The Lady comes to us to offer strength, not to receive it. But the dream-Elsinome did not hesitate. She was vigorous and tall, with a nimbus of light flickering about her head and shoulders. She drew the Lady to her, and took her against her breast and held her in a close strong embrace, and the Lady sighed and it seemed that some of the pain went from her. Then the two women drew apart and the Lady, glowing now as Elsinome was, touched her fingers to her lips and threw a kiss to Elsinome, and vanished.

That was all. With startling suddenness Elsinome woke and saw the familiar dreary walls of her flat in Guadeloom Court. The afterglow of a sending was on her beyond any doubt, but the sendings of other years had left her always with a strong sense of new purpose, of directions redirected, and this one had brought only mystification. She could not understand the purpose of such a sending; but perhaps it would manifest itself to her, she thought, in a day or two.

She heard sounds in her daughters' room.

"Ailimoor? Maraune?"

Neither girl answered. Elsinome peered in and saw them huddling close over some small object, which Maraune put quickly behind her back.

"What's that you have there?"

"It's nothing, mother. Just a little thing."

"What kind of thing?"

"A trinket. Sort of."

Something in Maraune's tone made Elsinome suspicious. "Let me see it."

"It really isn't anything."

"Let me see."

Maraune shot a quick look toward her older sister. Ailimoor, looking uneasy and awkward, simply shrugged.

"It's personal, mother. Doesn't a girl get to have any privacy?" Maraune said.

Elsinome held out her hand. Sighing, Maraune brought forth and reluctantly surrendered a small sea-dragon tooth, finely carved over much of its surface with unfamiliar and peculiarly disturbing symbols of an odd, narrow-angled sort. Elsinome, still in part enveloped in the strange aura of the sending, found the little amulet sinister and menacing.

"Where'd you get this?"

"Everyone's got them, mother."

"I asked you where it came from."

"Vanimoon. Actually Vanimoon's sister Shulaire. But she got it from him. Can I please have it back?"

"Do you know what this thing means?" Elsinome asked.

"Means?"

"That's what I said. What it means."

Shrugging, Maraune said, "It doesn't mean anything. It's just a trinket. I'm going to drill a hole in it and wear it on a string."

"Do you expect me to believe that?"

Maraune was silent. Ailimoor said, "Mother, I—" She faltered.

"Go on."

"It's just a fad, mother. Everyone's got them. There's some crazy new Liiman idea going around that the sea dragons are gods, that they're going to take over the world, that all the trouble that's been happening lately is a sign of what's to come. And people say that if we carry the sea-dragon teeth, we'll be saved when the dragons come ashore."

Coldly Elsinome said, "There's nothing new about it. Nonsense like that has been going around for hundreds of years. But always hidden, always in whispers, because it's crazy and dangerous and sick. Sea dragons are oversized fish and nothing more. The One who looks over us is the Divine, protecting us through the Coronal and the Pontifex and the Lady. Do you understand? Do you understand?"