“Not so many—I came to ask a favour—”

It’s a small hope, I said to myself, but while he listened I told 427

him all about Ooldra—my sin with her son, my brother Smahil, the whispers, the lot. “Is there anything can be done?” “It seems she hated you so much, and was with you so long, that she stays now she is dead, bound by a link of malignant concentration. And you were laid open—It is more terrible that he is her son than your father’s. But you have many things to expiate and nullify. Apparently your birth was in every way very inauspicious. Evil and good are balancing each other on a hair-fine quivering equilibrium; if one gets too great, it will over-balance the other. You have to fight harder than most people. But I dedicate you to absolving your birth prophecy in a bigger way than revenge on Zerd for little ravages. Do you accept this?”

“What must I do?”

“Warn Atlan. So far all attempts have failed—but a small, lone girl may have a better chance of slipping through the coast-watch, and you already seem to be good at survival. Can you swim?”

“Quite well.”

“I will give you your instructions later,” he said calmly. “Now put out all the candles but one. And stay close to me and quite quiet.” His voice became very gentle, as if he were about to weep over something. “Close your eyes.”

Immediately I was in blackness, no light of candle or fire seemed to penetrate my lids. For a while I heard him breathing steadily but as if under strain—then that sound went. Suddenly I was afraid in emptiness, I wanted to open my eyes to see if he were still there but they were not mine to open, they were heavy and cold as all my muscles.

Then, after dark emptiness in which I had forgotten movement, I did feel something stirring. And it was in me, but not mine. Some coldness was moving in me. At first it was vaguely pleasant, this stirring, and I was in the darkness which I realized was myself, or at least my consciousness, and it was vast, though I couldn’t feel all of it at the same time.

Now the movement which was not me was a fast turmoil, it was beginning to thrash wildly, sending waves of me against myself. I tried to cry out but my mouth was too far away. Then I realized that its agony was far, far worse than mine, that it was being torn out of me.

I could hear the priest’s voice from far away and above, but each word was not a sound, it was a weight. They were falling like sledge-hammers and the thing in me was squirming wildly to avoid them.