THE DUKE OF MERE greeted Shavus the Archmage with great cordiality when the old man appeared at the gates of Bragenmere, four nights before the last new moon of spring. For all his bluff, warrior heartiness, the Duke was a man of learning, and welcomed scholars - mageborn or otherwise - to his court. Even the most disapproving of the cult priests, the chill-eyed Archimandrite of Darova and the silent Mijac, High Priest of Agon behind his funereal veils, dared not remark. Sitting at supper the first night, Tallisett couldn't hear what the Duke and the Archmage had to say to one another; but, looking along the glitter of the high table at the two big, middle-aged men, the dark crimson velvet of the one in no way belittling the shabby brown-and-black homespun of the other, she rather thought they were comparing the finer points of shortsword technique with the salt spoons.

But on the second night, as she was hurrying down the corridor toward the vestibule where the Duke's guests assembled before walking in procession, two by two, into the state dining hall, she was stopped at the head of the stair by a pale, precise figure that materialized from between the malachite columns, and a cool voice inquiring, "Whither away, little cousin?"

It was Lord Esrex.

She curtsied politely, but her eyes were wary. She had never trusted her brother-in-law, even before his attempt seven years ago to have Rhion executed and herself disgraced - his friendliness now put her all the more on her guard. "I'm late. They'll be going in soon..."

"Not until I'm there." He leaned a narrow shoulder against a column drum and drew the white silk of his glove through his slender hand. "Surely you know the reason they're having a state dinner? I'm the guest of honor - your father's chosen to make me governor of the lands for which he married that brainless little slut at the turn of the spring,"

Tally felt her cheeks heat with anger, for she liked her new young stepmother, but she only said calmly, "If you've received the impression she's a slut, I'm afraid the spy network of the Cult of Agon isn't as accurate as it's made out to be. Even the most careless gossip in the court could tell you Mirane of Varle is devoted to my father."

She was rewarded by the color that flamed to the tight-skinned, delicate face. He would, she knew, have been delighted to be able to prove the Duke's new wife unfaithful, even as he had sought for years to prove that Rhion of Sligo, and not her husband Marc of Erralswan, was the father of Tally's children, and for the same reason - to discredit any heirs to rival his own son's claim to the Dukedom from which his grandfather had so rudely been thrust.

But with icy and bitter precision the scion of the White Bragenmeres waved her words away. "He thinks he can make it up to me, giving me that pittance for the wrong he has done my family. And if he's deluding himself that he's still man enough to father a child on that straw-headed little lightskirt. Is that why he welcomed the Archmage to court? To get him a tincture of potency, now that his own tame conjure has disappeared?"

She realized he was baiting her, seeking information, and shook her head, reaching to straighten the pendant pearl that hung at her throat with a hand cluttered by unaccustomed rings. For the full ceremonial of a state dinner she wore her husband's colors, emerald green, ribboned and tasseled in silver, the bronze-blue eyes of a peacock's tail hanging around her half-bared shoulders in a delicate collar. "I'm not in his confidence, cousin."

"They tell me other wizards are arriving in the city now," Esrex went on softly, his pale eyes studying her face. "The Serpentlady of Dun came in last night, they say - carrying her lover in a basket, I should expect - and Harospix Harsprodin from Fell. So the ears of Agon are not as inaccurate as you might think."

"Since everyone who enters the gates, mageborn or not, is under Father's protection," Tally replied steadily, meeting his gaze, "there's no particular reason why wizards should conceal their movements. I suppose Agon's spies simply like to feel important, telling their masters at the temple what they could have learned by the asking." She tilted her head at the sound of a muted fanfare of music echoing in the deep arches of the stairwell, so close above their heads. "Shall we go down?"

The ceremony of investiture, in which Esrex was given temporary governorship of the dower territories Mirane had brought to her middle-age husband, took place between the great course and the sweets, and Tally took her leave as soon as Esrex, Mirane, and the Duke had resumed their seats and the musicians had begun the light, flirty tunes that traditionally heralded the entry of dessert. She did not like the way Esrex' pale, heavy-lidded eyes sought out her own two sons - Kir rosy and vigorous and just turned seven, four-year-old Brenat already asleep with a chicken bone clutched in one plump hand - or the way he glanced sidelong at the Duke's fair-haired bride of ten weeks, as if trying to guess the reasons for the blooming sparkle that seemed to radiate from the core of her body.

