeval dragons had come to its end at last, the agreed-upon number of years fulfilled. Temple Pétlas in Nusgwéden was summoning the dragon riders to stave off an attack by the rebels. The basilisks were real after all, and the dragons had gone to fight them.

But it was when Rosédan, Brän, and Télhreus returned with their news that true despair fell over Mexesnód. I didn’t understand at first, but Rosédan explained to me that the military strength of the Ghadári lay chiefly in their mastery of the air. Without the dragons, then, the archon’s party faced disaster. “We do have magic,” said Rosédan, “that could break their minds as they descended, but they have magic too, and I’m afraid that theirs might be stronger.”

“Many of our greatest magicians have gone over to the rebels or are at least sympathetic to them,” said Brän.

“Like Raumuréh?” I asked, remembering his strange words to us.

“He’s never declared one way or the other, but I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Télhreus. “The archon says we’ll be leaving very soon, and we’ll either drown in the ocean or reach his promised land in the west. But you two, what do you plan to do? Are you coming with us?”

“No,” I said. “We’re going back—back to the place we came from.”

“The conditions should be right very soon,” said Rosédan. “A few weeks at most.”

“A few weeks,” said Brän. “Then you can go to Nusgwéden and warn them. You have to do it, Rosédan. You have to let them know what’s coming.”

“You don’t have to do anything,” said Télhreus, which made Brän give him a sharp look. “And I don’t know if it’ll do any good in the end. But even so, I think you should go to Nusgwéden.”

I was nodding along until I remembered the sympathies that filled both Mexesnód and Nusgwéden, not to mention all the Ghadári cities in between. Surely everyone in the realm had been warned by now. When I voiced my objection, Brän looked surprised and said, “Someone shut the sympathies off in Nusgwéden shortly before all this happened. Haven’t you tried to use them yet?”

It didn’t seem the time for me to explain the difficulties I had with the sympathies in the past, so I simply remarked, “Oh.”

“Do you think we should, Kësil?” Rosédan asked, holding my arm. Since her return she seemed to be a great deal more affectionate than previously, which was not a state of affairs I objected to in the slightest. As for the words that had passed between us at our parting, it was now settled that we would be married at the first opportunity when we returned to our own place and time. Not that our own place and time means much now, but insofar as it means anything I think it must mean Edazzo, and Rosédan agrees.

But to return to my narrative, I considered the question only a short time before I answered. “Our friends have asked for our help. What else can we do?”

Rosédan laughed and squeezed her hand tighter around my arm. “Of course it’s that simple. Indeed, what else can we do?”

The archon summoned us for one last meeting in his chamber. Or rather, he summoned me and Rosédan came along with me, saying that she wanted to meet the last archon of Ghadáreim. When I apologized to him for this (out of politeness, not any actual resentment of her presence), he only laughed and shook his head. “No,” he said. “I should have invited her too, but I’m embarrassed to say that it slipped my mind.”

“There’s no need to be embarrassed, sir,” said Rosédan. “I understand that you have many matters to attend to, perhaps more now than ever before.”

“That I do, but it does not excuse my discourtesy. Soon, very soon, I and my people will be leaving these shores. But there are many who did not heed my call, for a thousand different reasons, and I pray constantly for them to Heaven that they might be spared the judgment. I’m grateful that you’re returning to Nusgwéden; indeed it is an answer to my prayers. May the light and the grace of Heaven illumine you wherever you go from this day forward.” I felt a sense of warmth at these words, and it hasn’t departed from me yet.

Rosédan and I made our final farewells to the people of Mexesnód that we knew, before the hour came for us to leave. The weather promised an easy flight back to Nusgwéden, according to Rosédan, “Our task is difficult enough without dealing with rain and lightning,” she said. Then we took our places on Halgh’s back. I couldn’t help thinking that this seat was much more comfortable than Brän’s dragon, unless it was just that I preferred the rider who sat in front of me. Her slight body was warm and her hair flowed back in the wind, the sun’s light catching it and making it shine even more gloriously than usual.

But my narrative runs the risk of becoming nothing more than a soppy paean to Rosédan’s charms, which, abundant though they are, distract from the horror that we have witnessed. I will do my best henceforward to restrict myself to these events.

When we came to Nusgwéden after days of travel, it was night, though the lights all around and on the mountain shone brightly enough to create a false dawn. This was the first time I had seen it from a distance, so I was amazed now by the sharpness of the contrast between the two skies, the fuzzy warmth above Nusgwéden and the starry darkness beyond. “It’s remarkable,” I said. Not even Tarinzar back home had poured so much light into the dark. “And it’s comforting to see.”

