Dust. Like most of the Lucanesti themselves. The book was as mysterious as the elves who had penned it.

Holding his breath, he turned the fragmented page. Even so, scraps of vellum, light as dust motes, shook loose and hovered above the book, rising in the heat of the candle.

So as not to further disturb the fragile, precious pages, he raised his thick sleeve very slowly and exhaled into it, then read on: "… were wrong about the gods. True, the great lance of the hero Huma will strike a near-mortal blow against the Dark

Queen…"

Silently, the reader marveled. Huma's heroism, a thousand years in the past, lay in the future for the ancient writer. This book was over a millennium old. And yet it now read like news of tomorrow.

"This queen, Takhisis of the Many Names, he will banish to the Abyss, where she and her barbarous minions will wait and brood in a sunless chasm, far from the warm and living world they desire to influ shy;ence and rule.

"To reclaim her power, it would take …" The man swore a mild, silent oath. The text broke off again, the sides of the ancient page lost forever, and words of the prophecy with them.

But perhaps a more powerful spell, he mused. Perhaps I can still reconstruct…

But that would have to wait until the others left for the service. Too noisy for now. With a shrug, he picked up where the text continued.

"… that forms her body from the dust of the planet, restores her entry into the disheartened world. But until that time there will be other ways- faceted, more regular-to enter for a moment, for an hour, though the stay is brief and tantalizing in its

brevity.

"Lightning is one way, and the powerful surge of flowing water another. For a time-sometimes a minute, sometimes an hour-the goddess will be able to channel her spark and spirit into a blinding flash in the western sky or the tumble of waters in the dark Thon-Thalas. For that brief and glorious breath, the world will spread before her, green and vulnerable in all its prospect…