In the deserted vestibule, the glow of the oil lamps showed Tally a piece of paper lying on one of the spindly-legged couches; she picked it up and saw it was a rough drawing of her father and a wizard. The wizard, a grotesque figure in a long robe with no effort made to distinguish which order of wizardry or who the wizard was, had removed her father's head and was replacing it with that of a sheep.

Cold went through her, cold followed at once by a hot flood of furious anger. She ripped the paper in half, turned to thrust the pieces into the bowl of the nearest lamp, when a deep voice from the shadows said softly, "Don't burn it."

Looking up swiftly, she saw Gyzan the Archer standing with arms folded in the darkness between the vestibule's many columns.

"Give it to your father. He may be able to identify who printed it, and where."

"Would it do any good?" Her hands shook, her whole body swept with shivers of anger and a curious, helpless dread. From the great hall behind her the clashing of cymbals filtered, a bright glitter of sound - dancers in red with the long noses of goons were bounding and whirling among the tables, to the ripple of laughter and applause. "They just keep appearing, just like the rumors keep spreading. You can't stop them any more than you can stop rumors."

"Perhaps not." The tall Blood-Mage came over to her and took the paper, held the pieces together to study the drawing. "But one can do what one can to find the reason behind it. Hmm. One of the milder ones, I see..." His hands on the cheap yellow handbill were brown and deft, and in the lamplight Tally noted how both his little fingers had been cut off just above the first knuckle in the strange rites his Order practiced and how the rest of the fingers were scarred with ritual cuts.

"The reason is because people hate the mageborn, isn't it?" Tally followed him quietly across the vestibule, past the silent guards outside the bronze doors, and over the wavery harlequin of torchlight and darkness that fell like a silken quilt across the flagstones of the great court outside. "Because they fear them? Only now the fears aren't just of a single wizard using spells to cheat honest men or seduce chaste women - they're fears that wizards will organize and take over the Forty Realms. Which is funny," she added with a sudden, shaky laugh, "when you think of it. I mean, the idea that any group of wizards could get together long enough to conspire in anything is something that could only be believed by someone who doesn't know wizards."

The sounds of argument in Jaldis' rooms at the top of the octagonal library tower were clearly audible as Tally and Gyzan climbed the final flight of stairs from the uppermost of the book-rooms below. "Why not?" she heard the Gray Lady's soft tones, now clipped and very angry. "Because you don't want other wizards to learn how to communicate with other worlds than our own?"

"My dear lady," Shavus' gravelly bass rumbled. "It's a matter of principle. Were the case different you'd be arguing for me, not against. The magic of the Dark Wells - the knowledge of how the Cosmos is put together and what things can affect its very fabric - is a powerful and terrible lore. It cost Jaldis years of seeking and study... it almost cost him his life seven years ago..."

Gyzan opened the door and let Tally pass before him into the room, the peacock feathers of her collar and headpiece flashing strangely in the soft, blue-white witchlight that flooded the neat little chamber. The Archmage, in the act of leaning forward from Jaldis' carved chair, paused to note their entry, then turned back to the Gray Lady who stood, arms folded tight about her, in the curtained window embrasure. Near the small hearth sat Nessa of Dun - the Serpentlady, tall, heavy, and beautiful in the brown-and-black robes of the Morkensik Order - and with her the boyish, white-haired Astrologer of Fell and another brown-robed Morkensik mage whom Tally could not identify, though she knew him by sight as she knew so many of the wizards who had come visiting Jaldis over the past seven years.

"Any magic, any body of knowledge that powerful, must be kept to the smallest number of folk," the Archmage went on, his ugly face anxious and conciliating. "You know how quickly such things can be perverted to the worst uses. Remember what happened when the Blood-Mages learned the lore to summon demons..."

"That was the Dark Sect, the wizard Canturban's students," the Gray Lady protested.

"That's true," Gyzan added. "Even the other Blood-Mages shun them."

"Be that as it may." The Archmage waved a heavy-muscled hand. "It could as easily have been any of those splinter sects. You know no Blood-Mage has the training in balance and restraint that wizards must have - your pardon, Gyzan, but you know that's true."

"I know nothing of the kind. All Blood-Mages aren't like - "

"The wider the knowledge," Shavus went on as if his friend had not spoken, "the more chance there is for... accidents. Or spying."

"You're saying you don't trust us."

"I'm saying I don't trust some of the people who have access to the library on your islands. Suppose one of your Ladies takes it into her head to go over to the Earth-witches next year and takes with her whatever she may have found out? Can you guarantee they won't..."

