Everything all at once; that was how it had always been. Chaiel had never been able to choose what he saw. He could, sometimes, leap from one image to a related one, but even then the images rarely made sense. His clairaudience wasn't nearly as reliable as his clairvoyance, and the occasional bursts of clairsentience were simply confusing. He dimly remembered that it hadn't been like that before he was put in the bubble, but he tried not to think about that time.

So it was a pleasant surprise to be suddenly shown Thelyan boarding a train in a great hurry, and immediately on the heels of the image get a clear sense that the Director was on his way to see Chaiel.

Thelyan's visits were stressful. Nevertheless they provided new fodder for thought. Knowlege came through much more strongly when the bubble was opened to sight and sound. But what could have got the chilly bastard so worked up? That thing his predicting people had seen, a while back? Chaiel's memories of that visit were tangled, but he did remember that he hadn't been able to answer the question. Thelyan didn't understand how Chaiel's abilities worked. There had been, of course, a remote chance that a scrap of clairsentience would have given Chaiel the answer, by pure coincidence, but Thelyan always acted like Chaiel could know whatever he wanted.

I used to be a god, Chaiel reminded himself. He said it out loud, to have his voice for company. "I used to be a god."

Then he lost some time. He discovered he'd chewed his nails to bleeding, and bitten his hands and arms raw. This happened sometimes.

He remembered that Thelyan was coming to see him. Nothing by which he could judge time presented itself, so he didn't know whether he'd seen the train-boarding scene a minute ago or a day or a year. Now there were sounds coming to him, so he held his breath, hoping for music. It was so good when music came.

There was a hissing sound. Then a sharp crack, followed by a clank. Then a voice, speaking a language he didn't know; there were many languages he didn't know, though he heard them all the time; also foreign words the meaning of which came to him, though he didn't know what language they were. Then, suddenly, with a feeling of a dislocated joint snapping into place, a blizzard of clear speech in Eskaran:

very strong surge lasted only eight seconds, though the atmospheric effects

resolved, unfortunately. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. No.

can't get anything from him except this garbage about a green man, even in Survey. Well, the report -- yes. The report I received from Sandwell made mention of a green woman, though they've had minimal loss of personnel there. I can't correlate it with the thunderstorm prophesies, though. Yes, the locus appears to be the same, but it

just realized why there's a desert here.

Drink up, it's the end of the world!

When the talking faded away, Chaiel listened to it all in his head several times again. He made no attempt to draw conclusions; he'd discovered long ago that he only frustrated himself by trying to understand. Only one visual image had come with the speech, just a flicker: six wooden matches and an unlit candle scattered on a rough stone surface. This image was somehow sexual.

He kept coming back to one of the voices. The second to last voice caught in his head more than the others. Something about it frightened him, though the tone hadn't been threatening or angry. It was maybe more familiar than the others, though by now all voices, all images seemed at least a bit familiar.

Flash. More time gone. Now his genitals hurt. Apparently he'd been trying to masturbate again. He hated when he did that. It didn't work -- the same suspension that kept him from aging made it impossible for him to shed tears, sweat, void waste, or ejaculate. All the scraps of hair and fingernail he'd swallowed over the decades still lumped in his stomach, and once he'd vomited an accretion of the stuff and found it still sharp-edged, cemented by sticky clots of ancient blood, completely undigested. But his body sometimes did stupid things without his knowlege.

Something nagged at his mind, he'd forgotten something, something important... But then, when had he not? He'd forgotten more than any mortal ever knew.

Sound came again. Another voice, one he heard often, the words too routine to comprehend. This one stayed for a while. It repeated. After a time, he began to understand that the voice was Thelyan's, the familiar word his own name.

He opened his eyes, and discovered that he was upside down relative to the rest of the world. That was sort of interesting. Arching his back, he reached out toward the litter on the floor, bits of himself that he had dropped. Most of it gone to dust. Bits of his body, and his body was made out of energy, and the energy was pure thought. Knowlege was his food. He put knowlege inside himself; hair and skin and nails and blood came out and fell and decayed, a pile of decayed knowlege on the ground... suddenly he was afraid that Thelyan would eat the dust, and know things.

"Chaiel, give me your attention. Chaiel. Speak so I know you can hear me."

