The Pearl of the Soul of the World - By Meredith Ann Pierce Page 0,43

adhered to her like something tacky and alive. She had to snatch her arm away.

Her path led mostly downward at first, so that after a time she was certain she had passed below the waterline. The stone of the wall was clearer here. Beyond, the dark waters of the Mere moved sluggishly.

A flock of hatchet-shaped swimming things darted past, their huge mouths gaping. Something long and grey slid after them, doubling back on itself. It snapped bladelike teeth at her. Aeriel jumped. Farther out, something much vaster circled, very black: one of the Witch's mereguints, a water dragon. Aeriel hastened on.

Journeying deeper, she passed through mazes of corridors with faceted walls, each throwing her image back at her until she halted, baffled, scarcely able to tell where her own form ended and her reflection began. Always the pearl guided her onward and through. Once, at a juncture of two hallways, she sensed that if she had taken the other fork, it would have led inevitably down to where the captured duaroughs labored, deep in the palace bowels, beneath even the mud bottom of the Mere.

Many rooms flanked the corridor—all empty now. Unbidden, the pearl's sight revealed to her more than she wanted to know about the past of those deserted chambers. Here the Witch's black birds had flocked. There she had built her darkangels' wings, and in another, gilded their hearts with lead. The pearl observed the palace's memories with relentless dispassion. Shuddering, the pale girl covered her face with her hands. How could any mortal being have become so corrupt? Could anyone capable of such evil ever be redeemed? What might the pearl of the soul of the world become in the hands of such a one?

And yet, she remembered the Ancient's words, she is my daughter still.

Aeriel came to a room which halted her. Without looking, she sensed what lay beyond the door: a siege as white as salt, such as a queen might sit enthroned upon. The pearl imparted to her a glimpse from the chamber's past: the young Irrylath, not yet a darkangel, brought to his knees before that siege. The silver chain encircling his wrist was grasped in the hand of the tall, seated woman before him. She leaned forward, her face bowed from view. Her other hand was a fist in the young man's hair. Cruelly, she forced his head back, bending to whisper in his ear:

"Yes, love. You will."

Aeriel cried out. The sound shivered down the length of the empty hall, rebounding and magnifying into a louder and louder shriek, until it seemed that not one voice but many screamed. Aeriel ducked, covering her ears. She had no idea of the context of that scene—what had happened before it or followed after—and little cared. Her attention remained fixed on the horror of a single point in time: of the young Irrylath defying his mistress, and the White Witch slowly, inexorably—relishing every moment of it—breaking him to her will.

Aeriel gasped for breath and bit off her cries.

"No," she told herself sternly. "No!"

That glimpse which the pearl had brought her came from the past. It was not happening now. Half breathless, she uncovered her ears and heard the many bladethin echoes dying.

" Love, " she whispered, remembering the lorelei's words to Irrylath. Shaking, Aeriel gazed around her at the cold, white walls. "Nothing in this frozen place has anything to do with love!"

Grimly, she padded forward. The path wound on and on, sometimes downward, sometimes level.

Eventually, she began to travel upward again. It must be long past Solstarrise, she realized, no longer night outside. No inkling of dawn had reached her before, but the light was much brighter since she had once more risen above the dark waterline. She had the sense of being far higher now than when she had entered the palace.

"How long have I been wandering here?" she wondered.

A broad, straight corridor stretched before her. She halted, trembling, dimly aware suddenly of what lay ahead of her and not wanting to go on. She stood a long time, reaching out through the senses of the pearl, trying desperately to find another path—to no avail. Here lay the only path. Aeriel drew a ragged breath.

Quickly, she forced herself ahead down the long corridor. Human figures stood embedded in the walls on either side of her. None of them moved. Still as stone every one, caught fast in the indescribably cold crystal. Their eyes were all closed, all their limbs and faces frozen in