《Melted Beast》


 Descriptions of Words

    This text should act as a reference for terms used, invented, or fundamentally recontextualized for the purposes of the story. It concerns both words I have devised for broader use (my real made up words) and ones specific to the groups of people which the story depicts (my fake made up words.)


    It is intended for people who have already read the story and may seek to hear about some of its things. The story was written to make the language make sense in context (not that it necessarily achieves this.) That is to affirm this section does not serve as an enabler of or substitute for pleasant writing.


    It should not be seen as an authority or as a dictionary. Everything here is subject to reconsideration and change, and it will never be finished


    <hr>


    Various Notes:


    The Use of Other Languages Like Norwegian and Irish - Most words are rendered directly in English, but there are a few words (Otiser, Sprak, blaith, Ard Makaris, Mekarin, etc..) which are held over from a time when the story''s setting was something for an AI game and I needed unique words for keys.


    The only other time I use words from other languages is when I need to produce a word that has no inherent linguistic meaning to any perspective characters, such as feurkun, which was devised to elicit the peculiar, snarling experience of slurs.


    A


    Athad (words of) - Athad Kathra/Azad Kadra is a historical figure in Josmee. His past has been heavily mythologized and characters influenced by the Rootcliffs'' collective imagination of him occupy a central position in the faiths which grew out of the regions they proselytized to. Details around him are somewhat spoilery so I can''t talk about them much here, but his existence is heavily associated with Hesigns, the letters written on Wander (the "words of Athad.") What is widely understood is that the Rootcliffs occupied Goal under his authority many centuries ago, and that the Goalish territory has been one of many fuels for empire ever since.


    Azad''s name is often spelled differently to reflect the Goals'' alternative, generationally-learned pronunciations of it.


    B


    Birthwoman (bati) - "Birthwoman" is used by many groups in Goal to refer to a person who gave birth. It also tends to extend to people seen as women who childrear.


    Bati is a common term of endearment devised by Goalish children.


    Birthman (bata) - "Birthman" is used by many groups in Goal to refer to a birth-giving person''s partner/s. It also tends to extend to people seen as male who childrear.


    Bata is a common term of endearment devised by Goalish children.


    Biped - Biped is the out of universe way I refer to the parasimian-descendant people of Melted Beast.


    The bipeds are similar to us, psychologically and otherwise, because I wanted this story to be invocative of our conditions and situations, but I nevertheless prefer to keep a certain level of separation between the two.


    Bite - "Bite" is a common way for the inhabitants of Goal to conceptualize individuals or groups conceived of as parasitic or predatory, interpreted somewhat incorrectly by more pronouncedly legalist outsiders like Laruns as an "outlaw". ¡°Bite¡± itself grew out of the idea of a mover band that did not reciprocate with the shellbound; as a result, the line between hinterland bites and movers can be very uncertain and as a rule is unfixed. Many elements named as Bites by Goalish networks collaborate with other movers who themselves are only regarded variously as such, and engage in the plundering of both Larun settlements and rival shells.


    Blaith - A word used in Ard Makaris, a place very far away from Goal where Wander learned how to kill, to point to bladed weapons. It has become known outside Ard Makaris as a word denoting the style of the bladed weapon built by the various groups which inhabit that place, which tends to be long and single-edged.


    The sword scored with hesigns on Wander''s back is a blaith. The Lotaslager has been forced to start giving Makarish weapons to their recruits rather than the more traditional Kafkes'', since it''s what they have access to.


    Bleu - A color word I use. It''s light blue. I think the reversed e and u suggest a lighter tint.


    Born (river- out-) - The Sixbraids and some of the River Goals used "riverborn" to refer specifically to other bipeds. Many Goals employ some other variation of this idea to perform the same work. Some include the Laruns in their conception of the term; others do not.


    "Born" as an indicator is used less often than the more general "heart."


    Bryst - "Bryst" is a term often applied in Larun to something going over the chest. Bryst in the story is often used to refer to a very common style of garment used by Freemen and Larun fighters, a gray cloak and metal armor.


    Breather - Breather is a common, although not ubiquitous, way for various characters to conceive their "species" in Melted Beast. It''s a Larun word that has achieved prominence due to their polity''s expansion across "Harmony" (another Larun word denoting the Otisrat''s domain).


    Broon - A color word. It''s brown. I like the effect of the two o''s. It''s intended to evoke a very deep brown, mixed with ochre maybe, very earthy. The color of mud on a stormy day


    C


    Cannotfollow - A Rootcliff word whose utility spans multiple English words:


    1. Animal


    2. Servant


    3. Slave


    4. Infidel


    5. Pet


    It is also a relative of ¡°subhuman¡± although this connection is much more tenuous and does not involve any of the lengthy pseudoscientific architecture underpinning that term.


    Cannot follow was functionally the means by which the Rootcliff polity conceived of and imagined the purpose of unfree labor. That which could not follow was not morally reprehensible, but it would be either taught or dragged into moral acts.


    Cane (dry-/out-/off-) - A word similar in use to "cane" proto-Goalish speak - in that it was used to denote a long shaft of something - became a common way of denoting hand weapons, like clubs and swords. Many Goalish groups attach some modifier to it indicating its exterior origin; polished metal weapons were introduced to Goal via conquest.


    The Goalish "cane" is understood in-universe to be a particular style of bladed weapon like the Makarish blaith and the Larun langniv.


    Coldcoming - Many Goalish people employ some party near the beginning of winter to herald its arrival, and it tends to be called something like this.


    D


    Dunjoydur - Dunjoydur is a word used by an old group that once inhabited contemporary Josmee which referred to their world. It can partially be understood as "the breath," or "the air-mass."


    Dunjoydur is the word I use to refer to the planet on which Melted Beast takes place. It''s never used in the actual text, but it will be used in this document.


    Dry-ness (Dryman/Outborn/Offborn) - "Outness" "Dryness" and "Offness" are a few of an assortment of ways that the first inhabitants of Goal tend to gesture at elements which are regarded as, due to a feeling of existential dissimilarity, inauspicious or working to the end of some hostile agency. "Dry-born" is a term restricted primarily to the Goalish networks that formed along the East River which flows South out of the region, whose oral narratives distinguished themselves significantly from those of other groups, connecting the water of the river to the start of their existence.


    E


    F


    Feurkun - ¡°Feurkun¡± is a Larun word roughly analogous to ¡°unwise, naive person,¡± and is used often in the sense of, ¡°foreigner,¡± ¡°primitive,¡± and ¡°savage.¡± It originated as a term to describe a scorned or irascible woman. Feurkun is uniquely informed by the schema of value Larun society uses to center itself and justify imperial expansion, placing emphasis on maturation and inculcating other societies with Larun ideas.


    Firework - Firework is a kind of behavior in groups that reside in Goal. Fireworkers are healers, oracles and safety inspectors responsible for the curation of fire used by the group, from smithing, to cauterised wounds, to burning crops, to illumination.


    Fireworkers are respected in their circles but are obligated to distance from them, due both to the covert nature of their traditions and rituals ¨C knowing how to start, and end a fire - and the general Outness of their work.


    The definite shape of fireworking differs from shell to shell. Many groups in Goal express anxiety around fire and a caretaker/s of it, but the mythology, role and ritual of fire-work varies widely. It likely developed as a response to the exigencies of the territory; fire posed a considerable asset in Goal¡¯s freezing winters and an inversely serious threat during its dry, golden summers.


    Freemen - Freemen are a spoiler. They''re like most bipeds and come from most bipeds but aren''t the same. They''re employed by Larun institutions in mundane, taxing, or physically dangerous positions, as farmers, porters, and soldiers.


    In my brain, Freemen were originally orcs, although they''re not anymore. Their name is canonically how the Larun authorities disseminated knowledge of their existence; they are "men, freed."


    G


    Gapman - A Goalish word. It is often used to describe men perceived to be un-male, and is more generally directed at groups like Laruns that do not conform to local conceptions of gender.


    Gathering - A Larun word akin to "gathering" denotes a group of people assembled for a task. In-universe it is often how a group similar to a military is conceptualized.


    Goal - "Goal" is a large region in South Josmee, the latter of which is a polity client to the Larunkat Otisrat. It is home to Goalish, a semi-cohesive imagining of the region''s inhabitants by mostly exterior forces who extend a bit beyond the bounds assigned them by the the Rootcliffs (the predominant group in Josmee) and cease in places a bit prior to it.


    A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    Goal has geopolitical significance. Running directly through it is the Otisrat''s major Northern logistical artery, the Ash Road. Goal has also substantial mineral deposits, particularly silver. Multiple groups - Larun, Rootcliff, and others - have attempted to subdue the people living there for thousands of years, but their idiosyncratic forms of organization, Goal''s complex terrain, and interceding outside factors have meant that it has remained a quagmire for prospective empires.


    Many "Goals" do not conceive of "Goal" as a place they are in or "Goalish" a thing they are. Concepts like these are most common in North and East Goal, where the Sixbraids were situated and where Fragile is from. For narrative convenience.


    H


    Harmony - "Harmony" was a term used by the Larun authorities to denote the extent of their influence in Lefthorizon. It has since become a common word by many Sprak-speakers for the whole area, which lies roughly in its center.


    Heart - "Heart" is a word appended by many Goalish people to names for things in a condition like themselves, i.e. moving and bleeding. It is a very flexible device and not applied on any strict basis; there are some Goalish groups that have particular conceptions of plants and trees as "hearts", and others that don''t. Freemen move and bleed, but many Goals apply epithets of heart-removal such "heartless" or "unheart" to Freemen and sometimes biped Laruns for various reasons, and always to strip of similar condition.


    Heartswater - A word used by Goals most frequently to refer to their blood. Heartswater can also be used to understand a heart''s any fluid, but the word often carries a certain amount of gravity such that other words are used to refer to things like pee and pus.


    Hesign - Hesigns are a spoiler. They''re ideogrammatic characters that make changes in the world when they interact with the substance Wander carries with her.


    I think of most Hesigns as looking like little wheels with "spokes" that have tiny differences in the way each one is etched. This detail is subject to change, I''ve never thought very hard about their shape.


    Lefthorizon - A Rootcliff word for the land of Melted Beast.


    I use "lefthorizon" more generally to refer to the entire continent where the story takes place. Rootcliff authorities, which were once very powerful, used three words very often to refer to the continents of the world which they encountered, the other two being "rainhorizon" and "treehorizon." Larunkat authorities have adopted the basic scheme of these terms.


    Howl - Howl is a word used by many Goalish groups to refer to the paracanids they encounter.


    I


    I - The "I" is a very prevalent concept within Rootcliff belief systems. It serves as an essential encapsulation of the self which retains its vitality after the body dies.


    K


    Kontor - A position of authority in Larun gatherings.


    L


    Lawsman - A way that the Onnpeople imagined male-considered people who would rear children.


    Larun - The Laruns are a ethnic group in Larunkat, in the Southeast and other regions near the Ash River.


    Many years ago a group of Laruns obtained power over most of Larunkat and the other groups that reside there. That power has begun to wane somewhat in wake of recent changes.


    Larunkat - Larunkat is both a place and a large political entity. The place neighbors Josmee to the West, past the New Wild, and it is where the To-Dark Otisrat''s capital is. Perhaps less than a century ago the Otisrat''s reach was much wider and encompassed many other polities, but its highest authority was killed in war and it has since fractured into two tenuously aligned fragments. It still maintains a large amount of influence over Josmee and Goal, which have become much more important to it now that more distant territories have begun to resist its power and fight against it.


    Lotaslager - The Lotaslager is an armed anti-Otisrat spiritual organization located in the Baltozat of Ard Makaris, many miles away from Goal. It''s the group Wander reports to.


    The Lotaslager''s past is shady and it used to be part of a larger administrative organ, before the Otisrat and before the period of competition among the powers of Harmony that existed before that. Its present form is very violent and very authoritarian.


    Lodge - The "Lodge" is a very common figure in Goalish groups.


    Lodges bear some resemblance to an elder or authority figure within Goalish groups and are often regarded as such by exterior authorities, but understandings of the Lodge and their roles vary from place to place and this conception is generally less than accurate. Lodges rarely have any significant, socially constructed mandate for obedience beyond what is collectively instilled in many Goalish children toward their parents. The title of Lodge is a literal one that involves the transformation of one and their household into housing and houser for those who come to visit a shell and everything they have to offer. Lodges are usually drawn from elderly men, but not always; the only reason this happens is because of gender expectations and because the elderly are among the few groups who have traditionally been expected to stay in shells long-term.


    M


    Meeter+Knower - "Meeting"/"Knowing"/other is a recognized phenomenon in Goal whereby an individual/s will abandon a group and set out into the rounds. This is often imagined to be a spiritual activity, whereby those who leave go to spend time with and contemplate the essential characters of existence.


    The Dip Meeters from story 3 are Meeters but they are also something else that is a spoiler. Their superpowers don''t come from the Night Ruler, because the Night Ruler can''t give you superpowers.


    N


    O


    Onnpeople - The Onnpeople are a diasporic group that the To-Light Otisrat attacked and displaced many years ago. They used to occupy a series of high-density settlements in the region of Shaminkat.


    Wander was born among the Onnpeople and at the beginning of the story, due to her years of forced servitude, she has no information on the others. In her mind, they were all either dead or in bondage.


    Otiser/an - The Otiser is understood to be the most powerful figure in an Otisrat. They occupy the peak of the hierarchy.


    The current To-Dark Otiser, Girdan, is a girl. Otiseran is used as the word''s feminine form.


    Otisrat - An Otisrat is a polity-form commanded by an Otiser. Both Otisrats are this (there are two.)


    The Otisrat employs an idiosyncratic form of ruler-selection involving the equivocation of a reified, ontologically good "knowledge" with divine mandate.


    Over - "Over" is a Goalish word often used to denote garments that cover up the torso, and things that go over you.


    P


    Primlight - An out-of-universe word. I use it for "morning." It''s supposed to be the antecedent to "twilight."


    Punisher - A Larun apparatus used for public killings. It has a platform to stand and then drop off and a rope that goes around your neck and chokes you.


    A punisher''s drop is usually short enough that it kills by asyphixation rather than trauma to the spine.


    Q


    Questsaid - An out of universe word. Its utility is best demonstrated by example.


    "That''s all?" Guy asked.


    Guy isn''t really "asking" in this example. He is, but the only way you are able to interpet this as a question is via the question mark. If the mark were changed to a period it would function as a sentence, a said. One is "quest-saying," seeking to affirm by stating a potential conclusion, and shaping its interpretation with your tone. Only


    Guy said in a way that suggested he wasn''t saying something but rather seeking to confirm what he already knew by restating it, "That''s all?"


    does not sound good. So I use questsaid.


    R


    Response - "Response" is how the Sixbraids, some other Goalish groups, and Fragile conceptualize conflict. Response can be used to point at conflict of any scale, from small disagreements to the many uprisings that have happened in Goal.


    Rounds - The parts of Goal uninhabited by bipeds are often referred to as "rounds."


    The word was originally more general than that though, in that for some Goals it was just a way to point at a spot of land.


    Roundseat - "Roundseat" is the way many Goalish refer to their static dwellings. Outsiders tend to use "roundseat" to denote the particular type of shelter built by Goals, but the latter are diverse. Goalish housing usually incorporates thatching and wood or earthworks foundations.


    I also started thinking of it as round but etymologically it was just meant to be a "seat," a place to rest, that was on a round.


    Rulers - The Sixbraids and by extension Fragile extend offerings and reverence to a group of powers that they often call ''rulers,'' who are sometimes regarded in personal terms.


    River/Rulersland - These are words frequently used by Goals to gesture at everything that exists.


    I used them in the same sense of "world."


    S


    Shell - ¡°Shell¡± is a term conceived by the proto-Goalish people and popular among their contemporary descendants in the New Wild. The Shell is a quintessential sedentary unit in the organisation of many Goalish groups, and initially all it denoted was a more permanent and defended position. Over time, the shell began to adopt additional and more concrete meanings. Various incursions by invaders have attempted to excise the shell from its roots and establish it as the means of sedentish living for the inhabitants of Goal.


    Skyface - An in-universe Goalish color word. Many Goals describe the "face" of something we would see as blue as like the sky. Many Goals use this idea of "face" to gesture at properties of appearance, including color.


    Skyshade - A Larun color word used in much the same way.


    Sprak - Sprak as a term gestures broadly to Larun vocabulary, syntax, and ways of speaking.


    There are multiple forms of Sprak, but the one most relevant to the Story is "Little Sprak" - the Spraks of ordinary people, uncurated and unprestigious.


    Stabs - A Larun word that''s often used to refer to mineral extraction operations.


    "Stabbing" the soil is a popular way among some Laruns to imagine any act of excavation.


    H


    Hoof (strong/stone) - People who speak Goalish tend to refer to the setting''s para-equids as "hoofs."


    Because they have hoofs.


    Stronghoofs are generally seen as stronger, smaller, slower, and furrier than stonehoofs. Stonehoofs are tall and fast. Most Wandering Stars like Wander pick para-equids like stonehoofs to ride out from Ard Makaris, although the para-equids they ride are not the ones Goalish people are familiar with, and they are constructed using different names.


    T


    To-Dark/To-Light/To-Sidedark/To-Sidelight - Words picked up from the Rootcliffs that many Goals use to point West, East, South, and North respectively. The Laruns adopted them as "dacif/laif/sidacif/silaif."


    Direction words were not popular in Goal prior to the region''s invasion by the Rootcliffs, many years ago.


    U


    Under - A way-keeping people farther South along the river of the Sixbraids. Unders primarily inhabit the Dip, a region of land, inhabiting multiple shells across the river''s banks as well as a nearby lake, and exchange freely with moving bands of Unders who move across the territory catching, studying the land, and sharing information with their walls. Unders harvest yellow dye from a plant that has a significant population in their territory.


    V


    W


    Wall - "Wall" is a word commonly used by the Goalish to describe a person undertaking activity regarded as defensive. "Wall" as a distinct sector of Goalish groups did not fully crystallize until the Larun invasion, and it is still more broadly understood as a shape that any person occupies when they are engaged in repelling threats.


    Windshape - A word used by the Onnpeople to gesture at the para-equids in their region.


    Wiser - A word the Onnpeople used to refer to people seen as women who rear children.


    X


    Y


    Yon/man/woman - "Yon" is meant to invoke a contraction of "young". Some Goalish networks favor gendering it and some do not. Yon and Eld are not strictly "honorifics" in that Goalish cultures do not have very heavy social stratification and do not widely assign merit or obligations to age. In some cases more than others there is a greater weight placed on "Yon" or "Eld", but even in heated situations these adjoiners do not always carry overt implications of status


    Z

 Overture - Her Dreams

    She was the mind. She had forgotten her name. She was in the place all people arrive. It is the world¡¯s first cell. There are no faces there, mirrors are lost, and the soul is changed for a dream. She smelled the pines and groundwater; the wood and leather scent; the ash and ruptured ground.


    She had brought her smaller self. She fitted to it, and poured herself inside. When she looked up, she saw her wiser, draped in blades, red metal, and a smile that reached her eyes. It was her most majestic memory. No master or ruler could hope to match her mother¡¯s significance, even with all the stars in all the cells of the daylight sky.


    She looked out from their position, at the top of a grassy hill, to the country. Here she glimpsed a city. Twilight had fallen on that place, and its people had dragged pots out into the streets and started fires. There was smoke here.


    She felt the heat of her wiser¡¯s lap, in the cradle of which she sat. ¡°Are you sure you want to know?¡± her wiser was asking. ¡°I can only say a little of the call. You are too young to know its whole body.¡±


    ¡°Please, wisi?¡± she felt herself plead. ¡°It is such a brave and weighty thing!¡±


    ¡°If you so desire,¡± her wiser said, ¡°listen to the words, joyous one. For what I tell you is told only by your wiser, and I cannot stay long. If you take a man, one day you will tell it to him. If you bear daughters, one day you will tell it to them. It has always been this way; it will not be forever; it will be again.¡±


    ¡°Why did it start that way?¡± she asked.


    ¡°Because the first breather was a woman,¡± her wiser replied. ¡°At every thing¡¯s beginning, all was cold and there were only clouds. Onn, a cloud in the shape of a woman, formed on the top of the highest mountain and froze. Then Am and his warriors encamped in the firmament.¡± She pointed at the setting sun and then at the other lights in the sky. ¡°He began to march around us.¡±


    ¡°So the warmth came and Onn melted and she went down from the mountain. There, she found the water from her melting had seeped into the rich, ancient dirt, and made a crude people of mud and leaves. She laid with one and produced Ann, who was a man.¡±


    ¡°Onn had many children. She raised a house where they could live and give thanks to Am; that was Trethbiekilon.¡± Her wiser pointed a finger to the polis below them, at a spot where rose the pillars and towers of the Gilded Enclosure. ¡°She lived with her mate at its breast, and her youngers populated its edges. Many seasons passed, and Onn¡¯s children had children, who populated their edges. Eventually, Ourland was full of Onnpeople, and the whole place was full of Secondpeople, who live far over every horizon. We made many wealthy things.¡±


    ¡°Bad, which causes all disasters, was angered by the wealth of our outerpeople ¨C the old wisers, and the old lawsmen, joyous one, who have all passed away from us. It made a dancing and brought about fighters to torment them. Many of these were shaped like Onnpeople, but they were most truly like attacking beasts, because they have no inner good. Their wrongdoing does not reflect on you or me. It is not an unkind thing to use or destroy them, because it was the filth of people that danced their name.¡±


    ¡°The bad-danced beasts treated people like they were vermin. They ate our flesh and burned our dwellings. They put cages around our hands and told us where we could and could not walk. They took arms from the women and did not let us move the call.¡±


    ¡°The beasts would melt when they had been thrown down. When all fell away, they had no real face, form or name. This is because Bad danced them to hate what came before, and to have no care at all for merit, Am, or the outerpeople. Without these, the beasts¡¯ being was an empty place, and they were easy to fight.¡±


    ¡°The greatest among them came again. Many of them had stolen Onnpeople, and learned not to melt. This made them powerful. They put on us rules, and a new call. You will hear it, but you will not speak it, or I will cut out your tongue.¡±


    ¡°Onnpeople put up arms against the bad-danced beasts. They triumphed over us. We rose up many times, but each time they triumphed over us, and they put us to their words and their call. Then at last, we rose up with the Secondpeople. Even with the aid of so many friends, they still triumphed over us, and there was such pain. But the bloodshed had become too great for them, the nag of rule too troublesome. So some of the beasts went across the water plains, and toward their far shore, where lies the end of time.¡±


    ¡°One day, those beasts will return. When that happens, Am will be dislodged from his position by the bad-danced animals. He will retreat from us, back to the place away from the sky. They will run over everything and everyone. Then the land will freeze. The forest will freeze and the trees will freeze; the waters will freeze and the fish will freeze. Their bodies will collect in the soil and make it rich, and time will make it grow old. The clouds will come down from the stars and settle on the land. All will be forgotten before Ourland remembers itself again.¡±


    -


    She saw next her lawsman, who had put her to her wiser. This man had no majesty. He did not have metal armor, but a leather covering; not a sword, but a till. He must¡¯ve been born with his hands caked with soil, and they smelled like pinetrees. The skin on his face sloped in a musical way.


    They sat together on the ground of their bedplace. They spread colorful carpets and milkwater flowers about the floor, as though it were a holiday. She knew the warmth of his smile at her presence. He had brought out his cloth and thread, and they had begun to fill figures with sand before weaving them together.


    ¡°Like that,¡± he said, watching over her hand as she knitted her toy¡¯s head into a single piece. ¡°Just like that.¡±


    ¡°Why are dolls, losma?¡± she asked.


    ¡°You must ask the ones who make them,¡± he said. ¡°Why do you?¡±


    She finished weaving and turned it towards him. ¡°Friend,¡± she said.


    He held up his own, which he had knitted into a black windshape. ¡°And now, she has one too.¡± He neighed and snorted as he nuzzled its nose against her doll. She laughed at his impertinence.


    ¡°Why does losma?¡± she asked in return.


    ¡°For fun,¡± he said. ¡°After your wiser returned from marching, and took up her promises, and could no longer visit me. I needed friends.¡±


    ¡°Why?¡± she asked, weaving black strands into the doll¡¯s head. ¡°What do they do?¡±


    ¡°They bring joy and peace,¡± he replied. ¡°If you find one that does something else, tell me.¡±


    She had become engrossed in his words, and pricked herself with the needle. Her father¡¯s eyes widened when he saw the blood begin to ebb from her finger.


    He wound a piece of fabric around it. She didn¡¯t cry out. ¡°That¡¯s it,¡± he said. ¡°Brave girl.¡±


    She said nothing, only allowed him to do as he would to plug the hole. The bandage began to slow the ebbing pulse in her fingertip until it stopped. ¡°Does it hurt?¡± he asked her.


    ¡°It feels like wisi,¡± she said.


    ¡°Wisi?¡±


    ¡°She¡¯s gone,¡± she said. ¡°I need her.¡±


    He rubbed her finger and nuzzled her head. ¡°I know,¡± he said. ¡°I know how it feels.¡±


    He replaced their needles and string in a wooden box. He took her by the hand and guided her toward the shelf where it was kept. Her lawsman brought out a mask down from it and showed it to her.


    ¡°When she was a girl,¡± he said. ¡°Wisi gave this to losma. She knew she was going away and that she wouldn¡¯t see me. She put a little bit of herself in it. That¡¯s what you do. You put a little bit of yourself wherever you go. If I touch it, I can touch her ¨C even if she¡¯s beyond Ourland, or far away from the sky.¡±


    He took her hand and placed it on the mask¡¯s surface.


    ¡°Everything will always be with you.¡±


    She picked up the mask, hugged it close to her chest, and smiled. Then she grabbed at his windshape and pushed her doll at him.


    ¡°With me,¡± she insisted.


    He took it. ¡°What a might you have, joyous one,¡± he said, sweeping her up in his arms and carrying her away. ¡°There can be no end to it. It¡¯ll shine on all there is.¡±


    ¡°What now?¡± she asked.


    ¡°This is when we eat,¡± he said. ¡°I will light a fire.¡±


    -


    She could still smell the food her lawsman laid out. She took a deep breath. It mixed with his scent and rose up through her mind and body and stomach. It put down a pathway toward the Windshape Celebration.


    She moved with her lawsman to Trethbiekilon¡¯s sellers, who populated their corner of the city with stalls, trinkets, food, and fruits. It had become a place where people roamed and lived excitedly. Her lawsman¡¯s delicate white cowl placed her in the shade, and his face-mask, proof of his promises sustained, was carved with stars, beasts, and illustrious oaths. She thought it to be finest among those sported by the other men she saw.


    They passed the Onnhouse. Every heart knew it was a holy place. Some came as worshippers, proclaiming themselves there as servants of sky and water. Some came as supplicants, bearing gifts and treaties for the masters of their Enclosure. Here came she by twilight adventure, teaching herself the glory of high places and Trethbiekilon¡¯s horizon. She and her father made a dancing there in the way that was right for a hot season, and they were at last permitted entry to the temple square.


    Pars awaited them there. Pars, the first windshape! Pars, the giver of dancing! What a wonder he was; what a fear his face sent into her.


    Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    The artisans who had conceived Pars¡¯ grandeur had taken great pains to etch out the detail of the danceshape¡¯s mane, hooves, eyes, and snout. His eternal vigil watched over her mother¡¯s house, which was the house of their ruler, and she believed that the sun would go away before the Enclosure might depart its voluminous shadow.


    She pointed to the monument and asked her lawsman, ¡°Why did they put this here?¡± He answered her, ¡°To become more holy.¡±


    Within the Enclosure¡¯s walls, her wiser remained always at the master¡¯s side, in maintenance of her promises ¨C except for today. For today was the Windshape Celebration. Today there was peace in the country, a good harvest, and empty skies. There was surely no need for fighting at any point in the world.


    The bells of the Enclosure, the master¡¯s herald, were struck five times by his servants. She held her hands to her ears when they would sound. The thunder they made cracked open the doors to the fortress, and her wiser emerged, clad in armor adorned with flowers.


    When the Enclosure had fully disgorged her wiser¡¯s shining party, they received her. Each family removed the red metal of their promise-bound warrior, and put water to their body. Only after they had scrubbed the grit and sweat from her skin did her wiser dispose with her countenance and sweep up her and her father in her arms, crying out in joy.


    Together again, they reentered the city.


    When Am had achieved his apex, they moved to the table of Pars, where a turn-reader had emerged from the Enclosure. His agents dressed him in the buttoned vestments that bound his mind to the world, and they threw a fire on the bed of coals that his table was host to.


    For the reader¡¯s craft, a beast was brought out from the master¡¯s pen. It was leashed, placed in metal cuffs, and proceeded before the people. When she gazed on it, she saw a sleek, long-toothed, long-haired creature of tremendous strength and dignity. It walked on four legs, like a furred, muscular windshape. When it was urged on toward the table, its chains cut against it, and it groaned and exploded in a scream of protest. All the people laughed and exalted Am, who would have surely aided in the subjugation of this enemy. The beast passed her by and its gaze brushed against her own, demanding nothing and saying little. She wondered that a shape so sublime had been danced by filth.


    The master¡¯s blades were thrown into it.


    The beast was dragged up to the table, leaving a red stain where it was hauled. It was split open at the belly by the reader, who threw its flesh on the fire to produce his lines. He stared into them while his agents danced. On his seeing the turn, he spoke of good harvests and healthy children, which could only be attributed to the sacrifices and devotion of the Onnpeople. Good times were on their way. And there was shouting and jubilation among the attendants, and among her own family.


    In the evening, Am shined bright over Trethbiekilon, and lent the clouds his most favorable and exquisite colors. Her parents danced alone beneath the statue of Pars, well after the other men and women had departed for home. She watched them sway beneath the monument¡¯s shadow, and hold each other close. She marvelled at that sight for the rare and precious gift it was. She felt that a pressing gap in the center of her had been filled up, that she now had a line of golden thread linking her heart to her stomach. But, at this moment of satisfaction, a strange melancholy surpassed her.


    She approached and looked down into the fire of the turn-reader, where the bones of their sacrifice still lay, and inhaled its warmth. She saw the marks that the heat had made in the beast. These would never leave it behind.


    Her own hand entered the flames. She laid it flat over the fire, which licked against her hand ¨C cutting, kissing and writing itself into the skin.


    Even as her wiser rushed over to tear her hand from the coals, to shake her and thunder most terribly, she smiled. She held her hand in the way she would a jewel, as treasured and beloved company.


    -


    The smoke of the coals twisted and flickered in her mind, smearing and infesting its process, calling back to a time when the world was more full of fire. The years turned and quiet changed for terror and calamity.


    She broke free of the arms that held her, leapt from the carriage and landed in the muddy road, splashing filth all over her hands and body and face. She heard shouting as she threw herself into the dark, but she knew the men would not come for her. They would be greatly troubled, and she would make their hearts sorrowful, but these were too afraid of the greycoatted ones, and the ending they brought, to go looking for one little girl. The night was total, but her path was bright. All the while the world had become lost to Am had the fires of the city and the city temple raged. They sent ashen plumes up toward the sky, and set the horizon aflame. She followed them through dirt that soaked and grass that itched, clutching her lawsman¡¯s windshape tightly.


    She met the Onnpeople¡¯s conscription as she entered the city. The dead were numberless. Rocks, hooves, and barbed arrows had scattered them about the walls and fortifications, and broken their bodies into lethal positions. She stumbled over her people, doing her best to keep her footing, and her eyes, off of them.


    Just as she was about to clear the entrance, she tripped over one of the fallen warriors. Before she could stop herself, she looked to see what she had tumbled over, and she took her first face.


    A thin stream of blood trickled down from her lawsman''s nose to her leg when she held his head in her lap. His eyes and mouth had never closed. In his right hand, her lawsman clutched a rusty stuf, and his left had been stretched into the depths of his cover, to grasp at something she could not see. She pulled it up and back into the light.


    She took the doll in a daze, and pried the blade from his hand. She left her windshape with him and pressed into the streets, where she doubted any life save her wiser¡¯s could persist.


    She wove through a tangled mingling of substance. The city had been shaken and tossed apart, built as it was from soil, plants, and people. For the first time, they had begun to churn together and become more truly like one another. When she passed the Onnhouse on her way to the city¡¯s core, bulky grey shapes, clad in their cloaks and knives and chains, hauled candlesticks, ornaments, images, and spices from it. They paid her shadow little mind as they comported their loot to a train of wagons assembled before Pars. The danceshape¡¯s head had been hit by a massive rock and brought to the ground, crushing the table of the turn-reader. The city bells rang throughout, struck in a final act of desperation as the Gilded Enclosure was sacked. She moved into it, the first place of the Onnpeople, where the walls were high and the doors had become open.


    The Enclosure¡¯s facade had once seemed enormous. Now bombardment had produced gaps and inlets in every wall, pillar and window, splintering the wood, metal, and fired sand that it was cut from and flinging it open at every corner. She picked her way through the rubble of it, into its once-grand reception.


    The room was adorned with bodies of her kind, comrades of red metal smashed and torn in the defense of their beloved dynast. At its center did she see the body she sought, and even in death did she hold majesty. There is a shattered glory in a fallen temple and temple-bells. It is the kind that pervades the ruins of an ancient and royal people. That was her wiser¡¯s breed now, an amorphic presence of the deformed real, and divinity annulled.


    Standing next to her mother¡¯s body was a man. Standing next to him was a Bad-Danced Beast.


    ¡°Health to you,¡± it said.


    She knew it was a Bad-Danced Beast, for nothing besides a Bad-Danced Beast would appear so delighted in that moment. To what except a Beast would this orphanning bring joy? And what was a Beast, if not an unholy monster, sent to disembowel and desecrate all which was celestial? What was a monster, if not a thing in the shape of a person?


    A velvet blindfold wrapped around the Beast¡¯s eyes. Clasped to its side was a stuf of a different shape and metal. Even on the battlefield did it wear a shirt of orange and emerald, with nothing but chain links beneath to preserve it from arrows or blades. It surrounded itself with greycoatted compatriots, who turned towards her also.


    She stood before them, and brandished her lawsman¡¯s knife in her hand. To the palm of a warrior it was a shorter blade, but to her premature digits it held all the weight and power of a killing-sword. She screamed something at the Beast that she could no longer remember ¨C an oath of hate, vengeance and immortal war.


    Her vision slipped and changed. She fell to her knees. She could still remember the smell and taste of her gag. Her eyes were immersed in a red haze pouring through a dent in her skull. ¡°This is a thing that needs education,¡± she heard the Bad-Danced Beast moan. Its thigh had been cut apart, skewered and slashed. Tending to it was¡­ who was he speaking to?


    It was the man at the Beast¡¯s side. Surely he must have been a man. He was kneeling down, treating and binding the gruesome wound she had given it. As he held the Beast¡¯s leg, he was careful not put too much pressure on the wound and cause his master undue pain. A beast wants pain, she thought. It wants not its brother. So was she perplexed and saddened by the actions of her kin.


