No sooner had Roland got clear of the unidentified arms than he was swept off his feet by a more familiar pair. Windglow grabbed him in a bear hug, and spun him around.

“Nicely done, Roland! You managed it perfectly! It was the stuff of legend!”

Blinded as he was by the white explosion that burned into his retina, Roland was painfully aware that he had not “managed it perfectly.” But he had managed it nonetheless, thanks to Puddles, and the tributes that rained on him from all quarters added more loft to his soaring soul. From that perspective, even the prospect of permanent blindness seemed a reasonable price to pay for his new status.

“That was awesome!” added Delaney. “Totally. I about had a heart attack just watching you. I would have so dropped dead on the spot if I had been out there where you were.”

“Aw, anyone could have done,” said Roland, beaming. “No big deal.” He wondered if the words sounded as stupid to her as they did to him. His walk toward the Gaterock had easily been the biggest deal of his life. Such glory (he could think of no other word for it) was so foreign to him he scarcely knew how to act.

“Allow me to take this burden off your shoulders,” said Windglow, as he plucked Puddles out of Roland’s shirt collar by the scruff of his feathery neck. “I confess, I have no idea why Digtry insisted that he ride with you.”

“That little bugger can ride with me anytime,” said Roland. “He saved my life.”

Puddles shrugged. “Nothing personal.”

“Puddles saved your life?” exclaimed Windglow.

“Who’d have thunk?” laughed Roland.

“Puddles? I am afraid I do not understand. I know Digtry’s role in conjuring that dazzling explosion, and I saw what you did, Roland, in drawing all Raxxar eyes to yourself. Much though it would lift my heart to add this creature to the list of heroes today, I cannot think what he might have done to deserve it.”

“You could if you’d just pull your head out of---” grumbled Puddles.

His remark went unfinished as Roland suddenly lurched forward. As blurred images began to bleed back into his vision, he felt suddenly too dizzy to stand. Delaney caught him just as he collapsed.

“What’s the matter, Roland?! Aaah! There’s blood all over.”

Digtry appeared out of the torchlight shadows and pushed in front of her. “Let me see--Roland look at me!”

“Look at his eyes!” cried Delaney. “They’re all weird!”

“They’re dilated,” said Digtry, calmly. “Looks like someone peeked at the show.”

“Roland, talk to us!”

“It’s okay,” said Digtry. “He’s fine. His vision will return shortly. Half the Tishaaran squadron over here got blinded in the same flash. They'll all get over it soon."

“Yes, it’s getting better already,” said Roland, much relieved as Delaney helped him to a sitting position on the ground.

“But if you cannot see, then how did you manage. . .” started Windglow, before realization dawned. “So that was Puddles’s contribution! He steered you to the rock, did he?”

“He did.”

“But Digtry, how did you know that would happen?” asked Windglow. Turning to Roland, he explained, “Digtry asked me secretly tuck Puddles into your hood. `As a precaution,’ he said, although against what, I could not imagine. Now I see. But how did you know that Roland would not heed your instruction to keep his head down? You were so emphatic on that point.”

When put that way, Roland’s actions seemed to him incredibly stupid. The fact that Digtry had expected suck stupidity from him deflated his euphoria and left him utterly embarrassed.

Digtry shrugged. “Never hurts to be prepared.”

“I can’t believe I looked,” moaned Roland. “I’d be dead without Puddles.”

“Oh, Puddles, you're adorable, I could kiss you!” said Delaney.

“Good Lord, haven’t I suffered enough?”

One of the Tishaaran soldiers appeared and stared at the bloody slash in Roland’s shoulder. “Are you badly hurt?"

"No, it's just a scratch," said Roland. He blinked several times and rubbed his eyes. "If I could just clear my vision, I think I'd be fine"

The Tishaaran examined his shoulder more carefully."I don't think the wound is serious. But we should tend to it at once.”

As healing hands washed and dressed the wound, the fiery white blotch that ruined Roland’s vision slowly receded, and the world came back into focus. He found that they were sitting amid a squadron of Tishaaran soldiers who passed around baskets of honeyed breads, fruit, and a pot of cold tea.

