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immense towers whose pillars wept ghosts, the crumbling, hollow stone colossus with its half-mouth whispering rhymes in an unintelligible tongue. There, in the Realm of Dusk, Obax took the shape of one of the deathly steeds and had carried Byrnak past all these sights and more, finally bringing him to a shattered, peakless titanic mountain and to the awesome wonder that pulsed at its core - the Wellsource.
    Now, when he tried to recall its form, only fragmentary images would come to mind - was it a heart pumping iridescent flame, or a fountaining column, or a moaning whirlwind veined with lightning, or a cloudy thing of levers and crystalline planes? He did remember how it called to him, to the cold fire that blazed in his head. It had known him, and his destiny.
    Byrnak became aware of the woman's unwavering stare, moved up the pallet and pulled the furs aside. She was naked, her pale-skinned, rounded form sending lust rushing through him. Then he took her, sating himself, and she made no sound. Only when he was done did she say, in a voice desperate with need: "Who am I? Please tell me - who
am
I?"

Chapter Five
    Towards the glutted margins of battle they ride,
With their greying hair and rusting blades.
    —Kovalti,
Ode To The Warrior
    It was a cold, grey autumn morning in the Bachruz Mountains, cold without being icy, grey without the promise of an imminent downpour. Mist veiled the cruel crags and pinnacles and hid from view the few streams that wound along ravines and gorges worn deep by uncountable summers and winters. One of these streams, a river almost, came down from the highest snow-wrapped slopes, tumbling through mossy,boulder-strewn gullies till it reached the upper reaches of a high, sheltered valley called Krusivel. There, the waters slowed and widened towards the north of the valley where they fed a small lake and the town gathered around its banks. A runoff stream led away from the lake's northeast bank to a notch at the edge of a sheer drop, near the foot of a natural rock tower rooted in the cliffs themselves. The stream flung itself over the brink and into the air, falling from such a height that it bathed the barren rocks below in never-ending spray.
    A philosophically-minded townsperson might have pondered that long journey and wondered why anything would travel so far only to leap into oblivion.
    That morning, two men sat on a boulder near the edge of those falls. The taller and older of the two wore thick woollen breeches and a battered-looking black jerkin of quilted leather. His companion, a short, burly man in a trader's many-pocketed tunic, poured pale wine into a wooden beaker which he then handed over.
    Ikarno Mazaret, Lord Commander of the Knights of the Order of the Fathertree, accepted the cup and took a mouthful. He let the pungent savour fill his head before swallowing, then whistled.
    "What a vintage," he said. "That has to be the finest cup of Ebroan white I've ever tasted." He ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth. "What a difference from these Honjir ales, which are fine in their way, you understand. And as for asmirith, that distilled furnace-milk..."
    His companion leaned forward with the bottle but Mazaret shook his head.
    "One's enough this early, Gilly," he said. "Besides, you didn't come all this way just to bring me a flask of wine."
    "Well, I also happen to have a piece of Cabringan cheese," said the man called Gilly, producing a wax-paper package from a pocket and unwrapping it. "But if you'd rather not..."
    "Daemon in human form," Mazaret growled with a smile, reaching for the cheese and breaking off a piece. As he chewed, enjoying the sharp tang, he regarded his companion levelly.
    "So the news is bad, then?"
    Gilly shrugged, then poured himself a cup of wine. He was a round-faced, bearded man whose affable demeanour belied his lethal abilities with the broadsword.
    "Depends on your definition of 'bad'. Our sympathisers in the east have all promised to keep sending