"I see you are a man of your word, digger. Look for yourself. See if she is not there in the valley."

From his place on the hillside, Cheyne could see straight down to where Saelin stood impatiently over Claria, who was bound to a ganzite spire.

"Let her go. When she's up here, you'll get the totem," said Cheyne, his eyes stony and hard as he watched the assassins ring the valley. "Are you so afraid of a digger and a songmage that you need an army?"

"Saelin!" called Naruq, turning to leave.

"Wait. All right. Here. Now let her go." Cheyne held out the totem.

Naruq took it, smiled, and called down into the valley again, his words echoing off the spires like the sound of flat stones thrown in a shallow pool. "Saelin! Let her go."

Cheyne watched anxiously, but no one moved from the spire. When he looked back to Naruq, the elf had disappeared. But the sabers had not.

"Well, you didn't expect him to really do it, did you?" said Og.

"No. Of course not. He'll open the Clock. With this wind, it could be anytime. Are you ready?"

Og blanched, straightened his back, and nodded.

His mouth was so dry he couldn't even say yes.

Riolla snapped her spyglass shut and stood by the spire Naruq had indicated. Claria, still gagged and bound, had been lashed to the crystal with tough cords of bark rope Naruq had taken from the fortress. Saelin stood by, leering at the girl, waiting for the moment Riolla gave her over to him.

When the elf appeared beside him, the assassin startled and nearly lost his footing on the rock-littered valley floor as he fought the reflections all around him. Claria had enough courage left to laugh. At least until Naruq blew the debris out of an opening in the spire just over Claria's head, polished the four sides of the slot with his cloak, and inserted the totem. The spire reclaimed its missing piece with a sound click.

He turned to Riolla and smiled, his silver eyes dancing. "1*11 be going now," he said, and disappeared into the mirrored maze before the words registered on her ears.

"You can't leave us here!" Riolla cried, her voice echoing all around, following the reflection of her worried face from spire to spire. She grabbed Saelin's arm and popped open her spyglass. "You watch ahead. I'll direct our path up the mountain."

They began to stumble out of the valley as fast as they could, leaving Claria amid the resounding swell of the wind.

Above the valley, behind the crystal door, the Beast of the Hours awoke to the sound of a distant ringing, like the call of Ninnite prayer bells on the wind.

Up on the hillside, at first there was no sound at all. Then the force seemed to gather under their feet and the rocks hummed low and steady, shaking so gently that only by looking at the pebbles rolling around on the surface could they tell there was any motion at all.

"It's begun," said Cheyne. "They've put the totem in the correct spire. The first key is in place. And they've left Claria tied to the spire. Og, I don't know how long I have, but I've got to go down there, army or not. Claria will never survive what the Collector said will come next."

"Cheyne, the wind has already picked up. The storm gathers over the erg now. Look!" Og pointed to the darkening sky, the few clouds over their heads beginning to swirl into a spiral pattern. Toward the north, a low, pale cloud loomed.

"That's the sandstorm. The godscream. When it hits, we'd better have taken cover. That wind carries enough sand to grind down this entire valley," shouted Og. "You can't go down there-"

Claria's shriek rose from the valley floor, sounding like a thousand women. Cheyne grimaced and called over his shoulder, the wind taking his words to Og's ears instantly.

"Sing it shut again, Og. You're our only chance."

And then Og stood alone on the outcropping over the valley, his eyes on the crystal door above. He swallowed hard, his hands shaking and his knees about to buckle. All he could think of was how badly he needed a hard slug of raqa. Or even just a taste.

The wind bore down on him, and he braced himself against a big hickory tree, clutching the three gemstones in one hand and waiting for Cheyne to emerge from the valley with Claria. Little by little, the rising din from the spires' vibration filled his ears until he could not hear anything else. One by one, he saw the spires begin to shatter, their music passing from the range of his hearing into pure destruction. Holding fast to the tree, he didn't see how anyone could survive the onslaught in the valley.

Anyone except Womba.

Og could not believe his eyes. There she was, making her way across the tormented valley, pushing spire after broken spire away from her, with only one arm protecting her eyes. Two of the assassins lay crumpled in her wake. Og took a deep breath and steeled himself. There was no time for him to get away and no place to go. He turned away, gathered his concentration, and thought of the song.

Above, the crystal wall shook and trembled with every new assault from the powerful desert-borne winds. Og held his voice, hoping for a moment of respite from the wind, a moment when he could hear himself sing the song, truing the notes as he went.

In the Chimes, Cheyne wrapped his face in his kaf-fiyeh, put his head down, and pulled himself from spire to spire blindly, some shattering over his head, unable to see any sign of Claria. With his thoughts on Claria alone, he had forgotten the assassins, but they had not forgotten him. Two of the closest had placed themselves between him and Claria, their sabers sheathed, but their intentions plain. They would not let him pass. He had simply charged through them, run into the thick of the ganzite crystals and disappeared into a thousand reflected images of himself. None of which he could see, he thought ruefully. Several of the assassins had followed him in. Three of them lay dead from falling crystal, and two more still wandered blindly in the fury as Cheyne pressed on toward Claria.

Og looked through his thin kaffiyeh toward the crystal door and knew he could wait no longer. He began to put voice to the memory of the little tune as the windstorm finished its work in the Chimes.

All Cheyne could see was dark, swirling sand. But when the lightning struck the Chimes, it charged the spire in front of Cheyne with brilliant power, arcing from peak to crystalline peak in jagged, haphazard paths, giving him an instant of light to steer by. He saw Claria huddled next to the only spire still standing, beside it, a pool of molten glass sizzled around a shortened spire, the ganzite slowly dripping down itself to the dry valley floor in glowing, burning red lumps. The churning wind tore at Claria's robes and the airborne sand had all but flayed the skin from her hands. But he had seen her, and she had seen him. Coughing, Cheyne collapsed against another spire, oblivious to its danger, and thought he would die there, amid the smell of molten ganzite and sulfur, and the pandemonium of the godscream.

Then the worst sound of all reached his ears: absolute silence. The wind ceased as quickly as it had begun, and for a moment, Cheyne thought he had gone deaf. But then he heard the spilling of sand from his robes as he shifted, and the tinkle of the crystal chimes as the lightning's last charge scattered to exhaustion.

And Claria's raw shouts, so near that when his ears seized upon the sound, he was at her side in a heartbeat. His hands stiff with sand-covered blood, he fumbled at Riolla's ropes like a man with no touch at all, but at last he cut through the thick cords, brought Claria to her feet, and began to run with her to the edge of the valley, to the deep, sheltering caves.

"I'm here, Claria, hold on. We'll be out of here in just a minute, I swear to you, I will not fail you," he muttered through painful, cracked lips. Cheyne knew they had only seconds before the crystal door gave way and the Beast of the Hours, so long entombed, so long at bay, would spring back into its unconquered realm with the fury of three thousand unanswered years.