    ¡°Put the mark on it,¡± the Beast sang. ¡°Put the mark on that thing. Then put it on wheels. Put it with the rest of the women.¡±


    The Beast waved its man away and hobbled over to her while she was restrained by the greycoatted men. In its hands it held her doll, which it inspected with great interest, before dropping it at her feet.


    ¡°Filthy feurkun, covered in dirt. Angry feurkun, covered in blood,¡± the Bad-Danced Beast grumbled. ¡°Can you understand me, feurkun Chamark? Can that mind suffer a whit of clarity?¡±


    She could not. She could only scream her contempt for it through her eyes. It frowned.


    ¡°No. No wisdom for the little Chamark.¡± It went for her hands. She resisted, and so it seized them with a tight grip, bending and stretching apart her joints to take a look at her palm. ¡°Only pain, yes. Only scars and blisters and burns. What a poor kind of offering!¡±


    The Bad-Danced Beast let go of her scar and held her by the cheek. ¡°This feurkun land has treated you so poorly, little Chamark. I cannot help but feel misery for your life¡¯s brew. You can¡¯t appreciate my words,¡± it lamented, slowly, enunciating its vowels. ¡°But I can make you remember what I say, yes. And in so doing, release to you a gift.¡±


    ¡°You are thinking that this mission is done for cruelty, feurkun Chamark,¡± the Beast continued, gesturing at the dead. ¡°You are thinking this is for anger or nonsense. Or because we are hungry.¡± It shook its head. ¡°But you are wrong about this.¡±


    ¡°Once, I was a young man, in a hot and grassy place. I saw a wingless kind; it could fly over trees.¡± It pointed away to the rafters. ¡°I looked over to a friend of mine, and I asked him: ¡®Commander, how does this one fly?¡¯¡±


    ¡°After that time,¡± it continued, reaching around its head to untie the velvet cloth that concealed its eyes. ¡°He moved his metal, and he explained it to me¡­¡±


    It took the blindfold off and let her see what laid behind. ¡°¡­so that I, too, could fly without wings.¡±


    Her heart stopped, and she shook. It leaned in close when she tried to look away, forcing her to see. ¡°My friend was wise, feurkun Chamark. Do you know what this means?¡± It waved at its unveiled visage. ¡°I¡¯ll tell you. Flying is not only obtained by wings. A man who grabs onto the birds, he will be flying. A man who blows away the air, he will be flying. A man who bursts the ground underneath him; he will be flying too.¡±


    It tied the blindfold back over its head. ¡°You see, feurkun Chamark, this mission is not about cruelty. It is not about drink or riches. This mission is about flying. You are the trees, yes. We are what flies.¡±


    It picked up her doll and stood. ¡°Inside you will soon arrive a tongue with wings. Words that can fly. When they do, little feurkun, you¡¯ll fly too.¡±


    The man returned, bearing the mark: a hot rod of metal and ink that would anoint her skin with a master¡¯s seal. When she saw it, her hatred gave way to confusion and terror. The Beast reached out a hand to wipe away her tears.


    ¡°That¡¯s good,¡± it said. ¡°You cry now. But you take care about it. When the time is right ¨C crying, this is a woman¡¯s labor. All this hard stuff, this hitting, this smashing, this burning is your teller''s labor. He needs you to feel for him. That is divinity¡¯s directive. But cry too much, drown him in tears, and he¡¯ll hate you for it.¡± He pushed her forehead. ¡°And it is he, not me, who you must fear. This, too, is divinity¡¯s directive.¡±


    He limped away, falling back into the ashes of the Enclosure. One by one, his greycoatted attendants followed him into the flames. The last among these to do so was the Beast¡¯s own companion, whose irises twinkled brown and white, and spoke of cold. He looked back at her only once before he departed.


    The mark of the tithe pressed itself down into her skin, scoring the face of her destiny forever. It had pressed fire into her body: fire that would rage and simmer until the sun had been driven away and the world had begun again. This was the last time she cried.


    She fixed her eyes on the insignia of the Beast, a bone and arrow flapping fast and raggedly over the Enclosure, agitated by smoke as it burned to the ground. She wondered what they meant. She wondered if there was some answer hidden in its lines that revealed a just and decent reason for her hatred, her pain, or the emptiness of her world.


    Fourteen years passed before she would find an answer. It offered no comfort; but, there was comfort to be found. In the living and the dying.

 Story 1 (Part 1 of 4) – The Fragile Thing

    Key went away from his home, in search of something divine.


    Morning adventures like these were such sweaty things. Key did not care for them, but they brought quiet, solitude, and distance for it, so they had become his friend. He was a slight, breakable thing for his age, closer to a moon-eyed calf than the man he should¡¯ve been. He had long, thick hair, tied up in two braids; covering his body was an upover, a heavy green shirt woven from skin and wool. Around his neck, he carried a bag made of tuskleather. While the cheers and hubbub of the Coldcoming sprang up behind him, he departed his land Goal¡¯s peopled places, and favored, for a while, its empty ones.


    The Sixbraid walked over the hills and pressed through the overgrown, brambled tracker trails of his oldest ancestors, which these seatless rounds only half-remembered. He tiptoed under the nests of cloudwings and trunkbreakers, and past the wooded burrows of tusked hearts. He walked over the coins, arrowheads, and bones that poked up through the soil, and sometimes retrieved the curiosities among these that found their way to him. Today, he came upon a flat patch of dirt, pruned by a stranger however many seasons past. In addition to a few sprouts and shoots of grass that had encroached on it over the years, it was host to a single, withering skypetal, whose root was protected by a mound of white stones. He took one and left the others undisturbed, along with the four other patches of soil aside it. Each was larger than the first.


    He marvelled at the long-eared jumpers: the squat, grey-furred bundles who he could see shoot into the brush whenever he got too close. He walked through the cutset: a stripped and emptied reach of their beloved territory, chopped for the sake of some wheeled fire-slinger, or simply burned away by will of contest. The stumps and husks that comprised it now did not tell these stories, because they had no voices. They only sat in the ground and told of their being. The Lodge spoke of rulers who had once pronounced over water and wood; he supposed that this was a consequence of their ancient humiliation. Their place was an unwild, an empty brutality that few could find as valuable.


    Key listened for a hint of life somewhere across the barrens. When he found there was none to hear, he sat down for a while, to ponder things that vexed him, and let the quiet ease his heart.


    He was coming to the end of his road, where the monument of interest to him loomed. After exiting the cutset and coming to a steep thicket, he picked through a dense barrier of brush and leaves. He was especially careful not to make a sound, unsure of what he might alarm or incite. He reached the precipice that he sought, took cover behind a tree, and he set his eyes on the cage.


    Inches from Key¡¯s lofty perch, the ground plummeted down and gave way to the valley and water of the Sixbraids¡¯ highest love. The river, half-dead with thirst, ran down from the mountains far to the East. It was collared now by a deadly power in their own division of the world. He had arrived at the thing that choked it.


    Key had once asked his birthman how it was named, this steepled halt. He¡¯d called it a block-building, which seemed too bearable a word for what it was. The shadow it cast, for the Sixbraids, was that of death. It had been wrought of the devolved and desiccated, and placed into the path of vital force. Its creators had come to the water and carved up the ground, torn up stones of all colors, and raised them up on its shore; then, they had swallowed up saps and saplings and put them against the current. They had stopped divinity and stoppered it up. The works of man baffled him.


    On the watchtowers of the block-building Key could just begin to make out the grey-coatted men who kept watch over this perversion. To his surprise, he recognized the signs of a grander host being housed at the building¡¯s base. From the distance at which Key observed them, he could not discern their features or count their number accurately, but their peopled sprawl had filled both banks of the river with tents and facilities of all kinds, and even nestled itself into the pits and alcoves closer to the river itself. A mass of quadrupeds, perhaps stonehoofs, watered themselves in a large makeshift pen. Tiny figures were in the process of unhitching wagons from them, filled with bundles of cord and wooden poles.


    After he had gazed on these guests to his curiosity¡¯s satisfaction, Key attended to his true objective. From his tuskleather bag, he brought out a flat piece of stone no larger than his palm, a stylus of cloudrock, and a cut of especially tender dried meat he had been saving.


    Hear me, he scratched out onto the slate.


    He looked toward the river¡¯s water. A wind rose up in the trees and a cloudwing called.


    Accept this gift my friend, he wrote. We keep the ways for you. Tell bata I miss him so.


    Then he took the meat and the slab and cast them as close as he could to the river¡¯s source. It landed a ways off from the water itself ¨C but how close it was, to what had been, and all that would be! Perhaps it might be heard here.


    He went down on his knees and put his lips and nose to the ground. Then he departed the cliff, and passed again through the brush and thickets of the rounds. He followed the wind and water, and returned to the home he came from.


    </a>-


    When the sun had dropped below the horizon, the Empty Houses came into view. Key thought this a cruel name for such a virtuous inheritance ¨C the home of his birthmen, the shell-seat of the Sixbraids! His aching legs knew premature relief when he looked upon the clustered, ramshackle roundseats that were his world.


    The Houses, if not Empty, did sometimes appear a thing that was emptying. He crossed over the trickling, half-empty tributary that looped around its southern perimeter and flowed further into the Blockwood. As much as he adored the shell-seat, he found its winding pathways even more beautiful in this nightfall state, when compared with those which would populate them with daylight and excitement.


    He passed by the watchwalls, a group of Sixbraids standing guard over the East. All were clad in thick green wholeovers, woven from a thin, breathable fabric obtained from the wood of spottrees. At each man¡¯s side hung a long length of wood, adjoined to sharp stones by way of Western rope. All were bored, and all were drinking from skins of spirits prepared for the Coldcoming; these fuelled their joy and laughter, and let them wrestle with one another.


    ¡°Aieee, it¡¯s the Fragile Thing,¡± one of them slurred. ¡°How many drymen has he cut?¡±


    ¡°The Fragile Thing returns!¡± another hiccuped. ¡°Where was he, this time?¡±


    ¡°He was giving response. Don¡¯t you know this one? Always on response ¨C eating gapmen whole! A vicious and meat-hungry heart!¡±


    ¡°How many have you cut, Fragile Thing? Come, and speak! Tell us of your triumphs!¡±


    They laughed and pulled at him, inviting him to their company. Key smiled back and said nothing, feeling the hiding rise up inside him. He evaded the Walls and moved quickly through the roundseats, at last until he reached the one which housed his family.


    Key¡¯s family consisted of a single, broad-chested fireworker; his hair, a short weave of white and brown, was twisted into four braids. He lounged at the foot of their stove, beneath the elaborately carved chair that sat before it, using a rock and an angled shaft of wood to beat lines and images into the side of their dwelling for a Statement, which might serve to coax in the rulers of the riversland. ¡°Aie, bata,¡± Key called as he slipped inside the roundseat¡¯s fireroom.


    ¡°Aie, gentle thing,¡± Peak said. He chipped away at the wall, sending a chunk of wood flying off onto a cloth he had placed beneath it. When he heard his son draw open the seat''s cover, he draped a sheet over it. ¡°Good night coming?¡±


    ¡°Good, bata,¡± he replied. ¡°The air is clear, and so fresh.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s virtuous. We¡¯ll be needing to replace the Table¡¯s wind-catcher soon.¡±


    Key sat down by the fire where his father worked and opened his bag, reviewing his finds. ¡°Is it so urgent?¡±


    ¡°I could ask Horn to do it. But Horn does too much,¡± Peak said. ¡°I fear he may exhaust himself.¡±


    Key removed a scratched disc of cityrock from his bag. He rolled it around in his fingers and placed it atop the stove, where already sat a stone, an earring, and a clay statuette.


    The riversland grew dark. All the lights were put out, and when Peak thought his son retired, he sat alone by their stove. There, the air was so thick with heat that it pressed against his temples, and slowed what it found. He laid wood on the fire and rested back in his chair, humming to himself. His throat was clutched by a hoofhair necklace; he reached to rub its central object, a ribbed black shell, with his thumb and forefinger.


    A familiar shape slunk back inside his eyeline. ¡°Key?¡± Peak asked. ¡°What is it?¡±


    Key put a hand on his arm. ¡°I keep up, ba.¡±


    Peak tilted his head.


    ¡°Will you show me the sounds?¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re getting too old for that,¡± Peak said. ¡°Soon you¡¯ll have to go by silence like the rest of us.¡±


    Key was crestfallen. Without missing a beat, Peak wrapped his hand around the stem of his three-string and stood up. ¡°But not tonight.¡±


    -


    Key sat on his sleeping mat, under a set of blankets. His birthman sat by his side, adjusting his instrument.


    ¡°Do you want a new one,¡± Peak asked. ¡°Or a sound that you¡¯ve already heard?¡±


    ¡°The old sound, ba.¡±


    ¡°Very well,¡± Peak replied. He twisted a knob on the three-string¡¯s head, and altered his grip. ¡°The old sound.¡±


    ¡°Here I go, brave one; I go on now to Goal¡­¡±


    ¡°Here grows a strength of eighty thousands¡­ here grows mind a thousand strong¡­¡±


    ¡°Here grows hands that lift the river¡­ here grows words that storm the shore¡­¡±


    ¡°Here grows step that speaks of thunder¡­ here grows lightning to scorch and score¡­¡±


    ¡°Here births such a mortal kindness¡­ a good none can ignore¡­ it is fine to look upon him¡­ and bring him forth once more¡­¡±


    ¡°Here came the rain and the waters that first joined with the ground¡­ when all hearts first emerged from their coupling¡­ when came the first season and first flower. Here came rulers of riversland uncowed, unpushed by dry forces¡­ here came an arrangement of peace, and all in the order of their land¡­¡±


    ¡°The Ruler in the River knows faults. The Ruler in the River feels the lines. The Ruler in the Ground is aloof; the Ruler in the Sun is proud; the Ruler in the Thought is strange. The Ruler in the River is close; The Ruler in the River is bountiful; The Ruler in the River is good.¡±


    ¡°There was a meeter, He was named Hone. Hone: cold in day, warm in shadow, Hone: afraid of biters and chewers and mountain beasts, Hone: womanless, sorrowless, Hone: meatless, tongueless, Hone: the keeper of petals and maker of friends.¡±


    ¡°Hone was the adoring thing. Hone was the carefree thing. The company of Hone was trees; the company of Hone was hearts; the company of Hone was the stars in the sky. Hone raised his roundseat at last light; Hone felled his roundseat at first light.


    ¡°¡®Hone is gentle, and keeps all the old ways,¡¯ spoke all the riverborn. And then they were kind to him, though he did not bring them gifts.¡±


    ¡°A great hunger attacked the land. The riverborn who had lain with him came to Hone, and cried out: there is shame in you, eld! For while your people grows hungry, do you while every moment in your hole!¡±


    ¡°Hone was pressed by their sadness, and in a feeling of great shame. Hone entreated the river: give me a gift, great ruler! Give me a gift for my people, who you have brought such hunger into!¡±


    ¡°The river, he thundered back: deliver into me a son, and such a gift shall be inherited!¡±


    ¡°So Hone was much afraid. But he took strength, and he laid down with the ground and the river, which flowed into him¡­ the river¡¯s torrent arrived, and flooded the land, and made shoots of shellplant rise up from the banks.¡±


    ¡°And the river, he thundered back: I am delivered a son, and you are delivered this token.¡±


    ¡°Hone returned to his roundseat, and the riverborn were joyous with him. Hunger was put away from Goal.¡±


    ¡°Here I go now, brave one; I go on now to Goal¡­¡±


    ¡°Here grows a strength of eighty thousands¡­ here grows mind a thousand strong¡­¡±


    ¡°Here grows hands that lift the river¡­ here grows words that storm the shore¡­¡±


    ¡°Here grows step that speaks of thunder¡­ here grows lightning to scorch and score¡­¡±


    ¡°Here births such a mortal kindness¡­ a good none can ignore¡­ it is fine to look upon him¡­ and bring him forth once more¡­¡±


    ¡°Here I go now, brave one; I go on now to Goal. Goal it is where man will pass¡­ Goal it is where hearts will pass¡­ Goal it is where sky will pass at long last, and dark forevermore¡­ the land is all there is¡­¡±


    ¡°Go now in Goal¡¯s way, brave one¡­ lie now and pass¡­ lie now and see¡­ lie now, and dark forevermore¡­¡±


    Peak pried his fingers off the three-string, and looked at Key; he had fallen asleep a while ago, head leaned as it was against Peak¡¯s oaken shoulder. Peak gently eased him onto the floor, placed a blanket over his chest, and kissed him on the brow. Then, he moved to his own place, and followed suit.


    -


    The night in Goal could turn miserable. The warmth of Peak¡¯s home evaporated, and as the hours farthest from the sun and the noise of people drew near, he moved off of his bed and started to walk again.


    Key was torn from sleep by a sudden, crushing grip. ¡°Key,¡± a drowsy voice said to him, grabbing his shoulder and jostling it furiously. ¡°Key, come with me.¡±


    His eyes shot wide open, and he tried to speak, but he now existed in that plane on the edge of consciousness where words became slippery, and meaning a burdensome luxury.


    ¡°We have to go into the trees,¡± Peak was saying. Key¡¯s arm was being suffocated by his right hand. In his left, Peak brandished the stem of his three string as a makeshift club. ¡°We¡¯ve got to run, Key. Beam says we have to run.¡±


    ¡°It has you, ba,¡± Key said. ¡°The spirit has you.¡±


    ¡°Please, gentle.¡± It took a moment for Key to realize Peak was weeping. ¡°We need to run. They¡¯ve put the river on fire.¡±


    ¡°Please don''t hurt me. I¡¯m scared.¡±


    ¡°Beam says we have to run.¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s gone.¡± Tears ran down Key¡¯s face. Peak¡¯s grip was very tight. ¡°He is away. Please stop. Please, ba.¡±


    ¡°We have to go,¡± Peak said. He dropped the three-string, clumsily dragged Key up from his bed, and began stumbling out of the hut. As soon as the two of them reached the freezing night air, something in his mind dissolved, and he fell to his knees, clutching his son.


    ¡°Key?¡±


    Key said nothing. He just kept crying into Peak¡¯s chest. He held his son close, and he cried too. The early morning air made the water feel like ice on their cheeks. It melted through their skin.


    -


    Peak woke up late that morning.


    Once again, he rose from his sleeping mat. He walked past Key¡¯s, along with their living area, and dipped outside.


    The sun was lighting up the horizon, although the sky after it had become grey with clouds, weighed down by water. He wondered how it would come with the cold, like snow or rain. Other shell-dwellers had emerged from the roundseats nearest their abode, already fed and attending to the first work of the day: gathering wood, paying courtesy to their neighbors, and warming their hands around an impromptu bonfire. All called out toward Peak in greeting.


    He grimaced. He would have to eat, of course, and they would understand; understanding was itself a holy way. But the crime was real, so the guilt could not be helped.


    He lit up the stove in their fireroom. The only sounds were a few voices milling about outside, the crackle of the fire, and Key chattering away at the creatures in his sleep.


    Peak let Key rest while he cooked, brewing a breakfast of grain and vegetables that he prepared in a hard stone pot. When he woke him again, he set him upright, and gently tousled his hair. ¡°Aie,¡± he said. ¡°Eat.¡± Key stirred and his eyes opened.


    When he stumbled into the fireroom to see the sun shining in and Peak parcelling the stew into bowls, he balked. ¡°Ba?¡±


    ¡°You need to eat.¡±


    ¡°But¡­ the sun¡¯s out.¡±


    ¡°You need to eat. This came by dry force. We¡¯ll be drained all day. It¡¯ll be much worse if you don¡¯t fill your stomach.¡±


    ¡°Isn¡¯t it wrong? Doesn¡¯t it hurt him?¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s been hurt before,¡± Peak said, ¡°by less attentive men. Sit here and eat.¡±


    Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    With some hesitation, Key sat, and the two of them ate. As they chewed through their meal, they spoke of light and unimportant things.


    ¡°How did it go?¡± Key asked. ¡°The party.¡±


    ¡°Okay,¡± Peak replied. ¡°Your friend came by. He asked for you.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s nice.¡±


    ¡°Mm.¡±


    Key picked at his food. He put a small bit of the mixture in his mouth, and when Peak wasn''t looking, spit it out and stuffed it in his over.


    ¡°Soon I¡¯ll need to learn about cold troubles, won¡¯t I?¡± he asked.


    ¡°You already know about cold troubles.¡±


    ¡°In the way that you know them.¡±


    Peak looked up. Then he looked down again. He swallowed a wad of stew.


    ¡°That time draws near,¡± Peak said. ¡°But there are many purposes to be known. Some, sooner than others.¡±


    He said no more.


    ¡°I visited the block-building, yesterday,¡± Key said.


    ¡°Did you?¡±


    ¡°There were drymen,¡± he said. ¡°Maybe two hundreds of them. It didn¡¯t look like they were there to stay.¡±


    ¡°There are always drymen,¡± Peak replied.


    -


    After Peak finished his meal, and after Key had secretly disposed of his, they set about to firework.


    In almost every respect, the roundseat that Key and Peak inhabited was built in like fashion to its peers in the shell, with the exception of its size. In addition to its common area and dormitories, their home bore a large attached area for Peak¡¯s labor, that the afraid and infirm might be parted from the ice and cold by an insulated leather shield, made ragged by time and its elements.


    Peak and Key prepared themselves and their space to be received by the shell-dwellers. From atop the Fire Table, they retrieved a pair of heavy leather wholeovers, and each worked a dense, oily extract into the skin of them. Once they had finished, he and his father handed exchanged wholeovers, put them on, and stood before the Table in supplication.


    The Table itself was a bed of coals and logs of wood wrapped in stone, set adjacent to a large cut of polished rock, a length of cloudrock, and a smaller platform covered with knives and a jar of oil. At the Table¡¯s center burned a small flame, trailing a ribbon of smoke.


    Peak took the oil and dripped it over the logs. Key took up the cloudrock, and wrote a word on the slate.


    PAIR


    Peak retrieved a long rod tipped off with a wick, reached out his arm over the table, and lit his instrument¡¯s wick by the center flame.


    PRIOR


    He touched the rod to the oil. Flames jumped up from the Table, bathing Peak¡¯s arm, and the wholeover surrounding it, in heat.


    Peak pulled back both from the Table. Seeing that the fire had not attached itself to his father¡¯s cloak or his father, Key looked down and wrote one final word on the slate.


    HEART


    With the Table prepared, they turned to the wallrock. Laid out in a row on the Table¡¯s edge was an assortment of the last cutting metal in The Empty Houses. The knives, littlecanes, were small, delicate, and completely insufficient for any devious purpose, but they could bleed and break skin, and so they served the Table. Beside them was a mound of sharpening stones made rough by seasons of care for the Sixbraids¡¯ wallrock. Kneeling beside each other at the foot of the Table, Peak and Key took up a stone and honed each littlecane¡¯s edge.


    Every so often, Peak would peek up from his blade to watch his son¡¯s method. Key, engrossed in the tenderness and delicacy of the craft, reliably failed to notice.


    ¡°Much better,¡± Peak said. Key grinned silently. ¡°Much better.¡±


    Peak drew his knife across the stone one last time, placed it on the Table, and scratched Key¡¯s head. ¡°Finish up with that. Then bring anyone in.¡±


    A small group of the needy ¨C primarily itinerants, the sick, and injured laborers ¨C had already formed a lumpen mass outside their residence, sporting various conditions.


    Speaking to the sick was hard. Key had learned the sight of most of his neighbors since he was young, but he knew few of their names and had no experience with which to calculate their temperament. He did not know what spun around inside them, whether it was mortal or something else. So he tried to avoid it when he could. He tended to their immediate needs, bringing them fleece blankets and hauling over buckets of water from a nearby well. The groundwater smelled and carried a brown tint. Key grimaced as he handed it over to their visitors.


    ¡°Please tell me your intent,¡± he said to the lot of them, ¡°So that I might tell the fireworker.¡±


    They asked him to speak up.


    ¡°I need to know what¡¯s wrong with you,¡± he repeated. ¡°So when I come by you, please tell me.¡±


    He returned to Peak, who was pressing his tools in the flames and saying secret words.


    ¡°There¡¯s fifteen,¡± he said to Peak. ¡°Four have signs of the waterspot heart. Five have overmuch heat, and four are losing heartwater. I think one of them might be struck. I don¡¯t know what¡¯s wrong with the other two.¡±


    ¡°How is their temper?¡± Peak asked. He held one of the knives in the fire, a littlecane of middling size, and uttered a special word.


    ¡°They were very lively. None of them are down.¡±


    ¡°Good,¡± Peak replied. ¡°Separate the waterspots from the others. Don¡¯t touch them.¡±


    After they had worked through several of the more stable visitors, an older Sixbraid came. He was helping support his elderly mother with one arm, and carrying a basket in the other.


    ¡°Aie, Vigor,¡± Peak asked. ¡°What is this, now?¡±


    ¡°Please, eldman,¡± Vigor said. ¡°My birthwoman ¨C something has gone wrong. We offer much to you.¡± He held the basket out to Peak, who brushed it aside and helped him bring her over to his work table. Vigor indicated her leg, where a large protrusion had been covered by a thin sheet of bedding, stained green by the fluid it had produced. Peak unwrapped the injury, and as it came loose, it produced a foul smell that elicited retching from Key. ¡°This will need to be cut,¡± he said. ¡°Key, get me shutwater from the dig. Quickly, please. Quickly.¡±


    Key tore away the wooden door from their dig, where they had hollowed out the ground and insulated a crawlspace to preserve various components for Peak¡¯s remedies. He grabbed the shutwater, kept in a jar sealed by paste right beneath the cellar¡¯s entrance. Peak poured some out into a cup and brought it to her.


    ¡°I bid you drink this,¡± he told the woman. ¡°That our edge may not hurt you so terribly.¡±


    The woman moaned. ¡°What do you take me for, fireworker? I am not some mewling infant. I am not like this one.¡± She gestured to her son, whose brow was furrowed in concern. ¡°Just tear this trouble from me, and be done with it.¡±


    ¡°It is not only a good for you,¡± Peak explained. ¡°If you shift strangely while we cut, our edge will touch the wrong thing, and you will be worse for it. I bid you drink this.¡±


    ¡°I beg you, bato,¡± Vigor pleaded. ¡°Do as the eldman says. He is wiser than us.¡±


    She turned her nose at the cup, but at last relented. She downed its contents in one long draught, spilling some over the edges of her chin. When Peak returned the cup to Key, she puckered drowsily.


    ¡°That taste¡­ pit water!¡± she pronounced. She grabbed at Vigor, and babbled with excitement as the drink did its work. ¡°Ih, gentle, don¡¯t you mourn me. Don¡¯t you mourn me. If your birthman returns, do not ever let him touch me. You thrash him off now. Thrash him off from me¡­ I adore you, but don¡¯t be an empty-head. I adore you. Send me the way the Walls go¡­ send me to that easy place¡­¡±


    As she faded, her panicked mumbling grew softer. Vigor held her hand and comforted her. ¡°You¡¯ll only shut, ba,¡± he insisted. ¡°It¡¯s only a shutting drink. You¡¯ll be well, I promise. You¡¯ll be well. Shut your eyes. You''ll be well.¡±


    After Key finished tying a strip of leather tight around her thigh and Peak had shoved a flat length of wallrock into the Fire Table, he handed Key the knife he had prepared.


    ¡°Just as you¡¯ve practiced,¡± he said. ¡°Be very still.¡± Key nodded, his hands sweating and shaking.


    After speaking to the mind of the blade, he picked out a spot near the abcess¡¯ edge he thought a good starting point, and began to excise the mass. Blood erupted from the wound Key made, dripping over his filthy hands. He ran a hand across his brow, smearing it across his forehead.


    ¡°Still,¡± Peak repeated. ¡°Be still.¡± Again, Key nodded.


    Just as he was about to finish the cut, Key¡¯s fingers slipped and the knife fell. Peak¡¯s hand shot out and caught it before it hit the ground. He gently moved Key out of the way and proceeded to finish the incision, removing the pus-filled growth. Key retrieved materials for a soothing wrap, and Peak retrieved his stick of wallrock to burn closed their cut.


    As Key dug through the cellar, searching for a jar of snaproots, Peak called down to him. ¡°Key,¡± he groaned. When Key¡¯s clattering continued, he yelled louder.


    Key poked his head above ground to see Peak resting his ear against her chest.


    Shortly after, his birthman left the roundseat to inform Vigor. Key did not know what they said; he heard yelling and then crying. He peeked out of the roundseat and saw Vigor clinging to Peak like a newborn. He stopped watching after that.


    Key went up to the body. The lines of her brow, the wrinkles and folds of her chin and cheeks, the spots and hairs and lesions endorsing her skin ¨C all these traced themselves into the back of his mind, knitting together a memoir of her. She was his first face.


    Her mouth was open slightly, allowing him to see her teeth and tongue. This disturbed Key especially. It didn¡¯t feel correct. He reached out with a hand to close it for her, before he felt a hand on his shoulder. He jumped in shock.


    ¡°What were you doing?¡± Peak asked.


    ¡°Her- she isn¡¯t-¡± Key stammered.


    ¡°Go back to work,¡± Peak said. ¡°I must prepare her for the Walls.¡±


    Key went from the body, wondering what had pulled him in its direction. He was feeling sick, so he retreated to the dig, where he continued to gather the herbs he had been assembling anyway, in case she woke up.


    A pair of men, dressed in the same manner as the watchwalls, arrived soon after Vigor had departed the Fire Table.


    ¡°We are here for Lastfarmer,¡± the Walls said.


    Peak directed them toward Vigor¡¯s birthwoman. They grasped her by the legs and shoulders, lifted her up, and passed out of the roundseat. Her limp arms flopped about as they huffed and grunted away.


    Afterwards, Peak took a cloth to Key¡¯s hands.


    ¡°There was nothing we could¡¯ve done,¡± Peak said, wiping Lastfarmer¡¯s blood from his palm. ¡°She was deeply hurt. Her wound was the wrong color. She was gone long before she arrived at our table.¡±


    Key said nothing.


    ¡°So it is not something you did,¡± Peak said. "It is not."


    ¡°I cut her wrong.¡±


    ¡°The cut did not do this. She hadn''t lost enough heartwater. It may have been the shutwater, or something else.¡± He sighed. ¡°She was weak from the pain, and fragile. A fragile thing breaks. That is what it is; that is what we all are. And that is beyond our control.¡±


    Peak finished scrubbing the last of the filth from his son¡¯s fingers. He folded up the cloth and slipped it into his upover.


    ¡°This craft,¡± Peak said. ¡°It¡¯s a bite. There are few who fit it. My birthman was no fireworker. And there are plenty of Walls who would be happy to learn instead. They don¡¯t have much else to do.¡±


    He put his hand on the back of his son¡¯s head and squeezed it gently. ¡°Sometimes, rule of a thing takes many seasons to arrive,¡± he said. ¡°Sometimes it never arrives at all. It is not its wielder.¡± His eyes glazed over. ¡°No, it is not. But you must find something to rule. Without it¡­ there¡¯s only pain, and no companionship. You will have nothing to offer. And nobody will see any way to need you.¡±


    He shook his head. ¡°For a while,¡± Peak said. ¡°The while you have ¨C be easy, gentle one. And be well.¡±


    -


    With the blood cleaned off their clothes, Peak and Key continued to address the troubles of the shell-dwellers, albeit with Key in a less hands-on capacity. This continued until noon, when for a short time there had been no callers to address or repair. Peak dipped down into the dig to get Key.


    ¡°It¡¯s quiet enough,¡± Peak replied. ¡°We¡¯ll walk, now. I¡¯d like to finish our Statement sometime tonight.¡±


    Key nodded enthusiastically, long since prepared to flee from their work. Peak picked up a skin full of water sitting by his table. They shut up the place and began their walk through the Empty Houses.


    Their walk brought them to all the shell¡¯s inhabited corners. They passed through its bulk as they went from roundseat to roundseat, ensuring that the fire was being properly exercised by their dwelling¡¯s craftsmen.


    As they went about their work, many of their neighbors called out to Peak happily; he returned a perfunctory greeting, his countenance detached and somewhat absent. Key supposed they had not really left the Table yet. So, seeking a way from it, he turned himself to the world around them.


    The sun had filled up the space between The Empty Houses with noise and activity. A strong-hoof - a four-legged heart, familiar to Key for its whining cry and short, fuzzy tail - passed by them with heavy bags of grain slung over its back, lead by the hand of a man with a scalp scarred by fire. A collection of men smoked and laughed raucously over the digging of a rubbish pit. Silent mothers and daughters travelled in groups of three, hauling water, baskets and tools from seat to seat, accompanied by Wallwomen. They came across a catchcutter and his sons bringing dead jumpers and larger hearts in from the rounds to be skinned and cooked. One of the boys stumbled and dropped his catch into the mud, leading their birthman to whack him hard on the cheek and shout at him.


    Around they went: to the clay shapers, firing mud to work into dishes, to the cookers, lighting ovens with which to produce bread for eating, to the smokers, preserving the returns of the catchcutters, that they might sustain the sick and little children over the long winter ahead. They went to the empty forges, where the powers of moving and shaping wallrock had once produced useful buildings, and weapons of excellent strength. It had not been a minute before they exited that place.


    They drew close to the Empty Houses¡¯ Open. Here, running back and forth across a stripped patch of ground, a group of idle Walls contested a tight leather globe in a game of Fists and Legs. A few of the shell¡¯s younger boys admired the warriors from afar, envying their height, triumph, and facility.


    The Walls¡¯ sport drove heels into the ground, producing clouds of dust. One side struck at the other with their hands; the other used only their feet and knees. Each shook snot and sweat and blood from the others, consecrating and reconsecrating the Open. The affair, if ancient and respectable, was a tilted one, and the Legs could never do very well for long. But what a thing a Legged victory was ¨C what merits and character could one reveal to the world with that powerful distinction!


    One of the Walls pummeled an opponent in the process of kicking the ball back toward his friends, snatching it off the ground and carrying it into their territory. ¡°Triumph!¡± a watcher declared. ¡°Triumph for the Fists!¡±


    The Fists cheered and embraced one another, and the Legs kicked at the dirt in frustration.


    ¡°Come forward, empty-heads,¡± one Fist crowed, after they had returned to their starting positions. ¡°Come forward and fall!¡±


    ¡°Fall down yourself!¡± one of his opponents shouted back. At that, they joined their combat once more, swapping tactics. The Legs relinquished all pretence and civility and descended on their opposition with impassioned hand-to-hand assault; Key looked away as they made the first real damage of the game. He cringed as one or two memories of being dragged into such things were dredged to the surface by the display, and a sense of relief crept in, that he had grown up in a time when such bloodlust was largely exhausted.


    They were followed by the joyous laughter of the competitors as they arrived at the Speaking Place, where had been raised a circular mound directly adjacent to the river¡¯s banks. It was populated by a large stone monolith, and the house of the River Lodge.


