“Can you sound a fourth-level without equipment?”

Her face took on concentrated seriousness; after a minute a section of flooring dropped out of sight, revealing deep, dusty stairs that led away downward.

“Stay close to me,” I warned, motioning them ahead. “I’ve never been down here before.” Behind us the square of light revolved, spun — and we were in darkness.

“I wish that old great-grandfather of mine had provided a light! It’s dark as Zandru’s pockets!”

Callina raised her hand — and the tips began to glow. Light spread — sparkled — radiated from those twelve slender finger-tips! “Don’t touch me,” she warned softly. The passage was long and dark, with steep steps, and in spite of the ghost-light, dark and dangerous. Once Kathie slipped on the strangely slippery surfaces, and fell jarringly a step or two before I could catch her; and twice my outstretched hand broke sticky invisible webs. There was no rail and I found it hard to balance, but Callina picked her way securely and delicately, never stumbling, as if the way were perfectly well known to her.

Down, and down. Finally a door slid back and we stood in the semilight of Thendara under three waning moons. I looked around. We were in a disorderly section of the city, where the Terrans probably never came twice in fifteen years. Down the dark street was a place where horses were shod and swords and tools mended; here Regis was to meet me, if my message had reached him.

It had. He was there, standing in the shadow of several horses, in the deserted street.

“Lew, take me with you? Leave the women here.”

“We need Kathie. And someone has to stay here, Regis. This is our only chance. If we don’t make it, you’ll have to make what terms you can. I think, as a last resort, you might be able to trust Lawton.” I stopped, then shrugged, without finishing what I had started to say. There was no point in farewells and we made none.

Out through the streets of Thendara; into the open country. We passed a few houses and deserted farmsteads; they grew wider apart and finally ceased. No one rode this path now; on the Forbidden Road, radioactivity was still virulent, in spots, from the Years of Desolation. The road itself was safe now, but the fear lingered; too many men, in past days, had died. Hairless, toothless, their blood turned to water, because they had taken this path. The Comyn had fostered that fear, with tricks and traps; and now it was useful, because we could ride unseen. Only Dyan knew those tricks and traps as well as I.

We skirted the site of the ancient spaceships, their huge bulk still glowing feebly with the poisonous radiance. Then we were on the Forbidden Road itself; — the canyon, nature’s own roadway, which stretches from the highest point in the Hellers down to the Sea of Dalereuth a thousand miles away. Just wide enough for six horses to ride abreast, thirty feet below the surface of the plain, and nearly a thousand miles long, the Forbidden Road runs all across the continent as if some giant or some God, in the lost years, had reached out and scratched the molten land with a titan fingernail, cutting across mountains, foothills, plains.

Legend had it the Forbidden Road was the track where the Gods walked, ages ago, when they spread their terror on the land and the children of the Comyn were born with their minds awry with the strange Comyn Gifts. A barren land, seared of growth, the track of something that had marred the land to freakishness, creating the Comyn. Mutation? The children of Gods? I did not know or care.

Two of the moons had set, leaving a single pallid face on the horizon, when we turned aside from the Road and saw the rhu fead, a white, dim, gleaming pile, rising above the thinly gleaming shore of the lake of Hali. We reined in our horses near the brink. Mist curled up whitely along the shore, where the sparse pink grass thinned out on the rocks. I kicked a pebble loose and it dropped into the glimmering cloud-waves, sinking without a splash, slowly, visible for a long time. Kathie stared at the strangely-surfaced lake. “That isn’t water, is it?”

I shook my head. No living being, save those of Comyn blood, had ever set foot on the shores of Hali.

She said confusedly, “But I’ve been here before—”

“No. You have some of my memories, that’s all.” I patted her wrist clumsily, as if she were Linnell. “Don’t be afraid.” Twin pillars rose white, a rainbow mist sparkling like a veil between them. I frowned at the trembling rainbow. “Even blocked, it would strip your mind. I’ll have to do what I did before; hold your mind completely under mine.” She shuddered, and I warned tonelessly, “I must. The veil is a force-field attuned to the Comyn brain. It won’t hurt us but it would kill you.”

She glanced at Callina. “Why not you?”

Callina shook her head. “It has something to do with polarity. I’m a Keeper. If I tried to submerge your mind for more than a second or two, it would destroy you — permanently.” A curious horror showed in her mind. “Ashara showed me — once.”

I picked Kathie up bodily. When she protested, I scowled. “You fainted once, and went into hysterics the second time I touched you,” I reminded her grimly. “If you do that again, inside the Veil, I want to make sure you’ll get out the other side.”

This time, however, she was barriered against me, by my own bypass circuit. It was easy to damp out the alien brainwaves. We got through the shimmering, bunding rainbow, with blurred eyes; I set her down and withdrew as gently as I could.

The rhu fead stretched bare before us, dim and cool. There were doors and long passages, filled with chilly curls of mist. Kathie made a sudden turn into one passage and began to walk forward into the dimness.

“Lew, I know! How do I know where to go?”

The passage angled into an open space of white stone and curtained crimson. A dais, set back into the wall and paneled in iridescent webs, held a blue crystal coffer. I set my foot on the first step—

I could not pass. This was the inner barrier; the barrier no Comyn could penetrate. I leaned on an invisible wall; Callina, curious, put out her hands and saw them jerk back of themselves. Kathie asked, “Are you still blocking my mind?”

“A little.”

“Then don’t. That bit of you is what holds me back.”

I nodded and withdrew the blocking circuit. Kathie smiled at me, less like Linnell than she had ever looked; then walked through the invisible barrier.

She disappeared into a blue of darkening cloud. A blaze of fire seared up; I wanted to shout at her not to be afraid, it was only an illusion — but even my voice would not pass the barrier reared against the Comyn. A dim silhouette, she vanished; the flames swallowed her. Then a wild glare swept up to the roof and a burst of thunder rolled and rocked the floor.

Kathie darted back to us; and in her hand she held a sheathed sword.