"The Earth-witches are perfectly harmless."

"They say," Harospix of Fell remarked.

The Lady's sharp hazel gaze flicked to the Morkensiks sitting grouped by the hearth. "I am only saying that this concentration of knowledge can be taken too far." She looked back at Shavus. "From what I understand, he didn't even teach Rhion how to open a Dark Well, for fear I'd get that information out of him."

"Well, you did seduce him in an effort to get Jaldis' books away from him."

"That was not..." the Gray Lady began, then glanced sidelong at Tally, and fell silent.

"Oh, Shavus," Nessa chided and caught Tally's eyes mischievously. "As if she'd need a reason to try to seduce Rhion!"

Both Tally and the Gray Lady laughed, and Shavus, relieved, rose to his feet and went to clasp Tally's hands in his own. "I think you know Nessa, the Court Mage of the Earl of Dun," he said. "Harospix Harsprodin, and his student Gelpick of Wendt. They've come - and Erigalt of Pelter and Frayle the White should be here by tomorrow - to help in seeking through the Dark Well for some sign of Rhion and Jaldis and to assist in bringing them back. As you know it needs magic on both sides of the Void in order to make the jump, and since, as Jaldis says, there is no magic in that world or, if any, only a very little that can be raised at the solstices and the equinoxes, it's going to need a great deal on this side to bring them through. We're going to be watching by the Well in turns."

"And the other Morkensiks were kind enough to come and make it unnecessary to share the Well's secrets with myself or Gyzan," the Gray Lady added, turning back from the window, for all her soft stockiness moving with powerful grace. Her hands, rubbing on the plain meal-colored homespun of her sleeve, were thick with muscle from the bread bowl, the shears, and the spindle; alone among them, she did not wear the robe of a wizard, but only a simple dress, such as the peasant women of the Drowned Lands wore, with irises embroidered on its breast.

"Nay, I never said that!" Shavus protested.

"Did you think it?"

Shavus hesitated. Harospix inclined his snowy head with a courtier's grace. "There are different forms of magic, Lady," he said gently. "Different frames of reference. At the moment it is not the time to deal with the inevitable misunderstandings of trying to mesh an intellectual system like the Morkensiks' with an organic one such as your own."

The Gray Lady's lips pressed thin; Gyzan folded his arms, and within his tattooed eyelids his brown eyes were grave and sad.

"Then if you have no more need of our presence here," the Gray Lady said, "Gyzan and I will return to Sligo. No - " She raised a hand as Shavus got quickly to his feet. "I'm not angry with you. Just please let me know if you hear anything."

"Of course," the Archmage promised, glad to make whatever concessions would let him out of a fight with the Ladies of the Moon.

"The Archer may remain with us as long as he pleases," she went on, picking up her gray wool cloak from the table and swinging it over her broad, square shoulders. "Inar the Solarist has taken refuge there with us also, and we've had word that Vyla of Wellhaven is on her way, with two of the other exiled Hand-Prickers..."

Shavus' intolerant blue eyes widened in alarm; Tally could easily read in them his relief that the Gray Lady was carrying away no secrets to spread among that motley gang.

"You will, of course, be welcome among us at any time," the Lady added mildly, "since Rhion has taught even the most prejudiced among us that there are some decent Morkensiks."

"Well, thank you, my lady." The old man smiled.

She paused in the doorway. "Don't smile," she said gravely. "The day may come when you need that sanctuary. Good night."

"Damned arrogant intellectual jackanapes," she went on viciously, as soon as she and Tally had descended out of earshot - quite a distance for wizards. They crossed through the scriptorium, their footfalls echoing sharply in the warm, dreamy darkness where the smells of ink and parchment lingered. Gyzan had remained for a few moments to show the pieces of the scurrilous handbill to Shavus; the Lady and Tally walked down the stairs in silence, not speaking until they reached the lowest floor, the many-pillared entry hall where the colored glow of cressets in the courtyard cast dancing reflections on the marble walls. The Duke's guests were spilling out of the main hall now and into the court, where the warm summer evening breathed with the smell of jasmine and wisteria, with the lemongrass of the torches and the thin pungence of the dust that always seemed to hang in the dry upland air.