    The monolith, stabbed into the center of their hallowed ground a decade ago, held an inscription of lines Goalish and Larun. Key lamented that he could only read the Goalish side; the other was longer, and seemed to have some extra parts. Nevertheless, read it he had.


    ¡°PLACE OF THE LARUN LODGE¡¯S PROTECTION¡±


    ¡°GREATCATCHER SIXBRAIDS ¨C MOVED SPEAKER ¨C TELLS OF AND DOES GOOD FOR THIS POSSESSION¡±


    ¡°THE EMPTY HOUSES ¨C THE SIXBRAIDS¡±


    ¡°WALL GROUP OF THE LARUNS¡±


    ¡°WATCHER ¨C VAROM KNNEGUT ¨C GROUP OF SEASONS 22 | 13 GIRDAN¡±


    The piece had been defaced in a few places, but the only remnants of such vandalism had been chipped away. Its words troubled him. They did not make sense. How could one possess a people? It was not stone or dirt.


    They proceeded past the mound, toward the Lodge¡¯s residence, where lay the shell¡¯s oracle and dedicated convocal. Given the opportunity to gaze on its grand shape, Key often wondered what sort of rulers had been hosted there, before his time. On an ordinary day, there would the Lodge be confronted by the trials, quibblings and daily crises of the Empty Houses, although on this day he was nowhere to be found. His Entrance Chair, a plain wicker stool inscribed with the sign of the Thought Ruler, sat vacant before the entrance to his family¡¯s roundseat, the facade of which held their telling of the world and word. Key never tired of the sight of the carvings, which were many times more elaborate than those which adorned their own home and went so far as to record the griefs and victories of the shell¡¯s every season.


    They approached the estate. The Lodgeson Yawn ¨C a scarred, wrinkling man of short hair and smaller eyes ¨C stood guard at the doorway, drinking liquor from a clay jug.


    ¡°Aie, Yawn,¡± Peak greeted. ¡°Is your birthman awake?¡±


    ¡°Aie, Peak,¡± Yawn said. He took a swig. ¡°Aie, Key. He is with a visitor. I am not his keeper, but I would take care until she leaves.¡±


    They pushed open the house¡¯s heavy wooden doors. Before them, around the Thought Table, were two figures: the Lodge, and an elder named Wellborn. The Lodge was familiar to his eye ¨C his wispy white beard, and the thick head of hair that clung to his scalp complemented his natural warmth, and Key was pleased to see him. Wellborn, the shell¡¯s towering, barrel-chested voicewoman, was not.


    ¡°...struck the younger one in anger,¡± she was insisting. ¡°With his own hand.¡±


    ¡°You cannot know a thing like that.¡±


    She ignored him. ¡°He was broken apart. I saw it with my eyes. There can be no virtue, none whatever, behind such terrible injury. He is his son, womanless or not.¡±


    The Lodge sighed and buried his face in his hands. ¡°I cannot tell him how to raise his fighters,¡± he said.


    ¡°If you do nothing about this, I will.¡±


    ¡°I know your anger, eldsister,¡± the Lodge said. ¡°It lives in me, too. But there is hardly anything you or I can do. Even if I spoke¡­ he will not listen to me.¡±


    ¡°I do not want you to speak. Is he the only power in this place?¡± Wellborn bellowed. ¡°Remind me the drycanes he can muster. What bendrock sits at his command?¡±


    ¡°What sits at ours?¡± the Lodge hissed back. ¡°What sits at mine? What do-¡± They turned to see Peak and Key, waiting by the door.


    ¡°This is an opened place,¡± he said. ¡°We should talk later.¡±


    ¡°I think we shouldn¡¯t,¡± Wellborn said, swiping her hand through the air. ¡°Talk stays not bruises, nor scars.¡± She stalked away, giving Peak a half-nod as she threw open the room¡¯s cover and returned to the shell. The Lodge sighed and tugged at his chin. Then he beckoned the two of them.


    Peak tapped Key¡¯s shoulder and they approached the Thought Table.


    ¡°Aie, Strongbuilder,¡± Peak greeted the Lodge. ¡°A good morning, isn¡¯t it?¡±


    ¡°A good morning, firebrewer,¡± he croned. He hobbled over to Peak, moving with the aid of a twisted wooden cane. ¡°What is a sky without clouds? Clouds without rain? Rain without wind or ice or lightning?¡±


    ¡°Such a poor and lonely thing.¡±


    The Lodge smiled and they embraced. ¡°I know what it is you¡¯re after. There¡¯s no fire to work in this house. Coldcoming ended yesterday. Cold is come.¡±


    ¡°Perhaps today, we are only visiting a friend.¡±


    ¡°And perhaps today, I am younger than I once was,¡± the Lodge replied. ¡°Aie, Key. A good night?¡±


    ¡°Yes, eldman,¡± Key said. He paid the Lodge courtesy, bending his torso until his hands touched his knees. ¡°It is quiet under your roof.¡±


    ¡°You make me glad,¡± he said. ¡°Though the night in your eyes does not.¡± He reached out and playfully thumbed at the heavy bags on his face that betrayed Peak¡¯s episode.


    ¡°How is the voicewoman?¡± Peak asked. ¡°Many troubles in the shell?¡±


    The Lodge cringed. ¡°She breathes. But there is always trouble in the shell.¡±


    ¡°Are you untouched?¡±


    He looked downward. ¡°She feels pressed to solve every problem in the riversland. I wish I held some power to relieve her of that burden.¡± He shook his head. ¡°Enough of that. What of your troubles?¡±


    ¡°I have sent one to the rulers,¡± Peak said.


    His face darkened. ¡°Who? When?¡±


    ¡°This morning. Lastfarmer. Vigor¡¯s birthwoman.¡±


    ¡°A bad motion,¡± the Lodge replied. ¡°She lie still with that problem for eight seasons, now.¡±


    ¡°She was shut. The Walls took care of her.¡±


    The Lodge nodded.


    He looked between them. ¡°Is that all?¡±


    Peak jostled Key. ¡°Tell him about your journey.¡±


    ¡°I walked down to the block yesterday, eldman,¡± Key told the Lodge. ¡°There were men gathered by the river. Laruns.¡±


    ¡°It is a Larun place.¡±


    ¡°They were many times our number, eldman. I think they might not be there to stay.¡±


    He stroked his beard. ¡°What did they carry with them?¡±


    ¡°Stonehoofs, eldman. And rope. But that may not have been all. I was a long way off.¡±


    The Lodge¡¯s jaw tensed when Key mentioned the rope, as if it called up some profane memory. After a moment, he lit up again. ¡°It¡¯s good to know where the dryman is, but I expect it may not concern us, yonman. We are near one of their best paths; it¡¯s altogether likely that they are simply going home.¡±


    A pressure that had been binding up Key¡¯s chest suddenly released. ¡°I¡¯ll tell a man to keep watch for such things,¡± the Lodge said. ¡°In the meanwhile, go on to greater peace.¡±


    Peak and Key moved away from the River Lodge, departing the room. Yawn held the door open for them and bid them farewell.


    After they had left, the Lodge dropped to his knees. He began to breath heavily, and his ashy brow glistened with sweat. He clutched his chest, and clamped tight his walking stick.


    ¡°Ba,¡± Yawn exclaimed rushing over to him. ¡°What is it? Speak. Tell it to me, ba.¡±


    The Lodge shook his head.


    ¡°I should get him back?¡± Yawn asked. ¡°Ba? Need you the fireworker?¡±


    ¡°No,¡± the Lodge gasped. ¡°I stumbled. It¡¯s just a bump. Only a bump.¡±


    Yawn helped him to his feet. ¡°I should get him back.¡±


    ¡°No,¡± the Lodge insisted. He patted Yawn¡¯s shoulder. ¡°Go back. Go to your work. It was just a bump. Just an old man¡¯s bump.¡±


    Yawn reluctantly exited the building, returning to his position.


    ¡°Just a bump,¡± the Lodge muttered to himself. ¡°Just a bump.¡±

 Story 1 (Part 2 of 4) – The Walls

    After Peak and Key had returned home, which had become populated by a number of supplicants in their absence, they resumed their labor. The morning ended and the sun pierced the veil of clouds that had seemed permanent a moment before, and it marched inside their table alongside a man. Old Wall was gaunt, white-haired, and missing a number of fingers; Key knew he had fought in the last Response, but that had been many seasons ago, and he had never heard a word from him except in passing. When the Wall looked at Key, his eyes became tinted with a kind of bewildered revulsion; he didn¡¯t know why.


    ¡°Aie, eldbrother,¡± Peak greeted their visitor. ¡°How¡¯s your heart?¡±


    Old Wall didn¡¯t bother to greet him in kind or answer his question. He gestured to the blood spatter left by Key¡¯s earlier mistakes. ¡°Lastfarmer¡¯s?¡± he said.


    ¡°It is.¡±


    ¡°I think it wise to put a man with you,¡± he said. ¡°How else can I ensure your study keeps his edge from my flock?¡±


    ¡°What do you know of my study?¡± Peak returned. ¡°I am not a perfect servant, eldbrother. And if this place were always clean, you would see no need for it.¡±


    ¡°It is the Fire Table,¡± Old Wall sniffed. ¡°There has always been a Fire Table. So it will remain, until the last fireworker is gone.¡±


    ¡°That day is far afield.¡±


    Old Wall ignored him. ¡°There is a work in the fields,¡± he said. ¡°Too much for the ones given to it. I am obligated to gather more hands. Am I wrong in seeing you¡¯ve none to offer??¡±


    ¡°Perhaps not, but if I did, the offering would belong to them,¡± Peak said. ¡°Key?¡±


    ¡°Yes, I¡¯ll go,¡± he said.


    Peak looked at him curiously. ¡°Are you sure?¡± he asked, squeezing his shoulder.


    ¡°I''ll go.¡±


    Peak pulled him aside and spoke into his ear. ¡°You know what we¡¯ve discussed,¡± he murmured.


    ¡°I know.¡±


    ¡°Do not trust the Wall. Do not ever be too close to him. If you think he will lead you away from the other ones, you return to me straightaway. Do you understand?¡±


    ¡°I do.¡±


    He ruffled his hair and pushed him. ¡°Go on, then. Remember what I¡¯ve said.¡±


    The journey to the workground was silent. Old Wall did little to address Key¡¯s presence as they went about the shell, collecting other hands for the day¡¯s labor.


    After they had gathered a pack of Sixbraids satisfactorily large to Old Wall, they departed for the Houses¡¯ outskirts, where the vacant fields of the shell-dwellers stretched out toward the river¡¯s empty banks. A light drizzle began as they passed through the fields of weeds, brambles, and wilting shellplants that had taken root in the Fall. When they reached the stockseat, where the Sixbraids hid away seed and supplies from the weather beneath a thatched roof, Key caught a glimpse of Young Wall.


    Young Wall and his brother Darkhaired Wall were the two eldest sons of Old Wall, and stood among a few younger Sixbraids who milled about the stockseat, chattering among themselves. The Darkhaired Wall was his brother¡¯s senior by at least five years. He was tall and strong, and wore a necklace with a bright yellow stone. Young Wall, who stood below his brother, but above the rest, was less fortunate; half of his face was swelling and discolored. He followed his brother most places, and Key had only rarely seen him outside his presence.


    When they arrived, Old Wall took Darkhaired Wall aside to speak with privately. Young Wall watched the two of them step out of earshot and frowned. When he saw Key arrive, however, a smile lit up his injured face. He left the other youth to go and speak with him.


    As Young Wall stepped closer, Key felt the hiding rise inside him. It was a royal object, Key¡¯s hiding. One bowed before it as they did a ruler. When it said to sit, Key sat. When it said to cow, he cowed. When it said to speak, it spoke; one did not speak without the hiding¡¯s word. Submission to his hiding was pleasant, Key knew. It was an ancient grail, and in all the world, Key was its only selector. So there must have been need between them. There was no other way to be.


    ¡°Aie, Fragile Thing,¡± Young Wall said to Key. Key blanched when he saw what had become of him, but tried not to betray his horror. ¡°Aie, eldbrother,¡± he replied.


    ¡°How you minding?


    ¡°Minding good, eldbrother.¡±


    Young Wall smiled. ¡°I went looking for you yesterday.¡±


    ¡°Yes, my birthman told me.¡±


    ¡°Why weren¡¯t you around?¡± he asked. ¡°The cold only comes once a year. We had a good time.¡±


    ¡°I was walking.¡±


    ¡°Walking where?¡±


    ¡°The rounds.¡±


    ¡°The mouth on you!¡±


    ¡°No, I¡¯ve no mouth, eldbrother.¡±


    ¡°You went alone?¡±


    Key nodded. Young Wall shook his head.


    ¡°What if a heart catches you, huh? A dryhoof? A nightholder? It¡¯s hard out there. It¡¯s a hungry place.¡±


    Key gave a sheepish smile.


    ¡°Don¡¯t walk too far, you know?¡± Young Wall said, clapping him on the shoulder. ¡°A man lives with his own kind. You get happy that way.¡±


    The two of them were called away from each other when Darkhaired Wall addressed his peers.


    ¡°All of you listen now.¡± Darkhaired Wall raised up his hands to quiet the group, which gradually turned toward him. ¡°Today we¡¯re preparing the stemplanters. I¡¯m responsible for you, this time. You have my name. So be virtuous with it.¡±


    They set themselves to the task at hand. The stemplanters, the aim of their labor, were long, disposable farm implements whose components were brought by the cartload from the West every season, to be worked together by the Sixbraids for a shipment East. Their ingredients, bits and bobs of wallrock, were dumped out onto the ground of the stockseat in piles that sat higher than any Sixbraid present. Each man took a spot on a mat, cushioning them from its hard wooden floor, plucked from the pile and began their assembly.


    Key could only vaguely recall what the appropriate method was for this task, which they had been taught a season prior. He took out three pieces that looked like they belonged together and tried to fit them inside one another. He pressed and pressed as he would the stem into a base piece, until it snapped in half. Seeing this, Darkhaired Wall shooed him from the workplace.


    ¡°Stay away from this, yonbrother,¡± he said, collecting the materials that had survived Key¡¯s onslaught. ¡°You have funny hands. They do funny things. Go over there for now; do as you like.¡±


    Key felt the way of hiding on him, and consented to the Wall¡¯s command. As he began to move away, he felt somebody grab his shoulder.


    ¡°You¡¯re going to stay here and do what I tell you,¡± Young Wall said. He grabbed another group of pieces from the pile and they sat down together. He showed Key the base of the device he had broken.


    ¡°See here,¡± he said. ¡°Show me what you were doing.¡±


    Key mimicked the movements that had snapped the stem apart. Young Wall blew a raspberry through his lips. ¡°Whew - you¡¯re one empty head, Fragile.¡±


    ¡°I am, eldbrother,¡± Key affirmed. His smile fell below his eyes.


    Young Wall tasted his discomfort and softened his tone. ¡°Come on, it¡¯s not so hard,¡± Young Wall replied. ¡°Push here,¡± he said, pointing to a long stone rod.


    Key quickly seized the top of the rod and tried to push it in. Young Wall halted him with a firm hand.


    ¡°Eh ye,¡± Young Wall exclaimed. ¡°That hairy thing is right. Funny hands you¡¯ve got. Funny. What made you grab it like that?¡±


    Key shrugged. Young Wall grasped it in the proper way, ¡°Like this,¡± he said. ¡°You see?¡±


    Key nodded, although he was never sure if he did, in fact, see.


    ¡°Most things,¡± Young Wall said, leaning on the stem. ¡°They never broke because someone pushed them hard. They broke because somebody pushed them wrong. There¡¯s a right way and a wrong way to press on everything that lives. To give it a strength and meaning.¡±


    The stem bent under Young Wall¡¯s weight and snapped. He held it the broken halves in his hands. ¡°Some things, their way ¨C it¡¯s too difficult. There¡¯s a little speck somewhere inside them that only a ruler could push well. But we really must try. The riversland is full of hard, and we come into it as soft things; what choice have we but to toughen ourselves? That¡¯s what my birthman has taught me.¡± He gestured to his face. ¡°And perhaps that¡¯s what firework has taught you, hasn¡¯t it? Sometimes, to heal, a cut must be made.¡±


    ¡°A cut¡­¡±


    Young Wall walked over to the pile of parts, retrieved a new stem, and handed it to Key. ¡°Now you try.¡±


    Key imitated him. ¡°Now push,¡± he said. ¡°Push hard.¡±


    He did, and the rod popped into place.


    ¡°There,¡± Young Wall said, gesturing at the repaired stem. ¡°It¡¯s not so hard, is it?¡± He clapped Key on the back.


    ¡°Thank you, eldbrother.¡±


    ¡°Fragile, you call me like some creator,¡± he moaned. ¡°You need to speak like others. If you don¡¯t, they¡¯ll see you wrong. They¡¯ll see a gapman. You won¡¯t ever get to have anybody. Okay?¡±


    ¡°Right,¡± Key said. ¡°Okay.¡±


    Young Wall grinned.


    -


    A train of wagons appeared on the horizon, many drawn by stonehoofs.


    A grey host followed it, in and among them ¨C many figures shifting in the mist, hauling weapons, saddlebags, and assorted equipment. The herald at their head flew the banner of their master. Its sigil depicted a long white bone placed over an arrow.


    After he had finished depositing the laborers on Darkhaired Wall, Old Wall arrived at one of the watchwalls¡¯ perches, where an unlucky few were posted each morning to keep a wary eye on the horizon out of a cramped, stilted box.


    He climbed up the ladder that lead up to the tower. His aged muscles ached and burned by the time he was done; Sun Wall, a lanky and perpetually stiff fighter from outside his family, offered him his hand. He slapped it away. When Old Wall finally clambered to his feet in the post, Sun Wall again moved forward, gripping his leather upover to help steady him. Old Wall shoved him back.


    ¡°What is it?¡± he asked.


    Sun Wall pointed out the ranks of armed men massing across the river. One of the watchwalls squinted at the accumulating mass, shielded his eyes from the dawn, and then spoke the words of counting and seeing: ¡°One man two weapons. Two weapons-men, wallrock drycanes, ten weapons men, string-slings. Fifteen stonehoof, weapons and coverings. Fifteen stonehoof, grassface; seven carriers, grassface. Fifteen weapons-men, fifteen weapons-men, fifteen weapons-men, bendrock drycanes. Men all five canes high, one unseen. Eighteen men weaponless.¡± He turned to Old Wall. ¡°These are Laruns, eldman. Heartless ones.¡±


    There was a collective groan. ¡°Rulers, hold it from us,¡± Sun-Wall called out in despair. ¡°They¡¯re beyond measure. What could they have come to take?¡±


    ¡°When last did they bring so many?¡± one of the Walls asked.


    ¡°No fewer than ten seasons,¡± another answered. ¡°Those did not stop for us.¡±


    When Old Wall gazed out at the host, his lip became joined by a light quiver, and his hands affixed the perch¡¯s railing as though he meant to crush it. After a moment the exertion tired him and he sank; his temper deflated, color drained from his face, and he seemed weak on his feet. He used his grip on the rail to steady himself.


    Old Wall flicked his hand at Sun Wall. ¡°Go and tell the Lodge,¡± he said. ¡°Tell him that the dark has arrived.¡±


    -


    The Laruns spread out around the land across the first bend in the river, setting up tents, tables, and fires. In the wake of the stemplanters¡¯ completion, Darkhaired Wall shifted his group back into the shell, toward the hearthouse, where many of the Sixbraids¡¯ stronghoofs and lowers would be kenned after spending the day in pasture. There, Key and the laborers cut wool from the shell¡¯s woolbearers, who lowed contentedly as their caretakers shaved away their lucrative covering with knives of stone. In the midst of overseeing this work and intermittently peering out at the heavily-armed occupiers, Darkhaired Wall had begun to tell his charges a tale. Key paused his work to listen in.


    ¡°Yes, I visited Herdetopp with him,¡± he said.


    The jaws of Key¡¯s colleagues had gone slack with awe. ¡°Is it true what they say?¡± one asked. ¡°You and your birthman passed through?"


    "Through the Wild?¡±


    "The new Wild?"


    ¡°Of course,¡± Darkhaired Wall said, his mouth curving at their gaze and whispers. ¡°It¡¯s far too big to go around. There¡¯s no other way.¡±


    ¡°What was it like?¡± another exclaimed.


    Darkhaired Wall sat atop one of the pasture¡¯s fenceposts and laid one leg over another. ¡°It was not only a pleasant journey. There were many concerns. We met those who had been accosted by gift-hungry bites and meat-hungry hearts. Most terrible among these are nightholders, the light-quieting lives, which keep hands over dark and sleep, and do not often frequent our own country; we were fortunate not to meet one ourselves. You can watch the grasses and trees grow, think and wander; in the morning, the path may be open. In the evening, it may already have been covered up again. The wind whispers an awful crying sound, and to lay so much as a finger on the soil there will drench your mind in a curious weight.¡±


    ¡°But what was its face? What was its feeling?¡±


    He smiled. A mist crept into his eyes. ¡°It was¡­ good. The Wild embraces all; it bows to no one.¡±


    They kept working.


    A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    The shell¡¯s visitors marched as the sun began to fall down from the sky. They assembled into columns and filed over the bridge, across the vacant river. ¡°What do you think they¡¯re here for?¡± Young Wall asked Darkhaired Wall.


    ¡°Heartgifts, maybe.¡± Darkhaired Wall spit. ¡°Bite off another few of our hands, Walls, women.¡±


    ¡°Why do they need so many hoofs?¡± a worker near Key asked. ¡°And so many weapons?¡±


    Nobody could answer him.


    They walked into town. Key heard unsettled whispers point out the uncanny, greycoatted fighters as ¡°heartless men,¡± and ¡°Freemen.¡± This type made up the bulk of them, and they came in columns, bearing their arms and goods. Each moved with excellent discipline and carefully maneuvered muscle; they had presumably been marching for days on end, and still they appeared high of spirit and untouched by want, though Key did spot a few clutch their bellies in hunger, smiling all the while.


    The Freemen came in strains; there were men built like cattle, heaving huge packs of entrenching materials, weaponry and what supplies they had; men dressed in badged armor, each at the head of a column of armsmen, and the armsmen themselves - high, mighty enforcers of the will that flowed from the Otiser, their realm Larunkat¡¯s seer-sovereign. Key had no personal experience with these, the weird footsoldiers of that sickly and decrepit power. Each was sculpted to appear the most pleasant conceivable image of this dryborn kind, the Laruns, that those they were wrought to serve might enjoy the sight of them as they carried their baggage and fought in their wars: a face mirrored from left to right, blemishless, and sharply cut. Their eyes shined shades of gold, silver, and amethyst.


    At the very head of their train was a team of two: a tense, ferrety Sixbraid with sunken eyes, and to his right a massive armsman ¨C Key guessed, the element¡¯s officeholder. The Head Man was massive, a trunk of a body, clad in leather. Like his kin, his skin was thick enough to deflect a dull blade, his arms strong enough to fold metal, or flesh and bone. Unlike the other Freemen, the Head Man¡¯s body was covered in his armor; his head concealed by a polished bendrock helmet. Only his eyes could be seen, and only his appeared indistinct; Key could not name their particular hue in the sunlight. Perhaps it had something to do with the shadow cast by his visor.


    ¡°Manor has returned!¡± The Sixbraids were chattering among themselves, gesturing in awe at the Head Man¡¯s shiverring consort. ¡°It¡¯s Manor! He¡¯s come and changed! He has clothes like a dryman!¡±


    Manor was a man long since departed the Empty Houses, taken by the Laruns some years ago. He stood alongside the Head Man. Key remembered little from that time beside the grief, but he did remember the departing: those who came in force to manacle and guide heartgifts from the Sixbraids into the Laruns¡¯ country, for whatever purpose they thought fit. Returned he had, and dressed like a dryman he was; pinned to his chest was a sigil of pen and sword, the symbol of the Pointers. Manor had been made a holder of secrets, a speaker of codes, a man who hung men. The totem of Manor¡¯s office weighed down his side, a leatherbound copy of the Otiser¡¯s will ¨C shielded from the dust and rain by a thick sleeve.


    Freemen broke off from the train in groups of two and three and dispersed through the crowd, dragging away Sixbraids. Clamor and outrage rose from the shell-dwellers as they were beaten and bystanders threatened with langnivs, the Laruns¡¯ short, square blades. Key saw a child covered with blood and dirt screaming at nothing, as though she sought only to blow out her voice and feel no more.


    ¡°Gather!¡± spoke Manor over the commotion. ¡°All you riverborn, gather in the Speaking Place! Gather with speed, please!¡±


    Key and the other laborers looked to Darkhaired Wall. He hopped off his post and waved them forward.


    The laborers followed the other shell-dwellers and the Larun train to the monolith. Once the train had arrived in front of the house of the River Lodge, the Freemen began to work, unloading their wood, rope and nails from the wagons. Key had never seen any Sixbraid work with such speed. Theirs was a torrent of devotion, losing very little in their movement, striking nails into wood in synchronous harmony, passing equipment to one another in a tightly-woven orchestra of hammers. In only a few minutes, they had erected a grand device: a strong wooden beam suspended between two poles, host to five lengths of Larun rope, and set above a series of precarious stools that awaited occupants.


    Key began to hear a name echoed throughout the mass of shell-dwellers.


    ¡°What sort are they building?


    ¡°A punisher!¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s a punisher!¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s their choking-thing. Their twisting-thing. It cuts with knots, and does not spill heartswater.¡±


    ¡°But why have they brought it here? Rulers hold it from us!¡±


    ¡°Ih, rulers! Rulers hold it from us.¡±


    ¡°What have we done? How have we displeased them?¡±


    Beside the punisher, the Freemen had brought up an elevated platform, which they set in front of the gathering crowd. Manor and the Head Man ascended it after departing the space on their carriage.


    Key couldn¡¯t find Peak. The industry and unclear aim of these visitors frightened him, and he wanted for his birthman¡¯s strength and certainty.


    The Lodge, seated in his Entrance Chair, looked on the violation with melancholy and impotent anger. He stood up and grasped Yawn¡¯s arm. ¡°Help me closer,¡± he rasped. ¡°Let me look with them.¡±


    With a sinking feeling, Key saw his sire¡¯s pillaric silhouette among those being lead to the punisher. Peak passed him on the way up.


    He cried out and broke from the crowd, running up to his birthman and clinging tight. The stony hand of a Freeman kept Key at arm¡¯s length.


    ¡°I¡¯ll be back, gentle,¡± Peak said. ¡°Stay with the Walls.¡±


    ¡°No,¡± Key screamed. ¡°I want to stay with you. Don¡¯t go there, bata. Don¡¯t go away.¡±


    ¡°Stay with the Walls, gentle,¡± Peak shouted back. Key could observe the facets of his cheeks, his dimples and birthmarks, the strands of hair on his head and face. ¡°I adore-¡± Then the Freeman fit a sack over his face, and nobody could see him anymore.


    The men that the Freemen had dragged up to the stand were stood atop the rickety stools that had been prepared, upon which each struggled to remain in place. Then their necks were bound by rope. A Larun was appointed to stand behind each Sixbraid and given one of the hammers that had just been used to bring up the whole device. Key could not see what they meant to strike next.


    ¡°Hear me now!¡± Manor called out from his platform, doing his best to shout over the crowd. Sweat was running down the side of his face. ¡°All of you, listen to me now! Make it quiet, and listen. No man need go today. I promise that no man need go today!¡±


    The crowd assented for a while. Manor popped open a wooden tube on his back and took out a scroll, bound by pale thread. He untied and unfurled it, and began to read. ¡°Under the order of your lord,¡± declared the Pointer, ¡°River Strekson, Moved Speaker of the New Process, Commander of the Peace in Holy Josmee: the three feurkun regions of the Empty Houses, their lessers, and all their fields have been deemed Results of The Considered Problem.¡± Confused whispers took the crowd, primarily aimed at the unusual, half-translated terminology. ¡°In reparation for the cutting and fear-spreading activities of its inhabitants, it is the celestial will that they be slashed and burnt to the ground. Their laboring kinds will be cut into pieces with canes of nightrock. Their bodies will be remitted to open vessels, suspended aboveground with a rope of wallrock. No service of their name can be permitted.¡± Disgusted, mortified gasps came up from the crowd. These promptly evolved into protest.


    ¡°There is only- please, eldbrothers, please be quiet,¡± Manor said. ¡°I am not finished.¡±


    The Sixbraids would not consent. Somebody threw a rock at Manor¡¯s face. The Head Man caught it, inspected it closely, and slipped into a pocket, before exploding at his men in a guttural harangue. Whatever was said made them draw their swords. On seeing this, the passions of the shell-dwellers suddenly coolled.


    ¡°There is only one means of cancelling this reparation,¡± Manor continued. ¡°A gift of every other fighting man may be delivered to our camp beyond this place¡¯s limit by the second night of our company. These offerings will be passed peaceably, and without pain. A healer of your choosing may perform any revered ways you see proper to their safe passage. Their remains will be imparted you with haste, and in as fine a condition as you might imagine. You will be allowed to bury and celebrate them as you please. Let fall the virtue of our lord, if it is not-¡±


    ¡°Your lord wears no virtue!¡± A voice emerged from the mass of attendants.


    The Head Man stepped forward with a start, carefully maneuvering Manor to the side. He pointed his finger out to where the voice had come. Eight of his underlings pressed into the crowd, roughly tossing about those who wouldn¡¯t clear the way fast enough. They dragged a figure to the front: it was Darkhaired Wall.


    The Freemen threw him down in front of the platform. He stood and spit on one of them. The spat-upon wiped his face clean, reached into his pocket, and offered Darkhaired Wall a small towel for his own. He slapped it away, even though his face was cut and covered in muck. He turned his attention back to Manor.


    ¡°Where is your manhood, eldbrother?¡± the Wall roared. ¡°This is your birthplace! We¡¯ve done no wrong to you or this kind you¡¯ve chose.¡± Grunts of assent rippled through the masses. ¡°Was the cut they gave so complete, eldbrother? Do you feel no shame at all?¡±


    Darkhaired Wall continued to hurl hatred and invective at Manor as the Head Man descended the platform. He stepped up to the Sixbraid, blotting out the sun with his height. His hands shot out, gripping his skull and throat, catching a final vulgarity on his lips; his palm was able to reach around and grasp the whole of his victim¡¯s head. With a wrenching twist, he separated Darkhaired Wall¡¯s head from his shoulders, crushing it in the process. A surprised, outraged lament went up from the crowd before all was again silent.


    The Head Man murmured something in Larun words. He laid a gentle hand on Manor¡¯s shoulder when he returned to his side. ¡°O-our lord adores you all,¡± Manor translated.


    ¡°This thing will be carried out with speed,¡± he continued, wiping sweat from his brow. ¡°If it is not true, let fall the virtue of my lord. No lies have been spoken here today.¡±


    The Head Man waved his hand. Four of the Freemen manning the punisher dropped their hammers and swept their swords upward. In a moment, the captive Sixbraids had fallen to the ground, along with the bonds that had clung to their necks. There had the Laruns cut so precisely as to leave nothing more than a slight, identical red nip that marked each man¡¯s skin.


    Each man, except for one. Those who had been cut free removed the bags from their heads, and looked to the victim on their left.


    The Head Man whispered into Manor¡¯s ear.


    ¡°Take this first chosen as a kindness,¡± Manor said. ¡°Serve him with your works.¡±


    The Head Man pointed upward. The Freeman hefted his hammer and swung. The rope pulled taut. The bag Peak was under shifted slightly, and as the drop came, he began to struggle.


    In the moment that arrived next, Key felt the stirrings of need. He knew a requirement for the world to be a certain way, one with which it would not comply. His body was screaming through his mouth, but he couldn¡¯t feel it or hear it. The barest hint of this escaped his lips as a firm, leathery grip came over his mouth.


    ¡°Quiet!¡± he heard the Lodge¡¯s withered voice rasp into his ear. ¡°Quiet, and be still! Cry if you must. A third one will not go today.¡±


    Key¡¯s body was wracked with intense sobs as he watched Peak choke and shiver on the rope. Then, all at once, he became still. His father¡¯s body rocked gently in the wind.


    The Laruns marched out of the town, the springtime breeze blowing their cloaks away and beyond the Empty Houses¡¯ perimeter. A new mass of clouds had swept over the sky, casting a shadow on the shell and the wagons that creaked away. The boots of the Freemen dashed apart the mud, filling it with marks that would freeze over in the night. Then they were back across the river, and the Sixbraids were parted from their company.


    -


    After the Freemen had settled into their tents on the outskirts of the Empty Houses, Peak¡¯s body was cut down and Darkhaired Wall¡¯s collected, and they were brought down to the river. A small pyre was prepared: wooden logs, cut from the pines to the South, intended to be preserved for the cold, were stacked into a pile that stood higher than Key. Peak, Darkhaired Wall, and Vigor¡¯s mother Lastfarmer were put atop it; there had not been enough time to give any their own event. The Lodge said his words on them before they were given to the fire.


    Key was made to light a torch and carry it up to the bodies. He felt eyes on him as he set fire to his father.


    Yawn danced an invocation around the pyre, and around the ashes that they scattered into the trickling riverbed. Many of the men present shouted or raged in grief, offering up prayers, curses, and assorted oaths to various objects of worship.


    Key didn¡¯t curse, or worship. He did cry, because the world felt like it had stopped making sense, or perhaps that it never had made sense. He was entering the final stages of a progressive delirium, occasionally giggling to himself. Otherwise, the ones watching him saw nothing, and it was the nothing that he preferred.


    During the ceremony, a young woman who Key did not recognize emerged from the crowd. She wore a necklace with a bright yellow stone. She took her place alongside Young Wall. He took a sharp stone and cut his hand on it, and laid his hand in the riverbed, leaving his mark on it. He handed her the stone and she cut her own hand. Old Wall watched the two of them do it, with some mixture of emotions that Key couldn¡¯t fathom.


    After it was done, and the rest of the audience had returned home, the Lodge came up to Key to speak.


    ¡°Go to the Table. Gather your things,¡± the Lodge said. ¡°You¡¯ll stay with us, until we decide what happens next. No man needs an empty house.¡±


    Key¡¯s face was streaked with tears. The Lodge rested a hand on his shoulder.


    ¡°Don¡¯t cry,¡± he said. ¡°Crying is not a man''s work. You were young this morning. Now, you are an old boy. Nobody else can take what you¡¯ve been given. That¡¯s why a man becomes a man¡¯s way. He must be a giver. The only things he takes are the ones no-one else can; you hold them inside yourself. Otherwise, we¡¯ll all fall apart, you see? Do you see now?¡±


    Key couldn¡¯t meet his gaze. He gritted his teeth and felt a round hole in his chest. The Lodge patted Key¡¯s hands, slipped Peak¡¯s necklace inside them, and went on his way.


    After the ceremony, Key returned home alone. He walked back through the shell and arrived at their roundseat. He tried sitting in each of its empty rooms, but they were all freezing, so he sat in his father¡¯s chair, put heat on the stove, and heard the forever-gone laughter and the warm touch of his birthman.