“Congratulations,” said Roland to Digtry, seated next to him. “Your plan worked, as usual. But if I didn’t know you better, I’d swear you are deliberately trying to give me a heart attack.”

“How well do you know me?”

“Not very,” admitted Roland, his embarrassment causing him to laugh louder than normal. “Tell me, though. How did you know the Raxxars would wait so long to attack me?”

“I didn’t. Wouldn’t have surprised me if they ripped you to shreds before I got set up, but that’s the risk you run.”

Roland choked on his apple. “What do you mean? Did you--”

“Eat your food.”

“You. . . I thought we were friends!”

Digtry shrugged. “No one had a better plan? Eat your food.”

Roland returned to his meal, wondering why every conversation with Digtry left him so unnerved.

The Tishaaran captain, a gruff, stout fellow who introduced himself as Karpellet, waited until all had eaten their fill before signaling his soldiers to remove the surplus food.

“I am delighted to meet you all,” he said, sweeping a sweaty lock of brown hair from his wide forehead. A large lower lip fell from his mouth like a trap door when he spoke, revealing a crooked bottom row of teeth. “I tell you, Gaterock duty is full of surprises this season. One moment, more Raxxars than I knew existed in all the realms suddenly gather on our doorstep. The next moment four foreigners pound at our gate in the company of our long-departed Windglow!”

Berch approached him, hesitantly. “Excuse me,” he said, in a barely audible voice. “Could I please see one of those weapons you got there?”

His use of etiquette waved like a white flag of surrender. Despite what they had been through together, Roland could not summon much sympathy for Berch. The spite that the old codger had lobbed about indiscriminately early in their journey had left deep shrapnel wounds. At the same time, he took no pleasure in seeing Berch rendered so meek.

As expected, disclosure of the true nature of the wolf’s visit had devastated Berch. He had gone, in his own mind, from hero to butcher of the innocent in record time. The baying of the pack as they savagely tore open the wolf haunted him night and day. To make matters worse, the relentless pity of his companions roasted him like a ham on a spit. Delaney was the worst. Did she think he did not notice that she, who for most of the trip had ranked among the most pathetic persons Berch had ever met, bit her bottom lip every time she saw him to hold back her tide of sympathy? What clearer measure of how far he had fallen into disgrace than to receive alms of compassion from the wretched. She had even tried to hug him once! His only consolation was that Louise was not around to see him brought so low. That thought threw him into an even deeper pit of disgrace, although he had not thought that possible, as he realized he had not spared a single thought for his dearly departed for many days.

He had put the question to Karpellet because of events at the end of their dash to the Gaterock. A few of the Raxxars had retained or recovered enough of their night vision to block their path and put up a frantic fight against the group’s dash to safety. Only a valiant sortie from the alert Tishaaran guard, wielding their peculiar weapons, had saved the day.

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Reluctantly, Karpellet unfolded his whip from where it hung inside his cloak. Simple, without trim or ornament, it was heavier than it looked, made of pliable, pebbled leather. The tips were hard, as if dipped in molten metal, and thread-thin.

“We call this a tihsaarat,” said Karpellet, awkwardly reclaiming his weapon. “With proper training, it can inflict temporary pain but it will not kill anything larger than a squirrel.”

Delaney looked at Windglow. “I thought you guys didn’t carry weapons.”

“I am afraid such things do have a function in an imperfect world.”

“Don’t you ever forget it,” muttered Berch.

“Windglow, how come we never saw yours?” asked Delaney.

“Tishaarans teach that weapons, although regrettably necessary, are symbols of weakness rather than objects of pride. As such, we are reluctant to display them.”

“Could you show me how it works?” asked Berch.

Karpellet frowned, hesitated, and finally flicked his wrist at a hackberry tree. With a sharp crack, his weapon sliced through the warty bark, showering splinters in all directions. A faint wispof smoke curled over the point of impact. Embarrassed by his display, Karpellet tucked the tishaarat out of sight.

