"FOOLS." THE SLANT OF the morning sunlight, bright and hard as crystal in these high, arid foothills, splashed into the shadows of the Archmage Shavus' cloak hood and made his blue eyes glint like aquamarine. At one time the great southeastern gate of the city of Bragenmere had overlooked a wide stretch of open ground, between the walls and the broken slopes leading down to the plains and the marshes of the sluggish Kairn; but in the years of peace since Dinar of Prinagos' usurpation of the Dukedom, a cattle market had grown up there, and then a produce market for those who did not want to cart their wares through the narrow streets to the market courts within the city, and lately a number of fair new houses had been built by merchants eager for more spacious quarters than were available within the walls. Even at this hour, barely after sunrise, the gate square was bustling with drovers, butchers, and greengrocers, the warm summery air choking with yellow dust and thick with vendors' cries. "Imbeciles, both of them!"

Tallisett of Mere, every inch the Duke's daughter despite the plain green gown she'd pulled on that morning when driven from her bed by strange, craving dreams, folded her arms and looked across at the cloaked and hooded old man who had been waiting for her on the steps of the fountain by the gate. "You didn't seriously think Rhion would let poor old Jaldis walk into the Dark Well by himself, did you?"

"I seriously thought Jaldis would have had the sense not to go without my help."

"Nonsense," the Gray Lady said from her seat on the worn sandstone steps at the old man's side. She looked up at him and Tally, shaking back the long braids of her malt-brown hair. "You spoke to Jaldis - you know how he was about his dream of helping the wizards of the world without magic..."

"And you're the one who spoke to our little partridge Rhion just before they left," the Archmage countered. "You could have forbidden him to go, and without him Jaldis wouldn't have been able to."

"I think you're wrong, my friend," said the quiet voice of the third hooded form on the steps, a tail, thin man leaning on a long black bow of horn and steel - Gyzan the Archer, greatest of the Blood-Mages. "Jaldis would have gone with or without his pupil to help, and how would Rhion have stopped him? He wasn't that powerful a mage, you know..."

"He still should have done something," Shavus snapped irritably, and glanced back at Tally. "And you might have done something, missy, to keep them both out of trouble, instead of letting them lose themselves, perhaps for good, at a time when the Order of the Morkensik Wizards needs all its strength."

"And we others don't?" the Lady inquired tartly. "As I've heard it, the rumors of a conspiracy among wizards speaks now of one Order, now of another. Vyla of Wellhaven says the Earl has banished all the Hand-Prickers from the In Islands, but in Killay it was Filborglas they arrested..."

"Oh, Filborglas." With a scornful wave, Shavus dismissed the Archmage of the Black Ebiatics. "His creditors were behind that arrest, most like."

"I would not be certain of that," Gyzan said. "There has been unrest everywhere, like a pervasive malaise. In every city of the Forty Realms one sees posters and broadsides denouncing wizards and workers of magic, depicting us as seducers, liars, and thieves. Even those people who have spoken with us, who know the untruth, are uneasy."

Tally was silent, thinking about her own coming out to the market this morning. Last night at dinner in her father's hall there had been strawberries for the last course, cool and heart-breakingly sweet, and all night, it seemed to her, she had dreamed of them, dreamed of wanting more. Shortly before dawn the unreasonable conviction had grown upon her that she could find more strawberries like those in the market outside the gates - she no longer even recalled the train of reasoning that had led her to this conclusion - but the craving had grown in the predawn darkness to obsession. Perhaps had she slept in the same room with her husband, Marc of Erralswan, that lazy young nobleman would have talked her out of it, but they had never shared a bed, having married to scotch the scandal of her affair with Rhion. In any case, Marc was God knew where with God knew what woman...

At last, unable to stand the desperation any longer, Tally had risen, dressed in her plainest gown, and ridden down to the market by the gates, only to be met by Shavus, Gyzan, and the Gray Lady of Sligo and to come to the realization that the strawberries and the dream-inspired yearning had been part of a spell to bring her outside the gates to meet then.

And despite all the years she had known Rhion, despite her friendship for his master Jaldis and her understanding of their wizardry, her first emotion had been one of extreme resentment, of violation. They had tinkered with her freedom, tampered with the secret chambers of her dreams.

And she understood suddenly how easy it would be to fan this kind of distrust to consuming flame.

"That was why we called you here, Tally," the Gray Lady said gently, almost as if the Lady had read her mind - or at least, Tally thought wryly, her expression. "To ask you if it is safe to be seen entering Bragenmere - to ask how things stand with your father the Duke - and so that it would not be seen that you had had a message from us, if it so befell that it is not."