    The sheet that Peak had laid over their Statement loomed next to the fire. He studied it for some time. He did not want to draw it back. But there was no more choice about it.


    So he removed from his seat, threw aside the covering, and traced a finger over the lines of the last invocation Peak had written.


    ¡°Night ruler: how much is your own adored by us!¡± it read. ¡°Creator of hardship; creator of the unseeing; protector of Walls and the unsafe. May you enter into this house, bring into ours your sense, your safety, and your


    His words ended and gave way to solid wood.


    Key spotted Peak¡¯s three-string by the doorway, abandoned and untouched since the night before. He walked over to it, grabbed it, cradled it in his arms, and plucked the chords of his father¡¯s lullaby. Places, smells and visions swirled together in his mind and created a knowing of something that wasn¡¯t, which had escaped him and which, his body told him, he would find no longer.


    He cried again.


    -


    That night, the shell¡¯s men of consequence met at the Lodge¡¯s estate. Behind the Thought Table, around which the Sixbraids had gathered, sat the Lodge and his sons. He used a thin flame, observed by the Empty Houses¡¯ newest fireworker, to burn prophecy into strips of bark cut from an unblemished sapling. While they divined, the Sixbraid men shouted, and Wellborn, the observing voicewoman, fumed on its edges in her obligate silence.


    ¡°We must fight against this thing,¡± a young man said. ¡°Resist to our last breath. Even if it should mean our destruction.¡±


    There were a few faint murmurs of agreement.


    ¡°We have no drycanes,¡± somebody replied. ¡°What fight is there if we have no drycanes?¡±


    ¡°¡®What fight?¡¯¡± the young man mocked. ¡°Do we not have wood, eldbrother? And then, do we not have sticks to sharpen? Kindling to burn? Do we not have fists to smash with and legs to crush with? Do we not-¡±


    ¡°If you don¡¯t cover your mouth, Hunter, your head will fall out!¡± barked Old Wall. ¡°How is it you see it fit to speak of fights and failure, with no little ones to fail or fight for? And who of your kind did you lose to these heartless things?! The Laruns have made their qualities known to us. Known to me! Known to Goldhill, the Baking Place, to Shadow-Over-Water! My family has lost enough." He struck his chest. "If it must lose me, it will lose no others!¡±


    ¡°There must be someone willing to help us,¡± another replied. ¡°The country is yet flush with companies of fighters. Why do we not entreat them?¡±


    There was an uproar of dissent. ¡°Hand our trial to men without rules? Men who have never adored the river, fight the Sixbraids¡¯ fights?¡± Old Wall lamented. ¡°Against drymen of a thousand thousands, heartless things all? These, and the disaster that commands them. Our cityrock would be wasted, our virtue refute, and we would endanger the innocent besides.¡±


    Sun Wall spoke up. ¡°We should go. Take the little ones and go. There¡¯s no sense in keeping here.¡±


    ¡°Where would we go?¡± The question came from a leatherworker, Horn. ¡°The Blockwood is overrun with bites, who have no virtue whatever. Nothing but pain lies away from the sun.¡±


    ¡°We can only run toward it,¡± Sun Wall said. ¡°The Longfur is dense, and full of holy spots. We are hardly rich enough to be chased all the way through there. Once we have passed it, into Leaning-¡±


    ¡°You would have us seek refuge in a land as spoilt as this one,¡± Horn spit. ¡°Even if we were so empty-headed, we have nothing to offer that land¡¯s bite of a Lodge. Where would we go if they turned us away?¡±


    ¡°Further then ¨C all the way to the far banks, if we must. I¡¯d rather go to the rulers than sell our own to these things.¡±


    It was this particular impiety that proved the last straw for Wellborn. She stepped forward and slammed her palm down on the table. ¡°And I¡¯d rather be cut than cow to them! You half-men would leave thankless the water, let fly the work of a hundred generations? Let them use their nightrock. Let them spill a bowl of it down my throat. They will not have my retreat.¡±


    There were some murmurs of agreement, but more anguished shouts and groans at her illicit outburst. ¡°It would be well spoken, voicewoman, if you were at all a party to our plight!¡± cried Sun Wall.


    So Wellborn went up to Sun Wall and wrestled the weapon from his belt, sawed through the core of her long, tangled brown hair, and threw down both to the table. ¡°I¡¯ll let you bow to heartless Manor, and to his dryman keepers too. But when you draw your straws, set one aside for me. I will be the first to fall!¡± And Wellborn left the room, which was speechless.


    They looked to the Lodge, who was limping back over to the table, carrying three wooden plaques.


    ¡°Are you little ones still attacking yourselves?¡± the Lodge asked. ¡°I can prepare more invocations yet, if you have not tired of it.¡±


    ¡°Tell us what lies ahead,¡± the men cried. ¡°Give us the signs, eldman. Give us the signs!¡±


    The Lodge stepped up to the table and spread out the tablets for all to see. He pointed to the first, outlining a pair of thick, rectangular shapes.


    ¡°The tusks. These speak of our current predicament. Two head drythings, come to swallow us where they couldn¡¯t before.¡±


    He pointed to the second, an ovoid burn with rippling edges. ¡°The storm. It speaks of great trials passing our way, that much is clear ¨C but perhaps also, the possibility of water.¡±


    At last, he pointed to the third, raising his fist in jubilation. A jagged shape had been burned into the wood. ¡°The lightning! A virtuous power is passing by. Will it strike where it must?¡± The Lodge gestured to a number of five dark spots scattered across the bark. ¡°The sign of the five. This matter has been handed to the Thought Ruler, him and his wisest friends. He, and no other, will decide the course of this destruction.¡±


    ¡°May we yet be saved?¡± Sun Wall asked.


    ¡°The sign of lightning has always made itself known when the storm has met its peak,¡± the Lodge said. ¡°Only tomorrow will we know for certain. All we can tell the Walls to do is keep an open eye - for travellers, and any drycanes carried with them.¡±


    As the attendees left ¨C some relieved, some still anxious ¨C the Lodge again laid his hand on Key¡¯s shoulder. ¡°Set aside two straws,¡± he said. Then he himself left, returning to his chambers, and leaving Key in the doorway to look out into the cold and empty night, alone. He could see nothing out there.


    So he set aside three, and that was that.

 Story 1 (Part 3 of 4) – The Sign of Lightning

    The watchwalls on the Empty Houses¡¯ Eastern wing took turns standing guard for the rest of the early morning. They matched gazes with their Freeman counterparts in the Larun camp, where the banging of hammers and shouting spoke to some new, foul project of theirs. The greycoatted sentries¡¯ countenance remained as fresh, still, and alert as ever. The watchwalls, on the other hand, could keep awake only by their shiverring, the chattering of their teeth, and the hatred that filled up their hearts when they looked into the eyes of the drymen.


    It was only after the shell-dwellers had fully dispersed to their huts and enclosures, and after the morning star had set fire to the horizon, that the eyes of the duty watchwall began to fall to the suffocating weight of sleep. Just as he had begun to dream on his feet, he was shocked awake by what he saw.


    A small speck was coming down from the East. As it grew larger, he saw it to be a man, tall of stature and regal of feature. It wasn¡¯t until its every facet was made clear that he could see the details of her face.


    The speck ¨C a warrior, from cursory examination ¨C guided a mournful-looking beast of burden up to the shell. She was tall of stature, and she was regal of feature. Short, almond-brown hair flowed out from under a leather hat that left her head and eyes cloaked in shadow. She, and the stronghoof that accompanied her, carried the accoutrements of a gift-fighter: a roughly-hewn set of metal armor hanging off the animal¡¯s side, tinted the color of grass; a long blade over her shoulder, which was itself clothed in a brown leather sheathe; a second, shorter blade that clung to her hip. She wore a foreign garment, a charcoal mantle woven from a smooth and tough material uncommon in Josmee. Beneath this covering was skin etched, from the neck down, in the circular script of hesign. The stark white color of the characters could only just be discerned by the morning¡¯s light.


    As she passed through the plains and their patches of foliage, the figure passed by the Larun camp. The Freemen there, seeing that she was not of the Houses, did not molest her; they only did as was their wont, and continued working dutifully: washing clothes, sharpening weapons, and raising additional poles and ropes in the center of their tents. But they did take note of her when she met the banner of their camp ¨C admiring its device for a moment, with a set jaw and tightened grip, before urging her animal on and out of their company.


    The watchwalls, roused by their comrade out of panic, regarded her with snarling when they saw the symbols on her arms, but didn¡¯t move to inquire her purpose or stop her. She stood half a head higher than their strongest, and she looked down on them at them with disdain. Scared, scared! echoed her Bell. The men with nivs ¨C fighters! They¡¯ve seen it happen! They think you one!


    There are always men with knives, replied the warrior. They always think me one.


    She walked past the Walls, unmolested but for the piercing glares of onlookers.


    Screaming! shouted the Bell. Frozen people! Lives in danger! Fighters!


    -


    That morning, Key rose from the Lodge¡¯s house, and he walked through the shell to his father¡¯s Table. He was haunted by the stares of the few shell-dwellers he saw; most were hollow-eyed, and either looked around or through him.


    When he reached their roundseat, he found it deserted. The daily supply of itinerants were absent. He walked inside and examined a few of their instruments, the door to the dig, the Table itself, and Peak¡¯s knives.


    There they were, laid out neatly in a line beside the Fire Table just as they were the day before. He spotted the littlecane Peak had given him to cut Lastfarmer. He picked it up.


    Like its kin, it was small, although sufficient for a devious purpose. He was surprised not to see any blood glistening on its edge. It had been wiped down ¨C by Peak, Key concluded, sometime after they had left. He had gone out of his way to scrub it off.


    Seeing the knife churned Key up inside, and he felt sick just looking at it. It felt wrong, in a way, a confusing part of the world. He couldn¡¯t bear to let go of it, so he stuffed it into his bag and tried not to think about it.


    As he walked outside to take a breath, and maybe vomit, he was surprised by Young Wall, who grabbed him by the arm.


    ¡°Aie,¡± Young Wall said. ¡°What are you doing?¡±


    ¡°I-¡±


    ¡°Where have you been?¡±


    ¡°I was just- I was here.¡±


    ¡°I mean, where have you been?¡±


    ¡°I was here.¡±


    Young Wall¡¯s face was even more bruised and haggard than usual. He looked around at Key¡¯s home. ¡°There¡¯s nobody here,¡± he assessed.


    ¡°I know.¡±


    ¡°Come on,¡± he said. ¡°There¡¯s work to be done.¡±


    ¡°¡­I shouldn¡¯t leave the Table.¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s nobody here,¡± Young Wall repeated. ¡°You have to work with us. You¡¯re not going anywhere soon. They need you to be with them. You¡¯re our fireworker now.¡±


    Young Wall¡¯s cracked upper lip, chapped and red with frozen blood, quivered. His hand was still clutching Key¡¯s arm, a bit too tightly. He was behaving as though he were wounded, although Key could see that he had suffered no serious harm. It would surely be prudent to see about his condition. It was one like his own.


    ¡°Okay,¡± Key said. ¡°Okay.¡±


    Young Wall let go of his arm.


    They returned to the Speaking Place together, and submitted themselves to the possession of Old Wall. Key, Young Wall, and an assortment of other youths were briefly returned to the hearthouse in order to finish the work that had been interrupted the day prior. Their late arrival to this appointment meant that they found their way to the hearthouse after it had been fully staffed by the others. Key shuffled himself into a space where he would bother no-one, and Young Wall threw himself into his chores.


    The Wall first set about to shovelling soiled dirt from a stonehoof¡¯s stall. The veins of his bulging arms could¡¯ve exploded with the force he was sending through them, launching shovelful after shovelful over his shoulder into a cart waiting outside. Where he had been joined by his regular proud and sweaty ferocity just a day before, today his energy was obsessive and manic, and he appeared to work with the intention of breaking himself. Time after time he stripped the skin from his fingers in wielding his device, or skewered the roof of his hand on a sharp wooden panel; he bit the splinters from his wound, and continued to work. His behavior unsettled Key, who continued to shadow him.


    This continued for a time, until the shell¡¯s itinerant visitor came down from the hills and over the river. Even Young Wall paused his shovelling to watch the oddly dressed figure saunter through the gaps in their houses, beholden to no one.


    As she neared their post, Key¡¯s colleagues began to examine the question of their visitor.


    ¡°Perhaps we should approach her,¡± the Sixbraids whispered among themselves. ¡°Snow is coming. If half our hands must go, we¡¯re going to need city gifts.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ve been scouring this place since sunrise,¡± said one. ¡°I¡¯d prefer to avoid any more drymen. Who knows what may anger or displease her? Just let her pass.¡±


    ¡°Send the Fragile Thing,¡± offered another. ¡°The fireworker. He¡¯s hardly done a day¡¯s work himself. Doubt he¡¯ll be much help later; we should use him while we can.¡±


    Young Wall looked at the proposer in disgust, before he realized the proposee was already moving. Key had long been oblivious to most things, and he had already spent much of the day in a skittish daze. So, hearing his name, he finished refilling a cart with hay and began to walk over to their customer.


    ¡°Key!¡± Young Wall hissed. ¡°Get back! Get back here! Key!¡±


    It was far too late. Key had already made his way up to the warrior and made to tap her on the shoulder. In a heartsbeat, a hand seized his wrist and another gripped tight the handle of the blade on her side. Key squeaked and his heart raced. If she could match gazes with the Walls, she dwindled Key.


    In spite of her sudden, explosive movement, the warrior¡¯s expression remained placid. Her blue eyes fell upon his figure, hastily evaluating him for a weapon or threat.


    ¡°I-¡± Key stuttered in nasally Larun. ¡°I can¡­ I can¡­ water your beast, for you. Firstpoint.¡±


    He said this, as he said everything, just quiet enough that nobody could really grab ahold of it. The warrior¡¯s sensitive ears caught his words with ease.


    She looked up at the stable behind him, where the other animals sat in the shade, munching on feed.


    The warrior said nothing ¨C only pressed her gaze against his for a moment.


    Trembling thing! the Bell shouted. Little thing! Weak thing! Hold! Touch! Embrace! Hold!


    She pushed him away and released her instrument.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± she said in Goalish. ¡°You have quiet feet.¡±


    ¡°Y-yes,¡± he stuttered. He glanced down to her own ¨C grimy metal boots, whose spurs sounded an airy chime with each step, smeared and scratched as they were by however many days she¡¯d spent on the road. ¡°If it please you, we might also wash your shoes,¡± he said. ¡°They are so muddy and rough.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s attentive of you,¡± she said. Her voice was deeper than he expected, and just under her breath, a bit like distant summer thunder. She spoke in Goalish; it was heavily accented, as though as she had just learned it recently. ¡°But I¡¯m not here to stay."


    ¡°Ih,¡± Key said. ¡°We can still work with him. Our work is fast. If you have business here, you can attend to it while he¡¯s fed.¡±


    The warrior reached to the back of her belt, where a knife loomed. She retrieved a thin, nearly deplete coin purse adjacent to it, its top tied off by a small bit of twine that she slipped off. ¡°How much?¡± She asked.


    ¡°Two Lofte.¡±


    The warrior dropped four Larun coins into his palm and handed him the stronghoof¡¯s lead. ¡°The drink in your skin is splashing,¡± he said. ¡°If you want, I can fill that too.¡± She unhooked it from her belt and passed it to his free hand. When he took hold of the leash, the stronghoof nudged him with its nose and he let out a rattled giggle. ¡°He¡¯s very well-mannered. What¡¯ve you named him?¡±


    ¡°I haven¡¯t. If you need to call it, I¡¯d whistle.¡±


    Key stroked his neck. ¡°Is he injured in some way? I¡¯ve never known a warrior to walk alongside his charge.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s unharmed. We both have legs to walk.¡±


    Key looked at her with his eyes gleaming and his mouth open. When he realized this, he shut it, blinked, and stroked the stronghoof¡¯s nose. ¡°I always thought it cruel to name a thing you couldn¡¯t know.¡±


    The warrior raised an eyebrow. ¡°Really?¡±


    He nodded. ¡°Since I was a boy, I wanted to ride a stonehoof, but I was cowed by the pain I would be forced to put upon him. I dreamed of earning a boon from a wise man and learning to speak his words, so that I wouldn¡¯t need to drive or break him.¡±


    ¡°I thought much the same, when we met,¡± the warrior said. ¡°It already carries me and my weight. I need not put a tongue on it, too.¡±


    ¡°It seems virtuous,¡± he said. ¡°Isn¡¯t it true? It¡¯d be best to really speak to one other. That way, there would be no doubting your friendship.¡±


    A strange silence broke between them. Neither seemed inclined to move, until the warrior did, taking a sharp turn toward the river. The metal in her boots clinked gently with each step.


    Key watched her leave. He scratched the stronghoof¡¯s ear and tugged on its lead, guiding it into the stables.


    Once he had returned, Young Wall yanked the rope from his hand, pulled him aside, boxed one of his ears and slapped him across the face. ¡°What¡¯s wrong with you?¡± he asked. ¡°What is wrong with you? You could¡¯ve gotten yourself cut, you know that? You could¡¯ve gotten us cut. What are you thinking?¡±


    Key¡¯s nose had begun to bleed. He held it in pain. ¡°I don¡¯t understand,¡± he said.


    ¡°She wears the words of Athad, Key,¡± he blustered, running a hand up and down his arm. He shook two fingers at him. ¡°Only two kinds wear words: the old drymen, and the new ones. All of them wish we would disappear.¡±


    ¡°I didn¡¯t know.¡±


    He boxed his ears again. ¡°You know now, Fragile Thing. Remember. Remember!¡± He tapped Key¡¯s skull.


    The other workers stared slackjawed at the violence. He glared at them. ¡°Filth,¡± he shouted. ¡°Impotent filth. Gawk somewhere else!¡± He threw a wad of mud in their direction and they backed off.


    Young Wall left Key for a moment to wipe his brow, and then brought him water, and a towel for his nose. Key sat down, holding it up and pinching it to stanche the bleeding.


    ¡°I was sure she would strike you down,¡± he said. ¡°She raised her hand with such confidence.¡±


    ¡°I snuck upon her. It was an accident.¡±


    ¡°How did you make peace? What did you say to her?¡±


    Key handed him the money the warrior had given him. ¡°I said that I would feed her heart,¡± he said. ¡°And fill her skin.¡±


    Young Wall looked at the coins and then at the stronghoof, which brayed expectantly. ¡°I¡¯ll feed it. Once that¡¯s stopped running, go home.¡±


    ¡°But I-¡±


    ¡°Go home. Go to the Lodge. Take care of yourself.¡±


    -


    The warrior moved deeper into the shell, which grew denser and more developed as she approached the dried-up river, and the fields beside it, cut and set some months ago. The various huts, stalls and houses circled around a spot by its former banks, where rested a great wooden bedplace.


    The shell¡¯s inhabitants were a skittish lot, watching her from doorways and remote corners. When she turned, a fleet of shadows scattered, and a group of passers-by carrying baskets ducked their heads. There was one notable exception in an older woman who watched her from the light, her eyes narrowed and her massive arms crossed.


    Crisscrossing the walls of the estate was a series of Goalish letters, whose configuration frustrated her; beneath its covering she found an old man, eyes half shut, muttering to himself on a three-legged stool. The jingling of her approach stirred the Lodge from his slumber, and he squinted up at her.


    ¡°Another dryman,¡± he said. ¡°Have you come to cut us, too?¡±


    ¡°¡®Dryman,¡¯ eldman?¡± the warrior asked. ¡°Are the words I speak a Larun¡¯s?¡±


    ¡°They are not ours. Your mouth is a stranger to them.¡±


    ¡°My mouth reveals what I am. It has always been so.¡±


    He snorted.


    ¡°Is it you who sits in this shell?¡± she asked.


    The Lodge frowned. ¡°Am I standing, child?¡±


    The warrior continued. ¡°I¡¯m unfamiliar with this country. I would supply gifts for a route back to the Ash road; I was curious if you might provide it.¡±


    He indicated her hesigns. ¡°What good are these injuries, if not for moving and looking? I¡¯m sure they can find you your own way forward.¡±


    ¡°This is true,¡± she replied, ¡°But I have business, and am obliged to arrive there at my best possible speed. To go more slowly in this or any place is a less correct gesture. I am so commanded.¡±


    ¡°And what type of business asks this of you?¡±


    ¡°The business of my commanders.¡±


    He sniffed and looked away. She came across the creases in his eyes, the slight dilation of his pupils, and the incessant jittering of his right hand. ¡°You seem troubled,¡± she said. ¡°This shell smells of ruin.¡±


    The Lodge sighed. He pointed to the Speaking Place. ¡°Look around you, at the soil, Water-Fighting Woman. What do you see?¡±


    The warrior looked at it. The mud had been filled with bootprints. Many of them were wider than those of the Sixbraids she¡¯d already seen ¨C potentially, they had been made by Freemen. There was a patch of blood and viscera she could smell thirty feet away.


    Most conspicuous were the remains of a Larun punisher, smashed to pieces by the shell-dwellers.


    ¡°There is struggle,¡± she said.


    The Lodge waved his hand. ¡°Struggle is all,¡± he said. ¡°Trial is the whole of the thing. And ours is now ending.¡±


    A shout came up from behind them and they turned. The Sixbraids had scattered from the Speaking Place. The only ones remaining were a group of armed men, lead by a thin and irate elder. They stormed up to the Entrance Chair, waving branches tied to sharp stone.


    ¡°Is this the lightning we were promised?¡± he raged. ¡°A girl dressed in drynames?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s an insult!¡± one shouted. ¡°A punishment!¡±


    ¡°Perhaps she is a gift,¡± cried out another. ¡°Perhaps we must destroy her in their stead, and be relieved by it.¡±


    A fever was catching hold of them, and they began to discuss such things seriously. The warrior put a hand on her blade. ¡°I wish you would look past my friends,¡± The Lodge murmured to her, struggling to his feet. ¡°They do not look well upon water-fighting words, regardless of their shape or creator.¡±


    He jabbed a finger at the Walls. ¡°As long as I breathe, I am still the keeper of names,¡± he shouted, thrusting his hand at the warrior. ¡°This one is named ¡®friend.¡¯¡± He let out a huff. ¡°Look at yourselves, half-men. Shaken apart by a little wind. Who among you is gone yet? Go to your own work! Or the day may end without you in it.¡±


    The shell-dwellers reluctantly dispersed. Their ringleader threw a vile glare in the warrior¡¯s direction before he followed suit. ¡°I¡¯ve known my share of shapefear,¡± she said. ¡°But little as brave as this.¡±


    ¡°Little is brave as this kind. Where sits your own?¡±


    ¡°My birthplace is Shaminkat.¡±


    ¡°Shaminkat? I can see the Sailor¡¯s heart in you.¡± The Lodge coughed and coughed, collapsing back into his chair. She removed a white cloth from her breast pocket, into the face of which was woven a black insignia. Its winding vines and hammers were similar to but distinct from the standard that covered the Laruns'' host. He snatched the thing from her hand and proceeded to wheeze into it. He held a hand up to his face and shut his eyes. ¡°Ih. What a dreadful prank is the rulers¡¯ house,¡± he moaned. ¡°Or perhaps they are all really gone.¡±


    ¡°A prank?¡±


    ¡°I have turned words,¡± he said. He handed her back her cloth. ¡°In doing so, perhaps I have accelerated our destruction. I wish you would depart, yonwoman, so that you won¡¯t be devoured for my crime.¡±


    ¡°Before I do, I wish you would tell me the source of your grief.¡±


    He scoffed. ¡°What other source exists? Grief is men and our contest.¡±


    ¡°Those encamped beyond your walls?¡±


    The Lodge nodded. ¡°The heartless things, the man who commands them, the one that commands him.¡± He pointed to the river and the pyre. ¡°Twenty seasons before, we could have passed them down the water, given them a good ending.¡± He flicked his hand in disgust. ¡°The Laruns have taken everything. Fire is all we have left.¡±


    The warrior noticed now the downcast eyes of the Goals, the spots of blood in the dirt, the ways being performed from door to door by the shell¡¯s wise men. It was routine. Dread was a pollutant, infesting the places where lives begin. It was the element the Laruns exuded.


    The Lodge tilted his head as the warrior surveyed the shell¡¯s central yard. ¡°Shaminkat?¡±


    ¡°Yes?¡±


    ¡°You have a quiet face,¡± the Lodge rumbled. ¡°A quiet voice. I can¡¯t say what they say.¡±


    ¡°They say nothing. What do they want from you?¡±


    ¡°Nothing itself,¡± he spat. ¡°Once they asked for skin. Now they ask for bodies. It is always thus with drymen.¡±


    ¡°And how have you injured them?¡±


    ¡°Our brothers¡¯ brothers fight them in a land away from the sun,¡± he said. ¡°So they cut those of us nearer to it.¡±


    ¡°That is not the reason,¡± the warrior said.


    ¡°Hm?¡±


    ¡°That is not the reason,¡± she insisted. ¡°It is their wordless statement. A bendrock saying. Such hearts cut to cut. It brings them joy.¡±


    The Lodge tilted his head. ¡°So you do speak our words.¡±


    ¡°They were taught to me.¡±


    ¡°To us all.¡±


    The Lodge smiled, and then his face sagged in anguish. He looked away. ¡°Trial is good. They will survive.¡±


    He raised a finger to Yawn, flanking him patiently in the shadows. ¡°Show this water-fighter our images. Give her what she likes.¡± He shut his eyes.


    Taking the casual insult in stride, the warrior moved inside with Yawn. With a hint of remorse, the Lodge continued. ¡°Perhaps you would like to stay the night. Eat with us. I could have a wallwoman make room.¡±


    ¡°Thank you,¡± the warrior said. ¡°But I have a long way ahead of me. My purse is empty; my head adores the ground.¡±


    ¡°Then begone, Shaminkat,¡± the Lodge muttered. On a whim, he clasped his hands together and shook them at her, and sent off a dismissive wave as he drifted into sleep. ¡°Fly yourself away. To a clearer sky. To one more fine.¡±


    -


    The shell had become desolate and dispopulate in the time between her visit to the stables and the Lodge; perhaps the youngers had fled, or perhaps they had been ordered home by their parents, fearing additional assault by something heartless, and to spend the last steps of their sun with their loved ones.


    After memorizing the Sixbraids¡¯ charts, the warrior came back to the Houses¡¯ stables to retrieve her animal. When she did, it too was quiet, and the awkward, mumblesome, green-eyed thing that had taken it from her was nowhere to be seen. Still had he apparently kept his word before he left; her skin was full of water, and her stronghoof¡¯s belly full of hay. She took its lead and guided it along the path, out from the roundseats and other ramshackle tenements, into the hilly hinterland that attached the Empty Houses to the rest of Goal.


    A creature followed the warrior out of town, spying on her from corners and the tall grass. She decided to encamp next to the wood that began to spring up along her path; it followed her there too, shuffling from tree to tree, and snapping the occasional twig. It was adequately surreptitious beside this. If her ears were not keen enough to discern the heartbeat of birds nesting in the thicktrees high above, he might¡¯ve escaped her notice, as he nearly had amidst the clamor of the shell.


    Of course, there was also the Bell, but it was of limited help.


    Weak thing! In the shadows! Behind door! Behind dirt! Behind, behind, behind! Go to him now, before it¡¯s too late!


    What does he want?


    Following. Not chasing. Bereft! Bereaved! Uncoupled! Demands recoupling!


    But what does he want?


    Too many questions! it shouted. Touch! Embrace! Hold! Nothing else matters!


    The warrior lifted her waterskin from her belt. She uncorked it, brought it to her lips, and immediately spit up its contents. Out of curiosity, she tilted it over and let a small amount fall to the ground, revealing the liquid¡¯s sickly color. She sighed.


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    Having put some distance between herself and the shell, the warrior brought her beast into a shady grove on the edge of the Goalish rounds, where the highest trails of smoke generated by the Sixbraid¡¯s home could still be detected by his eyes. She detached her bags from the stronghoof and pushed gently on its mane; it dutifully folded up its legs and dropped to the ground with a snort.


    She unclasped her cloak from her shoulders and threw it over the stronghoof¡¯s back. Then, she approached and addressed the treeline.


    ¡°I can hear you, Quiet Feet,¡± the warrior said. ¡°Come out now.¡±


    There was no response. The warrior picked up a pebble, aimed it at a nearby boulder, reached back, and then launched it at gale force. It rebounded off eight different tree stumps before perforating its target: the trunk of a fallen spottree some distance away, large enough to conceal a body. Something behind it flinched as the rock exploded the rotten bark, and fell away from it in shock. After a moment¡¯s hesitation, the slight figure of Key emerged from his hiding place, looking sheepish.


    ¡°Why did you follow me?¡± she asked.


    He shook. His gaze flickered between her various sizeable armaments. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, eldsister.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not going to hurt you. I just want to know.¡±


    He hesitated. ¡°I couldn¡¯t believe you would really leave. You¡¯re our sign of lightning. You must be.¡±


    ¡°Sign of lightning?¡±


    ¡°Our Lodge read the skins,¡± Key said. ¡°Tusks, storms, and lightning. He said someone might come and help us. Fight the Laruns. Keep us safe.¡±


    ¡°He can see the future?¡±


    ¡°It is told to him,¡± Key said.


    The warrior said nothing. Instead, she slid her sword off her shoulder and threw it on the ground. She sat on a bag of grain and took out a wooden pipe, along with a wad of dark green resin. While she ground it into the pipe, Key dragged a stone over to her beast, huffing and sweating as he hauled it. The air grew noticeably hotter and drier as he drew near the warrior, purging the evening chill from his bones. He sat on the rock, put his arms over his legs, and waited for her to speak.


    A slight upward flick of her eyes was all he had to count as acknowledgement. But she did speak again. ¡°You don¡¯t fear me,¡± she said.


    ¡°No.¡± Realizing it was a lie, he corrected himself. ¡°I fear most others. You less than most.¡±


    ¡°Didn¡¯t your brothers tell you what I am?¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re nice.¡±


    She stopped pressing for a moment. Then, she continued. ¡°I¡¯m a fighter.¡±


    ¡°Who do you fight?¡±


    ¡°Things that need fighting,¡± she said, ¡°and men.¡±


    ¡°Is that what you¡¯re here to do?¡±


    She shook her head. ¡°Your Lodge is feurkun,¡± she said. ¡°The speaking of signs is a false and ineffective craft.¡±


    There was a marked silence before Key eventually said, ¡°I know.¡±


    From a pouch on her belt, the warrior took out a small clay bottle stoppered with cork. She held it up to an image on the tip of the pipe, whereby a bit of white fluid leapt out from the bottom and onto the tiny wooden sign. A warm flame curled out of its bowl, and she put it in her mouth. While she puffed, Key spoke.


    ¡°He was just trying to keep them calm. They were talking about flight. But there can be no flight. The Laruns are too fast, too close. And we are only riverborn. I think he plans to give himself when we choose, tonight.¡±


    The warrior didn¡¯t respond. ¡°Can I know your name?¡± Key asked.


    ¡°We¡¯re not like to meet again. There¡¯s not much sense in exchanging names.¡±


    ¡°Okay.¡±


    The warrior puffed on her pipe and blew a fine smoke that got in his eyes. He coughed. Seeing its effect, she adjusted herself to blow away from him.


    ¡°They¡­¡± Key couldn¡¯t bring himself to say it. His chest tightened up and his eyes watered. He forced them shut and squeezed his legs. ¡°The bodies we burned. One of them is my birthman.¡±


    The warrior stopped mid-puff and took the pipe out of her mouth.


    ¡°They took away his preference, ten colds past,¡± Key continued. ¡°And now they¡¯ve taken him. And now I¡¯m¡­ there¡¯s¡­¡± He stopped. The body had nothing else to say.


    The warrior extinguished her pipe and replaced it in her belt. She picked up her sword, putting one hand on the sheath and another on its handle, and rested her head against the stronghoof. She crossed one leg over another in a position of repose.


    ¡°I just can¡¯t sit by while another one goes.¡± he continued. He looked away. ¡°And¡­ I don¡¯t want to go. But¡­¡± Key reached around his neck.


    ¡°You should return to your shell, Quiet Feet,¡± the warrior responded. ¡°There is comfort in that which is still alive. Find solace in it. Don¡¯t leave behind what¡­¡±


    She sat up. ¡°What are you doing?¡±


    Key had gotten on his knees and held something out toward her. ¡°I have little to give,¡± he said. ¡°I have no city gifts. But there is this.¡±


    In Key¡¯s hands was what appeared to be some manner of necklace. The warrior picked it up to inspect it. Its ornament, which dangled from scarlet cord, was a kind of thin, ribbed stone or eggshell.


    ¡°It belonged to my bata. He said it was very valuable,¡± Key said. ¡°A gift from his man. He always kept it with him. It¡¯s the only precious thing I have.¡±


    She handed it back to him.


    ¡°Please, you¡­ I¡­¡±


    Her hand remained outstretched, and so he took it.


    ¡°I am not to work here,¡± she said. She laid back down. ¡°This is not my assigned territory. I am so commanded.¡±


    Key bowed his head. ¡°Forgive me, eldsister,¡± he said. ¡°T-this was¡­ isn¡¯t your burden to bear.¡± He opened his mouth to say more and then shut it.


    As he began to walk away, she spoke again: ¡°You shouldn¡¯t worry. It¡¯s not like your kind to sacrifice their weakest.¡±


    ¡°My kind, eldsister?¡±


    ¡°Men.¡±


    Key departed. She replaced her sword on her chest and tilted her hat back over her eyes.


    You¡¯re just going to let him leave?! the Bell raged. You are starving!


    Be quiet.


    Breath cannot be holy like this! I will not abide an empty house!


    Just be quiet, won¡¯t you?


    The Bell would not be quiet. It continued to chitter on as the warrior drifted off regardless, slipping into a deep, practiced slumber. But just as it was about to swallow her completely, her eyes snapped open.


    What is it? the Bell asked. The warrior tipped her hat up.


    I¡¯m not sure. I¡­ missed something.


    There is nothing near us that can hurt us.


    The warrior briefly scanned the area. The stronghoof let out a short, drowsy grunt.


    She went back to sleep.


    -


    The draw came after Key returned to the shell. As the Sixbraid men filed out of their homes, toward the house of the River Lodge, and around the Thought Table, the sense of sheer inevitability that the Lodge had stayed from their minds the night before was finally making itself known to them. As that inevitability welded itself to their hatred, many gave the hollow-eyed fireworker, whose position rendered him apart from the draw, a passing, envious glance. And so it was to their surprise that not two, but three straws were revealed to be set aside by the Thought Table.


    ¡°Three,¡± the Lodge rasped. ¡°Three straws?¡± He looked at Key.


    ¡°Yes,¡± Key whispered, his throat already hoarse. ¡°Three.¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°Three straws,¡± Key said, a bit louder.


