"Crap," One-Eye said. "You know those books by heart. Always got your nose in them. Anyway, you could fake the whole thing and nobody would know the difference."

"Probably. And nobody would care if I did. It's going sour, old-timer. Right. Let's go see Goblin."

Maybe the Annals needed a rereading on a different level. Maybe I was treating symptoms. The Annals have a certain mystic quality, for me. Maybe I could identify the disease by immersing myself, hunting something between the lines.

Goblin and Silent were playing no-hands mumbletypeg. I'll say this for our three spook-pushers: They aren't great, but they keep then- talents polished. Goblin was ahead on points. He was in a good mood. He even nodded to One-Eye.

So. It was over. The stopper could be put into the bottle. One-Eye just had to say the right thing.

To my amazement, he even apologized. By sign, Silent suggested we get out and let them conclude their peace in private. Each had an overabundance of pride.

We stepped outside. As we often did when no one could intercept our signs, we discussed old times. He, too, was privy to the secret for which the Lady would obliterate nations.

Half a dozen others suspected once, and had forgotten. We knew, and would never forget. Those others, if put to the question, would leave the Lady with serious doubts.

We two, never. We knew the identity of the Lady's most potent enemy-and for six years we had done nothing to apprise her of the fact that that enemy even existed as more than a Rebel fantasy.

The Rebel tends to a streak of superstition. He loves prophets and prophecies and grand, dramatic foretellings of victories to come. It was pursuit of a prophecy which led him into the trap at Charm, nearly causing his extinction. He regained his balance afterward by convincing himself that he was the victim of false prophets and prophecies, laid upon him by villains trickier than he. In that conviction he could go on, and believe more impossible things.

The funny thing was, he lied to himself with the truth. I was, perhaps, the only person outside the Lady's inner circle who knew he had been guided into the jaws of death. Only, the enemy who had done the guiding was not the Lady, as he believed.

That enemy was an evil greater still, the Dominator, the Lady's one-time spouse, whom she had betrayed and left buried but alive in a grave in the Great Forest north of a far city called Oar. From that grave he had reached out, subtly, and twisted the minds of men high in Rebel circles, bending them to his will, hoping to use them to drag the Lady down and bring about his own resurrection. He failed, though he had help from several of the original Taken in his scheme.

If he knew of my existence, I must be high on his list. He lay up there still, scheming, maybe hating me, for I helped betray the Taken helping him. . . . Scary, that. The Lady was medicine bad enough. The Dominator, though, was the body of which her evil was but a shadow. Or so the legend goes. I sometimes wonder why, if that is true, she walks the earth and he lies restless in the grave.