"Of course it's still safe," Tally said, a little uneasily. "Father has been under pressure from a number of people - merchants, the priesthood of Darova, and especially the priests of Agon - to ban wizards from the Realm, but he's never gone back from his stand that they do no more harm than apothecaries or knife-smiths or rope spinners or anyone else whose wares can cause harm... or, he'll add, for that matter, priests and lawyers. The rest of it he says is all silly rumors."

"Silly rumors," Gyzan murmured, his scarred hands shifting on the smooth shaft of the bow. His hairless, ugly face broke into a grin. "I like that."

"Like the silly rumor at the turn of the spring that a Blood-Mage's spells were responsible for the latest seizures suffered by the High Queen's son?" Shavus demanded, his pale eyes glinting under the coarse shelf of his brows. "That was when the Queen locked Gyzan up, though no complaint was ever made and no trial would have been held... nobody even knew where that rumor had started, any more than they know who'd been putting up those broadsides and posters."

"Was that what happened?" Tally remembered vividly the cold of that bitter spring night, standing in the black shadows of the gateway watching the procession of masks bob away into rain and mist, while she huddled in her ash-colored cloak, waiting for a man who never came. She still remembered the leaden awfulness of hearing the tower clock strike midnight and knowing that Rhion was gone.

Rhion was gone.

"But why would you have done such a thing?" she asked, turning to Gyzan. "That's what those rumors never say. Why! You aren't even in the employ of one of the Lords..."

"People believe anything of wizards," Shavus returned dourly. "The Earl of March believes I can fly - that I just travel horseback, when I can afford it, to confuse people. Silly bastard. They call the Lady Nessa 'Serpentlady' because her patron the Earl of Dun's got it through his thick skull that she has a snake with ruby eyes and couples with it to get her power. Your father's been a good friend to us, missy, but these days with rumor spreading like bindweed, it pays to take precautions, that's all."

From the gates nearby there was a sharp clattering of hooves; Tally turned, startled, to see a small group of riders emerge, bound for a day's hunting. She glimpsed her father, tall and broad-shouldered in his red leather doublet and plumed cap, and his fair, fragile, pretty second wife; saw her husband, Marc, like a bright bird of paradise in green, flirting already with one of her stepmother's ladies; and near beside them, her sister Damson, corseted brutally into yards of plum-colored brocade and plastered with jewels. With her rode her husband, Esrex, pale, cold, and slender, looking as if he detested the whole business. Of their son, Dinias, heir to the Dukedom from which her father had ousted Esrex' grandfather, there was no sign. Probably he was having another bout of chest pain and wheezing, Tally thought, trying to summon up sympathy for the boy in spite of his thoroughly unpleasant personality. She noted that her own son - Rhion's son - six years old and rosy and fierce as a lion cub, had somehow finagled his way onto the saddlebow of one of the huntsmen, and shook her head.

Beside her, she was aware of Shavus' gesture, a slight tracing of runes in the air with his fingers; though Damson turned her head their way Tally saw her sister's bulging gray eyes pass over them unseeing.

And for all she had said about her father's support of wizards, about how safe it would be for them to enter Bragenmere, she was glad the old man had surrounded them with the thin scrim of spells that had prevented Esrex and Damson from seeing her in the company of mages.

She sighed and turned back to them. "They should be back a few hours after noon - it's too hot to be hunting after that," she said. "Father put Jaldis' rooms under seal when Jaldis went away, and asked me if Rhion had gone with him - I think to make sure Jaldis hadn't gone alone. Esrex has been after him to destroy the contents of those rooms and to burn the books Jaldis left with him, but Esrex has always hated Rhion and Jaldis and is out to impress the priests of Agon."

"And as far as you know, the Dark Well's still up in that loft of his?"

"As far as I know." Tally reached forward and helped the Lady of the Moon get to her feet. The matter must be serious, she thought, for she had never heard of the Gray Lady leaving the Drowned Lands in all the years Rhion had been Scribe there. "I know Father will let you up there..."

"Good." The Archmage grunted. His blue eyes grew grave, losing that cynical sharpness as they met hers once more. "For I'll tell you the truth, missy - there's a smell in the air that I don't like. I tried to talk Jaldis out of going to that other world of his, saying wizardry here would need as much help as he claims it does there, and he wouldn't listen. But now I think things are serious enough - with the spies of Agon everywhere, and strange rumors going about - that it's time I contacted Jaldis and our little Rhion and brought them back, whatever they may feel about their other world. And I've a feeling we're going to need all the help we can get."