"You never bring me any presents. I want a puppy." Chaiel laughed at his own joke. He had a shadow. He waved at it.

Thelyan's voice behind him. "I don't have time for your wanderings now. Tell me what you know about the atmospheric disturbance over Paiwaar this afternoon."

So Thelyan didn't have time. Good for Thelyan. "It must be nice to be so busy." He twisted until he could see Thelyan's face right side up. The Director -- the Judge -- eater of gods, shitter-out of laws -- looked like a woman, suddenly. A pretty girl. Chaiel smiled. "Sometimes I see naked ladies. Sometimes I see very old ugly naked ladies. Once I heard a girl teaching a parrot to talk."

"Tell me what you know about the --"

"Atmospheric effects are still developing. Yes, sir, I'll have a copy sent up. They're not sure yet. A storm system of some significant size, at least, possibly a major climatic change. Yes. I'm quite sure. There's absolutely no way this could be natural. High-altitude winds simply don't move like that." Chaiel clamped his hands over his mouth, as he realized he'd inadvertently spoken what he was hearing, possibly told Thelyan something useful. It was almost certain, in fact, because Thelyan was smiling.

"Very good, Chaiel. That's the disturbance I mean. Now tell me who caused it."

"No."

"Come now. There's no one you have any reason to protect."

"No."

Thelyan's smile, though still icy, grew fractionally warmer. "That is, unless the culprit is one of my enemies. You would protect my enemies, wouldn't you?"

Chaiel tried to escape into the stream of images, but it was thin and sporadic even though the bubble was clear. I'm not going to talk, I'm not going to talk, I don't have to talk. I don't know anyway, I didn't see, nobody ever tells me anything, besides he can work it out for himself, what does he need me for? If Ka'an wants to make rain that's his business.

"So Ka'an has gained control of his host."

Realizing that he'd spoken out loud, Chaiel howled. He hid his face, willing himself to blank out, but when he opened his eyes again Thelyan was still there. All white and sparkly and mean-looking. "I hate you. I'm so thirsty. I hate everybody."

"Even Ka'an?"

"I don't care. You go find him and I hope you kill each other. I hope you kill everybody." A thought occurred to him, and he hastily added, "Everybody but Medur. If you find her, can I have her?"

An expression of disgust crossed Thelyan's face. "I'm not looking for her. She's no use to me. Tell me where Ka'an is."

"No. I don't know." But a flash, shockingly clear, gave him the answer, and he blurted it out before he could stop himself. "Under the acacia tree with the green man, breathing through his elbows, going to get rained on, yes. Ooh, that's against your law now, dog in the manger, bet you wish you ever had that much fun, guess what? I know something about you."

Even more disgusted now, Thelyan said, "I'm not remotely interested in what you know about me. What I want to know is --"

"I know why you hate him," Chaiel interrupted. Before he could go on, though, a deafening clatter of machinery burst through his head, accompanied by a picture of children poking a dead dog with sticks, and when it was finished he woke to silent darkness. Thelyan had blanked the sphere while Chaiel was caught in a fit of seeing.

Frustrated, Chaiel wept with dry eyes. "I know why you hate him," he repeated to the nothingness around him. "Other people get over that, you know. Other people don't have to rule the world just because someone was mean to them once. I know. I know. All the things I know." He screamed, then whispered. "Let me out."

His voice didn't even echo.

Ash lay propped on his elbow, watching Kieran sleep by candlelight. He was a little cold, and all his muscles ached, and he'd never been so happy before in his life. It seemed impossible that anything so good could happen to anyone, let alone to him. He didn't want to sleep, for fear everything would be different when he woke up.

Kieran was sprawled on his back, taking up most of the blanket. One hand was curled on his chest, the other stretched out palm-up across the dusty floor. His mouth was slightly open, and his hair spread in loops and slow curves along his outflung arm. The light of the candle's steady flame gilded the planes of his face, brought structures of muscle and bone into sharp relief, showed the twitch of dreaming eyes under eyelids that Ash's lips knew were soft as warm wind.

