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the boy long and hard.  "Thalick," he said quietly, "are you sure that we're the only ones who have been here?"
    HSSSSSSSSSSSSSS-YES.
    Zolan nodded, then looked at Tom once again.  "When is the angel coming back, boy?" he asked.
    "Tonight."
    Zolan swallowed hard.  "Are you sure?"
    Tom nodded slowly, this time his eyes held Zolan's like magnets.
    "What else did she tell you," Zolan asked quietly.
    Now, Tom looked puzzled.  The Master asked so many questions, he thought to himself in wonder.  Strange, because he had always been told that the Master knew everything.  Why, the Master could even talk to the Guardian.  Tom gulped at this last thought as he regarded the silent Stinger only yards from where he lay helplessly balled up against the boulder.
    Perhaps it was a test, the boy deduced brilliantly, just like in school.  Well, he would not disappoint the Master!
    "Angel come back tonight.  She told me so.  She want that I wait here." Tom answered a trifle more confidently.
    Zolan felt a twinge of pain stab at his chest.  He began massaging it slowly, thinking briefly that this was the beginning.  The pain ebbed momentarily, then returned, this time in stronger waves.  He winced and staggered.
    Thalick moved up quickly behind Zolan, sensing the man's discomfort.  Instantly, he recognized the dangerous thrombosis and proceeded to take action.  He could do little to repair the damaged heart tissue, but he effectively transferred most of the pain to his own empathic system.
    Zolan was frightened by the attack, but at the same time, he kept hearing the boy's words over and over, keeping rhythm with the waves of agony that periodically clutched his chest like some relentless claw.  Leaning on his walking stick, shaking his head in a fight for consciousness, Zolan whispered:
    "Why did she want you to wait?"
    Suddenly, he coughed and realized that he was falling.  It seemed like the longest fall he had ever taken; the world swirled about him like a kaleidoscope, vague and twisted, plunging with him to the ground.
    Quickly, things started to get black; only a worried hiss from Thalick and the boy's voice remained.
    He passed out after that, but not before hearing Tom give the answer to his question.
    "She wanted me to wait for you."

FIVE
     
     
    As twilight descended over the wastes, an eerie breeze invaded the glade.  The oasis rustled and groaned as the sky grew dark; as Zolan listened, he thought that it was sobbing inconsolably for the light it would only miss for half a day.
    Sometimes, when Zolan would listen to the dusk winds at home, he thought he could hear voices.  They were always sad voices, though, that were cold, hopeless awl always longing; the sounds, perhaps, of tortured souls that could only bay in torment under the shadow of nightfall.  They were voices, Zolan felt, that he could understand very well and had heard before.  Lonely, full of despair, they were the sounds of a thing or place that was dying - but had yet to die, which were allowed to cry only when the warmth of light disappeared and the dark was master.
    But as the night wind brushed against the palms and mesquite, crooning inexorably from one end of the world to the other, Zolan thought that tonight there was another sound riding the dark.  A smile cracked his dried lips, and he blinked at the stars above.  Tonight, Zolan knew, the night was singing to him.  The sharp salt striking his cheek as the breeze increased, along with the brushing and blowing of fauna above and around him, were like the words and melodies and phrasings of a lullaby created just for him.
    Each breath was now more painful than the next for Zolan.  His entire left side alternately experienced moments of acute, pin-prickling agony with those of only numbness.  After Thalick had revived him, he had not bothered to ask how serious the coronary had been; he knew that the end was very near.  Now, though he should have remained resting as Thalick had