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the monster's fatal poisons. At the new sound, I jumped, flinging my
     pitiful knife away into the darkness, where it clattered much too loudly against the rock
     wall.
    “EST SULARIS OTH MITHAS ...”
    And then, behind me, or what I thought was behind me, another.
    BUILD YE THE WESTERNMOST WALL IN THREE PARTS . . .
    And, beyond that, another voice, and yet another, until I spun about dizzily, buffeted by
     voices, by echoes, by wandering sound from centuries before. For not only did the voices
     of Southlund and Coastlund mingle in the darkness with a chorus of High Solamnic, but the
     ancient ritual language seemed to change as I heard it, traveling from voice to voice,
     each time its pronouncements varying slightly until I realized that the last voices I had heard were another language entirely and that I had followed a passage of familiar words,
     familiar sounds, back to a voice that was entirely alien, speaking a tongue as remote as
     the Age of Might, as the distant and unattainable constellations.
    I WOULD KNOW WHY, said a young man's tortured voice.
    YOU CAN FIND THE TRUTH, another voice said - softer, more familiar.
    AND THE FINDING WILL MAKE THE PAST. . . UNCHANGEABLE.
    I followed the familiar voice of the druidess L'Indasha Yman, my shoulder brushing against
     stone and a cool liquid draft of air rushing into my face, telling me I had found a
     passage ... to somewhere else.
    The voices were ahead of me now, ahead and behind, contained, I suppose, by the narrow
     corridor. Some shouted at me, some whispered, some vexed me with accents curious and
     thoughts fragmentary. . . .
    . . . SE THE FOR DRYHTNES NAMAN DEATHES THOLDE . . .
    . . . HERE ON THE PLAINS, WHERE THE WIND ERASES THOUGHT. . .
    . . . OUR MEDSIYN IS A STON THAT IS NO STON, AND A THYNG IN KENDE AND NOT DIVERSE THYNGES,
     OF WHOM ALL METALLES BETH MADE . . . . . . YOUR ONE TRUE LOVE'S A SAILING SHIP . . . . . . DOWN IN THE ARM OF
     CAERGOTH HE RODE . . . I stopped. In the last of the voices, somewhere behind me in the corridor, the old words had sounded. I forgot them all - the druidess, the erasing
     wind of the plains, the medicine and bawdy songs - and turned about.
    In the midst of a long recounting of herb lore I discovered that voice again . . . the
     bard's intonation masking the accents of Coastlund. I followed the northern vowels, the
     rhythmic sound of the verse. . . .
    And I was in another chamber, for the echo swirled around me and over me, and I felt cold
     air from all quarters, and a warmth at a great distance to my left. The voice continued,
     louder and unbroken by noise and distraction, and it finished and repeated itself as an
     echo resounds upon echo.
    I held my breath, fumbled for pen and ink, then remembering the monster, sniffed the air for acid and heat. It was indeed Arion's “Song of
     the Rending,” echoing over the years unto this cavern and unto my listening. So I waited. Through the old
     narrations of the sins of the Kingpriest, through the poet's account of the numerous decrees of perfection and the
     Edict of Thought Control. I waited as the song recounted the glittering domes and spires
     of Istar, the swelling of moons and the stars' convergence, and voices and thunderings and
     lightnings and earthquakes. I listened as hail and fire tumbled to earth in a downpour of
     blood, igniting the trees and the grass, and the mountains were burning, and the sea
     became blood, and above and below us the heavens were scattered, and locusts and scorpions
     wandered the face of the planet. . . .
    I waited as the voice echoed down the generations, from one century to the next to the
     third since the Cataclysm, awaiting those lines, not letting myself hope that they would
     be different from the ones in the leather book in my pack, so that when the lines came,
     they were like light itself.
    DOWN IN THE ARM OF CAERGOTH HE RODE: PYRRHUS ALECTO, THE KNIGHT OF THE NIGHT OF BETRA Y ALS FIREBRAND OF