Ash's heart was sore with too much joy; he was tempted to wake Kieran and talk to him some more, just to take some of the pressure off. That would be unkind, though. They were both exhausted. They'd barely had the energy to drag themselves inside the temple when the sun set, laughingly comparing how shaky their legs were, and then despite that they'd lit the candle and made love a third time while full night fell. Ash was surprised he could stay awake. By rights he should be sleeping like a baby. He knew his dreams would be as sweet as Kieran's were right now; he could sense the slow swells of emotion rolling in his lover's sleeping mind, curiosity and amusement and the occasional bright flash of discovery.

Twining coils of shining black hair around his fingers, Ash considered what Kieran had said before everything had gone beautiful. The objections he had raised. He'd been so frightened; though he wouldn't have admitted it, wouldn't have used the word fear, he'd been terribly afraid. This meant so much to him.

Much as Ash wanted to dismiss those fears as reflexive, he made himself ask: What could go wrong? What are the ways I might hurt him? I need to think of those things to make sure I never do them. Well, the obvious one was leaving, and that, he was sure, he would not do. Eventually the shine would wear off, being together would become routine -- Ash couldn't imagine what it would be like to take Kieran for granted, but he knew it was human nature. It wasn't about the newness, though. This wasn't a conquest. The things he loved about Kieran would only grow more precious with time. I have to find a way to assure him of that. Ash smoothed stray hairs back from Kieran's brow to make him smile in his sleep. When he wakes. For now what he needs is rest.

Just as he made up his mind to blow out the candle and join the dream, a sighing sound began outside. He looked out past the pillars, but saw only blackness. The candle flame ducked, whirling shadows, and a breath of wind stirred his hair. The wind's sound faded, then rose higher, carrying a scent that made him think of home. Summer. A heat wave; lying in bed sweating in the humid air, and then a wind, and this smell, and a great sense of relief...

"Uh-oh."

He nudged Kieran, but got no response. Well, let Kieran sleep a little longer. Probably there was no danger. He got up and found his pants and shirt and glasses. Another gust blew the candle out, so he got dressed by feel. Flickering light to the west caught his attention. He watched, for a moment, eyes adjusted to the dark now enough to see moonlight dusting a curled shape in the sky; under the towering cloud, dim purple bands rippled.

There was time to grope his way back to the bed -- almost entirely by his Talent's spacial sense -- before the mutter of thunder reached his ears. This time he made a more serious effort to wake Kieran, and this time succeeded.

Mumbling and rubbing his eyes, Kieran began an incoherent protest, but a new gust of colder wind brought him fully awake. Lightning just strong enough to limn him in blue caught him beginning a smile. "Oh. Hey." He sounded pleased. "Will you look at that."

"It seems we succeeded after all."

"Guess so. Wanna go up in it? See what it looks like from inside?"

Ash was tempted, but shook his head. "I think we should move the supplies farther in. Could you help?"

"Yep." Kieran didn't seem to feel any sense of urgency, despite the brightening flickers in the cloud and the increasing wind. He scratched and yawned and fumbled with his clothes at great length while Ash gathered the candle and matches and blankets. Well, if Kieran wasn't afraid of the storm, Ash wouldn't be either.

By the time they'd shifted their belongings to the back of the main room, the wind was constant, strong, and cold. Lightning was visible beneath the cloud as well as in it, and thunder cracked rather than rumbling. Ash bundled up the blankets and coats, and began to take them down a side passage.

"Don't you want to watch?" Kieran said.

Ash dropped his bundle. "Why not?" He let Kieran take his hand and lead him out to the temple steps, into the teeth of the wind.

A flash of lightning printed an image on his mind: Kieran standing on the edge of the step, gathering his hair back with one hand as it tried to fly into his face, unbuttoned shirt billowing around his scarred, lean-muscled chest, teeth bared in a feral grin. Then Kieran pulled him close, and they watched with their arms around each other as the storm stalked toward them on long insect-legs of lightning.

The first drops of rain brought a bark of exhilarated laughter from Kieran, which Ash echoed more quietly. It was exciting, the strength and size of the forces at work, though Ash thought he wouldn't enjoy it nearly as much if he were seeing it alone. Rain speckled his glasses, danced along his arms and across his bare feet; then the skies gave a roar and dumped it down in buckets, drenching them. Laughing, they pressed closer for warmth, kissed the rain from each other's faces, burrowed hands into each other's sodden clothes. They were no longer tired; it was as if the thunder's energy was pouring into them through their skin.

