9:
 
It had been some time since there was any sound, there at the section of the
wall where the darkness sat beside the light. Perhaps they had exhausted the
only topic of conversation which they had in common.

Then the brown-eyed girl approached them, carrying a small creature which was
not what it seemed in her arms. She bowed politely to the light, then turned to
the darkness and did the same.
 
"What do you want?" the darkness repeated herself.
 
The brown eyed girl smiled. "You do not have any thing that I want. I have only
come to return your friend to you."
 
The creature jumped from her arms to the ground beside the darkness.
 
"Thank you, young lady," the light said calmly. "You would do well to be away
from here quickly."
 
The girl bowed again. The light returned the courtesy, though the darkness only
looked at her in suspicion and contempt -- which turned to irritation as she
saw that the creature was bowing to the girl.
 
Before the darkness could say anything to that, the brown eyed girl turned and
hurried away.
 
"What exactly do you think you're doing?" the darkness finally said to the
creature.
 
The creature replied that he was showing appropriate respect to someone who had
helped him to travel a great distance more quickly than he could accomplish on
his own, thus facilitating his role in *her* schemes, for no other reason than
the goodness of her heart, and that her bloody-minded prejudice against persons
of that nature was blinding her from appreciating the genuine value of such aid
--
 
"Enough."
 
"My cat used to talk to me like that, once," the light observed.
 
"Very soon now," the darkness said, ignoring the light's irrelevant aside,
"they will approach the final gate, and open it. And then it begins."

"It begins very soon now?"
 
"No. It begins now."
 
                                  END CHAPTER TWO
                                  TO BE CONTINUED
                                  IN CHAPTER THREE