"THERE WAS NO ESCAPE

"Mentor," Rheba said slowly, carefully, "Don't trust the Tyrant's Ecstasy Stones. No one who goes too near them comes back out. Remember that."

"I'm trying to," Kirtn said. Suddenly he buried his hands in her seething hair. "Hold me, dancer," the Bre'n whispered. "The Stones are so very beautiful..."

For an instant she stood without moving, lost, for he had always been her strength. Then her arms went around him in a gesture both gentle and fierce. With an instinct far older than her years, she built a network of energy around him, pouring herself through him in a sweet rush of fire that even the Ecstasy Stones could not equal.

He shuddered and lifted her off her feet, holding her as though he were afraid it was the last time. Then his mind was free, not even a wisp of the alien ecstasy remained; but ecstasy was there, unity of dancer and Bre'n.

Slowly he let her slide down his body to stand again on her own feet. "I'm all right now, dancer. The Stones" Darkness turned uneasily in the depths of his eyes. "They won't fool me so easily again."

But unspoken between them was the question: Was it simple deception the Stones offered or was it something more?

Continuing their quest to return the slaves liberated from the decadent empire of Loo, Shania and Kirtn pilot the ship Devalon to Yherelle, the home planet of the Illusionists. Praised as the most civilized of all the planets in the Concord, the pair discover that civilization like any other mask, only goes to the surface. What lies beneath that is something else entirely.