"Again? Already?" Ash raised his eyebrows, knowing Kieran could sense that his surprise was feigned, perhaps even sense in echo the interesting texture of wet leather under his hands. But at that moment a blast of rain hit them with enough force to make them stagger, driven by a wind that was rising to a howl.

No discussion was needed. They fled back inside, to the back wall; then, when the cold wind reached them even there, to the side passage with the painted walls. The thunder was sharp and hard now, frighteningly loud.

"Maybe I overdid it." Kieran laughed.

"You think?"

"You're shivering."

"So are you."

Kieran grabbed up a blanket to wrap around them. They sat on the floor, making themselves small, listening to the roar that echoed through the temple. Ash set his useless glasses aside. He lit the candle, setting it on the side of them away from the main room, where it didn't flicker so much.

"I want to go look at it," Kieran said, glancing up to indicate the storm raging overhead. Ash knew he didn't mean physically. He wanted to repeat the wild, high flight of mind he'd performed that afternoon.

Ash remembered what it had been like. The half-glimpsed geometries of force, of life, the mind-wrecking complexity into which Kieran had dived as if born to it. It was frightening, the strength of yearning Kieran emitted when he contemplated that world. Ash feared he'd be lost in it. But it gave him such joy; Ash couldn't deny him. "Be careful. You don't know what it might do."

As before, Kieran's eyes went blank. The wavering light showed him staring past Ash's ear, lips parted, head tilted as if listening. Ash closed his eyes and reached out with his mind, suddenly afraid Kieran's soul would leap entirely free of his body and be lost to the winds.

But what he sensed was no rise -- Kieran's seeking went no farther than the walls around them. Something there had distracted him, fascinated him, so that the din of wind and water outside was brushed aside as an annoyance.

"Tell me." Ash formed the words gently, thinking them before speaking, hoping not to break Kieran's trance. It succeeded; Kieran answered slowly, absently, still mentally groping along the walls.

"The writing. It shows up in this light. These are just... well, I don't get how... how anyone can not be able to read them."

It seemed safe to open his eyes. Kieran was now staring fixedly at the opposite wall, eyes moving from side to side as if reading. "What do they say?"

Kieran was silent for a while, before speaking in Iavaian. Ash caught scraps of meaning in the words, but couldn't really understand. Whatever Kieran was reading, though, seemed to amuse him quite a bit. At last he switched back to Eskaran. "Can you believe they wrote down things like that?"

Suspecting that a request for translation would wreck Kieran's concentration, Ash played along. "Why shouldn't they?"

"Because oracles are only true in the moment." His eyes snapped into focus, an expression of shock leaping across his face as he looked at Ash. "So that's where you went." Suddenly a change went through him, an upwelling of unease quickly mounting toward terror.

It was hard not to look, but Ash had to close his eyes to force himself from visual to mental, strengthen his hold on Kieran's -- whatever it was, mind, soul, spirit -- and try to bring him back from whatever was scaring him. Then Ash saw it, and he began to be frightened as well, nearly recoiled but held tighter instead.

Something was surging up through the familiar texture of Kieran's thoughts. Something huge, strange, dark as oil, something so horribly old that to find it there sent icy claws scrabbling at the edges of Ash's sanity. And it knew him. It was aware of him. It was observing him, and it wasn't impressed.

It was inside Kieran, like a parasite. Rage gave Ash strength; he added himself to the force Kieran was already expending in pushing it back, and together they fought to stop its progress.

You can't have him. He's mine. How dare you dirty him with your greasy night!

A wordless reply raked at him: the outrage of an arrogance so immense that it could not recognize any claim but its own. It weakened, though, bit by bit. Finally, all at once, it was gone. Kieran slumped against him, breathing in hoarse gasps.

Ash was barely able to speak. "What was that?" His voice was half drowned by thunder, but Kieran heard him.

"The same thing I saw when I died. The bigger me. That wanted to eat this me. Oh god. Oh shit. Ash, it's going to come back."

Panic made his skin prickle. "It's coming back?"

"Not now. But it will."

"But what is it? Why's it in you? Do you have any idea?"