“Yet I miss the stars,” said Rosédan quietly.

We landed in the same place we had upon our first arrival, and again we were met by men with spears and by an Inquisitor pounding his staff on the ground. This time it was Sílveu who greeted us, if I may use such a friendly verb for the way in which he demanded to know what we were doing. All his affability from our first interview was gone, and he had the air of a man watching a candle burn down, dreading the darkness that would come when the light died.

“You were banished from Nusgwéden,” he said. I haven’t had yet a chance to look back in my account to see whether or not this claim was strictly accurate, but I have my doubts. “Why have you defied the priests? What have you done to the dragons?”

“We haven’t done anything!” I protested. “It was Narasíben who called the dragons away.”

He stared at us blankly. “Narasíben? What are you saying? But get down from there first. I have a number of questions to ask you.”

“Good,” said Rosédan as she swung down from Halgh’s back. “We want the word to get out as quickly as possible. You sent me to the rebels in the desert, and I’ve learned a lot about them. We’re all in danger and we need to be prepared.”

“No, no. Who are you that you think you can make demands like that? The Inquisitors, that is, the people, will decide whether or not your words are worthy of attention.”

Halgh lifted his neck to hiss at Sílveu, and I found myself sharing his sentiments. Sílveu took a few nervous steps away, but Halgh kept his eyes fixed on him until Rosédan whispered some words of command and Halgh took off into the air with heavy flaps of his wings. (Needless to say, I had dismounted also by this time.)

“Let me be clear,” said Sílveu. Slowly, as he spoke, the old amiable smile returned to his face. “I am an Inquisitor. It is my duty to investigate your claims on behalf of the people of the Ghadáreim, to judge whether or not they are believable and worthy of attention.”

“I’m informed that Temple Pétlas has authority in Nusgwéden while the archon is absent,” said Rosédan. “Take me to him.”

I understood and sympathized with Rosédan’s impatience, but this didn’t seem like quite the right line to take. Sílveu justified my fears when he said, “You have no right to make demands of me. You are a woman from hundreds of years in the past, the very definition of old-eyed. You’d drag us all back into the past that you love so much.”

“Don’t you want to know what happened to the dragons? Don’t you have that much curiosity, at least?”

“Personally, I have very little interest in whatever wild theories you have. And I am beginning to doubt the wisdom of letting you spread your old-eyed absurdity to the good people of Nusgwéden. But that doesn’t mean the Guild of Sympathies doesn’t have questions about you and what you’ve been doing these past weeks. There is good reason to believe that both of you have been consorting with enemies of Ghadáreim.”

“I’ve mainly been consorting with the archon,” I said, wanting to clarify the matter.

“As I said, enemies of Ghadáreim,” Sílveu said, his smile not changing even as his eyes hardened. “But the Guild will determine the truth. You should come with me now.”

This sounded reasonable, and it was true that the sympathies were the fastest way to spread the word, but it occurred to me that the Guild of Sympathies or the Inquisition or whatever it was called was not the first group we should trust to help us spread it. Or, for that matter, the second or third. “I don’t think so,” I said, feeling that it was time to put my foot down. “We’ll meet with Temple Pétlas first.”

“Will you really? Who do you think the guards on each level of the city will listen to, the High Temple and his ravings, or the sympathies that they have trusted all their lives? Because I can assure you that Temple Pétlas will never be allowed to broadcast his dangerous lunacy to the city.”

Something painful pressed against my shoulder, which after a moment’s reflection I determined was the point of a spear. The point, too, of Sílveu’s argument. “All right, all right,” I said. “We’ll go with you. We don’t really have a choice, do we?”

“Friends, you come with me of your own free will.” As he said this, Sílveu’s smile became truly intolerable.

We were on our way to the doors at the back of the bay when I began to hear the whispers. I assumed that it was the guards muttering about something or other (the Flame knows they had plenty to mutter about), but I started to think otherwise when I heard, very clearly, the words “Set the stones. Lay the foundation. The temple of Heaven is rising up among you.”

I looked around but didn’t see anyone talking. “Rosédan,” I said in her ear, “do you hear that?”

She nodded and squeezed my hand. “But I don’t understand it,” she replied.

I considered asking Sílveu or one of his subordinates about the whispers, but it seemed unlikely that they’d answer me. Instead I listened closely, hoping to make out more coherent words in the low torrent of noise. Steadily, I thought, it was growing louder. We were almost to the doors when there was a sound like a clap of thunder right above our heads. My ears ringing, I stumbled into Rosédan and then to the ground.