    ¡°No,¡± the Lodge said. ¡°Absolutely not.¡±


    ¡°I-¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re the fireworker. You are not a part of this.¡±


    ¡°My birthman was-¡±


    ¡°Your birthman was my friend.¡±


    Key did not say anything.


    Young Wall stepped forward. ¡°Key?¡± he asked. Key couldn¡¯t meet his gaze.


    ¡°Let him go,¡± said Sun Wall. ¡°He knows nothing of firework. He does not know its meaning. Vigor¡¯s birthwoman will speak to this.¡±


    Many of the Sixbraids glared at him, although Vigor himself was present and said nothing. Sun Wall withered away and fell silent.


    ¡°Are you blind?¡± Young Wall spat at his elder. ¡°Do you see any other fireworkers here? He¡¯s the only-¡±


    ¡°There are three straws,¡± Wellborn interrupted. She turned to Key. ¡°Peak left us the words. If you¡¯re not strong enough to say them, there are other bodies. Do you want to be born?¡±


    Key wanted to shrink away. ¡°I would stand with you,¡± he said. ¡°Voicewoman.¡±


    ¡°Then let it be so.¡±


    Whispers went through the crowd. There was sadness in the eyes of the Sixbraids, and anger, and fear. The Lodge¡¯s shoulders drooped in defeat, and he clenched his chest.


    Suddenly, Young Wall leapt forward, grabbing Key by the shoulders and shaking him.


    ¡°Gapman,¡± he thundered. ¡°You¡¯re not going anywhere. Do you hear me? You¡¯re not released from this. I don¡¯t permit it.¡±


    Yawn rushed over and pulled him away from Key. As he was dragged outside, he turned his ire on the shell-dwellers. ¡°You¡¯re just going to let him leave? You¡¯re not allowed! Don¡¯t you know?! He¡¯s got a problem! You¡¯re supposed to look out for us! You don¡¯t get to pick the easy one!¡±


    He looked toward Old Wall. ¡°Do something, birthman! For the good of your own, do something!¡±


    Old Wall did not even look at his son as Yawn wrenched him away.


    ¡°I disown you!¡± he cried. ¡°All your sons disown you! You women! You heartless bites!¡±


    The straws were drawn. The Sixbraids walked.


    Wellborn, Key, the Lodge, and the other selectees marched through the night to the Larun encampment, past the river, past the shooters keeping their perimeter, and toward the standard that stood at its front. On their arrival, they found the three additional punishers the Freemen had produced at the head of the camp. Nearby torches threw a light on the poles and ropes that cast long shadows against the Larun tents.


    The sentries¡¯ commander murmured to his men, who surrounded them ¨C chattering in Larun, holding their hands up in demonstration and illustratively emptying their armor and pockets. The Sixbraids followed suit.


    The Freemen passed through their host, checking them for hidden knives, and counting to make sure their number represented at least a quarter of the shell, referring to a set of written rolls that looked older than the Lodge.


    ¡°Healer?¡± their leader asked the Lodge in simple, stilted Goalish. ¡°Words to say?¡± His tone was hushed and tender.


    ¡°The words have been said,¡± the Lodge replied. ¡°All is finished. Do what you have come to do.¡±


    -


    Awaken! shouted the Bell. Pain! Danger! Awaken!


    The warrior leapt to her feet, one hand on her sword¡¯s handle, before she realized she was alone.


    It was night. She had slept for two steps-of-the-sun.


    There¡¯s nothing out there, she said to the Bell. What¡¯s wrong?


    Pain! Danger! The weak thing intends to freeze!


    The warrior massaged her temples in frustration. Even if you weren¡¯t trying to mislead me, she replied, the weak thing is little, and unimportant. And not our problem.


    He is!


    It is not the assigned territory.


    You cut Laruns! We cut Laruns! What does it matter where their bodies fall?


    It is not the assigned territory.


    Fear words! the Bell accused. Rot! Bad-danced drink!


    The warrior put down her sword and walked over to the Sixbraid¡¯s rock, sitting on it, and looking at the shell over the horizon. The stronghoof breathed with a therapeutic weight and regularity in its slumber. Her sweatsight enabled her to see a number of smoke columns emanating from the shell, where the heat danced itself into a series of white spirals that cascaded upward. The sky¡¯s vast host would surely be bathing the night in hues of blue and gold, but in the dark, it all appeared one color.


    How is it you hear him? she asked the Bell. Never have you heard so far, for a thing so small.


    I am joiner and joined! the Bell wailed. I touch all that touches you, and the weak thing is touched!


    I don¡¯t think-


    Too much thinking! Warmth! Embrace! Hold! Do it now! No more time! NO MORE TIME!


    The warrior set her jaw in resolution. The Bell could obviously hear what she had concluded. No! it screamed. No! I will not permit it! I will not-


    The Bell went silent.


    She lurched slightly as a harsh cracking sound came from below her. The stone had broken, shattered into pieces. She stood up and looked at the rubble. Starlight glinted off something underneath.


    How did¡­?


    The warrior kicked over the stone¡¯s remains, and inspected what she found there.


    She sighed in irritation, stuffed the necklace in her pocket, and rubbed her eyes. ¡°What a troublesome little fool,¡± she muttered.


    -


    ¡°Are you afraid?¡± Wellborn asked Key.


    The Sixbraids had been bound, placed in a line up to the punishers, and left to wait as the shell-dwellers were observed by Manor and hung. Their bodies were comported dutifully by Freeman porters to a set of wagons, whose riders prepared to carry them back to their Houses. More shooters stood over them, arrows nocked in the event of attempted revolt or retreat. In the distance, one could just make out a rapid, thunderous jingling, as though someone in the country were clapping together metal plates; it was weak enough that Key chalked it up to his incipient madness.


    Key had been trying his best to hold it together, but through the proceedings he had been falling apart intermittently, so Wellborn¡¯s question came as a shock.


    ¡°Doesn¡¯t it look like that?¡±


    ¡°Well, we have a lot to cry about. It could be something else.¡±


    He ran his restrained arms across his nose. Snot came out. ¡°Yes,¡± he said. ¡°I am afraid.¡±


    ¡°Of what?¡± she asked. ¡°This way is quick; there is little pain in it. Among his wrongs, that was a right Manor spoke.¡±


    ¡°I wish I didn''t have to go,¡± he said. ¡°I''m scared."


    She nodded. ¡°You don''t.¡±


    He looked at her questioningly.


    ¡°Nothing needs to go. Don¡¯t you go making that mistake. Things do, and there¡¯s no wrong in that. But to leave is no good. To be is not a wound. Its time and worker are of no concern. A smile is a smile. Contentment need not pass; the thought that it should is a thing of these.¡± She pointed to the shooters, who ignored her accusing finger.


    ¡°This leaving will happen now,¡± she continued. ¡°It will happen tomorrow, to you and I. But our sons and daughters ¨C they are the builders. One day they will live long. That is how we are charged. That is the Sixbraids¡¯ aim. That is the meaning of firework.¡±


    She was interrupted by the sound of metal crashing through wood. ¡°New set!¡± the Freemen called.


    The jingling had grown louder since she started talking, and it grew further as they approached the rope. He thought about asking Wellborn if she could hear it, but his tongue held itself. He was tired of talking.


    They walked up together. The dead were hauled away and the stools reset by the porters. Key stepped onto his; his knees wobbled perilously on the unsteady platform.


    An armsman placed his hands on Key¡¯s shoulders, steadying him. Then he looped the rope around Key¡¯s neck; he placed it close to the skin, but not so tight that he couldn¡¯t breath.


    As his executioner finished cinching the knot, the jingling, for the first time, came into popular earshot. The shooters, armsmen, and Manor and the Head Man could clearly hear it now, and some looked around in confusion.


    Manor whispered into the ear of the Head Man, who shouted a command in Larun to the shooters overlooking the other Sixbraids from their berm, who shouted in turn to the men assigned to watch the river.


    The noise had slowed, turning to measured, deliberate beats, in the way of footsteps. The wind carried the words of the Freemen back to the punisher, where Manor and the Head Man looked at one another in bewilderment. All strained their heads towards the bridge and squinted their eyes. Key twisted his neck around to see about what it was they had been informed; even through the darkness, he could clearly see that a figure was approaching, marching on their position.


    After it had passed over the river and out of its Western bank, it became quite obvious to Key that the creature was the warrior. It had to be, and there was something strange about her. The rippling tide of hair that once flowed from beneath her cover was gone; it was as though she had not been born with it to begin with. She seemed even taller than she¡¯d been, as great and strong as an Astoran wrestler. She wore the thick metal armor that hung from her beast, stained now a quiet indigo that dissolved her body into the dark. Her eyes had undergone a transformation, shrinking down into a pair of shiny black peas that protruded and flicked about. Their size ¨C that of the socket and ball ¨C dilated when she came in range of the camp¡¯s torchlight, and their sharp blue tint appeared to swirl back into the iris, as though it were water from a drain. Key wondered if he had simply imagined it.


    The interceding Freemen turned to the Head Man, unsure whether to let her pass. He mumbled something to Manor in Larun, who called out in Goalish to the warrior. ¡°You¡¯re not Seen, are you, stranger?¡±


    The warrior called back in Larun herself. ¡°No, brightman. I¡¯m just a Star, wandering your sky.¡±


    The Head Man pushed forward, and called back with his own tongue, which Key found to be high and exceptionally sweet. ¡°You¡¯ve picked a poor spot to wander on.¡±


    ¡°I have business here,¡± the warrior said.


    ¡°So uncover it.¡±


    She raised her left hand and extended a finger at Key, who shrank backward in fear and incomprehension.


    ¡°That one paid me to perform a duty,¡± the warrior said. ¡°A duty I cannot accept. I will return his payment to him now.¡±


    ¡°You can return it after his breath is ended,¡± the Man said. ¡°There is goodness to be done.¡±


    ¡°I will return his payment to him now,¡± the warrior repeated. She raised up her pointing hand to grip the hilt of her instrument, and tore it from its scabbard. It was a blaith, a long single-edged blade, forged from black metal ¨C more of a large skinning-knife than a sword, with a smooth, curved pommel. ¡°Do not hinder me.¡± She kept walking.


    The Head Man barked a command in Larun to the Freeman nearest the warrior. He glided toward her, and moved to grab her by the arm.


    The handless Freeman wandered away, clutching the smooth, angled wound where his bicep used to be. He fell against a wagon and started to make an amazing sound. In the warrior¡¯s second hand, she clutched the short, thick blade stowed at her side - not quite a fighter¡¯s knife, nor as long as her sword. It was hard and heavy and caked with blood. She brandished her weapons and continued to advance on the punisher at an inexorable pace.


    The Head Man didn¡¯t speak again. He raised his hand to the shooters, who let their arrows fly. The Warrior didn¡¯t knock them out of the air with her blaith; she didn¡¯t catch them, or duck beneath them, or use a strange trick to deflect them. The shafts of wallrock struck her, one after the other ¨C the first lodging in the armor above her heart, two in the plate by her lungs, and a fourth that pierced her throat. The force they struck with failed to stagger her. She ripped each free in quick succession and cast them all aside. Other than that which had stained the arrow, the cavernous notch in her neck showed no hint of blood. She continued.


    The Head Man whispered something to Manor and shoved him away before he drew his weapon from his sheath. When he stormed up to The Warrior, his every step rattled Key¡¯s jaw. He drove his point at The Warrior¡¯s sternum; before it met her skin, a single cut split his blade open at the channel. Her blaith passed through it, through the Man¡¯s armor, through one side of his body and out another. He fell, and his body dissolved into two neatly partitioned halves. Blood from both began to leak into the dirt.


    The other Freemen stood still, as though locked into place. Then, without a second thought, they unsheathed their langnivs and rushed into her.


    -


    The Warrior¡¯s thick, bloodstained gauntlets took hold of Key¡¯s wrist. She put his binding to the edge of her knife, pulled, and snapped it free. He gasped in shock as he felt blood rush back to his asphyxiated hands; his skin burned when he touched the marks that the wire had made, and a red handprint had made its way onto his wrist. As though she were afraid he¡¯d fall as he stepped down from the stool, she steadied him roughly, grabbed him by the chest, and hauled him off it. He turned to thank her, but she was already well away, snipping the bonds of the next Goal in line.


    A group of his neighbors were standing around a man who had been set to hang alongside Key. He walked closer to them to see what it was that made him so interesting.


    The ring of people parted. Key saw the body of the Lodge, low on the ground. He didn¡¯t appear to be breathing. One of them had their head to his chest, searching for breath or a heartbeat.


    Key stumbled away. He sat against one of the punishers¡¯ poles and hugged his knees.


    ¡°A dryman,¡± One of the mourners stood up to face The Warrior; it was Old Wall. He jabbed a finger at her and then Key. ¡°And Peak¡¯s thing.¡±


    Whispering began as the rescued Sixbraids gathered around the two of them.


    ¡°She pointed to him! Why would she point to him?¡±


    ¡°¡®Payment.¡¯ That¡¯s their Larun word. Payment. That¡¯s the word she used.¡±


    ¡°They got to talking by the hearthouse! He went right up to her, and the others hid - I saw it!¡±


    ¡°I was on watch when she left. The dryman who saved us. He followed her out there!¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s some bargain between them. Has to be.¡±


    The Warrior said nothing. Key shook, his gaze jumping between the many different sets of eyes swarming over his body.


    The gears turning in Old Wall¡¯s head clicked into place. He seized Key by his upover. ¡°Gapman. Can you hear me, gapman? You did this, yes? You offered to this dryman? You offered to her?¡±


    ¡°I¡­ I¡­¡±


    Old Wall¡¯s fist collided with Key¡¯s jaw. ¡°I¡¯ll cut you apart,¡± he bellowed. He hit him again. ¡°Do you know what happens now? Do you know what happens, gapman? There are a thousand thousand of these heartless forces, hungry for us all. Now they will burn your home. They¡¯ll burn all our homes. They¡¯ll eat us and take our children.¡± He hit him again, drawing blood. ¡°They¡¯ll steal our minds with nightrock. They will bury the river¡¯s banks and seal us away forever.¡±


    He raised his fist again. As he brought it down, a hand shot out from the darkness, stopping it cold.


    The Warrior bent Old Wall¡¯s arm backwards, ripped him off of Key and tossed him back toward the other shell-dwellers, who cushioned his fall.


    After he recovered, he accosted the two of them while his subordinates restrained him. ¡°Hairless thing. Hairless thing! You¡¯re a disaster! You¡¯ve broken mine. You¡¯ve broke my rulers and you¡¯ve broke my own. You have stolen away my boys. We¡¯ll break you, I promise. I promise that.¡±


    The Warrior ignored him. She offered Key, who was still reeling from the blows the Wall had paid him, her cloth. He shook his head, so she put it on him herself, wiping some of the red and grime from his face onto the sign that adorned the fabric.


    Seeing this, Old Wall let out a horrible laugh. ¡°I see now,¡± he snarled. ¡°You¡¯re not a gapman. You¡¯ve departed your own to grab at others. You¡¯ve thrust your way into alliance with disaster. You¡¯re a thruster, just like your birthman before you.¡±


    Neither The Warrior nor Key responded to his insults.


    ¡°You have nothing of us inside you!¡± he screamed.


    At last, Wellborn walked up to Old Wall, pushed away his men, grabbed the back of his neck, and catapulted his skull into her forehead.


    Old Wall fell to the ground, blood gushing from his nose. She wiped off the stain this had made on her chin. ¡°What a loathsome noise,¡± she crowed. ¡°It clogs my ears!¡±


    ¡°But why, eldsister?!¡± Sun Wall asked, rushing over and trying to cradle Old Wall¡¯s head. He flailed and smacked Sun Wall away. ¡°Wouldn¡¯t you of all agree? It was you who spoke of injury in flight!¡±


    ¡°It was I,¡± Wellborn boomed. ¡°Forsaking the river on its own is wrong. And it cannot be stomached. But don''t you have eyes to see this virtuous sign?¡± She pointed at The Warrior. ¡°This fighter has brought in the Thought Ruler¡¯s will. She is the lightning! It¡¯s just like you, isn¡¯t it, Old Rock? Not nearly enough power with you to fight; just enough to accuse and lament the one who fought.¡±


    Old Wall spit blood at her. She spit on him twice in return, and gave him a kick to the stomach. He crawled away, before being helped up by a pair of Walls. They glared at Wellborn. She paid them no mind as she walked over to The Warrior.


    ¡°I can¡¯t stay,¡± The Warrior said. ¡°I¡¯m only still here because of why I said.¡±


    ¡°And why is that? Your words eluded me. Something about¡­ money? Recompense? Responsibility?¡±


    ¡°A work that I could not perform.¡±


    Wellborn pointedly glanced at the field of mangled and brutalized corpses The Warrior had left in her wake.


    ¡°Some work that must¡¯ve been!¡± She snorted. She shook her head, turned to Key and said, ¡°Fragile man, just how is it you impressed this divinity? I must¡¯ve underestimated you.¡±


    Key began to reply, but The Warrior spoke again. ¡°It¡¯s an affair between us. My actions were mine and mine alone.¡±


    ¡°I have no doubt about that.¡±


    ¡°I will not tolerate retaliation.¡±


    Wellborn saw that she was not looking at her, but over her shoulder at the Walls. She smiled wearily. ¡°Don¡¯t worry about that rock. The Lodge¡¯s gone; he¡¯ll be next. Probably won¡¯t need anyone to do it for him, either.¡±


    There was a pause. ¡°He¡¯s right,¡± The Warrior said. ¡°About the Laruns. I can¡¯t stay. When they come back, they''ll finish their work.¡±


    ¡°Then give us your will.¡±


    When she said no more, The Warrior tilted her head.


    ¡°The Ruler has delivered you to our purpose,¡± Wellborn explained. ¡°You have cleared the trial he issued us; the will you speak is his. Will us to follow you, or fight them to our last breath, and it will be as the Ruler charged.¡±


    ¡°I am not your Lodge. I know little of your need.¡±


    ¡°The will you speak is his.¡± Wellborn pointed at her blaith. ¡°When you first raised that drycane to our Lodge¡¯s fortune, you delivered yourself to our Lodge¡¯s obligation. So now we must have your will.¡±


    The Warrior did not speak for a few moments. She turned away from Wellborn and scratched an itch thoughtfully. ¡°The best choice you have is to depart your river,¡± she said. Wellborn shut her eyes and bent her head before opening them again, released of much bravado.


    ¡°From the look of it, it has been leaving for many seasons,¡± The Warrior continued. ¡°There are waters closer to the dawn that flow from the same source. Perhaps your rulers and your virtue await you there.¡±


    Wellborn didn¡¯t reply. She stepped away and looked around at the bodies: the Sixbraids, Manor and the Head Man, and the swarm of massacred Laruns. She peered down at one of the dead Freemen, who The Warrior had skewered through the chest. She reached down to his waist, and removed a knife from his belt.


    Wellborn held it up to the Sixbraids. ¡°What are we?¡± she asked them. ¡°See it for yourself. We are given by the rulers to depart from the rulers. The drymen took wallrock from us; the rulers have brought it back in.¡± She pointed at the horde of dead men. ¡°Look now at what canes can fight! Creators of chains and stone! We have been punished with a gift, and there is virtue in it.¡±


    Wellborn slashed the dagger across her palm; there was shock and outrage from the Sixbraids when she threw her hand at the ground, sending flecks of herself into it. ¡°Let fall the river here,¡± she said, ¡°On this place. Then pick up your gifts, and if you are virtuous, follow me. I walk with the rulers. They are no longer here.¡±


    There was chittering and frightened whispers between the Sixbraids. Many of the older Walls looked glared at Wellborn even harder than before, but a few of the younger ones had clearly been infected with her energy.


    Some of the Sixbraids began to disperse among the bodies, collecting weapons. Wellborn returned to Key and The Warrior, and slipped the dagger into her waist. ¡°Where will you go?¡± she asked The Warrior. ¡°If you desire, you might travel with us a while, taste our hospitality. If the Laruns do learn of your allegiance, you¡¯d be better hidden in a group.¡±


    ¡°No, I¡¯m afraid not,¡± The Warrior said. ¡°I¡¯ll demand no offering from you, but I do need to make up for the time that I¡¯ve lost. All this work, for no returns-¡±


    She was interrupted by a growing pack of shell-dwellers. In addition to scavenging arms, they had begun to pick whatever they could off the mutilated corpses of the Freemen she had butchered. One let out a cry of jubilation as he located and plucked out a purse, filled to bursting with coins. They stumbled up to The Warrior, pressing them into her arms, laying their hands on her armor, and tearfully extolling her in jubilant Goalish.


    Key tried to reach her, and give her thanks for her work, but the group of supplicants was thick and energetic, and his efforts were frustrated. Soon, he watched her vanish from sight.


    He turned his attention back to the remaining inhabitants of the Larun camp; in particular, their most aggrieved participant. Manor was holding the upper half of the Man in his hands, weeping. Key saw that he had taken his helmet off, and that a face was bubbling up from inside. It melted into the tanned visage of a Mekar, one of the desert people, and as it reached a crumbling hand up to brush a tear from Manor¡¯s face, its eyes turned from gold to blue.


    Key could see the mark Manor had been given on the back of his neck ¨C an irritated black welt of ink and heat that could never be undone. A group of men took hold of the Pointer and pulled him off the body. When he began to scream, one of them threw the handle of a scavenged langniv into the back of his head. After two, and then three hits, Manor fell silent. Blood poured from his nose as they dragged him down to the riverbed.


    Slipping his hands into the folds of his upover for warmth, Key felt a strange, cold lump embedded there that he hadn¡¯t noticed before. He was about to draw it out and inspect it before Wellborn addressed him. Besides certain stragglers still in mourning, or picking at the dead, they were alone.


    ¡°Fragile man,¡± Wellborn said. ¡°Why do you keep here?¡±


    ¡°What will be done with him?¡± Key asked.


    She looked out towards Manor, being hauled by the Walls over the bridge into their imminently vacant Houses. ¡°I doubt we will ever see any more of that one. They will bring into him something cut of nightrock.¡±


    She offered him her hand. ¡°It¡¯s time to go home,¡± she said. He took it, and she pulled him to his feet. They set out from the carnage, over the bridge and into the newly forsaken remains of the shell-seat.


    As they passed out of the destroyed camp and through the grasses and past the dried-up river, something itched at the back of Key¡¯s mind. ¡°Why did¡­¡± he began to ask Wellborn, before he stopped.


    ¡°Speak strongly, eldbrother,¡± she said.


    ¡°There¡¯s something¡­¡± Key muttered anxiously. ¡°It can¡¯t¡­¡±


    He ran a sweaty hand through the folds of his upover, found the lump, and wrapped his fingers around it. Before he pulled it from his breast, he knew from its shape and texture that it was the necklace he had left with The Warrior. Wellborn turned to look at it when he stopped walking.


    ¡°That was Peak¡¯s, wasn¡¯t it?¡± she asked, catching a glimpse of it in his palm. ¡°That was the price you offered?¡±


    His body trembled. In his mind¡¯s eye he saw Peak swinging, swallowed by the wind and detached from space. He saw himself let go of his other hand, pluck the knife from Wellborn¡¯s belt, and fix it to pierce his stomach.


    Only Wellborn¡¯s own strength prevented him from bringing down the blade. He saw stars, the knife flying through the air, and felt his nose gushing with blood. He saw that it was not a different part of his mind that had done these things, but the whole of it, a rampant involuntary core. He held onto her, the last person he knew in his life, for the last time. Then, she was gone.

 Story 1 (Part 4 of 4) – The New Wild

    ¡°Come with me, Fragile.¡±


    ¡°Stand up, bata,¡± Key mumbled. ¡°Stand up. Why won¡¯t you stand up?¡±


    Young Wall slapped him. Key woke up with a start, beginning to cry out before a hand slid over his mouth. The darkness of the cramped and musty tent was total and, though he knew his voice and could recognize the smell of his breath creeping down his cheeks and neck, he could hardly make out the features of his accoster. All he could see were his eyes, whose gray color cut through the shadow. In the distance were voices, and the obliviate silence of Goal¡¯s winter backwood. He released a muffled squeal.


    ¡°Do not speak,¡± Young Wall growled. ¡°Look at me, Fragile. You must hear what I say. Wellborn is gone. My birthman and brothers cut her. He¡¯s going to cut you in the morning. You need to get your things and come with me. Nod if you''ve heard me.¡±


    Key blinked three times.


    ¡°Nod. Nod, empty-head!¡±


    Key nodded. The Wall removed his hand.


    Key took his father¡¯s three-string and his tuskleather bag, into which he stuffed Beam¡¯s necklace. He and Young Wall crept through the Goalish shelters, which were flush with activity. In its center, a fire burned, casting the shadows of tall, dancing figures on the cloth of their tents.


    When they crossed into view of the proceedings, they could see the shell-dwellers and what they had done with Wellborn.


    ¡°Come on,¡± Young Wall entreated. ¡°There¡¯s nothing left.¡± Key looked.


    The voicewoman¡¯s body had been beaten until it was black with bruises; there were long cuts on her arms and upper chest, which had been scorched and disfigured. Her belly¡¯s inside was exposed to the open air. A tangled weave of weeds and brambles had been affixed to her head, where her hair had once been, and her throat was slit at its center. Old Wall ranted and raved while his underlings listened in silence and fed her body to the flames. Key wouldn¡¯t remember what he was saying; there was little he could recall, save its vile character, and the venom it spoke to.


    Some other Sixbraids, watching from the periphery or from their tents, mourned. A large contingent of the Shell¡¯s women shouted out in possessed anger, hurled stones, and hammered against the Walls trying to beat and restrain them.


    Beside the voicewoman were three men. Key recognized them as younger Walls. They had been stripped down, and a vertical cut had been made below each man¡¯s waist. The fire put a shine to the blood in this gap.


    A stone struck Old Wall. He fell silent, and his body drifted away into the wild darkness. At that point, Young Wall seized Key by the arm and pulled.


    ¡°Come on!¡± he hissed. Key did.


    Young Wall lead him to a spot just outside their perimeter, where lay a large, belted sack.


    ¡°I couldn¡¯t get a stonehoof so quickly,¡± he said. ¡°This is food, water, some Larun gifts. It¡¯s going to get colder. Wear this.¡± He handed Key a snug, hooded coldover, white as the snow they would come to see.


    Key still wasn¡¯t responding, so Young Wall wrapped it around his shoulders. It was ragged, damp, and a bit mouldy, but it was warm. Then Young Wall picked up the sack and put it on Key¡¯s back, over his three-string. It felt like it weighed more than anything he¡¯d ever touched. He stood around, uncertain what Young Wall wanted him to do. Young Wall pushed him towards the forest.


    ¡°Go on, empty-head. You wanted to leave, so leave.¡±


    Key didn¡¯t move, so he pushed him harder. ¡°Leave,¡± he muttered. ¡°Get out. Please, get out.¡±


    He still failed to obey. Young Wall took him by the shoulders, grabbed his chin and forced him to look up. ¡°Fragile thing. Fragile thing; I know you¡¯re hurting. I don¡¯t even know if there¡¯s anything left to live out in that head of yours. But I can¡¯t lose another brother.¡± He squeezed. ¡°And this ¨C this is what I have to do. To keep with myself. So you have to go.¡±


    He kissed Key on the mouth, hard, desperately, and then gave him one last shove. He fell backwards onto the pack. ¡°Go. Fly! Fly, gapman! If I see you again, I¡¯ll throw you in a fire! I swear I will!¡±


    Key stumbled in the opposite direction, starting into a slow, awkward jog through the trees.


    Young Wall watched his image melt into the darkness, until the only remains of his being were the sounds of snapping and brushing he made as he crashed through the foliage. He waited until these marks too had faded to a rumble ¨C when they could at last no longer be heard, and only he remained.


    -


    Key spent twelve days in solitude, after his world had departed him.


    His people had taken a path through game trails and otherwise-uncharted routes toward Longfur so as to avoid contact with bites or Larun patrols. In spite of his experience with the ways that lie at home, Key had never himself learned anything of these more distant paths, which lead through thick brush that had not been used by the Sixbraids in half a generation. So he walked through the forest, the plains, the streams and brooks, the marsh, not knowing where he was going ¨C only that he would continue going at all, for whatever purpose had been put upon him.


    Apart from the whitewings and long-eared jumpers with whom he had already been acquainted, Key enjoyed six encounters with the other hearts whom he now shared it with. A life¡¯s worth of songs and frightening tales had turned the rounds, in his mind, to a place of strange, hungry forms; his brief excursions there had changed it into something else. Regardless of its true character, he would be forced to discover the things that lay beyond.


    His first encounter was with a group of hearts that passed by him in the night, stopping briefly to groom themselves and lap water from a pond. He could make out little more than their coats of bright red fur, which the wind tousled as each cleaned his neighbor. When one of them yawned, starlight glinted off a set of long teeth. Another saw him holding his hand to his mouth, but the faint yellow tint of its irises soon shifted from his paralyzed frame. After a time, they continued on, letting out triumphant howls as they galloped into the dark.


    His second arrived in the known, familiar shape of a riverwing, which shook off water from its glowing feathers as it dove through the sky. One had perched itself on a low-hanging branch while he was passing through over a thorny hill. Its presence tinted the light grey, and it splashed him with drops of dew. He stroked its back, which it took no notice of. It flew into him, bumping its head. Before it corrected its course and carried on East, its injury flared white.


    Nights were not bearable. Winter had come, and Key could not make fire. He piled up leaves and other bedding as best he could, but he was astounded that he didn¡¯t freeze in the cold. It wasn¡¯t cloudy, and so there was still some solace to be found the sunlight that remained.


    He quickly lost the provisions Young Wall had stolen for him. Three days on, in his third encounter, an enormous heart wandered into his camp, just as he had begun to nibble away at a piece of dried meat. Key scrambled up a tree to escape its interest. Left the option of abandoning his instrument or his supplies to the creature¡¯s ravaging, he took the three-string. It spent the rest of the night tearing the pack open, running its snout over its contents, devouring them, and falling asleep on the spot. The morning light came soon thereafter, enabling Key to gain a better idea of his oppressor; in its appeased state, the fluffy, lumbering mammal appeared nearly placid, although its rampage the night before had taught him different. He scurried down the tree and decided to bolt for the golden mists of dawn, rather than risk extracting his rations¡¯ remains from its grip.


    He was hungry the next day. Though he had no weapons, he considered hunting; in his fourth encounter, he happened upon a few round, flightless wings nesting in a bush. He reached out his hand at one, but it scattered and they rushed squawking into the green.


    Key could feel a pit forming in his stomach. He ate some berries to fill the gap and then spat them up, losing water. He tried drinking from a creek, which worked for a little while, until he spat that up too.


    In his fifth encounter, Key came upon a wounded heart, a roothead, its leg snagged in a trap left by some hunter who had already departed the rounds. In spite of his feverish stupor, and of its anguished, wailing cries, Key''s gaze was drawn to the pair of wooden branches that rose from behind its ears, and to its eyes round and black. He became caught by its smooth coat of fur, which was colored a pure, radiant shade of white. It was smaller than Key, and although sheer pain had made its movements jumbled and erratic, he was sure it could not resist any violence he might bring upon it. In desperation, he picked up a rock and looked at its soft, fragile skull. His gut roiled and churned and demanded he throw.


    Using his littlecane, he cut the roothead free. It limped away in terror the second it could, leaving patches of red on the leaves and grasses it scrambled through. He lamented and blubbered into the night for his weakness, his stomach and his skull tearing at him all the while. Then he picked up and moved on.


    Key began to see and hear things he knew couldn¡¯t be there. These were voices of his old peers, the crackling of fire, and his father¡¯s humming. He felt that he was losing the strength to continue forward, and that he had no destination. Key wished often that he had never been born, and he knew that he would see Peak at the end of that long-awaited and implicit journey, but he still feared to take it. To really consider it, as he could, brought out no end of shivering and tears.


    The last thing he imagined, leaned up against a lone tree in a dry and frosted glade, was The Warrior, standing over him. She was by far the most vivid of all his visions, cloaked in black and the white-gold twilight of the twelfth day.


    ¡°Are you a shadow?¡± he whispered.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡±


    ¡°Why did you return my gift?¡± he asked. His voice was an icy spark; he had to pull it out from his throat and stuff it past his frozen lips. ¡°I so wanted you to have it.¡±


    ¡°I didn¡¯t want it,¡± she said.


    The world grew darker.


    ¡°I admire you very much,¡± Key told her. Perhaps he was thinking it now. ¡°You¡¯re a very fine heart. I¡¯m scared.¡±


    The weight on his eyes had become too great. He felt that when he closed them, he might melt into the world and become more silent ¨C fall into the ground, and become as quiet and content as an unwild place.


    Before he slept, the world brought into him one final thought. It was one that would color and sculpt the first leg of his journey. It would carry Key through the dim, sightless pass that awaited him.


    It was nice to be held.


    -


    He had the dreams: of home, food, and the dead.


    ¡°Everything¡¯s going to be okay,¡± Peak said. ¡°Beam is safe. He¡¯ll be home tonight.¡±


    He hugged him and cried tears of joy. He cried so hard his mind tumbled and vibrated and his chest pounded like a charging bull. That moment lasted for years. He was terribly happy, until he tried to look for them again; he looked and looked and looked, and at last he realized they had already become, and had always been, absent.


    A brightness started searing itself into him. He wondered if this was the path to the easy place, beneath the rulers¡¯ house, and that he might find his father there. He wondered, and hoped, until he heard a voice.


    ¡°Ih, look at that. Eyes are opening.¡± It was a man speaking, and his words were Goalish, but they weren¡¯t Peak¡¯s. He became nauseous. ¡°Eyes are opening. Careful now. You ought not to speak.¡±


    His eyes stretched themselves open, and they were assaulted by a mixture of hues and scents that gathered into the wrinkled face of his mysterious caretaker. He felt weighed down by something soft, heavy, and warm. ¡°Where am I?¡± he asked.


    ¡°You ought not to speak,¡± the man repeated, ¡°but a speaking place is where you are, yonbrother. That is enough.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not- I wasn¡¯t¡­¡± He held up a hand to his head. ¡°Who are you?¡±


    ¡°My name is Will,¡± he said. ¡°And I know many things.¡±


    ¡°Will¡± was dressed in the fixtures of a Goalish roundsman, a knower of hearts. His voice was soft and chalky, as though he hadn¡¯t used it in many years. The single-room shelter in which he had awoken was assembled from chopped wooden columns and insulated by the skin of hearts. A line of dead jumpers, trapped or hunted, hung from the wall. A minty scent rose from the corner of the room, where a mash of leaves was being steeped in a bowl over a small flickering candle. The smell pleased him, even though he did not yet known its meaning or source.


    Will himself was a smooth-skinned Goal of middle-age, old enough for wisps of silver to be running through his thick black hair. There were no braids in it. He wore a leather upover, along with a dense fur that wrapped around his shoulders. On his hip was a knife, fashioned from a large tooth.


    ¡°How did I get here?¡± he asked.


