Temple of the Winds

"He's not coming to help you. No one can help those people, now. I can help you, but you have to agree to help me in return. I'll not risk my life and lives of tens of thousands of others on you if you are of no use to me. I'll find another who would rather go with me than be a slave to these beasts." She made herself look into his eyes. "Will it be dangerous?" "Yes." "Will I die helping you?"

"Maybe. Maybe you'll live. If you die, you will die doing something noble: trying to prevent suffering worse than this." "Can't you help them? Can't you stop this?"

''No. What is done is done. We can only strive to shape the future-we cannot alter the past.

"You have an inkling of the dangers in the future. You once had a prophet living here, and he wrote down some of his prophecies. He was not an important prophet, but he left them here, where you fools view them as revelation of divine will.

"They are not. They are simply the words of potential. The same as if I tell you that you have it within your power to choose your destiny. You can stay and be a whore to this army, or you can risk your life doing something worthwhile." She trembled under his powerful grip on her arm. "I. . I'm afraid." His azure eyes softened. "Clarissa, would it help if I told you that I am terrified?" "You are? You seem so sure of yourself."

"I am only sure of what I can try to do to help. Now, we must go to your archives before these men get a look at the books."

Clarissa turned, glad for the excuse to withdraw from his gaze. "Down here. I'll show you the way."

She led him down the spiral stone steps at the back of the room. They weren't often used because they were so narrow and hard to negotiate. The prophet who had constructed the abbey was a slight man, and the stairs were built to suit him. As tight as they were for her, she couldn't imagine how this prophet could pass down them, but he did.

On the dark landing below, he lit a little flame above his palm. She paused in astonishment, wondering at why it did not burn his flesh. He urged her to hurry on. The low wooden door opened into a short hall. The stairs at the center led down to the archives. The door at the end of the hall led to the main room of the abbey. Beyond that door, people were being murdered.

She turned down the stairs, taking them two at a time. Nathan caught her arm when she slipped, keeping her from a fall. He made a gentle joke about that not being the danger he'd warned her about.

In the dark room below he cast out a hand, and the lamps hanging on wooden pilasters sprang to flame. His brow drew down as he surveyed the shelves lining the walls of the room. Two sturdy but unexceptional tables provided a place to read and to write.

While he strode to the shelves on the left, she frantically tried to think of a place she could hide from the men of the Order. There must be some place. Surely the invaders would leave, sooner or later, and hen she could come out and be safe.

She was afraid of the prophet. He expected things of her. She didn't know what those things were, but she didn't think she had the courage to do them. She just wanted to be left alone.

The prophet strode past the shelves, stopping here and there to put a finger atop a spine and pull out a volume. He didn't open the books he removed, but tossed them on the floor in the center of the room and went on to the next. The books he pulled out all contained prophecies. He didn't select all the books of prophecy, by any means, but prophecies were the only ones he chose. "Why me?" she asked as she watched him. "Why do you want me?" He paused with a finger on a large leatherbound volume. He watched her, the way a hawk watched a mouse, as he withdrew the book. He took it to the pile of eight or ten already on the floor, set it down, and picked up one already there. He paged through it after he stopped before her. "Here. Read this."

She lifted the heavy book from his hands and read where he pointed: Should she go freely, one ringed will be able to touch that long trusted into the winds alone.

Long trusted into the winds alone, the very idea of such an incomprehensible thing made her want to run. "One ringed," she said. "Does that mean me?" "If you choose to go freely." "What if I choose to stay, and hide? Then what?"

He lifted an eyebrow. "Then I will find another who wants to escape. I offered you the chance first for my own reasons, and because you can read. I'm sure there are others who can read. If I have to, I will find another." "What is it 'one ringed' can touch?"

He took the book from her tremulous hands and snapped it shut. "Don't try to understand what the words mean. I know that you people try to do that, but I am a prophet, and I can tell you with a great deal of authority that such an endeavor is futile. No matter what you think, what you fear, you will be wrong."