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The city of the Middle Plains stretched from the low summit of Church Rise to its marshy bottom along the river. The lower section was a slum of decreped shacks on muddy streets so narrow that sunlight filled them for only half an hour a day. About three thousand last sons, widows, paralytics and illegitimate children of the poor lived here, unable by rank to become artisans and without land to farm. Many lived by charity, prostitution and crime.

Pahid's army brought a windfall to the bog neighborhood, its men and women strewing money through brothels, magic houses and taverns, its officers buying arms and conscripts to tend the horses. The city fathers sold barrelsful of bad wine from the municipal cellars to Defenders of Faith used to drinking something near vinegar. Occupation meant a heyday for thieves, whores and liars.

Nevertheless, the prevailing mood was anticlerical. The dregs of Paffir society did not love its religion, and the idea of rebellion amused them. When they saw Paula dragged singing to Pahid's dungeon, they liked her. The contents of the letter from Pahid to his superiors were common knowledge among these illiterate people, and confirmed their opinion of her power.

Paula's rescuers intrigued them as well. They surrounded the priest and the women and the sunburnt wizard who dispensed strong medicine and ranted like a madman about the importance of feeding children, listening respectfully.

Clark healed sores, relieved toothaches and cured catarachts. He applied Luz's topical salves to ulcerated feet and the lame rose up and walked. Their excitement made him giddy. He danced a little way with them, thinking of the healers back home who were often somewhat crazy.

Late in the afternoon, when the sky was darkening and the mosquitos gathered so thick that the children didn't brush them off but stood still and shivered, a woman took Klyne's hand. She was small, with yellow skin, teeth blackened from smoking, grey hair swept up in an exotic crest, her shapeless black clothes impressively clean. "You can't stay out here," she informed them. "Might wake up dead, or in Pahid's stable. Come on to my house."

They all followed her to a big hut divided into rooms by hanging screens. Clark could see no furniture in any of the little rooms they passed while the hostess led them to a cubicle where she left them standing, the women staring at the ground. He realized that the place was a brothel.

"Don't worry," he whispered. "That woman is probably as afraid of Pahid as we are, and she probably hates him just as much as we do. She has no reason to take sides."

Klyne motioned him to be quiet.

The woman returned with a smoky lamp she put on the floor, grunting as she bent over. "Now we can talk. Let me see. I'm Ma Zauber. Was born here. I've been to the Lir Temple, been everywhere. Studied the healing arts in the capital. My family goes back eight generations of healers. I know more about it than any other woman in the Plains. It's the truth. So if you're a teacher as well as a healer, you might as well start with me."

Clark nodded.

"Good! You're not shy." She beamed at the nervous women. "I can help you get her back."

"How do you know--?" Clark asked.

"If you were keeping that a secret, it's out. Everybody knows you're after the witch. The rest is just the details to Pahid, isn't it? We know you're with her because you're a ghost yourself. Mosquitos don't land on you."

Clark laughed. He had forgotten that his insect repellant was still active. "How can you help us?" he asked.

Akiva moved into the circle of lamplight.

The woman smiled, showing a gap between her front teeth, and pressed her little hands together. Clark had not noticed how small they were. No farmer, Ma Zauber, maybe not even fat but pregnant, though she seemed too old. "I know a woman who sees your friend every day. She's an herbalist also, but she's really an ignorant girl who believes everything the priests tell her. Defender of Faith. Hah. She'll be carded and burned some day, not that I'll be laughing then. It happened to her own teacher. That's the temple for you. Anyhow, they have her taking care of the witch. Good, then. Let's hear what you can teach."

All night Clark wrung at his knowledge of drugs, using the detector to identify the active ingredients in the medicines the herbalist showed him and trying to guess their properties. His mind lay silent while his memory toiled and leapt from thread to thread at terrible heights. Sometimes, while tracking a fragment of a lecture or a quick flash of an illustration seen long ago, he burrowed so far back in his memory that he forgot what was happening and thought he was still on the project he had been working on at the time. He heard voices, and in the morning he began to hallucinate rows of listeners behind Ma Zauber.

Her knowledge, all based on generations of trial and error, was formidable, but wieghed down by mistakes and conflicting observations. Good herbs were thrown aside because poisons had once contaminated a mixture. Some things only masked the symptoms, others aggravated them. Each discrepancy between her knowledge and his meant an argument. They lost their tempers quickly, and he called the woman a superstitious windbag more than once although he knew he was in the presence of a scholar.

When Clark invited Ma Zauber to write down what he told her, she answered, "I can't." Neither she nor any of the women of the house could write. They took turns listening attentively.

At sunrise, the woman said, "That's enough for one night. Now I'll pay you." She went out. Clark fell asleep.

The women of the house went to gather samples. A boy brought a pail of water and the Verloringer women went to wash. Their children followed, giggling uneasily at their mothers' nervous jokes. "They are talking about the farming days," Akiva remarked. "They're all afraid. This is an evil place." Clark, sleeping, did not answer. Out in the empty corridor, the women's laughter sounded faint.

