With a ringing of steel, the various regiments brandished their weapons: swords and sabers glinted in the sunlight; small forests of lances sprang to attention; archers beat arrow shafts against longbows, producing a strange clacking sound; artillery soldiers held catapult stones aloft. Standards unfurled on cue to snap brightly over the throng.

"Then so are you all sworn together!" cried Idrilain, raising her sword overhead. "By the Four and the Flame, by land and Queen, by honor and arms. Warriors of Skala, sound your cries!"

A deafening roar filled the square as each regiment shouted its own battle cry, vying with the others to make their voices heard.

"The Queen's honor!"

"Sakor's Fire!"

"Honor and steel!"

"The Flame on the Seal"

"True aim and well sped!"

"The White Hawk!"

Drummers and pipers stepped from behind the temple pillars, setting up a martial tattoo. Great horns as long as the men that sounded them blared and bellowed on the rooftops as the ranks turned and began to march out of the square.

"It all makes you want to join in with it, doesn't it?" Alec grinned, pulse quickening with the beat of the drums.

Laughing, Seregil threw an arm around Alec's shoulders and drew him away, shouting over the din, "That's the whole idea."

The clamor at dawn went unheard by Nysander.

Seated cross-legged on the floor of the casting room, a long dead candle guttered out before him, he floated in the dim oblivion of meditation.

Images came and went, yet nothing substantial came into his grasp.

After seeing Magyana to her tower door the previous night, he'd made his usual tour of the vaults beneath the Oreska, then found himself leaving first the House, then the sheltered gardens, to stalk alone through the windy streets.

Hands clasped behind his back, he walked aimlessly, as if trying to escape the anger that had been building slowly inside him from the moment he'd found Ylinestra hovering over Alec in her chamber.

Much of this anger was directed at himself. Ylinestra had meant no more to him than a voluptuous diversion possessed of a mind of uncommon ability. Yet he had allowed his carnal desires to blind him to the true depths of her cupidity. Her sudden dalliance with Thero had reawakened his lulled sense of prudence. What he'd witnessed this night strengthened his suspicions.

He let out an exasperated growl. The Black Time was coming, he knew, coming in the course of his own Guardianship. Was he prepared?

Hardly.

He had an assistant he could not completely trust and yet hardly dared release. A sorceress twenty decades his junior had him passion-blind.

And Seregil!

Nysander clenched his hands, digging the nails into his palms. Seregil, whom he loved as a son and a friend, had very nearly condemned himself to death through his own obstinate inquisitiveness. Alec would prove no different in time—that much was already clear.

For the first time in years, he found himself wondering what his own master would have to say about all this. Arkoniel's craggy face came to him as readily as if he'd seen him only the day before.

He'd been old when Nysander had first met him and never seemed to change. How fervently the young Nysander—that desperate, quick-tempered urchin of the streets, plucked starving from the squalor of the lower city-had tried to emulate the old man's patience and wisdom.

But from Arkoniel he'd also inherited the burden of the Guardianship, that dark thread of knowledge that must be kept at once intact and concealed. A thread that the events of the past few months, beginning with Seregil's finding the cursed disk and culminating tonight with the omens at the ceremony, showed to be nearing its end.

Finding no answers in the night, he'd returned to his tower and prepared for a formal meditation. Dawn found him motionless and seemingly serene. He'd been dimly aware of Thero's arrival and respectful withdrawal.

As the last light of Sakor's Day faded above the tower dome, Nysander opened his eyes, no wiser than when he'd begun. Denied inspiration, he was left with facts. Seregil had stumbled across the disk, ostensibly by accident, then found his way to the Oracle of Illior, who'd recited a fragment of a prophecy no one but Nysander himself had any business knowing about. Last night the same words—"Eater of Death" — had been spoken by the priest of Sakor following the strange omen of carrion birds.

Rising, he worked the stiffness from his joints and set off for the Temple Precinct again.

A cold sliver of moon was just sliding up from behind the white dome of the Temple of Illior when he arrived. Taking this as a favorable sign, he entered the temple and donned the ritual mask.

He'd sought the counsel of the Oracle only a few times before, and then more often in the spirit of curiosity. His devotion to Illior took a different form than that of the priests.

But now he hurried onward with a growing sense of anticipation. Snapping a light of his own into existence, he made his way down the twisting, treacherous stairway to the subterranean chamber of the Oracle. At the bottom he extinguished the light and strode on through the utter blackness of the corridor, more convinced with every step that the poor, mad creature at its end had answers to offer.

A lumpish, disheveled young man squatting on a pallet bed looked up as he entered. This was not the same Oracle Nysander recalled, of course, yet all the rest was as before: the profound silence, the dim, cold light, the attendants seated motionless on either side of the idiot vessel of the Immortal, featureless silver masks gleaming from the depths of their cowls.

"Greetings to you, Guardian!" he cried, vague eyes locking with Nysander's.

"You know me?"

"Who you are is nothing," the Oracle replied, rocking slowly from side to side. "What you are is everything. Everything. Prepare, O Guardian. The ordeal is close at hand. Have you preserved what was entrusted?"

"I have." Nysander suddenly felt weary beyond words.

How many times had he walked through the dusty labyrinth beneath the Oreska House, feigning absent curiosity? How many years had it taken to cultivate his reputation as an eccentric, albeit powerful, dabbler? How much had he sacrificed to uphold the trust of generations?

"Stand ready, O Guardian, and be vigilant," the Oracle continued. "Your time approaches out of darkness and hidden places. The minions of the Adversary ride forth in secret glory. Your portion shall be bitter as gall."

The silence closed over them again like the surface of a pool. Into that silence Nysander slowly recited words that, to his knowledge, had not been said aloud in nearly five centuries. It was a fragment of the "Dream of Hyradin," the one faint ray of hope he and all his predecessors had clung to down the long years of their vigil.

"And so came the Beautiful One, the Eater of Death, to strip the bones of the world.

First clothed in Man's flesh, it came crowned with a helm of darkness and none could stand against this

One but Four.

"First shall be the Guardian, a vessel of light in the darkness.

Then the Shaft and the Vanguard, who shall fail and yet not fail if the

Guide, the Unseen

One, goes forth. And at last shall be again the

Guardian, whose portion is bitter, as bitter as gall."

The Oracle said nothing to this, but gazed up at him with eyes that held no alternative.

After a moment, Nysander bowed slightly and went back the way he'd come, in darkness and alone.