“Now what’s all this?” said a quite new voice. When I lifted myself up onto my elbows I saw a man standing in the middle of the bay who hadn’t been there before. He was dressed entirely in black, in sharp contrast to the generally lighter colors that most of the Ghadári wore. He had a beard too, and if it weren’t for its vivid yellow hue I might have assumed he was one of the Zamara.

“Pétlas,” said Sílveu.

“That’s Temple Pétlas,” he replied mildly. “I wish I could say I was surprised that you’re seizing these two, but your guild will do anything to keep me helpless, won’t you?”

“Helpless? You’re the head of the priestly hierarchy, in fact if not in name. You’re one of the strongest magicians in all Ghadáreim. No, helpless is one thing you absolutely are not, Temple Pétlas.”

“Rosédan! Kësil!” Pétlas shouted suddenly. “Come with me! These men aren’t your friends, or the friends of anyone who loves Ghadáreim.”

Sílveu laughed. “An interesting choice of words. Do you mean to say that you love Ghadáreim? You, with your old eyes and your hatred of míkra, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re waiting for the Night King to come back.”

Pétlas remained unmoved, neither his stance or his voice changing. “Come with me,” he said again.

I would have, but I didn’t much like the way the spears were pressing against my skin. Rosédan, who was closer to Pétlas than I was, glanced back at me, and I urged her with my hands to get away. Even if I was to fall into Sílveu’s power, I hoped that she at least would be able to escape. Of course, I had no reason to believe Pétlas would be any better; I only knew that Sílveu had declared himself our enemy, if not in so many words.

Then I saw Pétlas hold up something like a golden arrowhead. He spun it between his fingers, and my guards fell away from me, dropping their spears as they clutched at their heads. “You’re correct that I’m not entirely helpless,” he said. “Rosédan Césalh and this man—”

“Kësil,” I said helpfully.

“—are under my protection from this moment forward. Anyone who lays a hand on them is an outlaw and a blasphemer. I, High Temple Pétlas, have declared it so!”

I don’t remember clearly whether or not I decided of my own volition to walk towards Pétlas, but walk towards him is what I did, Rosédan a few steps ahead of me. When we were almost close enough to touch him, he tucked the golden arrowhead back into his sleeve and snapped his fingers. A door opened under our feet and we fell.

I believe it was a drop of only about four feet, but the floor beneath was a steep incline, down which Rosédan and I rolled in an awkward tangle. Pétlas was waiting for us at the bottom (I still do not know how he got ahead of us) to help us to our feet. “Follow me,” he said.

“What are these tunnels?” Rosédan asked. “They weren’t here two hundred years ago.” I was wondering much the same thing. We had entered a subterranean world that reminded me of nothing less than the dwellings of the fair folk. The tunnels ran on, up and down long flights of stairs, joining one another in arched junctions, lit by the same diffused light that I had seen elsewhere in Ghadári buildings.

“Are you sure they weren’t? Did you ever look? Myself, I don’t know exactly how old they are, but I know they are old, though few are permitted their use.”

“What are they used for, then?” I asked. “Besides dramatic escapes.”

“Maybe once you reach the rank of Temple I’ll tell you.” Pétlas didn’t sound like he was joking, though I can never be sure if my Bird gives me an accurate impression of such things. I tend to doubt it: often enough I’ve told a joke to my friends and been met only by puzzled silence, so I can only think that such nuances are lost in the process of translation.

Although at first it had been a relief to stretch my legs after the long ride, I was tired and hungry, and I imagine that Rosédan felt much the same way. So I was delighted when Pétlas at last stopped walking and snapped his fingers again to open a panel in the ceiling above. There was no ramp here, but Pétlas jumped to grab the edge of the opening and pulled himself up. It was a feat that I doubted I would be able to replicate, let alone Rosédan, but after a moment he lowered a ladder from above and we climbed up.

We were in a room that, at first glance, I mistook for Raumuréh’s. Like his, it was dark except for a ring of glass that hung above us. But there was no tree stump in the center, and as my eyes adjusted I could see the haphazard piles of objects that lay everywhere: metal disks, wooden figures, cones like miniature sympathies, things for which my mind could find no name. Pétlas pushed his way through these piles until he reached a dim shape against the far wall. When he sat down I understood that the shape was a chair.

“So,” he said, “You’ve come a long way to tell me something. What is it? Is there anything you can tell me about what’s happened to the dragons.”