    ¡°Please, be silent. You have suffered the cold troubles, emptiness of food, and emptiness of water. Before I removed them, your insides were joined by many hearts.¡± Will knelt down and raised a dish of water to his lips. In his drowsy stupor, he ground his teeth and reared his head. ¡°I have done what I can, but your body is weak,¡± Will said. ¡°If you do not drink, you will go to the rulers.¡±


    He reluctantly took a sip. After the first, his thirst became more apparent. He took hold of the bowl and swallowed hungrily.


    While he hydrated, Will told him his story. ¡°You¡¯ve come out of a place from which few return. A young dryman left you in my care,¡± Will said. ¡°I know not from where she came or how she found me. And I know many things.¡±


    In the middle of drinking, his brain switched on, and he choked on the water. After recovering, he asked, ¡°A dryman?¡±


    ¡°A dryman.¡±


    ¡°Did she lead a stronghoof? Was she wounded in any way?¡±


    ¡°And she waited until I was sure you would survive,¡± Will said. ¡°She seemed very hard of heart. But perhaps not. Otherwise, why bring you here?¡±


    ¡°Did she say where she was going?¡±


    ¡°And she left when the sun was low. The sun is high now; do you know this heart?¡±


    He set down the bowl and attempted to get his bearings. He struggled to free himself of the massive black fur that he had been tucked into. The world was still spinning on its axis, and his body was telling him all sorts of nasty things. He balanced himself onto his feet, shuffled Young Wall¡¯s cloak onto his shoulders, and looped the three-string onto his back.


    ¡°Please, eldman Will, tell me,¡± he said. ¡°Which way did she go?¡±


    Will¡¯s laugh was a high-pitched, whiny braying. ¡°Eyes open a moment. He does not even know where he is; still, he asks for the way out.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, eldman,¡± he sputtered. ¡°I did not mean to injure. If you wish-¡±


    ¡°I wish only for your health, yonbrother. But her heading is cold, and complicated. It will easily be lost. Are you certain you wish to go?¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± he said. ¡°If I can, I would like to tell her something.¡±


    Will brought him over to a fold in the cell and held it open, revealing the sprawl of shrub and sky. He pointed up, to the river of daylight stars. ¡°See you that sign? It sits in the place she reaches for.¡± He pointed another way. ¡°That way is to the road of the Laruns. I advise you seek her with that thing, but should you lose your way, she let slip to me her own path. Once you have arrived there ¨C it is cut wide, and will carry over hills ¨C follow the sign again. These will bring you the one you seek.¡±


    ¡°Thank you!¡± he cried, instantly driving out the door, toward the direction Will had indicated.


    ¡°Yonbrother,¡± Will said. He turned back.


    ¡°If you don¡¯t find this heart,¡± he continued. ¡°Come back to this place before dark. I don¡¯t know what anyone is doing all alone, anyway. The riversland is full of hearts. The riversland is not a place of waiting. It¡¯s full of ones who need to be alone. You can be alone here, too. I¡¯ve no concern with that. Can you hear this?¡±


    He hesitated. ¡°Yes,¡± he said, ¡°I think so.¡±


    ¡°Perhaps you do,¡± Will said. He gave a slight smile.


    A wing sang from the trees, telling the morning¡¯s arrival. They turned to where it sat, high in a thicktree.


    If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    ¡°Thank you eldbrother,¡± he said. ¡°I only live due to your kindness. I will find something I can give you. I promise it.¡±


    ¡°Life is a search for such things.¡± Will replied. ¡°Go to your path, little Sixbraid. Submit to its command. I will be waiting.¡±


    He bowed to Will, turned his back on the shelter, and returned to the forest. As he departed, his host¡¯s roundseat dissolved into the icy Goalish mist.


    -


    He thrust his way into the rounds with conviction, impelled toward The Warrior and her road.


    He did his best to adhere to the way Will had pointed, but he was still unfamiliar with the woods, and soon feared he was becoming lost. He had long since departed his own position in the country, and had been walked by sleep West, into one fabulously new. It was a section of new shapes, new lights in the sky, and new hearts that watched him from the dark. He followed The Warrior¡¯s star, drowsy and disoriented from his ordeal, but empowered by a newfound and immediate purpose.


    For three steps of the sun, he pressed his concern. His sixth encounter began.


    Light retreated from the woods. He was confused, because it hadn¡¯t been so long since he had departed the roundsman''s territory, and yet the world was declining into shadow and silence. The wings chirping in their nests hushed and disappeared. The crawlers and parasites shied away and skittered back into their ancient, cryptic burrows. Even his footsteps, trodding on the frozen forest bed, became muted, fluttered echoes.


    He could see the star yet. It had become clearer in shape, with the light of the sun wiped from the sky. He considered heeding the roundsman''s advice for a moment; the dark had been so warm and pleasant. He had no doubt that he would be able to find it if he returned.


    A new whim tugged him back toward the rounds. He had become blessed like other people. He reached into his bag, wrapped his fingers around his father''s necklace, breathed, and then pressed forward. His heart was in his throat, and his mind half-asleep.


    The trees of the rounds began to dry away all around him. Their trunks and sprawling roots shrank into the soil and gave way to a blind plain, untouched by starlight; the only illumination came from a single, distant, dead sapling; beneath its branches stood a large figure on two feet.


    His sight shook and ran at the grass of the plain. Its kind waved in the wind like shellplants, tall, long, and stemmed, and possessed of two appendages on either side. They were ash-colored and faceless. Their thick, braided hair was blustered by the current as they were. They did not speak or say their names. Without voices, they could tell no stories. But they blew in the wind, and the wind had a voice.


    ¡°You have funny hands,¡± it said. ¡°Funny.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ll be well, I promise,¡± it said.


    ¡°You¡¯re not released from this.¡±


    Something wet and sticky covered his hands. When he brought them up to his face, he found them covered in a mixture of red and green fluid.


    ¡°You have nothing of us inside you,¡± the Sixbraids said.


    The sapling¡¯s light and its keeper bade him forth. He sank nearer to the ground with each step. His mind was barely conscious, and it did little to recognize the imprint of this heart which accuse and which pillaged and which took back the body. A feeling of cold and broken bone. It was something that held night.


    He arrived under the tree, which was dead and young. The night spoke to him in a number of garbled, almost-familiar voices that spat out a slurry of words and syllables. He sank to his knees, breathing too quickly.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± he whispered.


    As he regret, and called out to his elders in shame, it visited him. It dropped over and around the pain and hatred and he was embraced, and all of it was passed away. Its work settled in quiet and sureness where there was none, and then offered it freely forever.


    It grabbed hold of him then, wrapping its tendrils around his arms and chest. He was losing strength. The creature was no phantom; it was not a shadow cast by his dilapidated mind. It was a thing of the world, and its arms were mighty, constricting his skin and bones and turning his face blue.


    He struck out one time by screeching. His declaration was ignored by the oppressor, and tears poured down his cheeks. He gasped and sputtered for air. Sights of the air and of light and of people were summoned up for him, and there was no fire left in his body. His eyelids slid down and his grip loosened as he succumbed to the pressure, until it changed.


    A length of metal emerged in the space between him and the creature, stopping just as its tip was about to scratch his belly. The creature looked down into its chest, to find that the blade protruded from its core. The wound turned a dull shade of white.


    Explosion! He was blinded. The sun¡¯s brilliance flooded everything, and the shadow cast by the beast was stripped away. It shrieked as it dropped him to the ground, turning its attention to its assailant.


    He clutched at his windpipe as the air returned to his lungs. He could hear the loud clamor of battle, hissing and grunting as the two powers struck at each other from every direction. Their crash and tumult threw up such a cloud of dust that he could see little but the flailing of black appendages, the creature¡¯s speech pleading and accusing its opponent as she fell upon it.


    As suddenly as their earthshaking contest had begun, it halted. An earsplitting tone rang out from where their battle was joined, driving daggers into his skull and wreaking havoc, so he clapped his hands to his head.


    The nightholder¡¯s agonizing high note was accompanied by three flashes of light, sending golden rays shooting out through the smoke. The first flash revealed two silhouettes, locked together in the dust. The second and third revealed only one.


    The noise faded, and the fog of debris began to lift. He uncovered his ears, and she emerged.


    -


    The Warrior whipped her blaith downward, casting a long, thin ray of fluid into the dirt. When it hit the ground, the material solidified, and began to dissolve. She pressed down with her boot on the remains of her opponent, which flattened out and shifted into the white substance that comprised it. She stuck her sword in the ground and, kneeling down, laid one of the corked bottles she kept hooked to her person next to it; the nightholder¡¯s sludge eagerly leapt inside. After it had finished collecting, she stoppered it up and slid it into a sleeve on her coat.


    He watched all the while, too shocked to do much other than gawk. A black fog had swept over his mind, leaving him senseless and disordered. It was only when The Warrior spoke at last that his faculties returned.


    ¡°I found you alone,¡± she said. She wiped filth from the blade with her cloth. ¡°Why did you leave the others?¡±


    He glanced off to the side. ¡°I¡­ I preferred not to burden them." He coughed twice. ¡°Their journey is l-long. There are many they must feed.¡±


    She didn''t release her gaze. She slipped the rag into her pocket and sank her weapon back into its sheath. He tiptoed forward.


    "How..." He gulped. "How did you find me?"


    "I did not mean to. You went my way. I have means of keeping apprised."


    ¡°Ih.¡± He stuttered. ¡°That was because... I wanted- to give you something.¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    He removed the necklace from his bag. For a moment, he didn¡¯t offer it to her, merely holding it in his fist as he conceived of a way to propose it. But she could see it.


    The Warrior only spoke when he started to raise the necklace. ¡°I made forty detours to return that price,¡± she exhaled. ¡°Why would you return with it?¡±


    He almost felt too cowed to speak. ¡°I believed you might have dropped it.¡±


    ¡°It was placed down. I carry no weight I do not want.¡±


    ¡°Weight?¡±


    The Warrior considered her words. ¡°I had a wiser,¡± she said. ¡°Birthwoman. I had a lawsman; birthman. I have nothing of them now. It is a nothing one can feel. It is a nothing I have felt.¡±


    She spit into the grass. ¡°And I won¡¯t have yours.¡±


    ¡°I never meant to- I just- I wanted¡­¡±


    ¡°You wanted to leave,¡± she said, ¡°and pass off some piece of yourself to a stranger. It won¡¯t be me.¡±


    He shook his head. ¡°No, that was not its cause.¡±


    ¡°Really?¡±


    ¡°It can¡¯t be.¡±


    ¡°What, then?¡±


    He said nothing. She began to walk away. ¡°Return to your country, Quiet Feet,¡± she said. ¡°There is still a place for you there.¡±


    ¡°Its cause-!¡± he cried. She stopped.


    ¡°Its cause¡­ its cause, is that¡­ I know you,¡± he said. ¡°I do not know how, but I do.¡±


    The Warrior turned back toward him and crossed her arms.


    ¡°I mean, I¡­ or¡­ ih, my mouth is twisted!¡± He stamped his foot on the ground and forced himself to look straight up at her. ¡°I know that I don¡¯t know anyone. I thought that I could never speak in a heart''s way; that there was nothing in the riversland that knew my words but the rulers. But I felt as though you did. And I was glad! I had not spoken with anyone before that day. I know that I might do it again.¡± He shook the necklace in his hand. "I know that I need not feel so only."


    His eyes closed and tears ran down his face. His hands fell to his sides into clenched fists. ¡°I know no other way to give back for it. It is a best kind of gift. I have no other way. I beg you to let me do it, eldsister. I promise, I will beg of you no further. But I-¡±


    A shock went through his body. A great gloved hand took hold of his own, and its rough digits curled open his brittle, shivering fingers. They lifted the necklace from his palm and closed it back up.


    He let out a breath and opened his eyes. He bowed low to her.


    ¡°Thank you, eldsister!¡± he whispered. ¡°Thank you!¡±


    The Warrior said nothing. She looked at the shell in her hand, as though she didn¡¯t understand its purpose, before she tucked it into her belt.


    The hiding itched at him, directing his mind and pushing him hard. It had grown stronger and louder than he had ever feared possible. He turned away from her; the cold had burned his wet cheeks a bright shade of red. The path back seemed far, and terribly treacherous. The night to come would be cold. Even now, swallowed whole by the rounds, he sensed that he would find his way back to the roundsman, but he did not know if he would ever find his way out. He rubbed his arm.


    ¡°I¡­ I hope that the rulers follow you, eldsister,¡± he mumbled. He began to walk. ¡°I hope you will be safe.¡±


    ¡°I have a long journey too.¡±


    He turned back around.


    ¡°Very long. A far way to travel. In the shell, you had hands for hoofed hearts.¡±


    His eyes widened and he nodded.


    ¡°Have you hands for any other thing?¡±


    He racked his brain, searching for something he could do.


    ¡°W-wallrock!¡± he said. He scrambled for his birthman¡¯s knife, pulled it from his bag, and made a hasty rubbing motion on its edge. ¡°You¡¯ve wallrock. I¡¯ve had- I¡¯ve worked with-¡±


    ¡°Good, that¡¯s useful,¡± she said. She picked up The Stronghoof¡¯s lead. ¡°You can come with us, if you want. We can find you a place to stay in the next shell over.¡± She urged it on, and it began to lumber forward once more with a lick of his ears.


    Without hesitating, his charred throat whispered, ¡°I do.¡± He coughed, and cried out, ¡°I do! Please let me follow you, eldsister!¡±


    ¡°Come now, then,¡± she said, looking forward. ¡°We have a long way to go before dark.¡±


    The haze that had been obscuring his vision was finally dissolved. The world seemed extra bright, and filled up with excited energy. The hiding was thrust out, and followed behind him as he ran towards The Warrior¡¯s retreating form.


    -


    ¡°You need not call me eldsister,¡± The Warrior said.


    After a long day of marching through the Goalish country, He and The Warrior had stopped under a rocky cliff at the top of a long path West. The sun had begun to fall below the horizon, scattering green-orange light on three distant mountains whose white, icy slopes formed a harsh contrast to the landscape established by the sunset beneath them. His gaze was fixed on the tallest peak until The Warrior spoke.


    ¡°I know what it means,¡± she continued. ¡°But for the moment, we are travelling companions. Neither of us is above the other.¡±


    ¡°Then¡­¡± he asked, ¡°¡­can I know your name, now?¡±


    ¡°I have no name to know.¡±


    ¡°Didn¡¯t your creators give you one?¡±


    ¡°My creators are gone. That was long ago; I can¡¯t remember what they called me.¡±


    ¡°Ih.¡± He cast his eyes downward, and seemed to come upon a realization. ¡°Then, how should I know you?¡±


    The Warrior laid back on her arms and looked up. The sun had declined low enough that one could see the dimmer, farther stars beginning to emerge from and spin about the blue night sky.


    ¡°There was a disaster. Long before your time, or mine. Those I follow used to be a part of a large, armed gathering; it split in half.¡±


    ¡°A gathering?¡±


    ¡°A Family. Now, the Lotaslager. I am their servant. Some joined them, or others, but many of its armsmen wanted nowhere to go. They were finished with commands and marching. Some stayed together; others went into the seatless rounds. Your own, in that time, called those of us who did ¡®stars that wander.¡¯¡± She looked back at him. ¡°Those in Goal remember the words, so when others ask what I am, that¡¯s what I say. You can call me something like that, if you want.¡±


    His mouth had gone characteristically agape. ¡°What about ¡®Wander?¡¯¡± he asked. She shrugged. ¡°Wander,¡± he said, definitively.


    They kept quiet for a while. The sun slipped below the horizon. Night fell, and it became too dark for him to see, and too cold for Wander¡¯s ambient temperature to warm the two of them. So he gathered a pile of wood and kindling and she removed a glaucous metallic mould from one of her bags, along with one of her bottles. Then, she swirled her finger in the jar she¡¯d filled that morning, placed the mould onto the pile, and spread the substance over its surface. It joined to the mould like an opposite pole, running through its carefully chipped and shaped contours before it became fully engulfed. It glowed, and the wood erupted into flame.


    As he crouched and rubbed his palms over the heat, he realized he hadn¡¯t introduced himself. ¡°My name is¡­¡± He hesitated. Then he found his mouth say, ¡°Fragile.¡±


    He put a hand to his chest. ¡°My name is Fragile.¡±


    Wander sat up and gave him one of her looks, and these gave little except her eyes and their push. He began to shrink under it until she released her gaze. ¡°I know,¡± she said.


    ¡°You do?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s what the woman called you. The one at the punishers.¡±


    ¡°Wellborn,¡± Fragile said. ¡°She was called Wellborn.¡±


    ¡°Was?¡±


    His jaw clenched. The memory of her flashed in his mind, and he fell silent. ¡°I know what they did,¡± Wander said. ¡°You don¡¯t have to speak.¡±


    ¡°How can you know a thing like that?¡±


    Wander contemplated the fire. ¡°Tell me of your commands,¡± she said.


    ¡°Commands?¡±


    ¡°Things they had you do,¡± she said. ¡°What¡¯d make you correct.¡±


    Fragile thought. ¡°We had ways,¡± he said at last. ¡°Ways for our rulers, that they would keep with us.¡± He looked out into the night. ¡°But I do not know if they are with us now.¡±


    ¡°A command is its commander,¡± she said. ¡°Could she speak?¡±


    ¡°Wellborn?¡±


    Wander nodded. ¡°Sometimes,¡± he said.


    ¡°But not as she pleased.¡±


    ¡°No.¡±


    Wander said nothing more. Fragile looked into the fire. ¡°Is it wrong?¡± he asked. ¡°To carry them with me?


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°The ways that hurt her.¡±


    ¡°Men need hurting,¡± she said. ¡°So they need ways. You are no exception.¡±


    With that, she lowered her hat, and laid against the stronghoof. ¡°We¡¯re running out of dark,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯m going to sleep. You should do the same.¡± Soon enough she had dozed off, grasped by a sudden and noiseless slumber.


    Fragile hugged his three-string. A branch snapped somewhere in the dark. A gust of wind blew over the plains, making the trees creak, pushing leaves into their space, and bending the fire sideways. It chilled him to the bone.


    He snuggled closer to the embers and fell on his side. When he shut his eyes, rest refused him. A new darkness had arrived, a face-hour. He could still see them. He had been given a vision of empty spaces, and they cycled through his mind¡¯s eye. He bit his teeth and clawed at the dirt, shrinking into himself, away from his nerves and gut, which he did not want to hurt.


    A warm current whistled in from the night and passed into him. It became a quiet and well-studied part of his mind. With time, it gave rise to a song.


    Listen to me, it said.


    Listen to me, brave one.


    Here grows a strength of eighty thousand¡­


    Here grows mind a thousand strong.


    Here grows hands that lift the river¡­


    Here grows words that storm the shore.


    Here births such a mortal kindness¡­


    A good none can ignore.


    It is fine to look upon him¡­


    And bring him forth once more¡­


    He began to hum along to the tune as it lulled him away. His chest rose and fell, and he chattered in his sleep.


    The Bell couldn¡¯t smile, but she twisted another gust of wind to tousle the little Sixbraid¡¯s hair. She swirled through mind and world and laid herself in a place that lie between them.


    See you now, joyous one? That heart of yours ¨C how grand it is! she whispered to Wander. I will find you a many for it. A people of your own. Such is my promise. Such is my labor for us both.


    -


    The first morning crept inside his head, and it did what mornings do. He was released from the easy place, and sapped of the strength to get anywhere else. Memories became incomplete and mingled with unconscious fabrication. As the mind built itself anew, he would be Key again - for a little while longer.


    He opened his eyes to Wander¡¯s face.


    ¡°It¡¯s time,¡± she said.


    She stuck a skin of water on his chest. ¡°We have to get moving. Drink that, if you can. We¡¯ll be on our legs until dark.¡±


    Key rubbed his eyes and sat up. ¡°How far is the path?¡±


    ¡°I suppose not far,¡± Wander replied. ¡°If your Lodge¡¯s papers were correct.¡±


    She picked up the stronghoof¡¯s lead and clicked her tongue, urging him onto his feet and towards the grasses.


    Key got to his knees. The clouds had settled in the night. The sun was coming up, and its world was being rebuilt. He put his hands on his three-string, relishing its familiar texture. Some part of him knew where the tree it had been cut from lay, and would always need to lay there still. It basked in the old that he kept with him, that would always remain in that now and forever imaginary place.


    ¡°Quiet Feet,¡± Wander said.


    Key looked toward her.


    ¡°Are you ready to go?¡± She jerked her hand in the direction of the open way.


    He wasn¡¯t sure. Key looked back, over the reach of his birth country, one final time. He suddenly felt as though his heart would explode.


    The day was new! Its light, such profound novelty! Shaking apart as it had been for centuries, the entire world, on its knees since his emergence from its scars and systems, had flown apart at last. It had shattered at the seams and all its promises and antiquous loathings were far past dissolved. He did not know that it still existed, or that to it would he ever return.


    Key had always known that its end would come. But he had never imagined that the end would not tie itself to him. Rather than vanish when the world had, he still remained. He still tasted breath from his chest. There it was, the smoke of him, rising yet into the smoke of the sky, and whatever lay beyond.


    There were ends elsewhere to be tied to. Key looked back at Wander, and down at his hands, which shook with such excitement.


    He threw the three-string over his shoulder and stood up.


    ¡°I¡¯m ready,¡± Fragile said.

 Story 2 - The Wind Bringer

    It seems only days ago that Fragile the Sixbraid was living a quiet life in his people¡¯s village, in the ancient and storied land named Goal. Without provocation, a group of soldiers from a hate-filled empire entered into it, killing his friends, his family, and all the keepers of their tradition. A Wandering Star, a lone warrior from a distant land, arrived just in time to save Fragile and the Sixbraids from complete annihilation. Finding pleasure in each other¡¯s company, these two, a stronghoof, and an enigmatic presence named Bell now plumb the countryside for work and residence. Wander helps the people of Goal, and searches out a new home for her companion; in secret, she pursues her long-standing vendetta against a blind and destructive enemy.


    -


    Freemen could walk the woods at night. Eight of them, eight brysts on them, which itched, clung tight, and made sweat that turned to ice. The gray of their covering became a beacon that loved starlight and stood over Goal¡¯s pines, rocks, trees, and brush. Bigeyes walked among them, his friends. They were chasing something divine.


    Hundredbreaks, an especially large Freeman with a lazy eye, clapped his hands to his face. ¡°This is a hard cold,¡± he said. ¡°A harder cold than this country has ever offered me. You sidacif men, who are so deprived of its right shape, and who have never went across the lines to our true kind-home, would not know cold if it had wrapped its hand around your knife. Keep this feeling, Joyslip. Keep it in, Songsinger, and Snowfield, and all you young ones. It is most like the thing we need."


    ¡°On he goes,¡± mocked Snowfield, a shooter. ¡°On and on. Larunkat¡¯s shape, Larunkat¡¯s trees, Larunkat¡¯s cold, Larunkat¡¯s knife. We¡¯ve been informed of your passage, friend. There is no more delight to be had in it.¡±


    ¡°If no other sees fit to pass the time, I will do it myself,¡± Hundredbreaks replied. ¡°Although it is sidacif cold, it is a cold night. A lonely night, without friends. And with silent friends, I might as well be lonely.¡±


    ¡°It is good for a warning,¡± Joyslip said. ¡°It is so quiet, and we can all hear the other. A good night for a warning.¡±


    ¡°A good night,¡± Hundredbreaks agreed. ¡°How about you, Songsinger?¡± Any songs you could sing? And what of you, Bigeyes?¡±


    Bigeyes glared at them. ¡°Keep it quiet. We have come here to break apart the wind, not push it by chatter.¡±


    Hundredbreaks shook his head. ¡°You are a bitter drink, friend,¡± he said. ¡°And you are too unhappy. There are few of these left for you or I; why waste them frowning?¡±


    "I work for the group," Bigeyes replied. "A night where I could not but frown is better than an end I smiled for myself."


    ¡°Huh!¡± Hundredbreaks emphatically brushed his shoulder, as though he were pushing off dust. ¡°You ignore him, Joyslip. You tell us. Tell us about a windy thing. The kind we are like to find out here.¡±


    The young, twiggish little armsman lit up at his inclusion. ¡°I was told many warnings,¡± he whispered, ¡°of the Cave Caller, of the Two-Headed Twentytithe, and of the Weeping Woman.¡±


    ¡°The Weeping Woman. I know this warning,¡± Songsinger said. ¡°Speak that one, Joyslip.¡±


    ¡°Yes, tell us, Joyslip.¡±


    ¡°Tell us of the Weeping Woman.¡±


    Joyslip took a deep breath. Then, he began.


    ¡°Once, there was a woman who wept by a river¡­ a small river, that ran through trees. She had met a great burden, by wind and struggle. I think she was intruded on, or was it a lost child?¡± He shook his head. ¡°I cannot remember. But it was too much for her to bear.¡±


    "A man wandering through the wild found her. He asked her for her grief, that he could share in it. She told him then, and they had happiness for many seasons."


    Snowfield laughed. ¡°A high thing, he is. You have passed over days, Joyslip. They must have lingered together more than that.¡±


    "I only know the way it was told."


    Joyslip cleared his throat and continued, his confidence growing as his audience was enthralled by the yarn.


    "For their happiness, the woman grew frail and became cold. The man had the woman''s sadness, and now a sadness of his own. So he returned to the river where they met, and he wept there every day."


    ¡°A nettingwoman came wandering through the same place. She asked the man why he cried, that she might conclude it. So he told her, and they embraced one another.¡±


    ¡°This embrace incensed the woman¡¯s I. Her I reached out a finger from the Ice-Covered Chamber, and put it through the nettingwoman''s body. She was struck by the same injury as her predecessor, and was cold also.¡±


    ¡°The man mourned, but he could no longer weep. He had become stronger than they, and he took confidence in his friends.¡±


    ¡°The crying continued. If we were to come across a creek, or a rushing gully, we might still hear it there as you might have then. This sound is the Weeping Woman, and she no longer knows why she cries.¡±


    As Joyslip ended the tale, they came across a large aperture in the trees. It was comprised of torn up roots and saplings. The hole it had produced in the woods¡¯ facade was round, and taller than their lot stacked together.


    ¡°Prodda.¡± The Freeman spoke anticipations in their special tongue. Their voices did not breach anger or retreat into fear. ¡°Prodda Bring air Prodda-prodda Bring air. Prodda bring cold prodda-prodda bring cold. Prodda-prodda...¡±


    Bigeyes turned to the group and adopted the diction and measured timbre of their war-speech. ¡°All. All Hear All-all Count air All-all Hear me All-all Out niv.¡±


    Their heads spun in unison as a great shadow lurched through the woods, clawing past branches and turning massive thicktrees at the roots. At the sudden noise, the Freemen ducked their heads and fled to the nearest cover, which took the form of a rocky outcropping that concealed them from the sky.


    ¡°That Wind,¡± Songsinger hissed. He blinked twice at it. ¡°That Wind!¡±


    ¡°You Quiet,¡± Bigeyes replied.


    Bigeyes peeked out from behind their hiding place to survey the area. Hundredbreaks touched him on the shoulder. ¡°Show ways.¡±


    Bigeyes put his finger to Hundredbreaks'' eye and directed it out, toward another set of rocks just past the creature¡¯s shadow. ¡°Pinch.¡±


    ¡°Wind Not Man Wind-wind Dark push Here-here safe.¡± Hundredbreaks tapped his foot on the ground.


    Bigeyes grabbed Hundredbreaks¡¯ arm and squeezed. ¡°First say.¡±


    ¡°First say Eye pick.¡±


    Bigeyes briefly assessed the lumbering creature. ¡°Pinch.¡±


    Hundredbreaks nodded. He whistled softly to alert their friends, whose eyes fell on him.


    ¡°Group four,¡± Hundredbreaks said.


    All six of the Freemen made to move forward, and then backward. He held out four fingers and closed his fist, and the selected Freemen advanced.


    He beckoned them forward and directed them toward their goal. Then the whole of them gathered into a circle.


    ¡°All Move All-all Push,¡± Bigeyes whispered. ¡°Save no breath Prodda-Prodda sees.¡±


    Joyslip, Snowfield, Songsinger, and the other Freemen nodded. They assembled behind the rock, awaiting Hundredbreaks'' word.


    He threw up his hand. The shooters let their arrows fly. As their volley pounded away at the beast, the Freemen rushed out from their cover.


    A mouth opened up and breathed, sending out gusts of stink that drew back their brysts, blew back their hair and passed over the rock and onto the ones who hid there. The advance was stopped cold. Slowly, the other Freemen emerged, and stood in full view of the beast.


    Bigeyes rose up last.


    ¡°I can hear Wen,¡± Hundredbreaks said, his passions and words elongating. ¡°My sweet Wen. Bigeyes.¡±


    Bigeyes stared at the creature¡¯s mouth. Tears came to his eyes.


    The beast unhinged its jaw and lowered it to the ground.


    ¡°Do you hear it?¡± Hundredbreaks asked. ¡°Wen is in there. She cannot breath.¡±


    ¡°I can hear prodda,¡± Snowfield whispered. ¡°Our prodda. The higher one.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s terrible,¡± Joyslip said. ¡°It¡¯s the kontor. Why is it him? That cannot be right.¡±


    ¡°Your Wen is three counts breathless,¡± Bigeyes said. ¡°Our prodda is fifty counts breathless.¡±


    ¡°Can¡¯t you hear it, Bigeyes?¡± Joyslip asked. ¡°It cannot be anything but him!¡±


    ¡°Come away from there,¡± Bigeyes insisted. ¡°Come away from there.¡±


    Hundredbreaks threw down his weapons and began to undress. ¡°She needs me. I''m going.¡±


    Bigeyes grabbed him as he removed his bryst. Hundredbreaks threw him off, and he collapsed into the dirt holding the cloak. The other Freemen began to follow suit.


    Driven to desperation, he seized Joyslip, the lightest and youngest of them, and wrestled him back from the darkness. The other Freemen remained, removing their clothes, and walking into it.


    ¡°The kontor!¡± Joyslip cried. ¡°I must get to him!¡± He blubbered and roared as Bigeyes forced him away and lifted him up by the waist.


    He turned back one last time and called upon divine office. ¡°Prodda," he said, "Get them back from it.¡±


    But prodda did not. The last of the Freemen walked into the jaws of the beast.


    ¡°Kontor,¡± Joyslip wept. ¡°Our good kontor¡­ we cannot leave him¡­¡±


    ¡°There is nothing,¡± Bigeyes insisted. "There is nothing there."


    Joyslip would not hear him. He wept as his captor ran.


    <hr>


    <h4 align="center"> </h4>


    </a>Once upon a time¡­


    </a>In the Goalish rounds.


    Wander, Fragile, and the stronghoof vanished from their camp, plodding through the billowing white fog that encompassed the rounds. They reached the top of one last hill, Fragile huffing and puffing all the way, and the mist cleared. They laid their eyes on a new and impressive sight.


    A sprawling black road ¨C unpaved, overgrown, and otherwise untended ¨C wrapped around and over the hills to the South, and in spite of its dishevelment, appeared nevertheless serviceable to their purpose. ¡°What splendid heart is this?¡± Fragile gasped. ¡°A braid that wraps and twists about the whole riversland!¡±


    ¡°It is not a heart, but man¡¯s work,¡± Wander replied. Noticing the sweat on his brow, she handed him her cloth. He wiped the filth, instead, on the sleeve of his coldover. ¡°A contributor to the Ash road, where I must go. This should do well to carry us down to the way of its source.¡±


    So they quit the rounds. They slid down from the hill (in Fragile¡¯s case, tumbled) and pressed on South. Wander stuck a clump of green resin in her mouth and chewed on it. Their animal¡¯s hooves clip-clopped in time with the clinking and clanking of her metal boots. Fragile shortly became infatuated with a strange material which was spread over their new pathway; he picked up a handful, squeezed it, licked it, and swirled a finger around inside.


    ¡°What are you doing?¡± Wander asked.


    ¡°Does this have a name? It has a very interesting smell.¡±


    ¡°It is rock,¡± she said. ¡°Helpful rock. The Laruns carry it up from deep underground. Have you no experience with this place?¡±


    Fragile dropped the rubble, letting it scatter in the wind. ¡°When I was young, maybe,¡± he said. ¡°We had to hide for a while, during the Response.¡±


    ¡°The Response? The Goalish Violence?¡±


    He nodded. ¡°How many of these have you seen?¡± he asked.


    ¡°A few.¡± Her eyes never deviated from the trail in front of her. ¡°But I am new to this work. There are old ones who have travelled every road.¡±


    ¡°They are paths?¡±


    ¡°Yes, they are paths.¡±


    ¡°Where do they lead?¡± He stretched his hand out to the horizon. ¡°Could one go anyplace he pleased if he were to follow them?¡±


    ¡°Many places, in Goal and Josmee and Harmony,¡± she said. ¡°But everything and everywhere is not Goal, or Josmee or Harmony, as great as they may seem.¡±


    Wander and Fragile marched through the day. They guided the stronghoof into a frozen bog that had risen up through their path, and he could not walk. So Wander cut her armor loose and handed it to Fragile, who buckled from its weight and dropped it in the mud. Then she lifted the stronghoof up onto her shoulders and the four of them carried on, plowing deep into the chilly interior with their boots and hoofskin shoes.


    As they trudged through the moist woodland filth, Wander¡¯s shoulders began to ache from the beast¡¯s weight. She temporarily set him down and extracted a bottle of the nightholder¡¯s leavings from her vest. On uncorking it and shoving it at a group of hesigns on her lower back, the material leapt into them, causing them to glow, and relief to wash through her upper body.


    ¡°What is that?¡± Fragile wheezed.


    ¡°Residue,¡± Wander replied. She holstered the bottle and shouldered again the stronghoof, which brayed scathing complaint. ¡°Or ¡®remains.¡¯ It has many uses. It¡¯s the skin of the thing that attacked you.¡±


    ¡°The nightholder?¡±


    ¡°Is that what you call it?¡±


    ¡°I heard tell of such hearts,¡± he said. ¡°When I was a boy. My birthman said that of all those that inhabit the forest ¨C the trees, the winged things, and the walking ones ¨C the nightholder was the strongest.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not of the forest. The Family knows its like by many names: malignant things, againstfollow, brightplague. My birthwoman called them something else. In your words, it would sound something like ¡®dry-crafted animals.¡¯¡±


    Fragile nodded, his brow raised as she rattled off the different names of the forest heart. As she talked, his eyes wandered around the scars and dilapidation she had collected from the Freemen and the nightholder. In particular, he kept returning to a large, long blotch on her neck where she had been shot.


    ¡°What is it?¡± she asked him.