"I'm afraid I might." Kieran swallowed hard, burrowed his face into Ash's hair, and stayed like that for a long time. Ash just held him until his despair subsided, until his usual confidence began to reassert itself. At last he straightened and shook himself, visibly gathering his courage. "You know what's stupid? I was warned. Some crazy bum back in Burn River warned me, but I thought he was just, you know, being a crazy bum."

"What did he say?"

"He thought I was a god. He said I was Ka'an."

Incredulity and alarm collided in Ash's mind. He stammered out a few disconnected syllables, then stopped, realizing he wasn't going to be able to make sense.

"Yeah," Kieran agreed.

"But -- that -- you mean the one --"

"Yeah. That one."

"You mean an actual, literal -- you mean a real --"

"A god."

"But. That would. But. Kai, that --"

Kieran looped a hand in the air angrily. "Yeah, I know! I don't believe in them either! Who knows what it really is? Who gives a fuck? The thing's riding piggyback on my brain, and it's getting stronger! It wants things I don't want! It doesn't care what I want!"

"Like what? What does it want?"

"I don't even remember. I know it recognized you, though. There's something in you -- I told you about it, that thing I saw knotted up in you, I thought it was maybe another Talent, like you've got healing too, or something. But this -- Ka'an -- he recognized it."

Scalp crawling, Ash had to make a couple tries before he got the words out: "Do, do, do you remember saying -- do you remember talking --"

"No."

"You looked at me and you said, 'So that's where you went.'"

"Shit." Kieran shoved his hands up his face, took handfuls of his wet hair, shook his head and growled. Then he dropped his hands with a sigh. "Whatever. We should've expected weirdness; nobody ever told us anything about our magic, right? For all I know, I was just seeing my Talent or something. Putting a face on it, getting paranoid. Anyway, freaking out now is useless. We can talk about it in the morning."

"I guess you're right. We're too tired to make sense."

"Yeah. But... ah..." Glancing up at the painted walls, Kieran scooped up their blankets. "Let's sleep in the other hallway."

"I was hoping you'd say that."

The storm calmed later, subsiding to steady rain. Having stripped off their wet clothing, they were soon warm enough to sleep, and weariness conquered the nervous feeling that whatever had been playing with Kieran's mind would return any moment. They dreamed in unison again. This time it was Kieran's dream they occupied; a sickly-sweet vision of opium and incense in a scarlet-veiled pavilion.

In the dream, they fed each other from cups of mixed wine and blood, watching uncaring as floodwaters climbed the hill where the pavilion stood. Soon the flood lapped around their feet. The colors of rugs and gold-threaded cushions under water fascinated them. Then the embroidered veils of the tent walls were lifting and swirling in the flood, and they realized there was nowhere to go. Their hill would be drowned, and them with it. Already, bowls of fruit were drifting away out of the pavilion, like little boats, onto the lake that now stretched all the way to the distant mountains. With a creak and a flapping sound, the tent began to lean. It fell around them and pressed them down into the water.

Ash woke thrashing, fighting free of wet cloth. Beside him, Kieran started up, teeth chattering. They lay in an inch of cold water. Not the brilliantly clear lake of the dream, but mud-milky water scummed with leaves and drowned insects.

"The fuck?" Kieran looked around disbelievingly. He lifted a hand and watched it drip. "What the fuck is this?"

Clutching his arms around him to contain his shivering, Ash got up and splashed out of the short hallway. There he stood -- naked, wet, and confused -- for so long that Kieran gave up asking him questions and came to join him. When Kieran saw what Ash had been looking at, he let out a low whistle.

"Well. That's gonna suck."

It was still raining. But now, instead of veiling a green valley with a stream down the middle, the rain furred the surface of a muddy, swirling lake whose waters were lapping over the top step of the temple and pouring back into it in widening rivulets. The channel down the middle of the temple was brimful and overflowing. The spring no longer sheeted calmly down the wall; now it poured in an arcing stream, chattering and splashing. Outside, debris swirled slowly in currents of inflow. Trees poked up out of the new lake, and in their branches things were caught. Things like the drowned carcass of the bay mare who'd so faithfully brought them here.

Ash made a faint sound of pity for the poor animal, wishing he'd gone and brought her in when the rain started. Not that he would've been able to find her. Besides, they had bigger problems. "Our supplies."