I realized at that moment that we were not going to be offered either food or chairs. I glanced aside at Rosédan and was alarmed by the way she wavered on her feet and by the weary expression on her face, of which Pétlas seemed entirely unaware. Well, it was dark, I supposed. “Could we have some water first?” I asked.

“Or wine?” asked Rosédan.

“Of course!” He made a motion with his hand that I couldn’t see and said in a low voice, “Bring us some wine.”

Rosédan probably would have collapsed then if I hadn’t caught her and helped her sit down by the nearest stack. After a few minutes a woman brought in a plate with cups of wine (which is what the Bird called it, though it wasn’t quite the same) and bite-sized mushrooms. The mushrooms were quite flavorful, I recall, though at the time I would have wished for something more sustaining. Once we had eaten and drunk, Rosédan gave her account, which you have already read.

When she was finished, Pétlas jumped to his feet and kicked one of the stacks with his foot. I was at first surprised by what I took to be an outburst of fury, but then I saw how he he knelt and dug through the remains until he pulled out a stone-gray object shaped like a disk with a bulge at one end. “It may surprise you to know that I’ve been anticipating something like this,” he said. “The dragons came out of the wilderness, which is where Narasíben has her stronghold. And our scouts have reported evidence that the rebels are able to do things with their mounts that only the bravest and most skilled of our riders could accomplish. So I’ve been making preparations. Dragons, you see, aren’t normal, everyday creatures like sheep or dogs or even lions. They have a connection both to the land and to our magic that, I admit, is beyond our understanding.”

“I know what you mean,” said Rosédan. “Sometimes when I’m riding, I think I can see lines of light on the ground below, and it feels like the dragon is guided more by them than by my hands.”

“Yes, yes, quite so. I’ve been preparing for this moment for a long time, even when the archon himself resided in Nusgwéden. It might seem that we’ve lost all our defenses against the rebels, but they’ll find something waiting for them that they won’t be expecting.” He grinned, suddenly looking very boyish despite his beard. “You’ve done me a great service by coming here to tell me this, despite all the Inquisitors’ interference. If there’s anything at all I can do for you, let me know.”

I was about to ask for something reasonable: another plate of mushrooms, maybe, or some clothing to replace our travel-stained outfits. But before I could decide exactly what, Rosédan said, “I for one want to learn more about this trap you’ve set.”

“It wouldn’t be prudent of me to tell you more, would it? But I gave my word, and High Temple Pétlas does not break his word. I’ll tell you as much as I think is safe. A broad outline, perhaps.”

I understood very little of the conversation that followed, full as it was of not only technical terms (and I never know how accurately my Bird deals with those) but everyday terms arranged in an utterly nonsensical manner. What, exactly, was I supposed to make of a phrase like “alarms surmounted by a bend dexter?” At least when the archon had talked about magic, I could begin to understand him.

But the last portion of their conversation was easier. Rosédan asked him about the gray disk that he had been holding in one hand and waving back and forth as he spoke. “This? It lets me keep track of the magic feeding into the traps,” he said.

I saw an opportunity at last for me to ask an intelligent question, and I seized it. “I was under the impression,” I said, “that magic derived from the will and the understanding of the magician, but you made it sound just now like magic is something that flows like water powering a mill.”

“Water powering a what?” he asked, then waved the disk to forestall my attempts to explain. It seemed that the watermill had not yet been invented. “I think I understand what you’re trying to say. You have to comprehend that we’re using metaphors when we talk about magic; the reality is something harder to grasp. Certainly the magician provides the Idea and the skill, but he draws on something else, the same thing that guides the dragons, I’d guess. There is something else that lies beneath it all.”

These were thought-provoking words, and we all considered the matter for a little while before Pétlas stood up impatiently from his throne and began to stride across the room before stopping.

“The only thing that worries me is that my brother might be sympathetic enough to the rebels to sabotage my efforts. He is the one person I think capable of doing it.”

“Your brother?” asked Rosédan.

“What, did no one tell you that the great Raumuréh is my brother? He is the black sheep of my family, or perhaps I of his. Our paths parted quite some time ago, but we like to keep track of what the other’s up to.” He walked past us and stood by an object that for the first time I recognized as a sympathy. After a silent minute with his hands on the globe, he spoke again. “Our time grows short. There is word from some of the distant towns that flocks of dragons have been seen flying to the south, towards Nusgwéden. We must be ready. I have things to take care of in the city. You can go where you want, but I’d suggest that you don’t wander far. The Inquisitors will have everyone stirred up against you by now. But I’m afraid I can’t leave you alone here either, as a number of these items are quite dangerous if used improperly.”

