I nodded. Varia had said there was more than one gate.

After breakfast, we started up the mountain on a little footpath. Most of the birds were back for the summer, and the woods was full of their singing. I saw gray squirrel and chipmunks and rabbit turds, and lots and lots of oaks and clumps of pine. It was a long steep path, with lots of stops for the old woman to rest a minute, till finally I could see the top close ahead. There was lots of bedrock showing by that time, and the trees were sparse and small. And there weren't any more birds or squirrels or chipmunks. I'm not sure what they felt that kept them away, but I was feeling something that had my neck hairs bristling again. Either that or I was imagining.

We took one last rest, the old woman breathing hard, and frowning.

"Anything the matter?" I asked her.

She didn't answer, and after a minute we went on. At the top, she knelt down by a knee-high pine seedling with a leather thong tied to it: the tether she'd tied the chicken with. But there wasn't any chicken now, nor feathers nor blood, like a possum or bobcat would have left. Just the leather thong, which was either awful short to start with, or something had shortened it.

She still wasn't talking, and the frown was still there. She stood up and closed her eyes so tight her whole face skrinched together, and she began mumbling something I couldn't make out. Cold chills ran down me from the top of my head to my feet. After a minute she started to talk.

"Some folks were up yere last night, in the dark. Two men and two women, folks o' power. And the mountain took three of 'em-not et 'em; received 'em-two witchy women, young and perty, and one of the men. I'm a-goin' back down, right now."

We went. She didn't have anything more to say all the way to her cabin. I didn't either, but my brain was going a mile a minute.

I knew just what I was going to do: get me a job around there somewhere, on a farm or in the woods. It wouldn't need to pay cash; bed and board would be plenty, and the bed could be hay in the barn. I had twenty-seven dollars in my shoe, more than enough to buy a pistol and a good rifle, and plenty of shells. And I'd be back on top of Injun Knob before dark, on the night of the next full moon.

PART 2: The Twice-Stolen Bride 5: Xader

" ^ "

The top of Injun Knob appeared ordinary in the moonlight, half bald, its scrubby trees scattered. The gate hadn't opened yet, but Varia could feel it. Chuckling, Xader put his arms around her from behind, groping her through her housedress: "Might as well enjoy ourselves while we wait," he murmured, and kissed her neck. His inborn psionic talent was sufficient that, unless she took him by surprise, he could hold off whatever magic she might try with handcuffs on. So she stamped hard on his instep, and swearing, he let her go, stepping back from her.

Abruptly the three of them were swallowed into a deep bass indigo nothingness, a nothingness with a gut-wrenching, mind-numbing sense of distortion, followed by a moment of suspension while the gate examined them. Then Varia found herself running like someone who'd just jumped from a moving car. As if the gate had spit her out. Unable to windmill her manacled arms for balance, she fell headlong onto grass. A minute later, hands raised her to her feet, a small hand on one side, a larger on the other.

She stood not in midnight now, but in sun-dappled high noon, and looked about her. They were no longer on the mountaintop, but in a cathedral-like grove of large old basswood trees. The grass was lawn-like, almost without saplings, as if grazed between the monthly openings of the gate. And in fact, on this side, in the world called Yuulith, animals and humans could enter the site freely until the first distortion of the matrix, the Web of the World, when the gate began to regenerate. Then it physically repelled them.

Several rough-clad men with spears had been waiting to collect anyone or anything that came through. They held back though, recognizing that these were part of the Sisterhood. Ignoring them, Idri first untied the bandanna that held Varia's mouth shut, then removed the gag from between her teeth, leaving the handcuffs on. For just a moment she watched Varia work the kinks from her jaw, then turned and slapped Xader, the sound almost like a small-caliber pistol. Idri, like Varia, was considerably stronger than she looked.

"She's still a Sister, Xader," she snapped, "and don't forget it. Keep your hands to yourself, and remember who you are."

Remember what you are, Varia corrected silently. A cull. Occasionally a guardsman clone was flawed in some unacceptable way, and the whole batch was either kept for labor or quietly disposed of. It occurred to Varia that the Ferny Cove disaster might have left so few guardsmen alive, culls were used more widely now.

Xader had flushed with resentment. But it wasn't the slap that had stung him, Varia knew. He'd harassed her before, in the Packard, with the curtains drawn and Armik driving. And Idri had allowed it, to a point. Perhaps she rationalized it as punishment for Varia's deserting the Sisterhood, but basically she had a sadistic streak. Sitting in front, she'd ignored Varia's muffled complaints, grunted through her gag, but when Xader's hand went into his victim's pants, as it invariably had, Idri had turned as if she had eyes in the back of her head, slapped him, and chewed him out. He'd laughed and stopped-in his brutal, offensive way he was good-natured-but in an hour or two resumed his harassment.

No, what stung him now, Varia told herself, were the witnesses, the tribesmen who'd seen it. And no doubt he considered himself entrapped, for this time he'd been slapped without even putting his hand up her dress.

Varia wondered if this meant the end of his abuse. With her gag out, she could complain in words, and Idri could hardly ignore her.

The tribesmen at the gate had been respectful enough. At Idri's order, one had led them to the village headman, who'd loaned them horses and an escort. There Idri had removed Varia's handcuffs, and both had dressed themselves in tribesmen's breeches, for riding. Then they'd ridden to Oztown and the chief's compound, arriving at dusk. Idri wasted no time; made arrangements that same evening for a squad of warriors as an escort. They left the next morning at sunup, riding eastward through mildly rolling wooded hills, and occasional large openings with farms and villages.

Xader left Varia carefully alone, though from time to time she felt his eyes.

They traveled till dusk before camping. The new escort were swaggerers, warriors of the chief's own elite. Undoubtedly they'd heard of the rape at Ferny Cove, for they eyed the Sisters appraisingly, without the respect they might once have shown. But they'd said or done nothing more offensive than look. Then Idri started the supper fires with simple hand gestures, reminding them of the Sisters' reputation for dangerous sorceries.

The escort ate separately from its charges, except that Idri invited their sergeant to sit beside her. When they'd eaten, the escort and Xader had laid down their beds a little distance from the Sisters, screened by undergrowth. The men, including Xader, had warm sleeping robes against the night chill. The Sisters, with their powers, used only a pallet and a single light blanket.

Varia was awakened by a powerful hand clutching her throat, cutting off her air. The voice that murmured to her was Xader's, and she smelled whiskey on his breath. "There's a knife in my other hand," he said. "One sound and you're dead." He let go her throat then, threw the blanket aside, fumbled with the drawstring on her breeches and began tugging them down. She could sense the knife an inch from her throat; it move to her belly as he got her breeches off her buttocks.