“We need to get moving,” said Digtry abruptly.

“As you wish,” said Karpellet, “but there is no hurry. The Gaterock has never been penetrated by Raxxars.”

“You don’t know who’s after us. It’s more than Raxxars.”

“Pretty much most of the known world,” muttered Roland.

Karpellet’s eyebrows leapt to his hairline, but he did not ask any questions. “The path from here is not easy,” he said. “I beg you to excuse our timidity in requiring the inconvenience. Are you sure you would not like to rest a bit first?”

At Digtry’s insistence, the Tishaarans led their guests firmly, but politely, through a pathless wilderness into a wind-scoured canyon of black stone and crumbling lava. A narrow stairway, carved deep into the rock, wound steeply upward to a swinging bridge that spanned a deep canyon. Before stepping onto the bridge, Karpellet inserted a metal key into the lower supporting span. “Without the key, the bridge will collapse,” he informed them. “Please pardon our precautions, but they are necessary for the survival of Tishaara.”

“We may well need all of them today,” said Windglow.

Beyond the bridge, they crawled, single-file through a low tunnel bored through solid rock. “If need be, we can release sand into the tunnel to block it completely,” said Karpellet.

A few moments of nearly total darkness in the tube brought back vivid memories of Roland’s recent sight loss as well as the ordeal in Cloudmire. But before they were forced to relive to many of their past horrors, the tunnel spilled out onto a reddish sand beach.

A panorama of weathered stone took away their breath. As far as the eye could see, craggy precipices and ponderous cathedral peaks, forged in the anvils of eternity, pierced the sky. Wave upon wave of sheer-cloven, razor-sharp ridges and snow-capped volcanoes massed across a great plain. A rainbow of minerals bled out of the rock and glittered in the sunlight, providing a jeweled accent to the ghostly, wind-eroded mounds and narrow plateaus, spindly arches, bridges of stone, hanging boulders, and tombs of red granite.

Directly in front of them, a lake lapped quietly upon the shore. The water was calm and dyed azure by the sky’s reflection. Glassy fingers of water probed deep into the crannies of the stone walls that enclosed the lake.

Stunned by the beauty, Roland could hardly be persuaded to go on. He risked a quick glance at Berch. The old man squinted into the sun as he looked in the direction of the lake, but did not appear to be seeing anything. If only the old man could have experienced this without . . . Or maybe he would have reacted the same regardless. Berch had never shown much appreciation for nature other than as a pile of dirt for planting crops.

Karpellet pulled two small, flat-bottomed boats from under a pile of branches. Roland and Delaney climbed in the boat piloted by the captain, who shoved them off with a long, wooden pole. Windglow, Digtry, and Berch took the other and trailed close behind.

“Quite the run-around they give you,” said Delaney. Roland could hardly believe the change in her. Her features softened by the reflective orange light off the mountains, she looked almost pretty when she smiled.

““I’ve heard of gated communities, but this is ridiculous,” he agreed.

Gated communities. Delaney felt a sharp pang of homesickness, as for the first time in a long while, the thick curtain blocking her past briefly parted, and the image of her home perched on a fashionably landscaped terrace flashed into view. A moment later, the curtain closed and the memory fell beyond recall.

They floated into open water. Karpellet poled toward one of the small straits that squeezed between the rippled red cliff walls. After scraping through a canal scarcely wider than the boats, they glided into a watery meadow. They passed through reeds and rushes and the gray, barkless husks of once formidable trees, now bent and bearded with dry, greenish blue moss. Roland had the eerie sense of trespassing in an ancient arboreal graveyard. A muskrat glided through the water, leaving a noiseless ripple in its wake. Only the rat-a-tat of a lone woodpecker and the rapid-fire cries of a diving kingfisher disturbed the peace.

Karpellet explained that even though the water was shallow, the sediment was so soft that anyone trying to wade through it would bury themselves in the muck. Even a boat with a draw as shallow as theirs could not stray from the channel or it would beach. Only a skilled and experienced pilot could read the hidden signs on the trees to steer his way through.