"Our clothes," Kieran retorted. He stomped back into the dead-end where they'd slept, searching with his feet. After a moment he snatched up his pants with a cry of dismay. "You're not supposed to do this to leather! Where's my coat? Where's your coat, Ashes, you're turning blue! Aw, hell. This stinks."

"We have to get out of here."

"No shit."

"Where are we going to go?"

Kieran waved that off as unimportant. "Wherever. Up. First order of business is to not drown."

"Yeah, I'm with you there."

Grumbling and swearing, they dressed in their wet clothes and gathered the dripping blankets. Ash found a stretch of floor that was still dry and used it to fold the blankets lengthwise and roll them up, pressing streams of water out of them. While he did this, Kieran was hauling their supplies into a different area of dry floor, giving a running commentary.

"Flour's all right. Coffee's all right. Sugar's gone to sludge. Salt's all right, it was on top. Meat's kinda crappy, it's been soaking. What's this? Was this rice? It's everywhere. Aw, shit, half the matches are wrecked. And -- oh, this is great. This is brilliant. Fuck."

Ash turned to see what was the matter. Kieran held out his gun, and with a grimace tipped it so water poured out of the barrel.

"That's not so good," Ash said.

"Both the short guns were lying in a puddle. The rifles were stood up, so they're okay, 'cept all their ammo's under water."

"Modern ammunition's supposed to be watertight, isn't it?"

"Sure, it's okay if it gets rained on, or dunked real quick, but this stuff's been stewing. I bet half of it's gone dud. And there's no way to tell which half, until you try to fire it. Shit."

With a sigh of resignation, Ash went to tie the blankets onto the packs. "Nothing we can do about it now. Let's just worry about getting to higher ground. Even if the rain stopped now the water would still keep getting deeper for a while. And that rain's not stopping."

As if to illustrate his point, a gust of wind sent a wave across the lake toward them, spilling into the temple in a flat sheet that quickly eliminated what little dry ground was left. Ash finished lacing his boots, wincing at the disgusting way they squelched. Kieran, oddly enough, laughed as he got his own boots on. "What's so damn funny?" Ash growled.

"My boots are dry."

"Well, nice for you."

That made Kieran laugh harder. "I'd let you wear 'em, but you know, I've got these gigantic feet. Or was it humongous?"

"I'm glad you can see the humor of the situation." Then Ash heard his own words, and smiled halfway. "Actually, I mean that. I think we need to have a sense of humor today."

"I'd rather have a boat." Grinning, Kieran hefted his pack; Ash noticed he'd picked the heavier one. "You know, this is so weird I can't even be mad about it. Ten minutes from now we might be drowned or something, but I don't believe it because it's just -- I mean, I've seen flash floods before, but I've never seen standing water like this. I've never seen it rain like this before."

"Got your guns?"

"Yeah. You? Stick the rifle through the pack flap, keep it out of your way."

"Oh, that works. Okay."

"Ready?"

"Guess I'd better be."

They stood in the temple's open mouth, ankle-deep, examining their options. The only way to get out of the valley would be up the least steep slope, the one on the north side where the deer had come down yesterday. To get there, they'd have to wade, and possibly swim. Then they'd have to toil up among the slicked-down grasses and soupy mud to get to the top. That hill was cut by a number of new streams, which implied that the land above was awash. And there was no end to the rain; the sky was thickly gray as far as the eye could see.

Kieran gave Ash an encouraging smile, kissed him lightly. "Think of it like this: there's no way the Watch is going to be tracking us today."

Steadying themselves against each other's shoulders, they forged into the flood.

Ash's glasses were immediately splattered to near uselessness. Following the cliff wall, half climbing and half swimming, they inched around the head of the valley. It would have been easier if this had been normal desert, but here there were clutching branches and swirling grass to snarl their legs, sinks of deep mud to suck at their feet. At one point Ash reached out for a cracked boulder to work his way across a deep place, when his hand jerked back of its own accord, his stranger senses telling him something wasn't right. A closer examination showed him thousands of light-brown scorpions clinging in the crack. He warned Kieran about it, used a nail-wrenching grip on the outside of the rock to get across, and somehow kept from falling into the rising flood.

