end to them. Most of them are—transplants, I suppose you would say. They are circles of foreign soil; they look as if a gardener cut circles of land and replaced them with circles of land from somewhere else. Most of them were so similar to Valdemaran soil that if we hadn't been looking for signs of disturbance we wouldn't have spotted anything wrong. Some were from places I couldn't recognize—the one nearest the city going directly north from the Palace is of black sand, for instance. There was one piece that I would swear was right out of a mountain meadow in Karse; it even contained an herb I know grows only there. I took samples from all of them. But one—there was one at the end that was different. That strange one—it was fused sand, like badly-made glass.' He swallowed, hard. 'I—it would be very terrible if whatever did that has done it somewhere where there are people.'

'Did you see any of the strange animals some people have described?' Elspeth asked.

Karal shook his head. 'No, nothing that didn't seem quite normal, just out of place where we found it.'

'I found some of the strange animals, and even a bird,' Darkwind spoke up. 'Or rather, Vree found them and caught them. I had the impression that the disturbances were not regular and not in a pattern, but it hadn't occurred to me that many of them would simply look just like the land around them.'

An'desha listened with a sinking heart. Oh, this sounded far too much like that ancient memory for his satisfaction! I had hoped they would prove me wrong, but they are only proving me more and more right!

An'desha simply sat and absorbed it all, unable to garner the will to speak. Not just yet, anyway.

Darkwind described the creatures that he had caught and brought back; the other mages who had gone in other directions added their observations. Karal offered more comments of his own, calmly, though with obvious deference to the others. He wouldn't venture any conclusions, but based on his own figures and those of the rest, he began to plot the rest of the observations on a larger map of the land around Haven. Karal's relative self- assurance—and his and Ulrich's occasional glances of encouragement—finally gave An'desha the courage to speak up in a moment of silence.

'You all know—what, who I was,' he said softly, his eyes fixed on a spot in the middle of the table.

Every eye in the place turned toward him. Karal stopped writing.

'I still have Mornelith Falconsbane's memories,' he went on, haltingly. 'And those of the lives he led before he was Falconsbane. I knew this mage-storm when it struck. I recognized it somehow, out of those memories, though I did not know what it was, exactly, nor how I recognized it.' He swallowed; his throat and mouth felt terribly dry, and his hands were cold. 'Please—please, do not think me crazy. What I say is true, as true as I can say it. With the help of Master Ulrich, I —I sought answers to that recognition. I believe I know what this storm was, what caused it, and even why.'

The silence was so thick he heard the hiss of the lantern flames behind him. 'Please be patient with me—this was the oldest memory I have ever touched, possibly the oldest that Falconsbane himself had. It came from a time when Falconsbane was a mage and a king called Ma'ar.'

The gryphons hissed as one, hackles and crest-feathers smoothed flat to their heads, and sat straight up on their haunches. No one else moved.

'The memory of a storm like this one—it came after a Gate was destroyed. Not a temporary Gate like we know, but a permanent Gate—one that was held ready to be opened at any moment. It was a small storm, and the effects were limited, but they were very like what you have been describing here.' He swallowed again; what followed had been very, very hard to cope with, even at the remove of several hundreds, if not thousands, of years. 'But when Ma'ar—died—it was with the knowledge that his realm, and that of his enemy, were both about to fall to a suicidal cataclysm. Both realms, rich in magic, built with magic, were about to have every spell within them broken within moments of his death. Many permanent Gates, shields, devices, all—and all at once. He died before he himself experienced that cataclysm, but the effects would have been very like those we are seeing now, but much, much worse, lasting for days, and traveling across continents.'

'Continents?' someone asked. An'desha nodded.

'Hence, that it is called 'the Cataclysm' in the old texts,' Ulrich murmured as if to himself.

'But that wasss verrry long ago,' Hydona said, puzzled. 'What hasss that to do with usss?'

He took another deep breath. This was even harder to speak of, but for a different reason. 'I do not often tell of this, but when I was entrapped within my body by Falconsbane, I was aided by two—presences.' Please, oh please, do not let them doubt my sanity!

'Avatars of the Star-Eyed, he means,' Firesong interjected, and reached under the table to squeeze his hand encouragingly. 'The blade Need spoke to me of these, more than once. I believe they were what they claimed to be and so does she; after all, some of you saw them when they unmade both Nyara and An'desha, giving them back more human likenesses.'

'An'desha has told me of these Avatars,' Karal spoke up. 'I believe them to be true Visitations also.'

An'desha cleared his throat self-consciously, feeling his ears and neck growing hot with a flush he could not control. 'They warned me then, several times, that there was something terrible in the future. Something that threatened not only Valdemar alone, but all our lands. I thought it was only Falconsbane,

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