This caused Benabe to break her silence. "I don't know what you think she agreed to, but I have agreed to nothing. I'm her mother."

"She told you of the stones," Leeka said, "for years she told you of them."

Benabe did not deny it. "Shen is a child. She knows nothing about-"

Leeka raised his hand. "She knows a great deal. Mother, without insult, understand that you are the one who knows nothing about these things."

For a moment Kelis thought Benabe was going to hit the old soldier. Like any Talayan tribal girl, she had been trained in fisting, a martial art that, ironically, used elbows and knees more than fists. She could have driven his nose into his skull before his instincts pulled his head back.

If Leeka felt threatened, he gave no sign. "A great conflict is coming, war on a scale never seen before."

"War with who?" Benabe snapped. "The Mein were thoroughly beaten. Aushenia wishes Acacia no harm. Talayans have their own issues, too. There is no one to war with. The queen grips the world in her fist!"

"Her fist is not that large," Leeka answered. "The Santoth can see farther than you or I. They see a coming war on a scale never seen before, against a new enemy. Preparations have already begun."

The glow from the fire bowl was stronger now. By its light Kelis saw the faces of his companions as they absorbed that news, weighed it. But that was not all he saw. Behind them hulked the oblong shadows of the stones. He glanced over his shoulder. Surely, they had not been that near before. He began to comment on it, but found the words stuck on his tongue.

"The Santoth," Leeka continued, "would aid the Known World in the struggle to come, if the queen would share The Song of Elenet with them. She has it. My teachers know that. They feel it every time she reads from it, every time she sings. They could explain it to her better than she can learn it on her own. They could help her, and help all the people of the Known World."

Benabe was on her knees now, leaning toward Leeka, in an even better position to strike. "Tinhadin, who was the greatest of the Santoth, came to fear sorcery and drove it from the world. Why should we want it back? Forgive my asking, but who does that serve other than them?"

Kelis's eyes flicked between her and the stones. They crowded so near now that he imagined he could reach back and touch the rock behind him. Naamen saw them also. His mouth opened and remained that way.

"Is it a good thing to survive the coming slaughter?" Leeka asked. "Without the Santoth, you won't. Without the Santoth, the Known World will learn chaos of a kind it's never experienced before. Without the Santoth, Corinn Akaran will not learn the dangers of her sorcery. We know that she does not understand fundamental things. God talk does not create things anew. The Giver could, but when humans sing, we can only steal, rearrange, and often corrupt. There is always a consequence. Alone, the queen will not be able to see the consequences until it is too late. She needs the Santoth much more than she knows."

"So you wish us to believe," Benabe said. "You still haven't explained what role my daughter plays in this."

"She will stay here, with us," Leeka said. "We will hide her and protect her and commune with her and ready her for-"

"No." Benabe said the word with firm matter-of-factness. "No, I will not allow that."

"The decision is not yours to make. It's Shen's. She has made it already."

"Mother?" Shen asked softly. Like Naamen, her attention had drifted out past the ring of people to the stones surrounding them. She cocked her head slightly, listening to something beyond the argument about her fate.

Benabe ignored her. "I will stay with her, then," she said.

Leeka's eyes might have softened as he answered her-might have, Kelis was not sure. "That is not possible."

"It must be. I will not hand her over to you, no matter what she says."

"Mother," Shen said.

"If you wish to help," Leeka said, glancing up to include Kelis as well, "take the Santoth's message to Queen Corinn. Make her to know that the Santoth must have the book. They will have it, whether she consents to it or not."

Shen stood up. "Mother, the stones have come. They are speaking. They want to-"

She got no further. Her head snapped back. Her teeth gnashed at the air and her arms flew out. She looked like she had been pierced in the chest by something that wanted to lift her into the air. Benabe leaped to her feet and reached to catch her daughter, but the stone behind her suddenly moved. It turned into a cloud of sand, a moving pillar that had something like a human form at its center. It sped past Benabe and surged around Shen's trembling body and caught her as she began to fall backward. Benabe screamed. The other stones surged in on the group, spinning together and roaring like an angry wind.

"They mean no harm," Leeka shouted over the noise. "They will protect her from all harm until the time is right."

Benabe's voice rose louder still. "Grab her!"

Kelis tried, but the moment he stepped toward the girl, he lost sight of her. The swirling sand pressed against him. He could barely move, no matter how he tried to kick or lean or twist his way through it. A few times he saw Shen-her face, her legs, her supine form-revealed in quick glimpses, never in the same place twice.

Leeka said, "And if the time is right, she will let them free. She will lead them back into the world. If what we fear does come…"

As quickly as it began, it ended. The pressure holding Kelis in place vanished. He crashed to the ground, bumping against Naamen, who had also fallen. Silence. Stillness. The fire was out. Kelis blinked quickly. Soon he could see the stars and low moon outlining the people around him. He rose, counting the figures, scanning the featureless plain around them. He saw Benabe, Naamen, but no one else.

"They're gone," Naamen said.

In answer, Benabe let loose an ancient-sounding wail, long held, unending. Her daughter was taken.

C HAPTER

Rialus perched on a west-facing windowsill in his quarters, several stories above ground level, with a view out across the seemingly endless city of Avina. Buildings spread out in all directions, mazelike. Many had been glazed in sparkling hues of crimson and orange. More than one tower floated flags that announced their clan affiliation. Here and there trees rose between the structures, tall, lean poles that exploded in circular plumes at their highest points. Above, flocks of pigeons swooped in great swaths of motion. Starlings darted through the air. Higher up, tiny black pinpricks hung in the sky, watchers. Occasionally gulls flew on patrol, an air of ownership and condescension in their every motion and in each harsh cry.

A hundred different columns of smoke billowed dark clouds into the air, mixed in among five hundred thinner plumes of gray. Even more small white puffs belched out of pipes and chimneys. The columns were not so much a symptom of the contaminants of the air-as they often seemed to be in large Acacian cities like Alecia-as they were reminders of the thousands and thousands of lives being lived in those countless buildings, in workshops and at hearths, around public cooking pits and in great halls filled with revelers. Or so Rialus imagined.

Despite the smoke, the air tasted fresh enough. It carried the salty tinge of the sea, the only reminder-other than the gulls-that it was so near. The edge of the Gray Slopes lay just to the east over a barricade that, through some trick of its architecture, replicated a receding cityscape. The inhabitants of the city had turned their backs on the shore and seemed to willfully ignore their coastal location. If they did glance east, they saw the illusion of the continuation of the city, nothing else.