Morning light, hitting the purple, serrated edge of the distant mountain range, splintered out over the roof of the dark forest.
          Falk, Hawk and Wolf, negotiating the maze of ruins that marked Erastor's landward boundary, paused to watch the dawn thrust like a million red-gold spears against the sky-shield of the stars.
          Behind them, the towers of the sprawling castle turned from silver-grey to smouldering orange.
          Several days had passed since the war with the Skarnyr, and all the strange events following from it. Kaihima had shown Falk the utmost hospitality. She had even offered him the position of Queen's General; but Falk had not been able to resist the never-silent call of the quest.
          The three-who-were-one had survived Erastor.
          Now, Challun-Tioch beckoned.
          Broken buildings and walls stretched away on either side like shapes of sulphur. Clouds of yellow dust rose up about the wanderers. Blurred, debateable figures, all tawny and gold, they moved through the ruins like spectres.
          This phantasmal aspect of their progress made Falk remember, somewhat against his will, the two dreams that had come to him in Erastor.
          There were three elements in the first. The room he had slept in that night had become the chamber of his nightmare. The black-haired, green-cloaked Huntress of Challun-Tioch, a memory vividly cut by the etching-points of Hawk's eyes, had been transformed into the weaving-woman. But the man with the quicksilver hands was beyond rational explanation. Neither could Falk account for the alien landscape and events of the second vision - a dream lit by blood and the steel of swords - yet the man had followed him there also.
          Falk knew that this nameless pursuer was more than just an image in a nightmare, though he did not know how he knew. His fear of the flowing, shining hands was blindingly real. He was certain that it was his destiny to confront this man, and soon ... and that their inevitable battleground would be a place that was somehow beyond time, where all things ended and all things began.
          Drawing free of the ruins, the light of the dawn blazing full upon them, Falk thought again of the weaving-woman - a figure from a dozen mythologies, haunting, resonant - and a song from an ancient saga came unbidden to his mind:

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