After these sentences, which Pétlas had pronounced in authoritative tones, I was left puzzled regarding what exactly we were supposed to do. But since for the moment he seemed primarily interested in shepherding us out of the room, Rosédan and I obeyed like a pair of unusually obedient sheep.

Pétlas’s chamber opened on to a balcony with a stairway leading to the street below. It was a rather remarkable sight, I thought as I peered over the rail, even if it couldn’t compare to the view from the back of a soaring dragon. We were on the very top level of Nusgwéden, and the mountain fell away before my eyes in row after row of stone-carved buildings; the sun was rising before me in the east and just beginning to cast its rays on the city. I stood there contemplating it for a while before Rosédan nudged me and whispered, “What should we do now?” Then I looked up in some surprise and saw that Pétlas was gone.

“I don’t have the slightest idea,” I said honestly. “After all, it seems that we’ve delivered our message to the one man in Nusgwéden who can do the most about it. What more is there for us to do?”

Rosédan nodded her agreement and rummaged in her bag for the trinket that she had fashioned to measure what she had described as the span between worlds. She held it up to the sun and whirled it around her fingers a few times before she said, “We’re almost there. Two more days, I think. And then we can leave.”

“You can finally go home.”

“No, I doubt that’s possible, or at least I doubt that I have the skill to do it. Besides, I don’t know if I could bear knowing that my home would be torn apart like this, the dragons stolen from us.”

“Two hundred years is a long time,” I said. “Would it really matter?”

“It would to me. No, Kësil, the safest journey is the journey back to where we came from.” She put the trinket back in its place and stared at me with tearful eyes. “We should never have come here, Kësil. I was a fool to think I could turn back the waves of time and land in my home as if nothing had happened. Such a fool.”

It seemed to me the moment to put my arms around her, so I did exactly that. We exchanged various endearing words, after which she assured me that there was nothing she wanted more than to return to Edazzo with me. I suspect this of being flattery, but if one isn’t allowed to flatter one’s beloved, what is the point of flattery, or indeed of love?

We went down into the street to walk there, though we were mindful of Pétlas’s warning. The buildings here were not at all like those on the lower levels: they were marvelous, all of them in their own individual way. Pétlas’s house or palace, whichever it was, was a field of spiky towers like a silver crown. On its left was a building that rose in a series of domes tiled in a mosaic of a hundred different colors, and on its right a wall with arched entrances under a mural depicting flames lancing between earth and sky. There seemed to be no one building that was like its neighbors.

And yet there was an absence of people. I wondered if perhaps this was typical for the higher levels of the city, if it was considered uncouth or gauche to be seen in the open air. Perhaps the priests and the great men and women of Nusgwéden spent most of their days inside, their skins pale from the lack of sun, passing from house to house by way of enclosed tunnels. It was a charming thought, until it occurred to me that it was more likely fear that kept them inside. They didn’t know what had happened to the dragons, and even if they did I suspect that they would be even more terrified.

My readers may well ask why I didn’t seem particularly alarmed about the rebels’ attack. In reply I can only plead that I didn’t expect them to come until well after Rosédan and I were gone. I was worried not for myself, but for the people we had come to know while staying with Lugwin, foremost among them Lugwin and Hárasônan themselves, of course. Even Pikuln, though she had betrayed us. As these thoughts ran through my mind, I asked Rosédan whether we could find a sympathy somewhere to try and talk to Lugwin’s household.

“That’s what I was thinking too,” she said. “I’d hope that they’ve gotten away from the city by now and fled to the south, but we can try to contact them.”

I can only share Rosédan’s hope, because we never did see or talk to Lugwin again. As we walked farther and farther from Pétlas’s palace, I began to feel uneasy, a feeling that only grew stronger with every step. I briefly pondered telling Rosédan that we should turn back before dismissing the idea. This was a mistake, and from now on I will be sure to pay much more attention to my uneasy feelings.

I didn’t notice our followers at first, not until one of them shouted in rather offensive tones, “Hey! Turn around!”

I have enough of a contrarian streak that I was tempted just to keep walking, but I’m not enough of a fool to leave my back turned to unknown assailants. And if I’m not a fool, Rosédan certainly isn’t. So we both turned around to see who was addressing us.

There were five or six Ghadári men standing further down the street, facing us with rather unpleasant expressions. “You’re the Amikni and you’re the old-eyed girl, isn’t that right?” asked the man who seemed to be their leader. “Did you have a nice chat with Pétlas?”

“Yes, we did,” I said. “We had some mushrooms that I thought were exceptionally tasty.”

