Arddu and Morgan are captured by Ysmere, a former Sister who had been driven mad by what she saw as her betrayal by the Circle. With the help of the sword, Morgan manages to outwit Ysmere and bargains for their safe passage to the land of the sword. They arrive in a land filled with intermixing symbols of both First and Second magic in which there stood a glass tower in a hill shaped like a hand surrounded by a lake. Morgan realizes that this must be the hand holding Excalibur rising up from the lake in the legends. Arddu and Morgan enter the tower with the help of the sword just as both the Line and Circle reach them and begin to battle one another. They climb the tower and arrive in a room with a table on which lies a stone sheath for the sword, the Holy Grail and a severed, bleeding head. The head identifies itself as a seer and tells of Arddu's bond with the sword, Morgan's right to the Grail, which she would lose but with which she would always bear a bond, and their journey to Earth, but not the Earth of Morgan, to which she would never return. Arddu puts the sword, which is now known to be Excalibur, in the stone as Morgan takes the Grail, and both are transported to Earth.