    ¡°Nothing,¡± he said quickly, his eyes snapping back to the road. He struggled with her armor. ¡°Well, actually, I mean ¨C the drymen. They cut you all over.¡±


    ¡°Yes?¡±


    ¡°I could¡­ we could find a fireworker.¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t need to worry about that,¡± she said. She itched at the wrinkling mound in her throat. ¡°The marks will stay, but their work is no more.¡±


    ¡°Already?¡±


    ¡°I had to rest for a few days, after you left, but yes.¡±


    ¡°A few days?¡± he whispered. He shook his head in disbelief. ¡°You must have many concealed strengths.¡±


    ¡°More than I¡¯d like,¡± she said. ¡°Less than I need.¡±


    ¡°How did you grow so strong?¡±


    ¡°Work,¡± Wander said. She kicked aside a stone. ¡°Pain, when work would not suffice.¡±


    Fragile looked to the side as though he were reluctant to say something. Finally, he blurted out, ¡°Are you really riverborn?¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s that?¡± Wander asked.


    ¡°Ih...¡± Fragile searched for a way to explain. ¡°You know, of the river, and its banks. A¡­ a heart.¡± He tugged at his cheek to illustrate.


    ¡°A breather?¡±


    ¡°¡®Breather¡¯?¡± Fragile did his best to move his tongue around the unfamiliar syllables. It sounded like a Larun word.


    Wander nodded. Fragile gave a look of confusion.


    ¡°You don¡¯t know ¡®breather?¡¯¡±


    Fragile shook his head. ¡°What is it?¡±


    ¡°A heart,¡± Wander said. ¡°Sort of. It¡¯s a body, like yours or mine, one that thinks and goes away. Yes, I am one. But there¡¯s not much that can hurt me.¡±


    ¡°It is surely a great thing for the riversland,¡± Fragile remarked.


    ¡°What is?¡±


    ¡°Your strength.¡±


    ¡°How do you imagine this?¡±


    Fragile looked at her in surprise. ¡°In such a short time,¡± he said, ¡°you have made amazing works of living and responding. You have destroyed men with weapons. You have a spectacular push!¡±


    ¡°Yes, I hit well,¡± Wander said. ¡°It is my best practiced craft. But I do not do such a thing for the riversland. It is for my commands and commanders alone, and that is all.¡±


    ¡°What kind of a strength is in the riversland?¡± he asked. ¡°In the other places. The ones past the rounds, and towards and after the Larun shells. Are there many like you?¡±


    ¡°Like me, how?¡±


    ¡°Hearts who push as you do. For good things.¡±


    ¡°Every man pushes for himself,¡± Wander replied. ¡°This I have seen. To most men, his own hunger, the calm of his bedplace, and the life of his sons are the first and working good of his riversland. You can surely attest to this.¡±


    Fragile did not. Instead he scrunched up his brow and thought hard about it. ¡°If it is so,¡± he said, ¡°is it only women who will push for others?¡±


    Wander cocked her head at him. ¡°That is a peculiar thing to suppose,¡± she said. ¡°You have not known much of my kind.¡±


    ¡°I have only known one.¡±


    ¡°What of your birthwoman?¡±


    ¡°I had birthmen,¡± Fragile said. ¡°Although that was uncommon, Sixbraids do not put men and women together. Not before they move house. The Lodge said that this pleased the rulers.¡±


    ¡°The separation?¡±


    Fragile nodded. Wander chewed. ¡°Not many women push in the way I do,¡± she said. ¡°Even in Shaminkat. Where I was born.¡±


    ¡°With canes?¡±


    ¡°With canes.¡±


    Fragile looked at her huge, heavy swords. ¡°But they do push?¡±


    ¡°Everyone pushes. There is no other way to be,¡± she said. ¡°When I was a girl, I was taught a woman¡¯s power lay in work, speaking, and arms. But this was strange, and it brought no friendship to the Onnpeople.¡±


    ¡°The Onn-?¡± Fragile mouthed the curious word, struggling with its own syllables, which were unlike his and the Laruns¡¯ too. Wander did not seem to take any notice.


    They rose up and out of the sludge. Fragile hitched the armor back to the stronghoof, and they pressed forward.


    ¡°Aren¡¯t you curious where we¡¯re going?¡± she asked.


    Fragile looked up. ¡°Hm?¡±


    ¡°Where I¡¯m taking you,¡± she said. ¡°What I intend.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯re going away from the sun. Toward the nearest safe place.¡±


    ¡°¡­yes.¡±


    There was a pause. ¡°What more is there to it?¡± he asked.


    Wander took a moment to respond. ¡°You are quick to follow others,¡± she said.


    ¡°I have been.¡±


    ¡°You shouldn¡¯t be.¡±


    ¡°Why not?¡±


    ¡°There are those who will fail. Those who will lead you wrong. They do it all the time.¡±


    ¡°You have not done it to me yet.¡±


    She grew quiet for a time. She cracked her neck.


    ¡°I¡¯m going to the New Wild,¡± she said. ¡°We¡¯re already moving toward its edge. I¡¯m going to find somewhere for you inside, in the quiet and unbothered parts, before I must travel to the deeper ones.¡±


    A combination of dread and excitement collected in Fragile¡¯s stomach. ¡°Why are you going there?¡±


    ¡°For gifts,¡± Wander said. ¡°There is need for trackers, trappers, and drycanes. All my talents.¡±


    Fragile paused. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t mind to see the Wild. Everybody had something to say about it, where I¡¯m from. They said it was somewhere that hearts had escaped the drymen. Somebody said that it¡­ ¡®embraced each,¡¯ and ¡®did not submit.¡¯ It sounded like a wonderful shape.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s dangerous,¡± Wander said. ¡°There are kinds there that can cut me. It¡¯s no place for delicate things.¡±


    ¡°What about Herdetopp?¡±


    ¡°Herdetopp is safe,¡± she said. ¡°The safest you can get, farther inside. But this is only because the Laruns still care to make it so. I doubt you would prefer their company.¡±


    Fragile¡¯s curiosity was piqued. ¡°Why do you believe this?¡±


    She looked down at him, perplexed. ¡°Because they destroyed your family.¡±


    ¡°Who?¡±


    ¡°The Laruns,¡± Wander said. ¡°The heartless ones.¡±


    ¡°I saw you pierce those men.¡±


    ¡°I did.¡±


    A murky gulf had wedged itself between them.


    Wander spat her chew into the bushes. ¡°It doesn¡¯t matter, anyway. We shall be parted long before I reach that point.¡±


    -


    The road became thin, and ran up a high, rocky path. Rays of gold were flung about their file as the sun rose over the country, refracted by dew and a few remaining swathes of fog. As midday approached, Fragile began to make out an enclosed hilltop fortification, out of which were rising thin tails of smoke.


    ¡°What kind is that block, which is meeting our horizon?¡± Fragile asked.


    ¡°If we¡¯re in the right place, it should be a Couth,¡± Wander replied. ¡°Laruns stock food and drink there, space for travellers, arms for bite-catching.¡±


    ¡°Is it safe?¡±


    ¡°It should be.¡±


    As they approached, they could see ahead that it was a Larun outpost as she had predicted; their divine signal, and several others, flew from a flagpole on the inside. A wooden stakewall surrounded it, as did a few armed sentries, but it appeared primarily domestic: the gate was open, and a panoplic assortment of traders, small families, peddlers, and seasonal workers could be seen milling about the interior, alongside their carts, cargo and animals. Next to the Couth¡¯s doors was a flat mound of dark soil, cleared of shrubs and debris. One was large ¨C big enough for the foundations of a house, and unadorned. Its sibling was much smaller, and the marks that had shifted it, cut it open, and closed it up were fresh. A cluster of langnivs had been planted into its surface.


    ¡°Take this,¡± Wander said, handing him the stronghoof¡¯s lead. ¡°I¡¯m going to say some things. I might not appear to be myself.¡± Fragile nodded. She rolled up her sleeves, revealing her hesigns.


    They approached the Couth¡¯s gate, which was guarded by a trio of Freeman. The smallest of them sat on a large rock, clutching an empty bryst like those that he and his fellows wore. When he saw them approaching, he folded it up, placed it on the stone, and walked up to them. His smile and hearty gait reeked of pathological jollity.


    ¡°How fare you, friends?¡± he asked in Larun.


    ¡°Very fine, brightman,¡± Wander said.


    The Freeman¡¯s eyes widened when he saw her tattoos. ¡°Why, you¡¯re Seen, aren¡¯t you?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve been so accused.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ve a face?¡± he asked excitedly. ¡°A face I could see? To be sure and certain?¡±


    Wander handed him her cloth. The Freeman laughed and revelled in its image. He held it up to the sun. When he was satisfied with what he saw, he cried out,¡°Marvelous! That¡¯s marvelous!¡± He turned to the other guards. ¡°Prodda delivers to us, friends! Prodda delivers!¡±


    Wander cleared her throat. He folded his hands and bowed his head in a gesture of supplication.


    ¡°I neglect you, Seenblade. It is an indignity.¡± He gave her back her rag. ¡°Where you two headed from?¡±


    ¡°From the Greats, brightman,¡± Wander said.


    ¡°No slipping? I hope? Not a slip?¡±


    ¡°A slip or two.¡±


    ¡°This is Bigeyes,¡± he said, gesturing to himself. ¡°Little Bigeyes. I want to grab your names for my commander. I¡¯ve no mind to try and write for a few travellers. But he¡¯ll have your love to know. You¡¯ve come at such a time, Seenblade. Such a time.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m Hill-Measure,¡± Wander said. ¡°This is Camp, my given helper. We are headed on to Herdetopp.¡±


    ¡°That tongue¡¯s twisting fine, Seenblade,¡± the Freeman said. ¡°You must be from a far place.¡±


    Wander threw her head back and laughed - a bright, mirthous thing, that rang between Fragile¡¯s ears like a pair of bells. ¡°Most places far from here!¡±


    ¡°Real thinking,¡± he said, a note of bitterness creeping into his voice. ¡°No Firstpoint visiting here.¡±


    It was at that moment that Fragile noted the bloodied dishevelment that afflicted the Freemen of the Couth. Rather than travelling in groups of twos or threes, as they had in the Houses, many wandered without company, living solitary within the Couth¡¯s palisade.


    ¡°Where sits your commander?¡± Wander asked.


    ¡°The kontor is inside,¡± Bigeyes said. ¡°He is confined to our house. His wounds are great, and must be tended by our majam.¡± He shook his head. ¡°We are in a slip here, Seenblade. We are in such a slip. But you don¡¯t need to worry about that now. I¡¯ll hitch up your beast, and you can head on in. It¡¯s almost time to eat.¡±


    She handed him the stronghoof¡¯s lead. ¡°You¡¯re kind.¡±


    ¡°It is my labor,¡± he replied. ¡°You enjoy it. You all are lucky! No snow on the ground yet. Soon that shine will cover up our place and hide away all things, and you will know its size.¡± Bigeyes pointed upward. ¡°Take pleasure in Goalland. Don¡¯t let the Wild take you!¡±


    As they exited the Freeman¡¯s company, Wander¡¯s unaffected demeanor resumed. Her eyes grew sharp and wary, her gait measured, and her posture stiff and immovable.


    The Couth was inhabited by two large residences on opposite sides of its courtyard, and between them was a water well. Both buildings were plain and hacked together from wood; one was painted with the divine signal on its wall and was populated by Freemen, who lounged about its entrance. The other was long and thin and painted by no signals. From the inside, Fragile knew scents that made his stomach bubble with excitement.


    ¡°What is the reason of that place?¡± Fragile asked.


    ¡°Its kind is named ¡®salon,¡¯¡± Wander replied. ¡°We can sleep here.¡±


    They walked through its doors. The Couth¡¯s motley denizens lounged about smoking, playing table games, and drinking sweet milk. A bearded man stood behind a long trencher, wiping it down with a rag, and stocking shelves filled with honey and liquor.


    Wander handed Fragile her coinpurse, newly stuffed to its gills with Larun gold, and pointed out the man to him. ¡°I¡¯m meeting somebody here. Ask the salonier if we can have some spots for the night. I¡¯ll find you when I¡¯m done.¡±


    Fragile retreated to the Salonier and entered into dialogue with him. She surveyed the rest of the room¡¯s inhabitants until she found her man: a diminutive character in a coat and a wide-brimmed black hat. He had put up his legs on a game-table, and read from a sheaf of papers bound by leather. It flaunted a degree of opulence that belied his seedy, pauperish figure.


    She went over to his table, pulled out a chair, and sat down. Without looking up, the Hood asked her, somewhat judgementally, in Rootcliff, ¡°Why are you late?¡±


    ¡°An incident. I was entered into an exchange. I removed myself from it.¡±


    He flipped a page. ¡°It does not look like the exchange agreed to that.¡±


    She suppressed the urge to itch her throat. ¡°It will fix.¡±


    ¡°The next one may not.¡± He waved his finger at a spot behind her. ¡°What¡¯s tied you to this animal?¡±


    In the distance, Wander heard something break, followed by mutters of irritation.


    ¡°I broke that,¡± Fragile¡¯s lilting voice echoed. ¡°Sorry. I broke it.¡±


    ¡°Is it a problem?¡± she asked the Hood.


    He shrugged. ¡°You haven¡¯t been in the territory for very long. You already have one cannotfollow. What use have you for a second?¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s not a cannotfollow. I¡¯m letting him work for me. We will find a place for him to live.¡±


    ¡°You take your Taking very seriously,¡± the Hood said. ¡°Perhaps you should become a meiam, put off your shoes, and give yourself to the poorest of everywhere.¡±


    ¡°He¡¯ll labor for his keep.¡±


    The Hood scoffed. ¡°I don¡¯t care. Your appetites are your concern.¡± He sniffed, and looked up at her. ¡°Try to keep him above your waist.¡±


    Wander didn¡¯t respond with her mouth or her face. Instead, she waited expectantly.


    The Hood uncrossed his legs, put down his reading, and slipped a roll of thin fabric out of his satchel. He passed it to her underneath the table, and she slipped it into her belt.


    ¡°Now you have the ways," he said. "You should have them for a day, and then you should be able to write it all again, even if it is burned up. A next spot is close, ten binyaks in the way of sidedark. A nothing place. Enough for the two of you to refresh, if you¡¯ve met trouble. But better to go on.¡±


    ¡°And then?¡±


    ¡°You continue.¡± He looked back at his reading. ¡°One turn, yes? Remain low to the ground. Clean the Wild, and forward all divine will. Spread word of He and his Family.¡± He waved a hand at her in dismissal. ¡°I have nothing else for you. Go away, little star. Go to your cannotfollow, if that is what you like.¡±


    -


    While Wander met with her friend, Fragile hurried over to the bearded man she had pointed out to him. After he apologized profusely for knocking over a jar of honey, the Salonier brought out a clay pitcher full of coins. ¡°How many?¡± he asked in deep, rumbling Goalish.


    ¡°There are two of us, eldman,¡± Fragile replied.


    ¡°How long?¡±


    ¡°The night, I think.¡±


    ¡°Five,¡± he said. Fragile put out five Lofte.


    ¡°Each,¡± the Salonier clarified. He brought out another five. The Salonier scooped them into the pitcher.


    ¡°Take those by the wall,¡± the Salonier said, gesturing to a pair of beds wedged next to the far door. ¡°I¡¯ll put something out at sunset. Don¡¯t leave after dark.¡±


    ¡°What happens then?¡±


    ¡°The Laruns. They¡¯re chasing some heart that¡¯s been coming around at night, disappearing their walkers and watchers. They¡¯re armed and they¡¯ve become angry.¡±


    ¡°What kind of heart?¡±


    The Salonier shrugged. ¡°A bigger one than them.¡±


    Before he could inquire further, Wander had finished her business and was coming over.


    ¡°Will you be okay if we sleep on the road?¡± she asked Fragile.


    ¡°O-of course,¡± he stuttered. ¡°But there¡¯s a-¡±


    ¡°I heard. It shouldn¡¯t be a problem.¡±


    ¡°Should I get your gifts back?¡±


    ¡°No,¡± she said, turning. ¡°I just want to- get going...¡±


    The door to the salon rattled shut. The table where The Hood had sat was empty.


    ¡°Wander?¡± Fragile asked.


    ¡°Forget what I said,¡± Wander replied. She slid her sword off her back. ¡°We can stay.¡±


    -


    Clouds crept over the decrepit late-autumn sun, and the first snow of winter began to fall on outer Goal.


    Fragile and Wander occupied two side-by-side wooden bunks in the salon''s fireroom, where its residents drank, recreated, conversated, and slept. They spent the remains of the day in silence and moderate isolation, after the acute and lingering togetherness offered by the road. Wander cleaned her weapons. Fragile watched ¨C first the traders and walkers who inhabited the Couth, but mostly the Freemen, who displayed a more somber character than even those who had brought disaster on his home. He watched their commander, Bigeyes; the Freeman looked out wistfully over the horizon, gripping tight his empty bryst.


    After night had fallen and the snow had already made a white blanket of the country, the Salonier struck up a fire in the hearth of his salon. It filled the complex up with warmth, and with smoke that dissipated too slowly through its outlets. He prepared an extravagant supper for the Couth¡¯s residents: eight loaves of bread, a platter of dried meat, a large pot of stew, and twelve pitchers of watered-down, fermented grain ¨C the only ingredient which the Salon kept in true abundance.


    Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    The first words Fragile and Wander shared again did not come until the other eaters had gathered. The wind howled and crashed against the doors. While ice crept up and over the gates of the Couth and the dense shutters of its salon, Wander seated herself in the dining area. Fragile covertly seated himself next to her.


    Without greeting him, she said, ¡°An odd time to eat.¡±


    ¡°Huh?¡±


    ¡°The Laruns take later meals in the afternoon,¡± she explained. ¡°Those in the light of Josmee, who call themselves Rootcliff people, do it at three times. The Sotu of Shamarkat, six times, all between dawn and dusk. Even the Makars eat but once, at the sun¡¯s highest point. Most don¡¯t eat at night.¡±


    ¡°I think the one who cooked keeps our ways,¡± Fragile replied. ¡°I suppose he insists on it. It¡¯s not respectful to eat while the sun can see.¡±


    Wander took hold of a pitcher and drained it in a single swig, chugging until it was dry. She shook it out over the table with a frown.


    Fragile looked at her in awe. He took hold of another pitcher, took a small sip, and exploded into a fit of coughing.


    ¡°You¡¯re a little young for this kind of water,¡± Wander said.


    He tilted his head. ¡°How old are you?¡±


    ¡°I have seen nineteen colds.¡±


    "And I eighteen," Fragile replied. He pouted. "Have I been denied some power?"


    ¡°It¡¯s different. My body can accommodate dangerous drinks.¡± To wit, she took a large gulp of the receptacle Fragile had drank from, soured at the taste, and slammed it down in contempt. ¡°A full barrel of this couldn¡¯t tilt me, even if I wanted that.¡±


    A hearty laugh carried to them from across the room. A large group of Freemen had retired from their duties and begun a drinking game.


    ¡°Pour it out, friends!¡± one cried. ¡°A cup for friend Snowfield, cold; a drop for friend Rootson, colder still; a drop for friend Youngbeard, older and still colder!¡±


    They cheered. Many of the Freemen were sobbing as they did it. One of them had already collapsed and was being dragged out by his comrades into the snow. Wander and Fragile watched them leave, and Bigeyes enter, holding a cup full of grain liquor.


    The great Freeman, who had to duck to fit wholly under the salon¡¯s narrow roof, stumbled over to the fire. He raised up his hands.


    ¡°Friends,¡± Bigeyes said loudly. ¡°Friends. I¡¯ll be speaking now. If you want, come speak with me.¡±


    The clamor ended. Even the loopiest and most distraught Freemen grew quiet. All gathered around the fire and turned toward Bigeyes.


    ¡°We are, at present, afflicted by a dreaded and windbringing influence. Prodda has willed it that our strength be tested this way. It feels hard,¡± Bigeyes said, his voice breaking, ¡°when one has been deprived of happy kinship, and of all prior company.¡±


    His cup shook as he carried it to and from his lips, sloshing liquid over the side. He pressed his mouth shut as though he had swallowed fire. ¡°We are a kind of man. This is our condition. Our gift is helping, even if it should bring pain and problems on us. But we are born to be strong, too. Isn¡¯t that a terrible thing? One cannot be strong when he is cold and underground.¡±


    The Freemen broke out in befuddled whispers. ¡°I put out those words, friend Bigeyes,¡± one of the attendants said. ¡°I acknowledge that your count is twice mine. Still, I cannot but feel ¨C there can be a power in our becoming cold.¡±


    ¡°What power?¡± another cried out. ¡°Although we need it, cold makes a cold thing. It cannot move.¡±


    A small, blue-eyed Freeman spoke up. ¡°We know this is wrong. We know what has moved us.¡±


    The Freeman crowd did not twist and jump about the way Fragile had seen other crowds do it. Although he didn¡¯t speak their language, there was a mournful, contemplative energy to their grain-fuelled gathering, which drowned out the cold and wind lapping at their doors.


    Bigeyes spoke again. ¡°Joyslip knows it,¡± he said. ¡°Every night, when I lay down my head ¨C I try to find them, the ones we have lost, in my eye. I can see nothing there; I seek that it be given to me. There is something missing, which I lack the hands for. I do not know its name.¡±


    He wept. He was consoled by his friends.


    A smile emerged on his wet, contorted face. He pointed out towards Wander. ¡°But it has never mattered what we have hands for. We are provided for. Hands are delivered to us. Such hands would surely push off any problem by which we were afflicted. Isn¡¯t it so, Seenblade? Isn¡¯t it so?¡±


    ¡°It is so, brightman,¡± Wander replied. ¡°And how I regret that they are not mine. What a happy chase awaits you men!¡±


    Bigeyes¡¯ face fell, returning to the despairing pout it had acquired before, but the other Freemen were otherwise unbothered by her apathy. He mumbled angrily to himself as his companions escorted him from the room. Those attendant to the sermon dispersed to where they had been, and the room soon regained its prior gaiety.


    ¡°What did he want?¡± Fragile asked.


    ¡°To be safe.¡±


    ¡°They make a miserable sight. How do you imagine they¡¯ve been brought to such a state?¡±


    ¡°A fight,¡± Wander suggested. She poured herself a cup of liquor. ¡°This whole place smells of some injuring power.¡±


    Fragile looked at her. "It does not injure you."


    "And why would it?"


    "These are sad, and in some trouble." He itched his chin. "I have thought sadness may be like a heart. Like a heart you''d find among leaves. It eats at hearts, and then gives itself to others. How have you managed to push it off so easily?"


    "Sadness is not a heart," Wander said. "And if there are any who need it, it is the type you see here." She spread her arm at to the miserable pack of lang-niv-men. ¡°They have handed it to many.¡±


    ¡°How did you get us past them in the first place?¡± Fragile asked.


    She gestured to the circular hesigns running up and down her arms. ¡°The words,¡± Wander replied. ¡°They have friends who wear them too. I¡¯ve allowed them to suppose I am one such friend. How much Sprak can you hear?¡±


    ¡°¡®Sprak?¡¯ Is that how they speak?¡±


    Wander nodded. Fragile shook his head. ¡°Not much. A few sayings.¡±


    ¡°What did you hear me say to them?¡±


    Fragile strained as he tried to think. ¡°I think I heard¡­ ¡®helper¡¯ - ¡®house¡¯ - ¡®commander.¡¯¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ll hear them again,¡± she said. ¡°One needs to know Sprak for most places. It marked most places they walked. I thought they had marked Goal, as well.¡±


    ¡°They did.¡±


    They were silent for a while.


    ¡°Do you know any other ways to speak?¡± Fragile asked.


    Wander nodded again, scarfing down another loaf of bread and wiping her mouth on her arm. ¡°Makar. That¡¯s a Sidedark way. I can speak to Rootcliffs. I can speak to Shamars. And I can speak your words, but I can¡¯t read them.¡±


    Fragile looked at her in amazement. ¡°How did you come to learn these so quickly?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve been a study since my sixth cold. There wasn¡¯t much else I had to do for fun.¡± She leaned back in her chair. ¡°Fight others. Run or climb. Read. Lie down.¡±


    ¡°Where did you do this?¡±


    ¡°Makarland,¡± Wander said. ¡°That¡¯s where our Defense Building is.¡±


    ¡°Is it a far place?¡±


    ¡°Parts of it are on the To-Light lake. Other parts are in a lake of sand. It¡¯s about as far as you can get, that way.¡±


    ¡°Travellers told us about Makarland,¡± Fragile said in hushed tones. ¡°They say that is where they hit the big lodge of the drymen. They say that is where the anguish of the riversland began.¡±


    Wander nodded. ¡°Their ¡®prodda.¡¯ But that was many seasons ago. And he was no divine, or he would still be alive.¡±


    ¡°Who do you offer to, Wander?¡±


    She didn¡¯t answer for a moment. ¡°Who do you?¡±


    ¡°We were made by the Ruler in the Soil, but the Lodge said that he has been silent since the riversland¡¯s beginning. So we were taught to speak with the Ruler in the River. They said that long ago, Athad-Kathr came and ejected him and put his words on us. All the way-keeping hearts spent many seasons fighting in his name, awaiting his return.¡± He looked down. ¡°They say there are other secret rulers, like the one who rules sun, and the one who rules fire. But these are not as good or as kind as the Ruler in the River, who is loud, a safekeeper, and learned of all things. They are more interested in themselves, and do not adore hearts as he does. These others may be greater than him still ¨C but, even with all of their strength and glory, he stood for us when no others would.¡± His jaw dropped in awe as he realized what he¡¯d said.


    ¡°Perhaps you are the Ruler in the River!¡± he cried, giddy with enlightenment. ¡°If only I had recognized it sooner!¡±


    ¡°I have no interest in ruling anything,¡± she said. ¡°Need I rule the water to aid it, or it me?¡±


    This idea tempered Fragile¡¯s sudden ecstasy. He scratched his head. ¡°I don¡¯t know. I suppose not.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s a mighty call,¡± she said. ¡°My wiser told me one like it, once. But I remember so little of it and of her. And I¡¯ve met nobody yet who carries it with me.¡±


    ¡°¡®Wiser¡¯?¡± Fragile asked.


    She realized that she had spoken in Shamin.


    ¡°You¡¯ve said that word before,¡± he continued. ¡°Is it how you call a birthwoman?¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± she said. ¡°My birthwoman.¡±


    Fragile furrowed his brow. ¡°Why don¡¯t you tell me of your rulers? If I learn their names, I can carry them too.¡±


    Wander shook her head. ¡°Their call ¨C what was once done ¨C it is a secret item. I could only tell it to one or two. If I were to give it out, I must have known them for many seasons.¡±


    Fragile leaned forward. His leg began to bounce with excitement. ¡°Are there any less holy things you know? Ones whose telling will not hurt?¡±


    Wander took a bite of bread and chewed thoughtfully. ¡°There is one,¡± she started, ¡°of Onn ¨C the first breather. She had a son named Vol. He was taller than the highest darktree, and stronger than its maker. He forged the first stuf ¨C the first drycane. He-¡±


    ¡°How did he do that?¡± Fragile asked.


    ¡°With fire, from a bolt of lightning. I¡¯m getting to that.¡±


    ¡°Was it a very long drycane?¡±


    She looked at him silently.


    ¡°Sorry,¡± he said. He folded his hands, and tried to still himself as best he could.


    ¡°Vol was challenged by a beast to do battle. He fought with a tall tree, shaped into a wooden staff; hard as it was, it could not pierce the beast¡¯s hide. So, with his bare hands, Vol dug a pit in the ground-¡± she said, clenching her fist for emphasis. ¡°Took out a ball of wallrock, and shaped it like the staff. He took it up to the highest mountain, and prayed there for many seasons¡­¡±


    -


    Dinner ended, and most of the salon¡¯s inhabitants began to retire to their quarters and sleep. By the light of a candle, Wander and Fragile talked into the night on their beds while the traders and road people snored, burped, and muttered themselves to sleep. As they swapped stories and bits of history, Fragile sharpened Wander''s hunting knife on a stone, and she picked curiously at his three-string, which he offered at her request. The icy gale that had blown through earlier still thundered away beyond their shelter¡¯s walls, but now seemed, somehow, not so bad. Fragile offset the chill that it had bled into the salon with a thick woolen shawl. Wander needed only the thin black shirt that she kept beneath her vest and armor.


    ¡°...after they had been so humbled,¡± Fragile went on, ¡°the Storm Rulers would no longer demand such a great offering from the watercatcher. They would send him only good catches, and in the cold, would come down onto his seat, where he would host them, and allow them meat and drinks.¡±


    ¡°Very kind of him,¡± she remarked. ¡°After they destroyed his kind for a feat so small.¡±


    ¡°I think that must be the ending,¡± Fragile said. ¡°It has been displayed, and given me a good feeling. The others tell it so that the wind does not help him. But that seems so cruel. What would the point be, otherwise? A Ruler could not be so wrong. They are great and wonderful hearts.¡±


    ¡°You make a credible alteration,¡± she said. Fragile scratched his head. Wander plucked at a wire, producing an out-of-tune echo. ¡°This instrument of yours ¨C I do like its sound. Can you use it?¡±


    ¡°Only a little,¡± Fragile said. ¡°It was my birthman¡¯s.¡±


    ¡°And did he teach you any¡­?¡± She raised a finger to her ear and whistled.


    ¡°Not much,¡± Fragile said. ¡°It¡¯s a woman¡¯s instrument; for the two-season, or to give to children, sometimes. He¡¯d play and sing to me at night, when I couldn¡¯t sleep.¡±


    ¡°Was he a woman, also?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t think so,¡± he said. He slid her blade against the stone. The metal let out a pained, rasping note as he pulled it across. ¡°Its sound put a softness in him.¡±


    ¡°I haven¡¯t heard that kind since I was a girl,¡± Wander admitted.


    ¡°You haven¡¯t?¡±


    Wander shook her head. ¡°There was a rule against it at the Defense Building. I can no longer remember what it sounds like.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s awful.¡±


    There arose a loaded silence.


    ¡°I¡¯ll be back in a moment,¡± she said. ¡°You should go to sleep. We¡¯ll be moving by sunrise.¡±


    Wander drew up her pipe from her belt and laid the three-string at the foot of his bed. The wind howled when she opened the door to the salon, and stopped abruptly as a gust slammed it shut.


    Fragile put aside her blade and ran his fingers over the three string¡¯s delicate architecture. He did his best to strum a chord the way Peak did when he began his song.


    The sound was weak and shaky, but still familiar. He repeated the motion with greater strength, and it rang out. One of the road-people growled in her sleep at the noise.


    "''A rule,''" he whispered.


    He strummed it again. And again.


    -


    Wander went outside and fed some residue to her pipe, which lit up at once despite the torrent which was filling up the landscape. As she puffed, her eyes shrank away from the shadow of the storm, and gave way to sweatsight.


    Most of the travellers who hadn¡¯t taken refuge in the salon had walled themselves off in their covered carts or stables; the only light being thrown on the greater Couth shined out from a few of them. Most of the remaining Freemen, save some wounded sentries, had massed in a dark, lumpen host near the its center. The lot was dressed in heavy brysts, built for the cold of Northern Larunkat. All had armed themselves with bowed shooters, rockthrowers, and baskets of hurled shafts. None carried nivs, stickers, or armor of any kind.


    The Freemen¡¯s heads and hands were raised up to the sky. They were offering a dedication to their slain and ancient lord, one too soft for Wander to appreciate over the wind. What she could make out sought loyalty, love, and salvation. Their voices were light and airy, and sang in tune with the blizzard''s howl. Before long, it was ended.


    As though responding to some unspoken command, the Freemen picked up their equipment and began to walk out into the dark. Bigeyes reviewed them as they departed on their chase. In taking one final look at the salon, he spied Wander through the storm. He smiled and raised his hand to her in greeting. Then he threw up his hood, hefted his shooter, and walked through the gate. Its guards pushed shut the doors behind him.


    -


    A scream woke Fragile.


    He shot up from the bed and spun his head about his roundseat. Architecture bent and unmoulded as rays of light trickled in through the gaps and shutters of a place that did not yet exist.


    ¡°Bata?¡± he cried. ¡°Bata? What is it- what-¡±


    The door to the salon slammed. Wander had already alighted and snatched up a sword and her hat on the way outside. He brushed the sleep from his eyes and threw on his coldover before following her into the snow.


    The Freemen at the Couth¡¯s South gate moaned as they dragged it open. The snow had halted for a while, but clouds remained.


    One by one, the survivors of the midnight expedition fell back in to the Couth. At the rear of their diminished host, an especially large Freeman was being dragged on a makeshift wooden litter, and wrapped in an empty bryst.


    One of the Freemen hobbled over to Wander. ¡°He¡¯s asking for you, Seenblade,¡± the Freeman said. ¡°Our friend is asking for you.¡±


    The litter-bearers set their passenger down in the Couth¡¯s center, which Wander approached. As she drew near the victim, the extent of destruction that he had taken onto his body became more clear.


    With his remaining arm, Bigeyes beckoned her.


    She came by his side and knelt. He reached out and snatched the back of her head, jolting her hat off her head and into the snow. Wander acquiesced to this, and even leaned in closer when he tried to drag her down.


    ¡°Seenblade,¡± Bigeyes gasped. ¡°Please help us. Help my friends. Help the ones like me.¡±


    Wander said nothing. He continued, as though he hadn¡¯t received her silence. ¡°I have won,¡± he said. He smiled. ¡°I have beaten the thing. It will not have its way with me. I could give myself to what it needed.¡± His grin fell off his eyes, and his face twisted and wrinkled in pain. ¡°But I am in the wrong, now. I have done wrong to these friends of mine. Will you release me from it? Will you let it pass?¡±


    ¡°Your Prodda sees you,¡± she said. ¡°Be at peace now, Freething.¡±


    He let out a ragged sigh. Blood surged from his wound as he breathed. He pulled her close and hissed into her ear.


    ¡°Do not let them keep on this thing,¡± he whispered. ¡°I¡­ I do not work. I should have told them. I should have fixed it. But they should not go. Do not let them do it. Do not let the good ones go. Please, Seenblade! Do not let the good ones go. It is the good that hurts them.¡±


    His words devolved into spittled mumbling, and then to nothing at all. His eyes turned round and glassy. When Wander moved away, he looked toward the stars.


    -


    The Freemen took up Bigeyes¡¯ body and carried it beyond the stakewall, toward the sword-covered monument.


    ¡°What heart could¡¯ve made that terrible wound?¡± Fragile asked Wander.


    ¡°It¡¯s not our problem.¡± She picked her hat out of the snow, brushed it off, and placed it on her head. ¡°You should gather your things.¡±


    An agonized shriek turned them toward the survivors who had carried Bigeyes back in. A small group of wounded was being arranged for care by the North gate.


    Fragile turned to Wander. ¡°I wish to attend to them,¡± Fragile said. ¡°Can we wait any longer before we depart?¡±


    ¡°Attend to them? In what way?¡±


    ¡°I¡­¡±


    Fragile found that he could not answer.


    ¡°They have helpers,¡± Wander said. ¡°They are not in danger anyway. That one was struck the very worst. And they are hard to strike.¡±


    Another screech of pain echoed out from the wounded. Fragile made a face, wrung his hands and turned back toward the salon.