“How nice.”

“No one cares about your mushrooms!” said another man, pounding his foot on the ground in what I thought was an oddly childish gesture. “We’re not going to let you destroy Ghadáreim.”

This puzzled me, and I was about to respond with a simple affirmation that neither of us had any interest in destroying anything, but Rosédan spoke first, trembling as she did. “What is wrong with you?” she demanded. “Everything that’s happening to Ghadáreim, and you blame us? Why? Why?”

The men looked at one another, then the leader laughed and said, “Because we’re not blind and we’re not old-eyed. Everyone knows who you are and what you’re doing. You won’t be able to lie your way out of this. He wants to see you.”

“Who wants to see us?”

“Who do you think? Or are your eyes so clouded that you don’t know who reigns in Nusgwéden now?”

“Temple Pétlas?” I ventured. From the way the leader laughed again, I gathered that my venture was incorrect. “Well, I’m afraid I’m not really sure why we should go with you. We do have our own business in the city.”

The leader said nothing, but he held up a forked rod and I began to feel a tingling that reminded me unpleasantly of Táfir’s rod of judgment.

“I see,” I said. “Or rather, I feel.”

“If you’re smart, you’ll follow us. And you are smart, aren’t you?”

We went down one of the central ramps to the second level of the city, by which point I was beginning to suspect just who it was that we were being taken to see. By the time we came to the building with the sphere resting on its roof, I was sure of it, and I didn’t need to see Raumuréh descending the steps towards us with his arms stretched out. Indeed, I had enough time to devise a witty remark. “Your last invitation was more courteous,” I said.

“Well, I do apologize for that, but I’m sure my friends didn’t mean you any disrespect. You’re very remarkable, both of you! Please come in. There are many things to discuss and we have little time.”

I took Rosédan’s hand in mine and we followed Raumuréh under the threads into his workshop. I was surprised to see that it had changed from our previous visit. A steady bright light now lit up the interior, but there was no sign of the fantastic images that had once hung in the air over our heads. Raumuréh took his place on the other side of the stump of a table and, fixing us with a steady gaze, spoke. “You’ve been with the archon and Narasíben out in the desert where all things are clear. I’m sure you’ve told dear Pétlas all about it. I myself have been informed of everything I need to know, about you, about what that fool of an archon is planning, and certainly about the rebels who are on their way here as I speak. We all have our plans, mine not least among them.”

“What do you need us for?” Rosédan asked. “You didn’t bring us here just for our company, did you?” The latter seemed reasonable enough to me, but I waited to see what Raumuréh would say. He seemed to hesitate before a small smile crept onto his face.

“No, I brought you here, as you might have suspected, because of my plans. My final plan, one might say.” Again he hesitated, and shifted his head so that his hair fell to shroud his face. “This world has grown old, old and tired. The magic of the Ghadári was stronger when it was young, when the blood of the victim still coursed through the land. I don’t approve of the world or much in it: as the old joke goes, if Heaven had consulted me before creating the earth, I would have advised it rather differently. But I may have my chance yet.”

“To create the earth?” I asked. I was somewhat lost at this point in the conversation.

“They’ve told me many things that have otherwise been forgotten,” said Raumuréh, letting his voice fall to a whisper. “They’ve told me how the world was made from an ancient sacrifice and how the division and order we see with our old eyes were laid in place. Now that the victim’s blood grows thick and tired, beating sluggishly through the land, there is an opportunity for a new sacrifice and a new world.”

The story Raumuréh alluded to was vaguely familiar to me, though I haven’t had time to look back through my accounts to see if I’ve written anything that would help me remember why. So I simply said, “Oh. A new world.”

Raumuréh’s eyes flashed. “A new world for new eyes. A new vision will create it: my vision. And the old divisions that keep us bound in chains, keep us from fulfilling our true potential as the children of Heaven that we are.”

“But what does that have to do with Rosédan and me?” I asked. Raumuréh raised his staff in one hand and turned his other hand so his palm faced us. It was either a signal for silence or the beginning of some kind of magical ritual, but I assumed it was the latter. “How do you think we can help?”

Rosédan touched my shoulder gently and said in my ear, “Who do you think his victims are?”

But she must not have spoken quietly enough, because Raumuréh chuckled and said, “It certainly isn’t either of you. As interesting as you are, what good would you be as victims? Ah, but do you hear their voices in the air? They say that he is almost here. His foot is on the threshold.”

I found myself turning towards the entrance and fixing my eyes on the threads that blocked it. They moved, gently, as if stirred by the breeze, and Pétlas entered.

