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who had driven him to exasperation twice a week seven years ago. The Lady Sophia Cataline diCoursi Develin. The same, except that like her mother before her she now wore black.
    And … He looked more closely.
    There was – perhaps – the slightest fullness to her face, the slightest strengthening of her features, that hinted at a much greater strength within. This was no longer a girl who was becoming a woman. This was a woman in full. There was steel in her now. (Perhaps there was too much. But how could it be otherwise?) And there was something else in the way she looked at him, pleased but wistful, which hinted at a quality he did not remember. He knew it at once. That was grief: grief for all of lost Develin, and also for a man who had died.
    Grief, too, at the passing of the years.
    ‘You are older, Padry.’
    ‘Less fat, but more grey,’ he said, smiling ruefully. ‘And a martyr to my teeth, my lady.’
    ‘You are great in the Kingdom, too.’
    ‘Not that. I am suffered to use my skills for one who has them not, but who has become great in spite of it.’
    ‘Indeed. And is it for his sake that you are here? I presume so.’
    Padry spread his hands disarmingly. ‘I cannot say so much, my lady. It is more on my own account. I have brought – a gift.’
    ‘A gift? Oh, Padry! Have you found another? Have you?’
    Padry’s smile broadened a little. ‘Not just any other, my lady.’
    He had carried it here himself because he would trust no other with it. Now he took it from his satchel reverently, and lifted it in both hands. The council of Develin – all men in rich doublets – clustered round to see. He saw their eyes and heard their indrawn breath. They knew at once that its value was immense. Its vellum pages were made from the hides of three hundred calves – a princely sum by itself. But the worth of the words written on them was far more.
    ‘It’s Croscan’s book!’ said someone.
    ‘It is the Arc of the Descent,’ breathed Padry.
‘The Path of Signs Illuminating the Arc of the Descent of the Spirit
. “The First Sign is Fire. Fire is bright, and yet it is formless, ever-changing. It gives light, and light is truth. Therefore …” ’
    ‘“Therefore Fire is a sign to us of Heaven, of the unknowable Godhead that lies beyond the world,”’ said the lady. ‘How you dinned it into me! And where did you find it, Padry? Where was it?’
    ‘It was in Velis, as we supposed. Forgive me that I have not returned it sooner. I have had copies made so that it is no longer the only one. Now it is my privilege to bring it home.’ And he passed it to her.
    She took it, and turned it in her hands. ‘We are more grateful than we can say. But – the other volume, Padry? The Ascent?’
    Padry shrugged. ‘Alas. Some other looter must have taken it. We must go on looking.’
    ‘They
separated
the two? How could they?’
    ‘Ignorance, my lady.’
    Quite possibly the brute men who had squabbled over the loot of Develin had not been able to read at all. To them a book was a book, valuable, sellable, but no more. (I’ll have
this
one, you have
that
one, and you can have the pretty dress off the woman who we—) So one half of the great work of the sage Croscan, describing the descent of the sparks of Godhead from the very highest to the very lowest order of creation, had been found. But its companion volume, which told how each spark then yearned upwards, guiding the soul on its long path to reunion with Godhead, was still lost and might be lost for ever. And without it the book in the lady’s hands held only half of the truth. Less than half, for in its final chapter the Path reached the Abyss, the last place of all where the soul should leave it, for in the Abyss all hopewas lost and faithfulness was brought to nothing.
    Padry had known the Abyss, here in Develin before the end. He had returned to it more than once in the grim years that followed. And now he was near to it again, treading on the very