Their work wasn't over when they reached the place where the valley's wall wasn't vertical. Here, tumbled slabs of stone were set in ground rapidly going to mud, and they shifted underfoot in dangerous ways. Their Talent sense was no use in telling which ground was solid and which treacherous; the water made everything a blank. Ash found himself thinking that if Kieran hadn't had magical healing -- from whatever source -- neither of them would have made it. Nevertheless he saw Kieran wincing more than once when he had to use his right arm for something. He didn't have the option of favoring that side. This was a two-handed job.

At last they reached the top. Uniformly yellow-brown with sticky mud, scratched and bruised, they stood bent-over and panting for several minutes.

Ash was the first to straighten up and look around. Kieran had had a much harder time of it, not only because he was still weakened from his injury, but because he was bigger. There was more of him to move, which mattered on a climb like that. Ash set a hand on his shoulder to let him know he could rest as long as he wanted. There was no danger up here, that he could see.

To the west, he could just make out that the land dropped off in a lacework of cuts and furrows. East, and out to north and south, the high ground stretched in shallow ripples and low hills for what looked like forever. It was hard to make out distant features accurately, because of the rain streaking his glasses, but he thought he saw something that might be a taller rock, off to the northeast. Not more than two miles, he guessed, probably a lot less.

He pointed it out to Kieran, got a nod in reply, and they struck out for it.

The going was a lot tougher than it looked like it should have been. Water was everywhere, pouring, seeping, cutting, pooling. Uphill areas were slippery with mud or uneven with broken rock, and the lower places between hills were choked with thorny brush and debris, when they weren't impassably flooded.

What should have been a matter of half an hour's walking turned into a three-hour nightmare of climbing and slipping. But they got closer, bit by bit, to the looming rock that Ash prayed would have an overhang they could shelter under. His teeth were chattering now, as much with fatigue as with cold.

Finally they were skirting the slope of debris that had fallen from the rock. It was a squat spire that stood maybe thirty feet taller than the land around it, convoluted and crumbly from aeons of weathering. There wasn't anything that looked like shelter on this side, but they hadn't seen the whole thing yet.

Please, please let there be a cave or something, Ash prayed as they trudged through the rain.

Suddenly Kieran's hand knotted in his collar, yanking him to a halt. Puzzled, Ash glanced back at him, then followed his stare up to the foot of the spire.

Where a man in a white oilcloth rain cape stood staring back at them.

Kieran had his gun out before Ash quite registered what he was looking at, but the weapon only produced a sad click. Ash reached behind him to tug his rifle free of his pack, but two more men in white were coming around a buttress of rock, and Kieran grabbed Ash's wrist to haul him back.

"Just run," Kieran said through his teeth.

They turned and bolted. Behind him, Ash heard a shout, then multiple voices yelling. Just ahead of him, the ground bulged and spattered with a whump sound, spraying mud out of a crater a yard across. He glanced back, trying to make sense of the scene behind him, but Kieran yanked him onward.

"Dodge. They've got a breaker."

"There's six of them!" Ash yelled back. "With horses!"

They skidded down a slope and pelted across rock-strewn sand. With a frantic look over his shoulder, Kieran shrugged his pack from his shoulders and dropped it. Ash did the same, reaching back in the process to catch out his rifle before letting the pack fall. Kieran was pulling ahead; Ash stumbled as he looped the rifle over his shoulder, then ducked his head and put on a burst of speed to catch up.

Voices were shouting behind. It sounded like they were calling out to the fugitives to stop, most likely making dire threats of what would happen if they didn't. It was impossible to hear words over the sounds of running, and it didn't matter. Magics were cutting the air now, hooves were thudding, gaining.

Ash had no time to dwell on how stupidly unfair it was, to run into the Watch by pure chance on a day when rain would have made them invisible to magical senses. There was no time even to be afraid, for himself or for Kieran. Sound and time went strange, took on an eerie clarity. He heard the flat crack of rifle fire, knew by the sound that it had been a warning shot, not meant to hit. Now they'd be trying to wing him. All around, sudden potholes appeared, as the Watch group's entropist broke apart the earth. There was at least one pyro among them as well, and a kinetic or two, from the way mud kept bursting into blasts of scalding steam and flying across the path to obscure it.

