"Come," Freylis said. "Let's got to your room."

Tisana nodded. The dining-hall was no place for her tonight. Conscious that all eyes were on her, she made her way unsteadily down the aisle and out into the darkness. A dry warm wind was blowing, a rasping wind, grating against her nerves. When they reached Tisana's cell, Freylis lit the candles and gently pushed Tisana down on the bed. From the cabinet she took two wine-bowls, and from under her robe she drew a small flask.

"What are you doing?" Tisana asked.

"Wine. To relax you."

"Dream-wine?"

"Why not?"

Frowning, Tisna said, "We aren't supposed to—"

"We aren't going to do a speaking. This is just to relax you, to bring us closer together so that I can share my strength with you. Yes? Here." She poured the thick, dark wine into the bowls and put one into Tisana's hand. "Drink. Drink it, Tisana." Numbly Tisana obeyed. Freylis drank her own, quickly, and began to remove her clothes. Tisana looked at her in surprise. She had never had a woman for a lover. Was that what Freylis wanted her to do now? Why? This is a mistake, Tisana thought. On the eve of my Testing, to be drinking dream-wine, to be sharing my bed with Freylis—

"Get undressed," Freylis whispered.

"What are you going to do?"

"Keep dream-vigil with you, silly. As we agreed. Nothing more. Finish your wine and get your robe off!"

Freylis was naked now. Her body was almost like a child's, straight-limbed, lean, with pale clear skin and small girlish breasts. Tisana dropped her own clothes to the floor. The heaviness of her flesh embarrassed her, the powerful arms, the thick columns of her thighs and legs. One was always naked when one did speakings, and one quickly came not to care about baring one's body, but somehow this was different, intimate, personal. Freylis poured a little more wine for each of them. Tisana drank without protest. Then Freylis seized Tisana's wrists and knelt before her and stared straight into her eyes and said, in a tone both affectionate and scornful, "You big fool, you've got to stop worrying about tomorrow! The Testing is nothing. Nothing." She blew out the candles and lay down alongside Tisana. "Sleep softly. Dream well." Freylis curled herself up in Tisana's bosom and clasped herself close against her, but she lay still, and in moments she was asleep.

So they were not to become lovers. Tisana felt relief. Another time, perhaps — why not? — but this was no moment for such adventures. Tisana closed her eyes and held Freylis as one might hold a sleeping child. The wine made a throbbing in her, and a warmth. Dream-wine opened one mind to another, and Tisana was keenly sensitive now to Freylis' spirit beside her, but this was no speaking and they had not done the focusing exercises that created the full union; from Freylis came only broad undefined emanations of peace and love and energy. She was strong, far stronger than her slight body led one to think, and as the dream-wine took deeper hold of Tisana's mind she drew increasing comfort from the nearness of the other woman. Slowly drowsiness overtook her. Still she fretted — about the Testing, about what the others would think about their going off together so early in the evening, about the technical violation of regulations that they had committed by sharing the wine this way — and eddying currents of guilt and shame and fear swirled through her spirit for a time. But gradually she grew calm. She slept. With a speaker's trained eye she kept watch on her dreams, but they were without form or sequence, the images mysteriously imprecise, a blank horizon illuminated by a vague and distant glow, and now perhaps the face of the Lady, or of the Superior Inuelda, or of Freylis, but mainly just a band of warm consoling light. And then it was dawn and some bird was shrieking on the desert, announcing the new day.

Tisana blinked and sat up. She was alone. Freylis had put away the candles and washed the wine-bowls, and had left a note on the table — no, not a note, a drawing, the lightning-bolt symbol of the King of Dreams within the triangle-within-triangle symbol of the Lady of the Isle, and around that a heart, and around that a radiant sun: a message of love and good cheer.

"Tisana?"

She went to the door. The old tutor Vandune was there.

"Is it time?" Tisana asked.

"Time and then some. The sun's been up for twenty minutes. Are you ready?"

"Yes," Tisana said. She felt oddly calm — ironic, after this week of fears. But now that the moment was at hand there no longer was anything to fear. Whatever would be, would be: and if she were to be found lacking in her Testing, so be it, it would be for the best.

She followed Vandune across the courtyard and past the vegetable plot and out of the chapter-house grounds. A few people were already up and about, but did not speak to them. By the sea-green light of early day they marched in silence over the crusted desert sands, Tisana checking her pace to keep just to the rear of the older woman. They walked eastward and southward, without a word passing between them, for what felt like hours and hours, miles and miles. Out of the emptiness of the desert there began to appear now the outlying ruins of the ancient Metamorph city of Velalisier, that vast and haunted place of forbidding scope and majesty, thousands of years old and long since accursed and abandoned by its builders. Tisana thought she understood. For the Testing, they would turn her loose in the ruins and let her wander among the ghosts all day. But could that be it? So childish, so simpleminded? Ghosts held no terrors for her. And they should be doing this by night, besides, if they meant to frighten her. Velalisier by day was just a thing of humps and snags of stone, fallen temples, shattered columns, sandburied pyramids.

They came at last to a kind of amphitheater, well preserved, ring upon ring of stone seats radiating outward in a broad arc. In the center stood a stone table and a few stone benches, and on the table sat a flask and a wine-bowl. So this was the place of the Testing! And now, Tisana guessed, she and old Vandune would share the wine and lie down together on the flat sandy ground, and do a speaking, and when they rose Vandune would know whether or not to enroll Tisana of Falkynkip in the roster of dream-speakers.

But that was not how it would be either. Vandune indicated the flask and said, "It holds dream-wine. I will leave you here. Pour as much of the wine as you like, drink, look into your soul. Administer the Testing to yourself."

"I?"

Vandune smiled. "Who else can test you? Go. Drink. In time I will return."

The old tutor bowed and walked away. Tisana's mind brimmed with questions, but she held them back, for she sensed that the Testing had already begun and that the first part of it was that no questions could be asked. In puzzlement she watched as Vandune passed through a niche in the amphitheater wall and disappeared into an alcove. There was no sound after that, not even a footfall. In the crashing silence of the empty city the sand seemed to be roaring, but silently. Tisana frowned, smiled, laughed — a booming laugh that stirred far-off echoes. The joke was on her! Devise your own Testing, that was the thing! Let them dread the day, then march them into the ruins and tell them to run the show themselves! So much for dread anticipation of fearsome ordeals, so much for the phantoms of the soul's own making.

But how—

Tisana shrugged. Poured the wine, drank. Very sweet, perhaps wine of another year. The flask was a big one. All right: I'm a big woman. She gave herself a second draught. Her stomach was empty; she felt the wine almost instantly churning her brains. Yet she drank a third.

The sun was climbing fast. The edge of its forelimb had reached the top of the amphitheater wall.