As he looked back at the trailing boat, Roland saw Digtry’s large, dark eyes intently studying the surroundings. For once, the mysterious little man had let slip a clue about his background.

“Digtry has never been to Tishaara before, has he?” he asked Karpellet.

“I confess he is strange to me,” replied the captain, his eyes riveted on the water as he maneuvered the boat through the weeds.

“Do you know anything about him? He never talks about himself.”

“He appears to be a wanderer,” said Karpellet. “Interrealm travelers are rare and invariably mysterious.”

“Any idea what realm he is from?”

“If I were to guess, I would say the Fourth. That is generally where the wanderers come from. In fact, the first time I set eyes on him I said to myself, `This man has the mark of the Jewel on him.’”

“Mark of the jewel? What is that supposed to mean?” asked Delaney.

“It is but an expression,” said Karpellet with a shrug as he veered to the right in response to some submerged marker. “It simply means he looks like a Fourth Realmer.”

“But what does a jewel have to do with anything?” Delaney persisted.

“The Jewels. Color lodes. You know, the sign of the Fourth Realm?” said Karpellet. Getting no response, he said, “Forgive me, did Windglow tell you nothing of the realms?”

“He told us a lot,” said Delaney, jumping to their guide’s defense. “I can’t remember everything. Like anyone could keep track of all this.”

Karpellet accepted this with a nod. “I am sorry. I did not mean to imply that Windglow was negligent or you inattentive. Each of the realms has a sign or a symbol. These signs have been passed down through the ages, much like folk stories or songs Every child learns that the Hanging Rock of Vyarlis, the First Realm’s only distinctive land formation, stands for the First Realm. The sign of the Second Realm is the Open Book--after Orduna, the City of Knowledge that lies in its midst. Our realm’s mark is the Giant White Pine. I trust you saw your fill of that in Big Timber.

“The Jewel represents the color lodes found in the eastern hills of the Fourth Realm. They shine with such brilliance that one grain of a lodestone can dazzle an entire countryside. The Color Gnomes hoard them so that few outsiders have ever seen one. Those who have, though, can scarcely talk of anything else.”

“How about the Fifth Realm? What is its sign?” asked Delaney.

At the mention of the name, a shadow fell over their guide’s face. He looked away grimly and began to fidget, and his words came reluctantly and breathless. “That realm, according to legend, is marked by the Cold Flames. A purple fire that burns cold. No one really knows what it signifies. That realm is beyond understanding.”

“Cold Flames,” repeated Roland. “A purple fire that burns without heat. You know that could almost be a description of what brought me to the realms.”

“You never said anything about a cold fire,” noted Delaney.

“Well, neither did you,” Roland countered, feeling defensive. “But I mean, that’s how the three of us got here, right?”

“Not me. I never saw any flames. Just bright light, heavy metal, and an amp from hell. And not Berch, either. He mostly talked about a lot of smoke.”

Karpellet shot quick glances at Roland, obviously curious but unable to take his eyes off his steering. “Are you saying that you have seen these flames? Where? Have you actually traveled in the Fifth Realm?”

“No, I was in the Second. That was where the fire dumped me.”

“You saw Cold Flames in the Second Realm?” Karpellet’s voice was so altered, so absolutely strangled by incredulity that Roland was ready to recant the whole story just to appease him.

“I don’t know. It’s not that they were really cold. It’s just that they weren’t, you know, hot.”

“Good, I’m glad you cleared that up,” said Delaney, rolling her eyes.

“But they were flames that did not burn or consume?” said Karpellet, with a look of horror.

“I thought so. It’s hard to be absolutely sure about anything. It all happened so fast that it’s all kind of fuzzy.”

“Roland,” said Delaney, responding to Karpellet’s agitation. “This could really be important; don’t wuss out on this.”

“Get a grip, Delaney,” Roland said, irritated, particularly by the word “wuss.”

“Come on! Like you’re not going to remember a fire that burns cold instead of hot?”

“It wasn’t really cold; it was--”

“Were they flames that didn’t burn or not?"