“Enough of this nonsense,” said Pétlas. “Raumuréh, there’s no time for your games, not anymore. The rebels are upon us.”

“Are they?” said Raumuréh. “I suppose you have a clever plan to ward them off.”

“Something like that. Why are you laughing?”

“You were always so confident, even when we were children. But you really think you can prevail over Narasíben? She has allies you can’t even begin to understand, stronger and wiser than any of your little circle.”

“And you always underestimated me,” said Pétlas in a quiet voice. “But if you doubt me, come and see with your own eyes.”

“You invite the most powerful magician in Ghadáreim to your triumph? You don’t have any fear of my magic?”

“Not of yours.”

Again Raumuréh laughed. “How can I spurn such trust? The rebels are an hour away, if I am any judge of dragon’s speed. Will you be ready before they arrive?”

“We were ready a long time ago,” said Pétlas. “I’m not as blind as you think I am.”

Raumuréh tapped his staff on the ground and said, “Lead the way.”

Rosédan and I had not, perhaps, strictly been invited to accompany them, but we found ourselves caught between them, moved along by what I can only describe as the sheer force of their wills. Later I asked Rosédan if we had been affected by their magic, and she hesitated before answering. “No, I don’t believe so,” she told me. “But you should understand that much of our artificial magic approximates power that can occur of itself in the world. There are men, and some women too, who have the power to command so that those who are weaker of will must obey.”

“Maybe so,” I said, “but neither of us are especially weak of will. No, there has to be some other explanation.”

She gave me an odd look, but only said, “Maybe so.” Unfortunately, I don’t see any way now to find out the true explanation. Probably there was some magical artifact concealed on the person of either Pétlas or Raumuréh, one that Rosédan simply didn’t notice.

We descended the levels of the city, down to one of the great bays that were carved into the mountain’s side. As we climbed down the final stairway into the bay, Rosédan stumbled and would have fallen down the last few steps if I hadn’t caught her. “There’s something wrong here,” she whispered to me. “There’s something waiting under the earth.”

“I begin to understand,” said Raumuréh behind us. “I admit, brother, I wouldn’t have expected you to have gone this far. But I wonder if it will be enough.”

“It will,” said Pétlas, turning back towards us. “Trust me, it will.”

“That little building is peculiar, though,” said Raumuréh, gesturing with his staff towards a structure near the wall. Its shape was vaguely familiar to me at first, and after a moment’s thought I decided that it reminded me of a cup. I will avoid drawing any absurd poetic metaphors from this resemblance, as I’m sure that my readers are more interested in the facts of what happened next than in my imaginings. “There’s an energy there that seems dissimilar to the rest,” Raumuréh went on. “It’s the nexus of the area, isn’t it?”

“I’m not surprised you spotted that,” said Pétlas, but even as he spoke his smile faded, and he began to walk at a rapid pace towards the building.

“You see, there is something wrong. Something that Pétlas wasn’t expecting,” Raumuréh said to Rosédan and me. He followed his brother, and of course we were drawn after the both of them. When we were halfway across the bay I heard a sound that I had become very familiar with over the past months. It was the cry of a dragon, and it was soon joined by others. I looked up, but even though the sky was pale and clear, I saw nothing.

I hurried to catch up to the others, who by now had reached the open door of the building. When I entered, I was just in time to see Rosédan’s golden head vanishing through a hole in the floor, which rather startled me until I saw the steps leading down.

The room below was lit by a pale blue glow. Pétlas was standing by a pool of water at the far end, his arms folded over his chest and an expression of violent anger on his face. This expression was matched by the tone in which he spoke to Raumuréh. “What under Heaven is this? What have you been doing here?”

Raumréh pounded the end of his staff against the ground and its outer layer crumbled away in flakes, revealing at one end a point of carved stone. He lifted the spear into the air and in the same motion thrust it through Pétlas’s chest. Pétlas made a horrible gasping noise and fell to his knees, his eyes fixed on Raumuréh. Blood was draining from the wound at a rate that didn’t seem possible, flowing into the pool and dying it red even after all life had faded from Pétlas’s face and he lay still by the side of the water.

“It’s done,” said Raumuréh.

His words seemed to break a spell that had held Rosédan and me frozen in our places and unable to speak. Rosédan cried out, “He was your brother!”

“Didn’t I tell you I want to break all those earthly bonds?” There was a complete calmness in Raumuréh’s face that I found chilling. “And now the work is done. Everything that Pétlas boasted in was nothing more than a shadow, so I will leave these shadows to amuse themselves with their games. I will sleep and dream a new world, so that when I awake, it will be as the harbinger of what is to come.” With these words he stepped back into the pool and let himself sink into the water, his hair flowing around his head in a golden aura. Then the swirling crimson clouds hid him from our sight.

