I didn't understand, but I ran. I ran, my sides aching, blood streaming
from the forgotten flesh-wound in my side. Miellyn raced beside me and
Rakhal stumbled along, carrying Rindy.
Then the shock of a great explosion rocked the ground, hurling me down
full length, Miellyn falling on top of me. Rakhal went down on his
knees. Rindy was crying loudly. When I could see straight again, I
looked down at the hillside.
There was nothing left of Evarin's hideaway or the Mastershrine of
Nebran except a great, gaping hole, still oozing smoke and thick black
dust. Miellyn said aloud, dazed, "So _that's_ what he was going to do!"
It fitted the peculiar nonhuman logic of the Toymaker. He'd covered the
traces.
"Destroyed!" Rakhal raged. "All destroyed! The workrooms, the science of
the Toys, the matter transmitter--the minute we find it, it's
destroyed!" He beat his fists furiously. "Our one chance to learn--"
"We were lucky to get out alive," said Miellyn quietly. "Where on the
planet are we, I wonder?"
I looked down the hillside, and stared in amazement. Spread out on the
hillside below us lay the Kharsa, topped by the white skyscraper of the
HQ.
"I'll be damned," I said, "right here. We're home. Rakhal, you can go
down and make your peace with the Terrans, and Juli. And you, Miellyn--"
Before the others, I could not say what I was thinking, but I put my
hand on her shoulder and kept it there. She smiled, shakily, with a hint
of her old mischief. "I can't go into the Terran Zone looking like this,
can I? Give me that comb again. Rakhal, give me your shirtcloak, my
robes are torn."
"You vain, stupid female, worrying about a thing like that at a time
like this!" Rakhal's look was like murder. I put my comb in her hand,
then suddenly saw something in the symbols across her breasts. Before
this I had seen only the conventionalized and intricate glyph of the
Toad God. But now--