Nightworld

These hadn't been cut, though. The trunks and branches had been crushed, and their splinters pressed into the ground. Something awful big and heavy—or a number of big and heavy somethings—had been outside these windows last night banging and scraping at the shutters.

But they hadn't got in. That was the important thing.

As Alan pushed his left wheel forward and pulled the right backward to turn and roll back to the path, he saw the depression in the lawn. His stomach lurched. He hadn't noticed it before; he'd been too intent on the shutters and the ruined rhodos. But from this angle you couldn't miss it.

The fresh spring grass, overdue now for a trimming, had been crushed in a wide swath that angled in from the front gate, around the willows, and directly to the house. Alan tried to imagine what sort of creature could leave such a trail but all he could come up with was a thirty-foot bowling ball. With teeth, most likely. Lots of them.

He shuddered and rolled back to the path. Each night it got a little rougher. One of these nights Toad Hall's defenses were going to fail. It was inevitable. Alan prayed he'd be able to persuade Sylvia to move out before that happened, or that Glaeken would be able to assemble the pieces he needed to call for help.

Alan could feel it in his bones: they were all going to need help. Lots of it. And soon. Otherwise, if the Sapir curve was correct, they had two sunrises left. Then the sun would set for the last time at three o'clock on Thursday afternoon. And the endless night would begin.

MAUI

Even the coffee tasted like fish.

Jack knew the water was pure—he'd watched Kolabati draw it from the water cooler—but it still tasted fishy. Maybe because everything smelled fishy. The air was so thick with the odor of dead sea life he swore he could taste it when he breathed.

He was standing on the lanai, forcing the coffee down, looking out at the valley below and at the great whirlpool spi

Kolabati joined him, coffee cup in hand, and leaned on the railing to his right. She wore a bright, flowered muumuu that somehow enhanced her figure instead of hiding it. Jack's eyes locked on the necklace. He tried to be casual but it wasn't easy. There it was, half the reason for this hairy trip, a couple of feet away. All he had to do was reach out and—

"My silverswords are all dead," she said, looking down at a wilted garden beneath the deck. "The salt water's killed them. I'd hoped to see them bloom."

"I'm sorry."

She gestured with her cup toward the giant maelstrom.

"There's no point to it. It sucks water and fish down all day, then shoots it miles into the air at night."

"The point," Jack said, remembering the gist of Glaeken's explanations, "is not to have a point. Except to mess with our minds, make us feel weak, impotent, useless. Make us crazy with fear and uncertainty, fear of the unknown."

Jack noticed when he said "crazy" Kolabati stole a quick glance over her shoulder at the house.

"And speaking of points," he said, "what's the point of Moki? How'd you get involved with a guy like that? He's not your type, Bati."

As far as Jack could see, Moki was nobody's type. The guy was not only out to lunch, but out to breakfast, di

"How do you know my type?" Kolabati said, eyes and nostrils flaring. "What do you know of me?"

Jack studied her face. Kolabati had changed. He wasn't sure how. Her wide, dark, almond-shaped eyes, her high, wide cheekbones, full lips, and flawless mocha skin were the same as he remembered. Maybe it was her hair. She'd let it grow since he'd last seen her. It trailed long over her near shoulder and rustled in the sour wind like an ebony mane. But it wasn't the hair. It was something else, something inside.

Good question, he thought. What do I know about her?

"I know you don't hang out too long with people who don't see things your way."

She turned and stared down at the valley.

"This is not the real Moki—or at least not the Moki who shared my life up to a week ago."

Shared her life? Jack was about to make a crack about the ability of this one hundred and fifty year old woman to share anything when he saw a droplet of moisture form in the corner of her eye, grow, and spill over the lid to run down her cheek.

A tear. A tear from Kolabati.

Jack was speechless. He turned and stared though the door where Moki was feverishly working like the madman he was. But working on what? And didn't he ever sleep? He'd harangued them for hours, then he'd rushed to the upper floor where he'd gone to work on the shattered pieces of sculpture littering the great room, recutting them, fashioning a new, giant single work from the remnants of all the others. Ba was in there with him now, sitting in a corner, sipping tea and watching him in silent fascination.

"He was wonderful," Kolabati said.

Jack looked at her again. The tear was still there. In fact it had been joined by others.

"You love him?"

She nodded. "I love who he used to be." She turned toward Jack, wiping the tears from her cheeks, chasing the fresh ones that replaced them. "Oh, Jack, you would have loved him too. I only wished you'd known him then. He was gentle, he was so alive and so much a part of his world, these islands. A genius, a true genius who couldn't flaunt his brilliance because he took it for granted. He never tried to impress anyone else, never tried to be anyone else but Moki. And he wanted to be with me, Jack. Me. Nobody else. I was happy, Jack. I was in love. I thought I'd found an earthly Nirvana and I wanted it to last forever. And it could have, Jack. You know it could have."

He shook his head. "Nothing lasts forever." He reached out and touched her necklace. "Even with that."

"But so soon? We'd just begun."

He searched her face. Here was the difference. The seemingly impossible had happened. Kolabati, the cool, aloof, self-absorbed, ruthless Kolabati who had sent him out to kill her own brother Kusum, who had walked out with her own necklace as well as Kusum's and left Jack bleeding in a chair because he had refused her offer of near immortality…Kolabati Bahkti had fallen in love and it had changed her. Maybe forever.

Amazingly, she began to sob—deep, wrenching gasps of emotional pain that tore at Jack. He'd come here expecting to find the old, cold, calculating Kolabati and had been fully ready to deal with her. He wasn't prepared for the new Kolabati.

He resisted the impulse to take her in his arms. No telling what Moki-The-Unkillable might do if he saw that. So he settled for touching her hand.