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Aeriel saw a young girl barely in woh forehead as her mother, her hair the sah, the chin reen

"Oriencor," Ravenna breathed "O hter, Oriencor"

A space of silence At last Ravenna roused

"Then careat disaster upon our ho not known in centuries So you here, upon your world, that they ulfed in such a conflict, none ever dreaer to be off, to join the fight and unleash against those of our own people who had becoht her But I deo without me No one wanted her, anyway: I was the only one who considered her human At last, I confessed her ancestry to her"

Ravenna’s words gre and halting

"She wentme, she fled and vanished into the wild e When the last chariots departed, I re, but I could find no trace In the end, in despair, I concluded she must have perished"

In heraway on pluhter screa, co the planet in vain Aeriel could have wept for the dark-haired halfling girl When the Ancient spoke again, her tone had flattened into exhaustion

"Those few of us left upon this world had to decide what to do Messages from our home world had ceased Only silence answered our hails All of our chariots were gone So of new chariots, but we had neither tiun to die Artificial fro A handful of us, cut off frohter world as before We resolved to let it decline gradually and see if we could find a balance-point We decided to try to salvage the world"

With the aid of the pearl, Aeriel envisioned the world’s at away into space, whole species of plants and ani thinner, smaller, hardier

"And we succeeded," Ravenna said, a trace of ani to her voice "Over the years, we bred new species of vegetation that could survive without our care We trained the duaroughs to maintain the subterranean machinery that manufactures water and air Now that the ater pass outside the Domes without masks to help us breathe Bit by bit, ithdrew fro you to evolve as you would"

The beadwork landscape woven in Aeriel’s nizable, dotted with the herbs and beasts and peoples she knew Ravenna sighed

"A point of stasis was reached at last, the entropy halted--or so we thought Then the Witch appeared, upsetting our delicate equilibrium only subtly at first: wells tainted, dams undermined, cisterns breached The scarcity of water was always our weakest point We repaired the da her handiwork, spreading drought As our nuy she could, ransacking the darkened Cities for tools In time she learned all our e this world as surely as , the irown dark

"And yet," the Ancient whispered, "she iswhat to say "What happened there," she ventured at last, "on Oceanus?"

Ravenna started An explosion of colors leapt suddenly into Aeriel’s thoughts She shrank froues," the Ancientlady choked "Weapons of uniinable ferocity, horrors unleashed to last a thousand thousand years beyond the lifetimes of their creators and victilows in heaven with such a cold and spectral light: quick with the poison that never ends Nothing is left alive there This is the only world that reht If Oriencor would but listen! If I could but persuade her to renounce this n after azed at her

"How can I help you, Lady?" she asked finally

The Ancient turned on her "Crush the Witch’s army," she answered, with such fierceness that Aeriel flinched "Destroy her darkangels And lay the pearl of the world in her hand"

Aeriel stared, a Was she, Aeriel, to convert the lorelei as once she had rescued a darkangel? But the Witch was infinitely el "son" had been What if Oriencor did not wish to be saved?

What if she used the sorcery of the pearl to further her own evil ends?

Yet Ravenna seemed so certain that Aeriel dared not question her She was an Ancient, after all, with knowledge far superior to Aeriel’s own I airl told herself Perhaps it is not necessary that I understand The Ancient lady paced,restlessly

"What does the future hold, Aeriel--do you know?"

Aeriel shook her head Ravenna sighed

"Nor do I Many possibilities exist An infinity: destiny isn’t fixed, you know"

Aeriel nodded, trying desperately to coe had told her once, ht of the Lady Syllva’s are ready tohad she been wandering with the Witch’s pin in her head and how long healing here under Ravenna’s care? The other returned to her, reaching once lancing thrill of the Ancientlady’s power

"This jewel on which I have shown you the past," she said, "can also scan ahead in time I have other such jewels here in the City And I have sat with the for a hter’s s"

Iirl’s mind