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I returned to squat beside hiirlpilar that blocked the chasm

"Is that the Palace of Pain?" I asked the old man

"I never saw the Palace of Pain except from the inside," he said

"What was it like, inside?"

He hooded his eyes with his hands, as if not to re for," he concluded "The People in the ditch , either"

"How can you be sure?" I asked

His face had grayed "That she has not led us to where we need to bethat’s a disappointht not finish the journey

Restless, I walked back to the girl, now standing stiffly a fewher head like solanced down at thearound the base of the reat cloud of dust

Thendifferentthe hordes, a kilo over the silent crowds At first I could not tel whether it was a variety of war sphinx But the dust raised by trae, curled-up spider withon a round disk and floating with insolent lints shone from the facets of two oval, slanted, widely spaced eyes on the front of its broad, flat head

The Captive

The Primordial Vinnevra came up beside me "Is that?"

For a moment, I could not say a word--made dumb by the old spirit’srealization that this thing was now free, perhaps in control of the rabbedus toward that one, the Beast, haven’t I? That’s where they’re al going!"

A wide gate opened in the base of the leaning monument Slowly at first, then with steady deterate Tar sphinxes euard theate, dipped a little,the crowds kneel or fal beneath its shadow, then passed through as wel When it had disappeared into the monument, those who had not been crushed picked the into my flesh I pried the

She corandfather

"We won’t cross the chasm," she said "Wemy words for directions But that hardly seemed to matter She did not randfather that horror But our expressions were too stricken, too obvious

I could not avoidhis skeptical look

"You’ve seen it, haven’t you?" Gamelpar asked us "The Beast

It’s down there" His face crinkled with remembered terror "That is a Palace of Pain, isn’t it? And they’re stil being lured inside"

He could not finish

Vinnevra curled up beside the old man and patted his shoulder as he sobbed I could not stand that, the oldlike a child

I wandered off to let them be, then sat and buried my head in my arms and knees

Chapter Nine

BY TREMENDOUS FORCE of wil, Vinnevra ignored her coh the low dry hils and boulders to flat terrain--the direct opposite of where her geas was teling her to go Gaht a line as we could e toward haphazard foothils like wrinkles in a blanket Looking up along the low portion of the curve, I saw the

foothils push against a sharp range of rockyinto the atreat body of water would be Beyond the haze lay s any artificial landscape, cli for thousands of kilometers until it e wals

Beyond that line, the Halo’s false landscape appeared again, deep green and rich, tantalizing

The wisdo course did not seem obvious to me, but Gamelpar did not object--and I could think of no reason not to put as irl looked haunted

Her geas, it seerammed this wheel with the means to direct and protect her subjects But who controls the beacons now?

I had no answer for the old spirit’s obvious question

Within a couple of hours, alking over irregular sheets of gray, flaky crust, overlaid with a powdery white char that tasted bitter on ue--bitter, burnt, nasty What passed for natural landscape overlying the layer of bedrock, itself little more than a veneer, had been burned away, as if the Gods had decided to drop sheets of fire and destroy anything living

Hundreds of ed sheets of blue-gray foundationaside the white char and crust and exposing a great gaping wound in the Halo itself

Ruin laid over ruin

We walked around the towering, curling, jagged edges of that hole, pausing once only to peer into a pit at least four or five kiloh layer after penetrated layer of smashed, ruptured architecture and ed at the botto

And yet--for the Halo, this was but a reat black sion of the wheel, our tile, was apparently not necessary Not yet, at any rate

The Lord of Admirals had no co ience gathering strength, waiting for the proper htened of hier

After a few hours, we cliher, relatively undisturbed stretch of level land--dirt, rocks, a ridge of granite populated by a few singed and drooping trees--and a se We paused Gaers into the pond and tasted the water, then nodded