One other new feature that I must comment on was almost imperceptible in the wan light until I got very close to Bastion. The entire edifice is covered, top to bottom and front to back, with runes, sigils, and mystic etchings of every variety. I've since spent much of my free time studying their design and have them nearly unraveled. The challenge of it kept me interested and active when I otherwise might have begun seriously missing my home and familiar sights.

Seeing Bastion again after so long brought to mind something unexpected and long forgotten. Many years before the building of the stronghold, while I was an apprentice in justarius's house, Esme had talked me into watching my first theatrical production. I had not even heard of such things before coming to the big city of Palanthas. What impressed me most was not the story, or even the players, for I can remember nothing of either, but the backdrop that had been created for the stage. It was a street scene, with false shop fronts and homes that looked quite real in the odd green-

OK CDC USA plague

white glow provided by the bowls of powdered lime and water that served as footlights.

I realize this seems a long digression, but I tell you because if you have ever seen such a sight, you will understand how the exterior of Bastion looks now. Not dark, exactly, but very dimly lit from the bottom up. 1 felt as if I stood upon a stage, though I knew the building before me was not false-fronted, nor the darkness beyond the edges of my vision merely stage wings hidden by heavy curtains.

I knew, too, that the frightening sounds around me did not come from actors in the ivings, waiting to play the parts of hounds. Plaintive baying echoed from beyond the lacy wrouglit-iron fence that surrounds the stronghold. I could see red eyes glowing at an unknown distance, oddly shaped and placed; one here, three there, not like any wolves 1 had ever seen.

Zagarus was pressed against my leg, for once speechless. To our mutual great relief, the enormous, arched door before us swung open on creaky hinges, flooding the courtyard at our feet with yellow light. I remember it only because 1 had not felt like such a rube since I arrived as an apprentice at Justarius's villa those many years ago. My mouth hung agape, I am sure.

"You're here. Come in. I have too much to do to be standing in the doorway." The voice was brisk, yet unmistakably female, and had the hint of an accent 1 still have been unable to place. Her face was entirely in shadow.

There was no question of not complying with that voice, however. I could feel Zag paddling up the slick, porcelain steps next to me and can only imagine how incongruous he must have looked to her, a sea gull with no sea in sight. The silhouetted woman pointedly ignored him.

We stopped next to her in the doorway, and I squinted, still unable to see her features. "I'm Guerrand DiThon," I said, knowing as 1 did how foolish I must have sounded.

She looked meaningfully at my red robes. "Do you think I

open the door for just anyone who happens by?"

I looked toward the red eyes beyond the fence. "Has anyone just happened by?"

"Not yet."

"And your name is-?"

"My business." She waved us through the door impatiently. "Dagamier." The bright light fell across her face, and at last I could see her. She looked young, perhaps of an age with my little sister Kirah, except around the eyes. Though her skin was unlined, there was a depth of experience, a cynical sadness, even, in orbs the dark blue of an angry, storm- tossed sea.

Dagamier was-is-a study in contrasts. Skin as white and unblemished as unveined marble, more polished than pale. Straight, shoulder-length hair the same midnight black as the silk robe she always wears. She's one of those people who looks good, sensuous even, in black, with her sharp, compact angles and a woman's soft, graceful moves. She's smart as a whip, with a tongue to match. I am ever on eggshells with her. Frankly, I haven't figured her out yet, and I'm not sure a lifetime of study would help that. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

"I will show you the nave area that is common to us all and to the red wing," Dagamier said, leading us into the apse. "Ezius will likely give you a tour of the white wing when he has completed his shift in the scrying sphere. You will have no need to see the black wing."

"I have seen it," I said abruptly, involuntarily. "I've seen them all, at least from the outside."

She looked over her shoulder, one brow arched skeptically.

"Didn't the Council tell you?" I felt compelled to ask. "I was among the twenty-one mages who helped build Bastion before it was moved herefrom the Prime Material Plane."

Honestly, Maladorigar, I don't know what made me tell her all that. I should have known it would annoy her.

Dagamier's firm-lipped silence confirmed that it had.

"Then you will not be requiring a tour." She took a step to leave, and I instinctively reached out a hand to her forearm. I thought I had touched fire.

"Oh, but I do need one," 1 assured her quickly, pulling my hand away. "Nothing inside looks as I remember it. My involvement in the construction ended with the raising of the walls. The interior was completed by the Council of Three after they sent the other eighteen representatives from the site. Even the gargoyles, the fence, the creatures beyond it, the runes tluit surround it, are all new to me."

"The runes were drawn upon Bastion by the Council of Three to send Bastion here. The creatures are hell hounds, other-dimensional flame-belching monstrosities with fangs and claws, brought here by LaDonna as the black order's contribution to security. They patrol outside the fence." She continued in her bored voice, as if reading the information from a handbill. "The gargoyles were conjured by justarius for the red wing; they watch the forecourt for unwanted visitors."

Catching the pattern here, I asked, "And the fence was Par-Salian's doing?"

She stared at me for long moments in a most disconcerting manner. "No."

Dagamier walked through the apse to the soaring central nave. It, too, was new to me, and seemed to serve no other purpose than to connect the three wings that join it at equidistant points from the towering front door. Actually, nine doors lead away from this area: one each to the white and red wings respectively, seven into the black wing, seven separate and distinct rooms that can only be entered from the nave.

In the center of the room is a wide, round column that stretches from floor to ceiling. A support pillar, I supposed, not recalling it from the construction. The column is ringed by a narrow, fish-filled gurgling stream, like a miniature moat, whose source is a mystery.

"That column houses the scrying diorama, Par-Salian's contribution to defense," Dagamier said pointedly. "Each of us takes a shift inside, watching Bastion and this entire demiplane for signs of intrusion."

"Of course," I said lamely, wishing I sounded more like the new high defender than some sheepish apprentice. Glancing around, I was struck by the whiteness of the walls, the natural-looking brightness that seems to filter down from the ceiling, as if it's a glass pane that faces the sun. Par-Salian's influence here is obvious, as is justarius's. The snowy whiteness is broken only by man-sized lush, tropical plants. There is little evidence of LaDonna's hand here, except, perhaps, in the shadows.

Dagamier must have seen me looking at the greenery, because she said, "The plants and fish have always been the responsibility of the red representative. They'd all be dead if it were up to me." She looked at Zagarus for the first time. "Naturally, your gull and its mess is also your responsibil- ity."

Zag's wing feathers gathered up like a bird in the cold. Does she think I can't hear her? he griped. Imagine talking about me like I'm some wild animal.