Her voice had taken on an edge of scolding. Ashamed of how he had backpedaled in the face of skepticism and wilting further under Delaney’s chiding, Roland tried to recover himself. Come on, Roland, where is the hero that faced down the Raxxars?

He took a deep breath and tried to clear his mind of all thoughts except for that moment of his arrival. “Well, I wouldn’t swear to it. I mean, nothing seemed real at the time. Kind of a blur. You can understand that."

"Yeah, you said all that."

"But I know there was a fire in the library--a huge one. And, yeah, I guess I would call it sort of purplish. And when I landed on the island, the fire was still burning. You know, burning but not burning. Fading, but still there. And I sort of remember shivering when it was all over, although I couldn’t swear it was the flames that caused that.”

The captain’s jaw hung open on the verge of an exclamation. But before he could transfer his thought into speech, the scraping on the boat bottom alerted him to his duties as a pilot. He remained silent as he steered through the waters, but was clearly disturbed.

Roland and Delaney exchanged quizzical glances. Roland feared he had messed up again. He had told both Digtry and Windglow about the fire but had not included all of the details. Until just now he had forgotten the strange tint and the goose bumps and the shivering. Was this something they should have known before now? Would this little morsel of information have saved them some grief along the way?

“Land ho!” called Karpellet, interrupting his thoughts.

The craft ground to a halt on the sand. Unprepared, Roland pitched off his seat onto the wet, flat floor of the dory. Yanking off his soft leather boots in two quick motions, Karpellet leapt into the water and began towing the boat to shore.

Roland and Delaney stepped out to make his job easier. As he slogged onto shore, Roland’s adrenaline high from the Raxxars finally wore off. He could barely lift his feet up out of the water and he yawned in exhaustion. “I really hope we don’t have any more of this Mickey Mouse trail to follow,” he whispered to Delaney.

The other boat beached, and they all filed behind Karpellet as he trudged up a steep dune dotted with tufts of foxtail grass. When he reached the top, he pulled off his shoes to empty the wet sand from them. “Welcome to Tishaara,” he said. “Again, I ask you to please forgive the inconvenience.”

The newcomers to Tishaara heard only the first words of his speech as they looked upon the hidden land for the first time. Berch stared blankly. Delaney’s head swiveled from side to side, searching for something more. Roland could not hide his disappointment. In all his speculation about Tishaara he had never imagined it to be so plain, so ordinary, so uninspiring. He had always associated exclusivity with wealth and privilege, and so expected that this “gated community,” so intentionally cut off from the rest of the world, to be the height of affluence and splendor.

But Tishaara boasted no palaces or castles or fortress walls. The city was nothing more than a collection of rather plain houses irregularly spaced along a dirt road. Some of the homes were well-crafted with arching roofs and attractive stone patterns. But except for one large round-roofed structure at the end of the street, all were small and many seemed a poor risk against a stiff breeze. Various barns were scattered across the plain or plateau, whichever it was. A sparse woods struck off north of the city while rolling hills of grass, brownish and chewed to the nubs in spots, lay in the other direction. Except for the beach, the entire area was rimmed by sheer, ribbed cliffs.

“Is this, like, the whole thing?” asked Delaney in disbelief.

“A Depression era version of Shangri-la,” muttered Roland.

As Windglow’s face drooped, Delaney recovered her manners. “Hey, it’s cool, Windglow! Pretty and so peaceful with the mountains and lake and all. And look at all the gardens!”

“My apologies,” said Puddles, bowing low to her. “I misjudged you by the company you keep. Obviously, you are a keen and astute observer.”

“Please excuse me,” said Karpellet, as he set off toward the largest of the structures. “I must report to the Chamber.”

For Roland, the demons of dread had returned. This was the fortress that would protect them against the mysterious power that had turned all the realmlands against him? It seemed he had fled for refuge to the Third Realm only to find even greater peril. He had sought safety among the Lumberjacks of Big Timber, and had barely escaped with his life. Now he had placed his life in the sanctuary of a place called Tishaara, and saw not the barest illusion of strength or security.