Ash ran zigzags across the plain, dodging rocks and leaping potholes. Didn't bother wondering how long he could go on doing it. Tried to keep Kieran in sight. Tried to probe the ground ahead for solidity, but was repeatedly thwarted by the complexity of water. Maybe that was why the Watchmen kept missing. Followed Kieran down another slope and through a stream, into more rippled terrain. A horse screamed, somewhere, and he began to think they might have a chance of escaping.

His pulse beat painfully in his temples, his sinuses, his eardrums. His breath rasped his throat raw. Tan water sprayed in arcing sheets from every footstep, squelched in his boots, weighed his legs.

Kieran led him into a maze of tiny hills, strangely rounded and no taller than a house, where the sand-and-clay earth shed water well enough for their senses to work on it. Unfortunately, it also made a heavier mud, which sucked at their boots and slowed them down. Ash guessed that Kieran was hoping it would break the legs of their pursuers' horses. He was trying not to think of how the Watchmen could simply dismount and chase them on foot. The men in white were better rested, better fed, and had dry ammunition. The small hills suddenly gave way to a steep slope, leading to a drop into a gully full of braided water.

Digging in with their heels and hands, they tried to keep from sliding into it. For a moment it looked like it would work. Then, just as they reached the edge, the ground gave way. Ash yelped as the crumbled mud hauled him down. Kieran reached out to him, but missed. The Iavaian was slowed by his long coat, which dragged above him, catching on rocks; Ash had no such impediment, and had barely time to start to be afraid before he was slammed against the bottom of the gully.

He thrashed and swam to be free of the mud. The runoff stream helped, cutting through the piled mudslide and whisking it away. For a moment his glasses were totally opaque, before the downpour started to wash them clean. But as he tried to stand, he felt that his left foot was caught in something, just before a nauseating pain jolted up his leg.

Kieran landed beside him, having had a more controlled slide down the slope. He reached for Ash's arm, but Ash pulled away. "Wait! Ow!"

"Come on!" Kieran grabbed at him again, glancing fearfully up to where their pursuers would appear any second.

"I can't! My -- it's broken --"

"Broken? What is?"

"Foot or ankle." Ash wrapped his hands around his calf and hauled his foot out of the obstruction, letting out a screech like a stepped-on cat as it came free. Then he fell forward on his elbows and retched.

"Broken," Kieran said distantly. "Holy shit, Ash. We're fucked."

Ash drew a ragged breath. "No. Just me. You run. Go."

"Like hell I will!"

"Run, I said." He was surprised how level his voice sounded, even if it was forced through clenched teeth.

"I'll carry you."

"Then we'll both get caught." Ash pulled his rifle around and shook a clump of mud off it. "Listen, damn you! Let them catch me. You get free. Then you can come rescue me. You know where they'll take me."

"Ashleigh!" Kieran whimpered his name, eyes too wide, panicked. Ash had never seen him panic before.

"Fucking do it, Kai!" Ash shouted back.

Kieran's eyes squeezed shut for a second; when he opened them, his face was stony. In a whirl of flying water, he spun and pounded off down the wash.

Ash watched him go until a bend in the gully took him out of sight. Only then did he allow his eyes to spill over. They both knew it had been a lie between them. There was no way Kieran was going to be able to bust Ash out of Churchrock. But they had to pretend to believe it, or there was no hope in the world anywhere.

He hoped Kieran was out of earshot when the sobs began, wrung out of him through a painfully tight throat, high and thin behind his teeth. He hoped Kieran couldn't hear him.

I didn't get to tell him those things. About forever, and never hurting him. Damn it, why can't the world leave us alone? All sorts of wretched, horrible people get to live out their lives, but this shining thing we found -- the world can't stop trying to put the light out. At that moment, Ash wanted desperately to kill something. The fact that he would soon have that option didn't escape him.

Gritting his teeth, he sat up. He avoided looking at the way his foot was kinked sideways. Patiently, he picked a gob of muddy grass out of his rifle's bolt, then slid it back just enough to see that there was a round chambered. He settled the stock against his shoulder, aiming upslope, and waited.

The longer it took them to capture him, the farther away Kieran got. That was all that could possibly matter now.