Far down the hallway made of hanging mats, someone moved and swayed them. Akiva stepped back. A shape approached in the half-darkness, stopping to look in each room. Akiva went to the outside wall and looked through a chink at the street. There was no sign of danger. He extinguished the lamp, then returned to the corridor. The figure had drawn close.

"Who are you looking for?" he asked.

In the next room, the laughing stopped.

"Akiva," the figure sighed. He was pulled into an embrace that began when he was eighteen years old and now made the intervening years vanish.

A long time passed in perfect silence. He knew what she had become, that she was the captain of whom Ma Syrie had spoken. He had even caught a glimpse of her during the battle. In their old life they had been interdicted lovers, and the new one made them enemies, but now, in this quiet breath between two lives, they felt no passion or sorrow but only peace. Akiva remembered someone teasing Clark about his terror of the night between worlds, and smiled at the memory. I will never fear the emptiness between worlds, between lives, between one heart and another, he thought. That emptiness is love.

At last Berthe sighed again, a little last shadow from that night between lives, fleeting as dew and beautiful because it must perish. She quoted a hymn to the Lost God, "He is come back like the sun at morning."

"Berthe, we are enemies," Akiva sobbed.

She held his head to her breast. "Is it true, then? The annihilation of the Temple? If it is anything less, Pahid will forgive you."

He could say nothing.

"Will you destroy the only good?"

"Oh, Berthe, it's all gone wrong. It is not good. It has fallen--how can I explain thier wickedness? It has fallen, the temple, the priests, the world and her people. To demons who feed on dreams. All the willing hearts that serve are serving evil."

Berthe smiled. "There can be no betrayal of faith. No one serves evil by being good, or good by being evil."

A light behind Akiva made him turn around. Neshar entered the hallway, carrying a little torch.

"Is this he? Is this Neshar?" She ran and knelt in front of him.

The sight of this enormous woman hurtling toward him would have frightened any child less used to adoration, but Neshar only looked up at Akiva and set his burning stick aside in case she should throw her arms around him. Berthe took his hand in hers and, after gazing at him a while, kissed his forehead. "Do they still call you Neshar? Yes? And you are nearly six years old. Have you been a good boy?"

"Most of the time," he answered.

"Are you afraid of water?"

"No."

"Good. I was afraid, that you might be. We had to put you underground, in a riverbank, when you were a tiny baby, to hide you until your father could come and take you away. We gave you to him at a country shrine by Feyling's altar." Her head dropped to his chest. Neshar's arms encircled it like a crown. He patted her hair.

"Berthe--" Akiva stepped haltingly toward them. He brushed against one of the hanging mats and it crashed down, filling the hallway with light. Klyne appeared, knife in hand, at the same time that Clark stepped into the hall with his Puro. They looked at one another and at Akiva and Berthe on their knees, and withdrew.

"Berthe, those tears were yours. I saw them falling past the window in the moonlight, but I didn't recognize them. Forgive me."

"I was afraid to come in. I had a husband--he said I was a devilspawn. I hoped...I hoped. And he is. He is alive. You have cared for him, as--"

"My own son. I, whose children are scattered everywhere, am given..."

Clark was at the door when they came into the room. "Have you seen her?" he demanded.

"Yes."

"Where is she?"

"In the temple. Where would she be? She is...alive. Pahid is working her soul's cure."

"How?" Clark shouted.

"With--fire."

Clark sat down. He turned his face to the wall.

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Paula lay thinking about straw. It seemed to be plentiful on every planet, except perhaps Reshebora. Even there, one saw it in the gutters.

She had not gotten up or eaten since the last time Pahid came to her. He had made a cut in her leg then, and it was almost closed now. When she saw daylight on the ceiling, she closed her eyes. There was no daylight now, so her eyes were open.

I should do my exercises, she thought. She began one that could be done lying down, then forgot. The door opened. She shut her eyes.

Berthe closed the door and put a torch in the ring. Paula hid her face from the flame's glare. Berthe sat down by her shoulder.

"Pa'ula, I have something for you," she whispered.

So I told my name, Paula thought. She took the crescent from Berthe's hand. "It's a light knife." She chortled. "Look, it cuts." She slashed at the straw.

"Cut a hole in that wall and go through it. Then you will seal it with clay I will bring you. Can you do it in one night?"

"Sure." Paula turned off the knife and pointed it at Berthe. "Whatever you want. What do you want?" Leaning closer, she almost said, "Do you want to go to heaven?"

Berthe pointed to the wall. "Cut." She went out.

Paula sat looking at nothing. Do it? she thought. The choice was fun. Not doing it seemed attractive. Prisoners have no choice. No, that isn't true. A prisoner can obey or defy. A prisoner can choose suicide, sometimes. Suicide? She felt the knife in the darkness. Embossed. Her fingers read to her: Work for Harmony. She laughed.

She knew this knife. It was Clark's. I'm being rescued, she thought. Why didn't she tell me that. I should have guessed when she called me Paula; I'd never have told them my name.

Was Sevit's imprisonment like this? She began to cry, thinking of him. I'm tired of the dark in here, she thought. With the torch gone, the point where the light beams met seemed dazzling. She was through the wall long before Berthe returned.

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CONTINUE.....................

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