She laughed. “Sadly—perhaps sadly for us both—I am a nun, and not your lady love.”

He nodded. He fetched a stool—there were several. “I can build a fire to get you dry,” he said.

She shrugged. “I’ll get wet again going out,” she said. “Nor would it be useful for me to strip for you.”

“This place is very special,” he said. He ignored her last comment. “Can you feel it, oh puissant Sister?”

She reached out into the aethereal.

She put her hand to her mouth.

“It is closed off. The earth on one side and the rush of flowing water on the other.” He nodded. “I imagine something very powerful could make it in, or out, but this cave is virtually sealed in the aethereal.” He sat on a stool and leaned back. “So here we can talk. About anything. No one is listening—not Harmodius, not Thorn, and not even Ash.”

The name reverberated.

“Ash?” she asked.

“After Lissen Carak, I went and made an ally—I think—of a potent and ancient Power that men call the Wyrm of Ercch.” He glanced at her and she nodded.

“I have learned a great deal talking to him. Mostly, I have learned that he opposes another Power, who he calls Ash, and who—” Gabriel smiled like a boy. “I know I sound like a fool, but who seems to be the Power moving the pieces on the chessboard—at Lissen Carak, and in Harndon. And perhaps elsewhere.”

This was not the conversation for which she had prepared for the last hour while walking and riding and climbing. She took a deep breath.

“What do you guard, under the vaults and dungeons of Lissen Carak?” he asked her.

“That is not my secret,” she said.

He nodded. “But you admit there is a secret there,” he said. “What have you done that I cannot be killed?” he asked. “Even for you, this is a potent witchery.”

She sat back on her stool. Leaned her head into the stone of the back wall, slanting upwards into the white blur of the water that made the front wall.

“Don’t you think we’d be better with blatant seduction?” she asked.

He laughed. His laugh—the open honesty of it—made her laugh.

“Amicia, is your love of God so great, the feeling so wonderful, that you have no room in you for earthly love?” he asked.

She made a face. “What would you have me say? But yes.” She shook her head. “I think there was a time—not so long ago—when I’d have fallen into your arms.” She flushed. “But something has changed in me. There is a point, in prayer—in the ascent to God—when you must guard yourself carefully against sin. And then, I’m sorry, a point where sin seems a little foolish. When it no longer tempts. Where earthly love is but a pale companion.”

“Ouch,” he said. He wore a brave smile, but she saw she’d cut him too deeply.