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meager skills would not answer in that place; the shadow refused to part.
Tossed about like a moth in a downdraft, Taen floundered and struggled to
reorient. But the wards restricted her, making progress impossible.
Taen persisted. Cold savaged her flesh, cut deep into her bones until it
seemed her very thoughts would freeze in place.
Her dream-sense labored, suddenly burdened by an overwhelm-ing weight of
earth and ice overhead. Taen persevered, striving to fathom the hidden center
of the wardspell, but it was not Anskiere she found. High and thin with
distance, she caught the whistling echo of a cry. Strange creatures lay
imprisoned beneath. The eerie harmonics of their wailing chilled Taen even
more than the terrible cold, for the sound touched her dream-sense with a
feeling of lust and killing beyond the capacity of violence to assuage. Held
fast by Anskiere's wardenship, the creatures she sensed could not win through
to freedom; but here, at the vortex of his powers, where she should have
en-countered the Stormwarden's living presence, Taen found si-lence and frost
and the impenetrable stillness of ages.
Discouraged at last she withdrew, returned to awareness of her own body. But
the grove of the Vaere seemed strangely comfortless after her sojourn, its
unbreakable quiet a constraint upon her ears. Grieved for the fate of her
brother and distressed by the loss and the loneliness created by the
Stormwarden's absence, Taen bent her head and wept. With her face buried
within her crossed arms and her shoulders shaking with misery, she did not
notice the thin chime of bells as Tamlin appeared at her side.
He seated himself on the rock by her feet, his forehead creased by a frown.
"I warned there might be risks, child." He paused to puff on his pipe. Blue
smoke rose and braided on the air currents around his hair, untouched by any
hint of a breeze. "Now, why not tell me what troubles you so."
Taen lifted her head, embarrassed by the tears on her cheeks. She dried her
face with her sleeve while Tamlin waited with his thumbs hooked in his
pockets, his beads and his bells strangely silent in the silvery twilight of
the clearing. Slowly, carefully, Taen described what she had experienced of
her brother. Her phrases were clumsy and halting, but Tamlin did not
interrupt. With bearded lips thinned with concentration, he puffed furiously
on his pipe, now and again touching Taen's mind directly to gain a detail left
out.
Her tears began again as she described the plight of An-skiere, but she
hardly noticed. Tamlin's eyes became piercing and his pipe hung forgotten
between his teeth. Yet he spoke no word until she lapsed, faltering, into
silence, her tale com-plete.
"You bring me sad tidings, Reader of Dreams." Tamlin sighed. He raked stubby
fingers through his beard and twirled the pipestem thoughtfully between his
hands. At last he stirred, and regretfully studied the tear-stained face of
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his charge.
"The demons of Keithland grow overly bold, I think. Man-kind must not be left
defenseless. If the Stormwarden of El-rinfaer is no longer active, your
training and your skills become a matter of urgent importance." Tamlin paused
as if weighted by an impossible quandary. "After I have held council on the
issue, the Free Isles must be warned of the danger. For if I read the matter
correctly, the demons prepare an assault against Landfast. There are records
there, in Kordane's shrine, which must never leave the care of humanity."
He did not add, as he could have, that much of the burden of mankind's
defense might fall on the slender shoulders of the girl who stood before him.
Soon, of necessity, she must confront the supreme test of her abilities.
Cycle of Dreams
Lights flickered like a fixed swarm of fireflies across the con-sole in the
underground installation which housed the Vaere. If some of the panels stayed
dark, the autologic and memory banks which once had served the star
probeCorinne Dane still functioned to capacity. But charged with
responsibility for man-kind's survival, the computer itself had evolved in a
manner her builders never conceived.
The Vaere turned the intricate mathematical functions once employed for
stellar navigation toward probability equations. Taen's encounter with her
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