"Listen, Tally," the Lady said, halting in the darkness and touching the younger woman's beribboned sleeve. "What Shavus is refusing to understand is that knowledge is not simply for use. It is for saving, for passing along, maybe to people we don't know in the distant future. Yes, I tried, by means of spells and coercion, to get Rhion to show me where Jaldis hid his books when they stayed among us, though it is a lie to say that I used my body to try to coax that knowledge out of him... I tried because I feared that the knowledge would be lost."

Tally frowned. "But if you don't know who will be using it in the future, ill could come of it."

"Ill can come of any knowledge," the Gray Lady said softly. "There is only so much that we can control. Rhion told me that seventeen years ago nearly all Jaldis' books were torched out of existence by the old King's soldiers when they arrested him - when they put out his eyes, tore out his tongue, and crippled him. There was knowledge in those volumes that was lost forever, Rhion said. Now something about these rumors of conspiracy troubles me, something about the fact that they seem to be centered here, in Dun, in Fell, and wherever any of the Great Lords has a wizard in his employ. Though I've never liked the thought of a mage selling his powers to a Lord - it is not for such that these powers were given us by the Goddess - I will say that it does keep the Lords themselves in balance and prevent any one of them, or any Cult, from aggrandizing too greatly. Without them..."

She frowned, rubbing her hands again uneasily over the coarse wool of her cloak. "Without them it would become a contest of strongmen." She glanced up at Tally in the woven shadows, studying her face.

"We need Jaldis' books, Tally," she said softly. "Rhion told me before he left that Jaldis turned them over into your father's keeping."

Tally was silent for a long time. She was remembering the handbill she had found, remembering others that had appeared, pasted to the walls of taverns and public baths; remembering the way Esrex had looked at her sons, and the black-robed priests of the Hidden God who seemed always to be about the court these days.

But they were Jaldis' books, Jaldis' secrets. He had trusted her with them, as he trusted her father and trusted Rhion. "I - I can't," she said softly and wondered if the Gray Lady would put a geas of some sort upon her, as she had put a geas upon the strawberries, to draw her out of the city that morning. She turned away, crossing the vestibule to the doors. The Lady walked with her, her soft-booted feet making little sound on the speckled red terrazzo of the floor.

"He is my friend," Tally finished simply, turning within the shadow of the great bronze doors. "And Rhion..."

"I understand." And in the darkness she could hear the sadness in the Lady's voice.

"If what Shavus says is true," Tally went on hopefully, "they'll... they'll be bringing Rhion and Jaldis back through the Void at the summer solstice, when they can raise enough power on the other side - Nessa, Harospix, Erigalt, and the others." She shivered with the thought, the desperate hope, of seeing Rhion alive and safe and with her again. Please, Goddess, she prayed to Mhorvianne, the bright-haired lady of illicit loves, please bring him back safe. "That's only a few weeks."

But somehow she heard in her own voice the note of false heartiness she would have pitied in another, and cringed from it.

"So it is," the Lady said quietly. She drew her cloak about her, though the darkness outside, alive with torches like jeweled gold lace, was balmy with the summer's lazy warmth. "And perhaps all will be well. If it is not..." She reached out and touched the younger woman's hand.

Her voice sank almost to a whisper, sweet and strangely audible beneath the voices of servants and grooms, the jingling of horse gear, and the laughter of guests in the court beyond the arcade where they stood. "If it is not, remember that you and your children will always find sanctuary in the Drowned Lands."

Another shadow seemed to thicken from the general gloom behind them; Tally got a brief glimpse of Gyzan the Archer. Then the two wizards stepped back and seemed to melt into the darkness again, becoming one with the shifting reflections of torchlight beneath the arcade.

Tally straightened the collar of pearls and feathers about her neck and tucked with her fingers at the stray tendrils of her hair, preparing to return to the lights and music of the feast. Beneath the green silk of her husband's colors and the thick bullion and pearls, her heart was beating fast. Shavus had brought the others of their Order, to watch beside the Well until the turn of summer - and at the turn of summer, they would bring Rhion and Jaldis back.

If something hadn't happened in that other world.

If they could even find that other world in the darkness of the Void.

Mhorvianne, guide them... Goddess of the Moon, help them...

Resolutely stifling the fear that had walked with her every day since the equinox of spring, she started back along the arcade toward the main palace. As she did so a moving shadow caught her eye, slipping from pillar to pillar. At first she thought it was Gyzan and the Lady, but a moment later, as the shadow stepped into the court and vanished into the crowd, she saw that it was only a servant, hastening on some errand from the empty library to the color and life of the feast.