I believe I was still staring at all this when Rosédan put her hand through my arm and said, “It’s time for us to go. Halgh is here.”

“Halgh?” I said, which I admit is not the most brilliant response, but I was understandably stunned by what I had just seen. “The dragon?”

“Of course I mean my dragon!” Rosédan said, her voice breaking. “I want to leave right now.”

I shared her sentiments entirely. I do regret that we were not able to do something with Pétlas’s body, but what could we have done? And the Shimas only know what magic was still bound to Pétlas. So, clinging to one another, we left that building and crossed the bay to the ledge where Halgh was waiting, crouched on his two feet and the tips of his wings.

We rose into the air atop Halgh’s back, but when I saw the northern sky my heart sank. It was darkened by what at first glance seemed to be a thundercloud, but was in fact a flock, or perhaps I should say an army, of dragons. And the noise that at first sounded like thunder was in fact the song of scores of dragons, each of them with a melody of its own that by concentrating I could hear and be moved by, but which in combination clashed with the others, high note against low and low against high, so that I wanted to cover my ears.

Halgh cried out in reply, but Rosédan touched his brow to quiet him, then directed him downwards to a spur of the mountain not far from the bay we had left.

“Where are we going?” I asked her.

“The last place we want to be is in the air with all of the rebels’ dragons after us. We’ll be able to hide here for a while until we spot a better chance to get away.”

Halgh gripped the rock with his claws and seemed about to let forth another triumphant cry (though what he had to triumph over was beyond me) but glanced back to Rosédan and was silent. It was not the most comfortable position for Rosédan or me, clinging to his back where we were, but I was soon distracted from thoughts of my own personal discomfort. The dragons were landing.

Once I saw a cave whose roof was filled with bats, jostling for position and spreading their leathery wings. I was reminded of this when I saw the dragons on the floor of the bay. Their discordant music had ceased; now they sat and stared towards the far wall, where Narasíben and her dragon stood alone. She spoke, and her voice rang out unnaturally loud among the rocks.

“This is the hour of our victory! The holy mountain is ours, and the world will be shattered on its peak!” No doubt there was much more to her speech, but at that moment the mountain shook and she broke off. It was hard to see from this distance, but I thought she crouched by the side of her dragon and put one hand on the ground. Then she sprang up, but it was too late for her or any of the rebels to do anything. The floor of the bay began to crack, then fold upwards, the rock flowing like mud over the head of dragon and rider alike, until at last all was still. There was no remaining trace of the dragons, only the mounds of rock that rose like great eggs from the ground.

Narasíben had been the last to be enveloped. In a voice barely human she had cried out, “The basilisks’ curse on this place! May it and all its people perish!” Her scream became incoherent, and before the rock closed over her head, I could swear that I saw her body dissolving into sand. Maybe it was just a trick of my eyes, but I swear that’s what I saw.

“It was a cruel trap,” Rosédan said, so quietly that I could barely hear her. “They will sleep there for centuries, but it’s beyond my ability to tell what, if anything, can awaken them.”

“It’s over, then?” I asked. “The rebels have been defeated?”

“It’s not over! It’s something beyond the magic I know, but I can feel it! Halgh! Away!” At once Halgh stirred himself, flapping his wings and lifting us into the air. No matter how many times I asked Rosédan what was happening, she would only shake her head and urge Halgh on to greater speed. It was only when the mountain was the size of an anthill behind us that she relaxed and turned back to face me. “Maybe it was the basilisks’ curse that Narasíben called down, or maybe it was some unforeseen side effect of Pétlas’s plan. Maybe it was even something Raumuréh wrought, Heaven knows why, but then, only Heaven knows why he did most of what he did. But it was death. I felt it creeping over me, cold like ice and blinding like a sandstorm.”

We landed in an open field by a trickle of a stream, where Halgh could rest and feed, dipping his beak into the water and pulling out squirming fish that promptly vanished down his throat. Rosédan cried for a long time then. I tried to console her, telling her about the passage of time and the fate of all nations, but she didn’t seem much comforted by these philosophical musings, so I instead put my arms around her. This seemed to be rather better.

“Well,” she said at last. “Now I know the end of it all. But it is not the end of me, or of us.”

It is, however, the end of this portion of my story. I leave my readers here with the promise that I will not neglect to describe how Rosédan and I returned to Edazzo.