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tents, flattening each one and, he hoped, their occupants as well. Screaming Marwandians ran everywhere, but he couldn’t see them. Evidently tugoliths possessed poor night vision. He galloped toward the sounds of their howls and suddenly felt the stockade walls splintering around his forequarters. Then he stopped, listening as the screams of terror receded into the black woods beyond. Turning around and trotting back into the enclosure, he listened carefully and discovered that his huge tugolith ears possessed a sense of hearing that more than compensated for the poor eyesight. Someone nearby approached him — by the casual nature of the stride he knew it was Dark. “I didn’t crush you?” he said, his voice sounding horribly deep.
    “Not I. I had enough sense to sneak out of the tent before —”
    “Hush!” Seagryn grunted, then he listened more intently. Far, far away there was still screaming, but he heard another sound, too. In eerie counterpoint to the shouts of terror he heard — music. Beautiful, incongruous music. He listened carefully until it faded. Then he turned his giant head in the direction of Dark’s voice. “So,” he muttered. “You were right. Again.”
    “Boring, isn’t it,” the boy answered glumly.
    Seagryn recovered his human shape suddenly. “How could such a gift be boring?”
    “Can you imagine living without any surprises?” Dark asked. “Believe me. It’s boring.”
    “Very well then, Dark the prophet. What happens to us next?”
    “We try to find a tent still standing and get some sleep. Then tomorrow we start toward the meeting-place of the Conspiracy.”
    Seagryn’s jaw gaped. “You said there was no Conspiracy!”
    “So?” Dark said. “I lied.”
     

 
    Chapter Three
    CONSPIRING VOICES
     
    PAUMER the merchant owned a hundred mansions, many of them splendid. But none could rival the grandeur of this house. It balanced upon the edge of a volcanic crater which cupped a bottomless blue lake. This lake was fed each summer by the melting snowcaps of the jagged peaks that ringed it. “The Hovel,” as Uda’s father liked to call the palace, nestled in a crack between two of the sharpest crags.
    Had she been anxious for Paumer’s return, the petite, black-haired girl might have waited on the Hovel’s inner portico, watching for the barge to start across the lake. That’s how her father would come, for the only road into the cone wound up the mountain to the landing on its far side. But Uda was in no hurry to see him, nor the special birthday surprise he had promised. It wouldn’t be what she wanted. That he could grant with just a word — if he would ...
    Instead Uda passed the time on the Hovel’s outer face, gazing down upon the green forests of northern Haranamous that ringed the volcano’s base and making plans. On most days, clouds clustered just below this summit, obscuring the view. But on this, her thirteenth birthday, the sky was so clear she could see all the way to the ocean on the eastern horizon. She could almost make out tiny galleys, plowing the waters to north and south. Did they catch the winds in the red-and-blue sails of the House of Paumer? Probably. Her father owned everything. Everything of any importance, anyway.
    And that should make her powerful, she argued with herself as she planned. Her brother would doubtless call it scheming. He often accused her of such. But as she perceived it, only those without power schemed. Those with power planned how their influence should be applied — and protected. And Uda liked to think of herself as powerful. Why shouldn’t she? When Uda surveyed the world at her feet, she truly thought of it as her world.
    Yet even as she thought it, Uda acknowledged her self-deceit. She was always scrupulously honest with herself, if with no one else. The power she longed for was still only potential power as long as her father continued to regard her as a little girl. How could she change his attitude? Her brother