"Stop that noise!" Flint called. When the mule began to back away from the hole, pulling the lead rope with her, he shouted, "No! Wait! I didn't mean it!"

Tentatively, Fleetfoot peered over the edge again. Not very attractive at eye level, she looked absolutely absurd from below. She also looked irked. Flint had a sudden horrible vision of the mule stomping off in a huff. And indeed, she began to pull away from the edge again, and the end of the rope rose higher in the chute.

"Fleetfoot, you"-He thought quickly and changed to a wheedling tone-"entrancing creature, please come back."

The rope stopped, trembled, and dropped down a few inches. Wet brown eyes searched his. One ear flopped.

Flint unwrapped the rope ladder from his middle. If he could just get the thing up to the mule… He gauged the distance and tossed the ladder overhand.

The thing dropped back down on him like a pile of snakes, and Fleetfoot brayed.

"Sure, you beast," Flint muttered. "Laugh."

He untangled himself and tried again, with the same result. Finally, on the third try, his shoulder aching from the effort, he tried an underhand toss and a foot of the ladder looped over the edge of the chute, where it snagged for the barest second on a rock. Fleetfoot lowered her wet muzzle and snuffled at the ladder, dislodging it and sending it spinning back down on Flint.

"Fleetfoot!" Flint chided. He affected a falsetto that reminded him of an elf girl addressing her dolls. "Do you want me to die down here, my dear?"

A hee-haw boomed down the shaft like thunder.

He threw the ladder again. This time, two feet of ladder flipped over the edge, lying on the ground right next to the mule, who gazed at it with stupid eyes. The bottom edge of the ladder dangled before Flint's face, but the dwarf didn't dare touch it lest he jiggle it loose. The ropes began to slide back into the chute, and Flint cursed softly.

Then Fleetfoot lifted one dinner-plate-size hoof and held it above the inching ladder. The dwarf held his breath.

Just as the last rung was going by, the mule delicately, deliberately, placed her foot on it. The ladder stopped with a jerk.

With a delighted cry, Flint placed one hand on the bottom rung and tugged. The mule snorted and appeared disconcerted at this sudden pressure on her hoof, but she maintained her stance.

Favoring his shoulder as much as he could, Flint clambered halfway up the ladder. Soon the end of the rope that he'd attached to the mule's collar swung at his side. He had another ten feet to climb.

The mule shifted restlessly.

"Fleetfoot, no!" the dwarf shouted.

She lifted her foot.

Flint lunged for the dangling rope, and the mule's neck bobbed a foot because of his sudden added weight. The ladder hurtled by him to the chute floor below. "You mule-brained idiot!" he hollered, dangling from the rope.

With a jerk, the mule reared back from the shaft and galloped several paces. With a strangled cry that exploded as he emerged, the dwarf came shooting up out of the hole like a trout hooked by an angler.

"I'm sorry, Tanis," Gilthanas said as they trotted along the path above the ravine.

For a moment, the words sent a shock of recognition through Tanis. The murderer had said that.

"You know I have to do this," Gilthanas said. "I'm pledged, as a ceremonial guard, to uphold the Speaker's edicts." He'd long since sheathed the sword in the scabbard, which he'd also taken from Tanis. He seemed to assume Tanis would make no move to escape.

The half-elf nodded. He was too busy pondering his situation to engage in chitchat. Yet…

He might learn something that he could use later.

"I understand," the half-elf said. He looked over at the elf. Gilthanas's face was ruddy from the pace they'd maintained for nearly an hour. His cousin looked back, and for the first time in years, Tanis saw the friend he'd had when they were little. "What part do you have in the ceremony?"

Gilthanas, panting, drew to a stop in a clearing. He waved Tanis to a seat on a nearby boulder and took one himself, not far away.

"When Porthios leaves the chamber beneath the palace, he will lift his hood-he's wearing a gray robe, like this one-to conceal his face. He will pass from the chamber to a spiral staircase-ninety-nine steps, one for each year of his life so far. The steps are called Liassem-eltor, the Stairway of the Years. Porthios must climb the stairs in complete darkness. At the top, he'll find an alcove with a single candle, plus flint and steel to light it."

"And you…?" Tanis prompted, wondering briefly why he himself had not been taught the specifics of the ceremony.

Gilthanas continued. "Beyond the alcove will be a long hallway, which appears on no maps of Qualinost because it is used only by elves who are neither child nor adult-elves who, therefore, don't really exist. Thus, the corridor doesn't exist and appears on no maps."

Tanis tried again. "Your part…" But Gilthanas, entranced by the celebration that he too would undergo someday, appeared determined to tell the whole tale.

"The corridor is called Yathen-ilara, the Pathway to Illumination. It leads to the Tower of the Sun. The youth makes his way along the pathway in silence. At the end is a door, where he waits until the one who has conducted the vigil at the Kentommenai-kath opens the door, admitting him to the central hall of the Tower of the Sun."

So that was where Gilthanas came in. He sounded as though he had learned his role by rote-repeating it to Miral, no doubt. "I will wait outside the door until a gong sounds. Then I will open the door, slip inside, let the door close, take the candle from Porthios, and say-in the old tongue, of course- 'I am your childhood. Leave me behind in the mists of the past. Pass ahead to your future.' Porthios will open the door and move into the Tower of the Sun."

A glimmer of an idea began to form in Tanis's mind.

"You will remain in the hallway?" the half-elf asked.

Gilthanas sounded a little peeved. "I'm supposed to represent Porthios's vanished childhood, so I really shouldn't be at the ceremony itself. But Miral says no one will notice if I crack the door just a bit to listen. After all, I'll be having my own Kentommen in only sixty years."

Tanis had his plan now to stop Porthios's murderer.

They resumed their run to Qualinost. Finally, the path sloped downward. Drums and trumpets sounded again from the direction of the palace and Tower, and Gilthanas cried, "We have to go faster! I'm late!"

Through the thinning aspens, Tanis could just barely see the western bridge arcing over the River of Hope. Without pausing to think, he misstepped and bumped into Gilthanas. When his cousin turned toward him, startled, the half-elf tackled him.

Five minutes later, a gray-robed figure emerged from a copse of trees. Behind him, the shrubbery jiggled and a muffled noise came forth, as if a large animal had been bound there. Someone who looked closely at the robed figure now trotting down the path would have seen the faint outline of a sword under the left side of the robe.

Tanis hoped no one would.

He pulled the hood over his face, broke into a run, and crossed the bridge.