The thing reared up even taller. Sacs at the sides of its throat puffed up as it lifted its flipperlike limbs. It suddenly spread finny hands that were large and wide. Claws like bullfish spines stood out from the ends of the digits. Then it spoke, wheezing and belching the syllables. The shock of its distorted words felt like pebbles pelting against me. "You did not come by the path. How came you?"

"We came by»

"Silence!" I warned the Prince and gave him a rough shake. I was backing us away from the creature, but it hum-mocked its ungainly body over the sand toward us. Where had it come from? I glanced about wildly, fearing to see more of the creatures, but there was only the one. It made a sudden rush forward, interposing its huge body between the tableland and us. I responded by retreating toward the water. It was where I wished to go anyway, the only possible escape that I could imagine. I prayed the tide would bare theSkill-pillar.

"You must leave it!" the creature belched at us. "What the ocean washes up on the treasure beach must always remain here. Drop what you have found."

The Prince opened his hand. The figurine fell but the chain tangled on his lax fingers, to dangle from his handlike a puppet.

"Drop it!" the creature repeated more urgently.

I decided the time for subtlety was past. I drew my sword awkwardly with my left hand, for I feared to let go of the Prince. "Stay back," I warned. My feet were crunching over barnacles on the uneven rocks. I risked a glance behind me. I could see my squared-off black stones, but they barely stuck up above the water. The creature mistookmy look.

"Your ship has left you here! There is nothing out there but ocean. Drop the treasure." There was a hissing quality to its speech, most unnerving. It had no more lips than a lizard, but the teeth that the opened mouth bared were multitudinous and sharp. "The treasures of this beach are not for humans! What the sea brings here is meant to be lost to humankind! You were not worthy of it."

Seaweed squelched underfoot. The Prince slipped and nearly went down. I kept my grip on his shoulder and dragged him back to his feet. Three more steps, and water lapped around my feet.

"You cannot swim far!" the creature warned us. "The beach will have your bones!"

Like a distant wind, I faintly felt the buffeting of fear that he directed at us. The Prince's mind was unshielded, and he gave a sudden cry of wild terror. "I don't want to drown!" he cried out. "Please, I don't want to drown!" When he turned to me, the whites showed all around the edges of his eyes. I did not think him a coward. I knew only too well what it was like to have another mind impose panic on my unguarded thoughts.

"Dutiful. You have to trust me. Trust me." "I can't!" he bellowed, and I believed him. He was torn between us, my Skill-command for obedience warring with the insidious waves of fear the creature gushed at him. I tightened my grip and dragged him back with me as I retreated. The water was up to our knees. Every wave nudged against us in its passage. The wallowing creature did not hesitate to follow us. Doubtless it would be more at home in the sea. I risked another glance behind me. The Skill-pillar was close. I felt that vague confusion that the black memory stone always inflicted on me. It was strange, to push myself toward disorientation in the hopes of salvation.

"Give me the treasure!" the creature commanded, and virulent green droplets shimmered suddenly at the end of its claws. It lifted them menacingly.

In one motion, I sheathed my sword, threw my left arm around Dutiful, and flung us both backward into the water. As the creature dove toward us, I thought I saw a sudden flash of comprehension in those inhuman eyes, but it was too late. We fell full length into the cold saltwater, and my groping fingers sought and found the canted surface of the fallen pillar. I had no time to warn the Prince as it swallowed us.

We stumbled out into an almost-warm afternoon. The Prince dropped nervelessly from my grip to sprawl on a cob-blestoned street in the gush of saltwater that had accompanied us. I drew a deep breath and looked around us. "Wrong face!" I had known this could happen but had been too intent on escaping the thing on the beach to consider it. Each face of a Skill-pillar was carved with a rune that told where that surface would transport you. It was a wonderful system, if one understood what the runes meant. With a jolt, I suddenly grasped how much I had just risked. What if this pillar had been buried under stone, or shattered to pieces? I dared not think what might have become of us. Shaking, I stared at the foreign landscape. We stood in the windswept ruins of an abandoned Elderling city. It looked vaguely familiar and I wondered if it was the same city that a similar pillar had once carried me to. But there was no time for exploration or speculation. All had gone wrong. My original plan had been to return alone through the pillar, to rush unhindered to the aid of my friends. But I could not leave Dutiful stunned and alone in this barren place any more than I could have left him on the hostile beach. I'd have to take him with me. "We have to go back," I told the Prince. "We have to get back to Buck exactly as we came."

"I didn't like that at all." His voice shook, and I knew instinctively that he was not speaking about the creature on the beach. Going through a pillar was a harrowing experience for an untrained mind. Regal had used the pillars recklessly in transporting his young Skill-users, little caring how many of them went mad from the process. I would not use my Prince so recklessly. Except that I had no other choice, and no time.

"I know," I said gently. "But we have to go now, before the tide comes in any deeper." He stared at me without comprehension. I weighed him keeping his sanity against what the woman might know through him. Then I threw that concern aside. He had to understand, at least a little, — sv, or I'd emerge from the pillar with a drooling idiot. "We have to go back to the pillar on the beach. We know it has a facet that will take us back to Buck. We'll have to discover which one."

The boy made a small retching sound. He hunkered down on the cobblestones, pressing the heels of his hands to his temples. "I don't think I can," he said faintly.

My heart smote me. "Waiting won't make it any bet' ter," I warned him. "I'll hold you together as best I can. But we have to go now, my Prince."

"That thing might be waiting for us!" he cried wildly, but I think he feared the passage more than any lurking creature.

I stooped and put my arms around him, and although he struggled wildly, I dragged him back into the pillar with me.

I had never used a pillar twice in such swift succession. I was unprepared for the sharp sensation of heat. As we emerged, I accidentally snuffed warm seawater up my nose. I stood up, holding Dutiful's head above water. The water around the pillar was seething with the heat from it. And the Prince had been right. As I held his lax body in my arms and shook water from my face, I heard startled grunts from the beach. Not one, but four of the ungainly creatures had congregated there. At the sight of us, they charged, hunching across the sand and into the waves. No time to think or look or choose. The Prince was limp and lolling. I clutched him to me, and risked dropping my Skill-walls to try to hold his mind intact. As an incoming wave drove me to my knees, I slapped a hand to the steaming surface of the Skill-pillar. It dragged me in.

The transit this time seemed unbearable. I swear I smelled a strange odor, oddly familiar and yet repulsive. Dutiful. Dutiful, prince. Heir to the Far seer throne. Son of Kettricken. I wrapped his tattering thoughts in my own and named him by every name I could think of.

Then came a moment he reached back to me. know, ou That was all I sensed from him, but after that- he held, n to himself and to me. There was a queer passivity to our ond and when at length we — shed out onto green grassunde; a lowering sky, I wondered if the Princes mmd hadsurvived our escape from the treasure beach.