    Wander closed her eyes. She opened them, dug around in her belt and flipped a coin at him, which landed in his hair. He picked it out and raised his eyebrows at her.


    ¡°Get them food,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯ll take a look.¡±


    He nodded hurriedly, and rushed off to the salon.


    She walked over to the Freemen. Only two were still present by the gate, and one of them sleeping, with the rest hauled by porters back to their house in the Couth. The Laruns¡¯ majam, a gray-haired man wreathed in a brown-and-yellow cloak, stood by them with a jar of bloodsuckers; a round tube containing paper and holy words was kept hitched to his back even while he performed his duties. He was applying the parasites to his unconscious patient¡¯s open wounds, and as she and her hesigns approached, he ducked his head and tried to appear engrossed in his work.


    She addressed the conscious soldier. ¡°What is your name?¡±


    ¡°I am Joyslip, Seenblade,¡± the Freeman said. He groaned and clutched his leg, which had been torn to an unusual angle. ¡°If you have judgement to carry against me, please do it. I will not be awake much longer.¡±


    ¡°I am not so Seen,¡± Wander replied. She got down on her knees.


    The majam noticed her beginning her ministry and unbit his tongue. ¡°Seenblade,¡± he called out. ¡°Seenblade, that may not be-¡±


    She popped her patient¡¯s knee into place. He unleashed a bloodcurdling yowl.


    ¡°I know what¡¯s needed,¡± she said. ¡°Tend to your own, brother.¡±


    The majam reluctantly dipped his head back down. Joyslip looked up at her, aghast. ¡°I feel like I should not breath,¡± he said.


    ¡°You should not, but you will.¡± She spread some snow over his knee. ¡°Stay off the leg for three days.¡±


    ¡°Will you chase it now, Seenblade?¡± Joyslip asked. ¡°Will you chase it with Bigeyes and the rest?¡±


    ¡°The thing named Bigeyes no longer breathes.¡±


    Joyslip looked up. He shook his head. ¡°It cannot be right.¡±


    Wander got up to leave. His hand snatched out and locked onto her wrist.


    ¡°We did not see much,¡± he said. ¡°This enemy, it does not need battles. It sends out a draft from itself, and our friends will remove their cover and submit themselves to it.¡± He put a hand on his face and bit his lip. ¡°Twice have I been taken from it. If were not for our friend, I would be twice cold. It overcomes by fear, and we become certain that¡­¡± He clammed up. ¡°That¡­ something important to us¡­ he lies inside it.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s called a hump,¡± Wander said.


    ¡°You know its name?¡±


    ¡°I might,¡± she said. ¡°Your words are like those I¡¯ve seen on paper. It¡¯s a rare beast. It prefers your type.¡±


    ¡°It is wind,¡± the Freeman espoused. ¡°Or an agent of the wind. I cannot think of any other thing that would press against us like this.¡±


    ¡°Like wind.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s right, Seenblade,¡± Joyslip affirmed. ¡°Do you know what it is?¡±


    She shook her head. ¡°No.¡±


    ¡°Wind...¡± Joyslip searched for words. ¡°Wind is¡­ it is the end, and the air. It is the end inside the air. Wind is a mouth, blows away cloud, blows away fire. It blows away rocks that fall into water. Wind is what the hand cannot lift. It is the end inside the air,¡± he repeated. ¡°This hump is a giver of it. I wonder if you can fight it, Seenblade. Perhaps it is not a thing for knives.¡±


    ¡°Then I won¡¯t,¡± Wander said. He released her, and she stood up.


    ¡°Your friend told me,¡± she continued, ¡°Do not seek out the wind again. He is right. You will not breath.¡±


    ¡°I do not think I have any choice, Seenblade, ¡°Joyslip said. His eyes became wet, and he gritted his teeth, and he propped himself up on his elbow. His voice tremored. ¡°You and me were made in this way. We are born of cold, and brought into cold. We rise against the wind. With Prodda¡¯s help, we can come back to ourselves again.¡± He laid back down and smiled. ¡°Yes. With time, everything we need will do it. That is how our warmth was born.¡±


    Wander clenched her jaw.


    Fragile made his way over to the injured Freeman, bearing a platter of bread and a bowl of stew. As she made her way past, Wander turned over the stew from his tray with a flick of her finger. Its piping hot contents splattered into the snow, turning it shades of red and green.


    -


    After he had deposited the food with the recovering nivmen, Fragile rushed to catch up with her.


    ¡°Wander?¡± Fragile asked. ¡°Wander.¡± He held out her coin. She narrowed her eyes at it.


    ¡°Where did you get the bread?¡± she asked.


    ¡°The man who cooked for us wasn¡¯t in,¡± he explained. ¡°I found it in the room where we slept.¡±


    ¡°Give it to him later,¡± she said. ¡°Or they¡¯ll think a bite of you.¡±


    ¡°Are you¡­ did something happen?¡±


    ¡°Nothing happened,¡± she replied. ¡°Where is he? The Salonier? The cooker?¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s outside. I think they¡¯re opening up a hole.¡±


    They went over to the Northern gate, where worked the Salonier just beyond the stakewall. He was helping to dig a grave for Bigeyes in the large of plot of cleared land, plunging a spade into the dirt with two Freemen. He noticed her approaching and nodded to her.


    ¡°How¡¯s your heart?¡± the Salonier greeted. His Goalish was heavy and slurred.


    ¡°Eldman,¡± Wander said, "how long has their kontor been breathless?"


    The Freemen shovelling perked up at the mention of their commander. The Salonier leaned on his shovel.


    ¡°Forsnow, Wingcall,¡± he said in Sprak. ¡°Bring water.¡±


    They put down their tools and retreated to the salon.


    ¡°Twenty days,¡± the Salonier replied. ¡°First chase. The first. He went out in front.¡± He gestured to the patch of ground filled with swords. ¡°And they built that.¡±


    ¡°Why all this sneaking and false telling?¡± Wander asked. ¡°What was its design?¡±


    ¡°It is not false to them,¡± the Salonier said. ¡°It could not be false to them. A different way of knowing, maybe. It is the way they have gone on.¡±


    They looked over Bigeyes¡¯ body, which had already started to freeze. The Salonier¡¯s skin was ashy, and his beard was frayed. ¡°There is pain,¡± he said, ¡°and mourning in this country. It is terrific. Its roots are well-watered. But I do not wish disaster on these drymen. They have always been forward in our talks. They do not raise arms for any excited mood. When I was young, the road was emptied by their hands. This one-¡± He gestured to Bigeyes. ¡°-would¡¯ve made a fine son. The kontor, a fine birthman.¡±


    ¡°They must have needed the man more,¡± Fragile said, ¡°For the loss to have cut so deeply.¡±


    ¡°They do delight in their Laruns,¡± the Salonier explained. ¡°When they are relieved of them, I have seen them become desperate and empty-headed. Some of them try and start telling each other what to do, but they do not prefer this. So I have come to know ones of this type, who are loud, and make many friends.¡±


    ¡°I am glad you think well of them,¡± Wander said, ¡°this kind that eats up others.¡±


    The Salonier looked at her. ¡°I¡¯ve watered here for eighteen colds. I¡¯ve seen one or two Blades, across my seasons. Only one, or two.¡±


    Wander said nothing.


    ¡°I cannot appeal to you as a Larun,¡± he said, ¡°So I will do it as a man. If this thing is not stopped, it will keep attacking until they are all gone. I do not know how it will behave then. I do not want to find out.¡±


    Wander was silent for a long time. ¡°Quiet Feet,¡± Wander said, ¡°I wish you would return to the Freemen. Ask them if they remember anything more about the beast.¡±


    Fragile¡¯s eyes nervously flicked between the two of them. Then he bowed his head. ¡°I will do it,¡± he said.


    He hiked back up to the Couth.


    ¡°There¡¯s something wrong with your helper,¡± the Salonier said. ¡°Whatever you really are, I would find it out. He trembles when men have done nothing to him. He is like a woman.¡±


    ¡°I will do your work,¡± Wander said. ¡°But not for them. And not without gifts.¡±


    ¡°There are coins.¡±


    ¡°Coins I have. You will tell others what I did here. You will tell them of the words I wear. And you will tell me of the man who rules this place.¡±


    -


    With payment duly remitted for Wander¡¯s services, there was a shortage of things left to do in the Couth before she departed on her hunt.


    Fragile did help to tend the other wounded Freemen, and for it received some rudimentary supplies from the majam. After he had bound and dressed their wounds, he retreated to the Couth¡¯s stables, and advanced a secret project therein.


    The few Freemen who remained on their feet spoke softly to their friends, fortified their compound, and set about to their ordinary service of the Couth and its residents. Although affected by the absence of their companions and commander, news of Wander¡¯s intention travelled quickly. They fed and pampered the stronghoof, offered her swords and provisions, and aided Fragile in his efforts.


    Wander waited for nightfall on a walkway that ringed the stakewall, smoking her pipe. Fragile joined her as the sun dipped below the horizon.


    ¡°How will you find this beast?¡± he asked her.


    Wander puffed out a cloud of smoke that the wind spun and blustered apart. ¡°It¡¯s big and loud enough,¡± she said. ¡°And it leaves a trail. It shouldn¡¯t be anything.¡±


    ¡°Have you ever done it before?¡±


    ¡°No. But I will do it here.¡±


    They were silent. Wander took her pipe from her mouth. ¡°I lack something,¡± she said. ¡°I wish to have it from you.¡±


    ¡°...I will give you what I have, Wander.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve seen ones pained like us,¡± she said. ¡°Because there is something of them that is no more. Many have shouted or hit for it, and sought out leaving. There is a shaking in us at the thing that did it.¡±


    ¡°Response,¡± Fragile interjected.


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°It is like response, what you say.¡±


    ¡°I thought ¡®response¡¯ was¡­ fighting. To strike another.¡±


    ¡°It is,¡± Fragile said. ¡°But I think the shaking is also a fight.¡±


    ¡°Its name isn¡¯t important,¡± she said. ¡°I do not see it in you.¡±


    There was a pointed silence. ¡°I have no one to respond to,¡± Fragile said. ¡°Who remains who has pained me?¡±


    ¡°The Freemen,¡± she said. ¡°The Laruns. Also those who struck you and threw you and left you in the ice.¡±


    Fragile shivered when he realized she was talking about the Sixbraids. ¡°You knew that¡­ I¡­¡±


    He hugged his arms to his chest. ¡°These did not bring pain to me. Or they are already gone.¡±


    ¡°There are many in the place behind you.¡±


    ¡°They did not bring it to me,¡± he said. ¡°They have different eyes.¡±


    ¡°Please explain.¡±


    Fragile tugged at his hair. ¡°The eyes I have seen ¨C I have seen few, but they are all beyond me. They have seen different things, and they see different things. The Lodge said that we shared a seat, so that our eyes were alike. But I could not swallow that. Those saw me different, and these see me different. My creators too¡­ and they all must see me. They cannot look away. Each sees only what he can. And I will be there. I do not think I should hurt them for it, or anything else.¡±


    He coughed. ¡°I have always spoken wrong. Can you hear this?¡±


    ¡°So you do not put your anger on a gathering.¡±


    ¡°How could I do it?¡± Fragile asked.


    ¡°A man does not ask to hurt, or to produce these things.¡± She knocked her foot against the wood of the Couth. ¡°A man enters a gathering. He is carried, and he carries. It carried them here. It carried me here. So others look for the marks on them, to see what they carry, and turn them out from themselves. Anger is passed against them then.¡±


    Fragile mulled over her words. ¡°I do not think I am great enough to hear it,¡± he said.


    Wander shook her head. ¡°I can hear you,¡± she replied. ¡°But yours is wrong. I am not how another sees me. I know what I am.¡±


    ¡°I do not think they can see you,¡± Fragile said. ¡°Their eyes must have been shut, even if they were still open. I am not a thing for eyes. But you really are different. You can speak all manner of words. I do not think there is an eye you cannot push open. When you do it, you will be adored. I am sure of it, because it would be the Rulers¡¯ way.¡±


    Wander looked at him. His eyes were very wide.


    ¡°Maybe it is so.¡± She looked down at her pipe. ¡°But there are many eyes in Ourland. They are more closed, and sharper than you know.¡±


    -


    Fragile approached Wander in the Couth¡¯s stables, as she strapped on her armor.


    ¡°Why does this shine?¡± she asked.


    ¡°I cleaned it,¡± Fragile said. ¡°A little. I tried. I tried my best not to hurt it. Did I hurt it? I should¡¯ve asked.¡±


    ¡°You didn¡¯t hurt it,¡± she said. ¡°You should¡¯ve asked. Why did you try?¡±


    ¡°I made it dirty.¡±


    She rubbed a hand across her chestpiece. ¡°And the shine?¡±


    ¡°The Freemen. They gave me some firewater.¡±


    Wander finished tightening her breastplate. She fumbled through the stronghoof¡¯s saddlebags.


    ¡°How long do you think we¡¯ll be gone?¡± Fragile asked.


    ¡°I¡¯m going alone,¡± Wander said. She slipped a metal mould into a pouch on her side.


    ¡°Okay. I¡¯ll try to help these men.¡±


    ¡°Do what you can,¡± she replied. Wander took off her hat and stuck it on the stronghoof. She lifted up the back of her hair and brushed a hand across her scalp, driving flecks of white into the air. A moment later, she tugged the wig free from its roots and stuffed it into a belted vault on the stronghoof''s side. She scratched his chin once, and turned to Fragile. ¡°If I¡¯m unable to pierce the beast, and it starts to head back here, a voice will say so.¡±


    ¡°A¡­ voice?¡±


    ¡°Yes. It will feel like it is inside you.¡± She tapped her temple. ¡°You must trust it. It¡¯s a part of me.¡±


    He bowed his head. She removed the coinpurse from her belt and handed it to him.


    ¡°If I do not return," Wander continued, ¡°it is because I have been put away by this beast.¡± She directed him toward the Couth¡¯s Western gate. ¡°The road to Herdetopp is that way. With this, you can purchase passage from any kind of wheeled group or company heading into Herdetopp. Once arrived, it will enable you toward a long stay ¨C there, or wherever else you should like.¡±


    ¡°It will all be done, just as you say.¡± Fragile¡¯s hand curled tightly around the cold sack of metal. Wander began to march away, but stopped.


    ¡°I will come back, Quiet Feet,¡± she said. ¡°I will come back. Even if I must do something terrible.¡±


    ¡°Yes, Wander,¡± he replied. ¡°I will wait here. I will not go away.¡±


    She walked on, and out past the Southern gate. The Freemen standing guard there pressed them shut, closing out the last light of evening.


    Fragile spent some time on the stakewall, watching out past the edges of the Couth, and the stars falling down below distant mountains. When the sun had fully set, he returned to the Salonier. ¡°What did she say, that Wall?¡± he asked.


    ¡°If the one I help does not return by sun¡¯s rise, eldman,¡± Fragile said, ¡°I am to follow her into the rounds.¡±


    He held out the pouch to the Salonier. ¡°She asked you to hide this for us while she¡¯s away, eldman, and to make use of it if we cannot return,¡± he said.


    ¡°What is it?¡±


    Fragile pulled opened the top, displaying its gleaming contents. ¡°They¡¯re gifts, eldman. You¡¯d be able to care for these men, and move them away from this place.¡±


    The Salonier¡¯s stoic countenance melted into wonder when faced with such world-changing wealth. ¡°Your creator is wise,¡± he said. ¡°Wise and virtuous, for a dryman.¡±


    ¡°She is my friend,¡± Fragile replied. ¡°And she is a giver.¡±


    -


    After the gates shut behind her, Wander walked up to the nearest copse that stood on the edges of the Couth. She invoked the Bell.


    What can you see? she asked.


    Wander felt the Bell¡¯s hands fly outward, touching everything as far as she could stretch. Boiling! she cried. And scorn, all around us!


    What can you see?


    The Bell would not answer. She ventured into the hinterland.


    Their expedition into the rounds soon demonstrated promise. She came across a large, egg-shaped path through the trees and made to follow them. She bounded across the pines and leapt from branch to branch.


    You must alert me when you touch the thing, Wander said. I don¡¯t want to address it from the front.


    Do not address it, the Bell implored. Get out from this place. Get out now. Resign from this useless work!


    Wander ignored her, hoping that her noise and angst would dim after she had tired of it. But she did not. As they traversed the rounds, surveying the birds and nighttime animals from the height of the canopy, the Bell continued to pester her.


    Wrong path, the Bell protested. Wrong path. What has pushed you in this way? You should not have left the weak thing. You should not have put him to those strange and hungry beasts.


    I am doing your haver''s labor, Wander responded. You should be happy for it.


    This labor is not my haver''s. Why help beasts fight beasts? Let them freeze. Let them eat each other apart. Let them be removed from all view.


    Before Wander could retort, a great shape crashed through the underbrush, tearing up trees and pushing up the snow beneath them. She perched on the limb of a thicktree and looked down.


    The outerpeople would not think well of this action, the Bell chattered. And what would your producers say?


    Quiet, Wander chided the Bell.


    I will not-


    Be quiet and look! Look out! Wander tried pointing out the hulking mass to the air, before she felt foolish and stopped. The Bell did see, anyway, and ceased her scolding.


    The hump¡¯s great hide gave itself to darkness. It was hairy and oval, with a great pointed mound rising from the crown of its skull. Wander wasted no time; she unsheathed her short blade and flung it through the beast.


    The missile flew straight and true. Its shaft pierced one side of the hump, exited out another, and became lodged in the ground. She leapt high into the air and plummeted down, crashing her body and sword into the hump¡¯s eponymous growth.


    The beast did not cry out in pain or anger. It opened its mouth to disgorge wind, which blew out, up, and past Wander¡¯s head, sending her and her blaith flying off. Her feet stove great trenches in the snow where she landed and the soil underneath, adjacent to her short blade.


    Wander extracted herself from the ground. She and the hump stared at each other. The bright white of the creature¡¯s wounds shone softly in the darkness.


    It is speaking to me, the Bell said.


    Wander gritted her teeth. There is someone in there.


    There is nothing inside that thing.


    She unfastened her breastplate from her chest. If you go in there, joyous one, you will freeze, the Bell said, and I will be left alone.


    I know the truth, Wander said. But she wished she did not. The knowing was tearing her up inside.


    She felt an overwhelming urge to open up her body and let herself on the world. She dropped her armor to the ground, stepped forward, and addressed the beast directly.


    ¡°I can hear you in there,¡± Wander said. ¡°It is not lost on me. I know you need what I have. Like I need you.¡±


    The blaith felt as though it had frozen to her glove. ¡°But you left us all alone,¡± she continued. ¡°I want to give you everything I have. And I can¡¯t. I can¡¯t go yet... I won¡¯t go yet.¡±


    She brandished her sword. ¡°Goodbye, wisi.¡±


    She swept against it.


    -


    Fragile sat on the stakewall and waited. The night¡¯s passing was glacial.


    The Freemen who remained looked toward him from the Couth¡¯s belly. They brought him blankets to keep from the wind and the cold, and babbled softly at him in their language. When they realized he couldn¡¯t understand them, they went away, although their eyes did not.


    The sun¡¯s first ray broke out across the sky. When it struck his brow, he picked up his bag and tumbled down from the heights of the Couth, crashing into the snow. The Freemen crowded the walls, watching him trudge through it toward the forest.


    ¡°What happened?¡± one asked.


    ¡°Look! Somebody left.¡±


    ¡°They left?¡±


    ¡°Who?¡±


    ¡°Who left the wall?¡±


    ¡°It was a visitor.¡±


    ¡°A friend.¡±


    ¡°The helper.¡±


    One of the nivmen, a shooter, raised up his weapon and notched a missile to it.


    ¡°What are you doing?¡± his companions asked.


    ¡°He may lead it back here,¡± the shooter said, ¡°Toward the people and the smaller ones.¡± He struggled to keep his eye on his little target. ¡°It is not what our friend would want.¡±


    The other shooters present followed suit, and levelled their weapons at Fragile¡¯s retreating figure. Just as they were about to loose their volley, one of his comrades gripped the arm of the initiating Freeman with a hand. He leaned on a heavy cane.


    ¡°This one is walking with a kontor,¡± Joyslip said. ¡°So let it be, please. Do not dissolve this fellowship.¡±


    The shooter grit his teeth and flexed his knuckles. He lowered his weapon, and his friends did it also.


    ¡°Look!¡± one of the onlookers cried. ¡°Look to the rounds!¡±


    From Fragile¡¯s view, a large, stomping form lurched its way from the darkness of the copse, where the dawn had yet to penetrate.


    ¡°Wander?¡± Fragile whispered.


    The sunrise rebounded off the figure¡¯s polished breastplate, and fell on her face. Wander pushed her way past the roots and branches, covered in cuts, bruises, and dirt.


    ¡°Wander!¡± He rushed up to her. ¡°Are you well?¡± he asked.


    ¡°I''ve lost no water,¡± she said. She raised her eyebrow at him. ¡°Where¡¯s the stronghoof? What are you doing out here?¡±


    ¡°I - it doesn¡¯t matter,¡± he said. ¡°I fed him a step or two ago. He should be awake."


    ¡°Good,¡± she said. ¡°That¡¯s good.¡±


    The sun reached over the trees and into the world. Its sight smiled on their brows and those of the Freemen, and joined with the snow, and delivered gold into every other color that made a home of the riversland.


    Wander stuffed a wad of chew in her mouth. ¡°Come along, Quiet Feet,¡± she said. ¡°My work is done. We have lingered here a bit too long.¡±


    She headed back toward the Couth. Fragile jumped after her and followed close behind.


    <hr>


    </a> "We''ve arrived, then?" Fragile asked. "This is the Wild."


    "We have passed over its most distant limit,¡± Wander replied. ¡°There is a long, long way to go.¡±


    The storms they weathered from the warmth and safety of the Couth had turned out the country and its road for a new type of being. The trees around them hissed and whined incessantly, their branches burdened by thick locks of white that the wind could and did send cascading into their hair at its pleasure. Fragile, who stood knee-deep in the accumulate, scrambled to keep up with Wander and the stronghoof; neither of these was paying great mind to the icy terrain. Every few meters Wander would strike through the snow with enough force to create a window beneath and reaffirm their course. Then they would continue on, passing deeper into the chilly and wild beast which they now inhabited.


    Wander¡¯s eyelids drooped. She had adopted a pronounced swagger, in which her arms and head hung loosely, and were not kept high like usual.


    ¡°It must have been difficult,¡± Fragile said. ¡°This thing you did for them.¡±


    She blinked. ¡°It was not easy. We will stop before nightfall. ¡±


    ¡°Yes, Wander.¡± He paused. ¡°I¡¯ve been wondering¡­ about something.¡±


    ¡°Yes?¡±


    ¡°Back at the Larun-place, when you first spoke to the heartl- to the Freeman. You appeared to become filled with happiness, and easiness. And you¡­¡±


    Wander waited for the question.


    ¡°I haven¡¯t- I mean, I¡¯ve never seen you- You don¡¯t-¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°...nevermind.¡±


    They continued to walk.


    ¡°I was taught to speak, and to speak falsely, in many ways. Only a few of them include words. Does that answer your question?¡±


    Fragile marvelled at the idea. ¡°You can speak with a face?¡±


    ¡°You can speak with a face. And with a hand, and with a body. And with an eye. With all the items in your power.¡±


    Fragile paused, before asking, ¡°Can you teach me this way?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s a many-figured craft.¡±


    ¡°I know. You were¡­ you could be glad, as you wished.¡±


    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t say that. But I could be like other breathers.¡±


    ¡°Right.¡±


    Wander paused and stopped walking.


    ¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± Fragile asked.


    Wander hung her blaith on the stronghoof. ¡°This is a decent place.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯re stopping now?¡±


    ¡°Are you not feeling up to it?¡±


    ¡°Up to-¡± Fragile blanched. ¡°Don¡¯t you have to-¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m hungry,¡± she said. ¡°And tired. I will call it respite.¡±


    They established their camp on the side of the road, beneath a dense pine canopy. They built a campfire and boiled water from a burbling stream, where a bed of stones glowed pale shades of blue, white and yellow when they were received by the dark. At that time Wander waded into it with a fibrous bag, her clothes and body bringing up a cloud of steam from the freezing water. She exploded open its surface by shots of the hand, and soon emerged with a great bounty of swimmers that she gorged herself on.


    Then they cleared an area of snow and sat down together alongside the stream, which ran smoothly enough to reflect their countenance.


    ¡°First, feel the edges of your mouth,¡± Wander said. ¡°Try and bend them out.¡±


    He complied. She gestured to the water.


    Fragile had not seen his face in several years. Looking at it now was like seeing an old, weathered, ragged animal. The smile it bore was a weak approximation of mirth.


    ¡°You look like you¡¯re in pain,¡± Wander said.


    He tried smiling harder. She put a hand to her chin.


    ¡°Know that it¡¯s not all about effort,¡± she said. "When you pull yourself apart like that, they might see some anger, or find the face that you''ve hidden. You must give this thing over to a kind of gentleness."


    He pared back his smile¡¯s intensity, and the curves in his face eased.


    ¡°Better,¡± she said. Then she looked into the water, smiled, and looked back at him. Her expression appeared very warm and genuine, and a bit suggestive; he blushed and cast away his eyes. ¡°How can you do it so naturally?¡± he mumbled.


    ¡°It was not a simple feat. I practiced like this,¡± she said through her teeth, ¡°About two steps a day. With my lines, during study and fighting and half a step before the night¡¯s passing.¡±


    Her mouth slipped back into a hard line. ¡°So it is an uncomplicated discipline, but it does not come without time.¡±


    ¡°How much time?¡±


    She shrugged. ¡°I never stopped working on it. That¡¯s just how it is.¡±


    Fragile furrowed his brow, and then he smiled. He turned to her for evaluation.


    ¡°Aat,¡± she said. Fragile looked at her in confusion.


    ¡°¡®Aat,¡¯ I said.¡± Wander pinched her nose. ¡°I mean- lower. Under. Down.¡±


    ¡°Less?¡±


    ¡°Less,¡± she affirmed. ¡°Less. ¡®Aat¡¯ is less. Aat.¡±


    ¡°¡®Aat,¡¯¡± Fragile repeated. He eased the curves.


    ¡°Mm. Good,¡± she said. ¡°That¡¯s how happy is. Repetition is important.¡±


    He dropped the expression, and then did it again.


    ¡°Oot, on this one. More - Oot.¡±


    He did it again.


    ¡°Aat, Aat.¡±


    ¡°Aat.¡±


    ¡°Oot, I think - yes, certainly. Like this.¡± She threw out a lazy, gummy smile. ¡°Oot.¡± Fragile giggled.


    ¡°A little less.¡±


    He smiled at her. ¡°Tue,¡± Wander said. ¡°Good. Tue.¡±


    ¡°Tue,¡± Fragile exclaimed.


    ¡°Good.¡± And it was good.


    Perhaps it was respite.

 Story 3 - The Heartswater Howl

    It seems only days ago that Fragile the Sixbraid was living a quiet life in his people¡¯s village, in the ancient and storied land named Goal. Without provocation, a group of soldiers from a hate-filled empire entered into it, killing his friends, his family, and all the keepers of their tradition. A Wandering Star, a lone warrior from a distant land, arrived just in time to save Fragile and the Sixbraids from complete annihilation. Finding pleasure in each other¡¯s company, these two, a stronghoof, and an enigmatic presence named Bell now plumb the countryside for work and residence. Wander helps the people of Goal, and searches out a new home for her companion; in secret, she pursues her long-standing vendetta against a blind and destructive enemy.


    -


    A howl and his man emerged from the rounds. In the night, the howl had become placeless and colorless to the shell-dwellers. Its shape was born of ancient visions. In the dark they could see nothing else. So they peeked out from their roundseats and performed offerings. They lit fires, burned meat, covered their eyes and watched out. They looked at the man and the howl, and wondered always what they were, these things that went out of hills.


    The howl and his man paraded through the shell, in search of what? No one knew. They went to the Place for Hearing, and an elderly woman who sat in its dirt. The monolith at its center had been cracked in two, its dominate proclamations shattered into rubble by a heavy force. She scrawled shapes in the soil at its base with her cane, uttered her mother¡¯s words to herself, and spat up smoke from a long pipe. She placed a hand on her chin.


    The howl and his man approached the woman, who took up no business at their presence, or their disquieting of the shell-dwellers. The man knelt down and put a hand on her shoulder. He whispered into her ear.


    She took the man¡¯s hand and spoke a word. She set aside her pipe and her stick and he helped her to her feet. They walked across the shell and set out from it arm-in-arm. The howl brushed against her, and roamed by their side.


    An arrow swung out at them.


    The first was loosed suddenly, and out of step with any others. It stuck into the ground at their feet. A great aimed volley followed, cast at them from five shaded points, from between the seats and below the snow and atop a few trees nearby. The man wrapped his arms around his companion and pushed down on her before he was struck by the bulk of them. The howl rushed out at their attackers before it was struck down by the rest. A bowstring snapped at last and the air was soothed.


    Shadows began to emerge, and fires. The shell-dwellers found the woman caressing her supine companion¡¯s face as he choked on his own breath.


    ¡°Bata,¡± she whispered tearfully. ¡°Bata¡­¡± She spoke no more.


    Their lights fell on the howl and its broken coat. It had become wet with freezing blood. The Walls¡¯ sharp stones had bound to it and that which poured out was the color of its hair.


    When they first passed their fire over the howl and turned up its hue, the Walls cried out in fright and jumped back. Then they went closer and more tentatively to it, touching their hands to the howl¡¯s fur and putting its blood on themselves. They began to wail and moan.


    An anguished vibration spun through them. The first cry was wordless, and an ear over the horizon could not distinguish it from the wearied exhales of the wind, or a hot stone in water. Words arrived that were simple and coughing. They were fragile and fell apart when they collided with the shaking that this foul enormity had wrought, and they pleaded for the safety of children.


    People came out from between the seats, getting fire, and going over to their dead voicewoman, and they moaned too. The shell¡¯s young were shooed and went by the monolith, to see what she had written in the dirt.


    First a hand


    A hand felt out


    Out must speak


    A hand will hear


    A hand will hear


    <hr>


    Once upon a time...


    Near the shell of Our.


    Wander''s eyes snapped open.


    Snow had fallen in the night, dusting over the pocket they had chosen for shelter after their departing from the shell named Rootyard. It was still very dark. The wingtrees that towered over them smelled like ash and her mind made them tall enough to scrape the sky. The wind pulled hair in her face and rushed battering against her head and body. In the shade, Goal¡¯s things did not sleep or watch; they only were, and they had no end.


    She stood up, threw her blaith over her shoulder, and turned to Fragile¡¯s sleeping spot on the other side of their withered campfire. The little Goal was resting his three-string beside the sack of feed he used for a pillow. He sat down and let out a weary sigh. It pitched up on the way out.


    ¡°What are you doing?¡± she asked.


    Fragile jumped up when he realised Wander was awake. ¡°I-I¡¯ve- been getting ready,¡± he stammered. He yanked up the three-string and hitched its strap over his neck. ¡°I couldn''t shut my eyes.¡±


    "You''ll learn how. Time will bring it to you."


    -


    Fragile could feel, although he could not see, snowflakes brushing against his face and lips and eyelashes. He stumbled over a rock. Wander¡¯s head pivoted toward the noise, and she realised his eyelids were drooping.


    ¡°You can ride him, if you like.¡±


    Fragile looked up in confusion. Wander gestured to The Stronghoof.


    ¡°I¡¯m fine,¡± he replied. ¡°This reminds me of the Houses.¡±


    ¡°How?¡±


    ¡°In the Houses, I¡¯d walk. Usually in the morning and evening, but if there was a party, I¡¯d do it in the day.¡±


    ¡°Where were you going?¡±


    ¡°Some place. Not nowhere, but¡­ not somewhere.¡±


    She gave him a blank stare.


    He thumbed at his tuskleather bag. ¡°It wasn¡¯t just to do it, you know? It wasn¡¯t fun, or anything like that. It hurt. It pierced my legs. There are those who thought I would go away, and become a knower for it.¡±


    ¡°A knower?¡±


    ¡°There are those who go to the rounds,¡± Fragile said. ¡°They seek to join with rulers, and with the hearts of the riversland.¡± He rubbed his nose against his sleeve. ¡°They are called knowers. They give up their voices and are like a walking one.¡±


    ¡°And you didn¡¯t?¡±


    ¡°No. Not always.¡±


    They walked in silence for some time.


    Wander spoke up. ¡°The Defense Building had something called a Wooden Room. I¡¯d go in there sometimes, at night, when no one was around. I¡¯d climb for three steps-of-the-sun.¡±


    ¡°Climb?¡±


    ¡°Right. They had a wall you could climb up, and over and around, to get better at it. So I¡¯d do that.¡±


    ¡°For a couple steps-of-the-sun?¡±


    She nodded.


    ¡°It sounds exhausting.¡±


    ¡°Wherever we are is an exhausting place,¡± she replied. ¡°That is its purpose. We are born by pain; stay by pain; go by pain.¡± She rattled the words off as though they were a project of memory.


    ¡°There must be happiness,¡± Fragile asked. ¡°Somewhere outside us.¡±


    ¡°I am not certain.¡±


    At that point, they were forced to halt. Fragile felt the ground beneath him become flat and slippery, and he had no sure footing. The darkness availed itself only to Wander¡¯s sweatsight, which revealed to her the passing of the trees and the great gap that sat before them. Beside them, a long wooden pod had been encased by the ground. In its belly sat a brown length of wood, shaped for pushing water.


    Wander knelt and put her hand to the surface. ¡°What is this place?¡± Fragile asked.


    ¡°A lake,¡± Wander replied. ¡°The cold has brought ice into it.¡±


    ¡°Can we walk across?¡±


    ¡°No,¡± Wander said. ¡°It¡¯s not thick enough.¡± She gave pointed tug on The Stronghoof¡¯s lead.


    They retreated from the ice. Wander handed the lead off to Fragile, walked up to the shoreline, and hefted a large stone. She wound up and threw her missile at the ice surrounding the one of the boats. The force of impact cracked it apart and sent heavy chunks drifting through the water underneath. The boat rocked gently on the water.


    -


    ¡°It is a frightening thing, this lake,¡± Fragile said. He pushed down the paddle, propelling them through the water and the lingering cuts of ice. The Stronghoof brayed, its legs folded up in the center of the boat. Wander reclined on its opposite end, smoking, and propping her head up with her arm. Her eyes wiggled, shivered and glowed, uncertain whether to give themselves to sweatsight. For the first time, Fragile realised that they really did change at night. ¡°I feel like it may swallow us.¡±


    ¡°Fear is a companion to all breathers,¡± Wander said. ¡°If not of hunger, then of hurt or want, or the feeling that another is in those things.¡±


    ¡°And those like this,¡± he said. ¡°The quiet and the dark.¡±


    Waves lapped against the boat. Something scurried through the water, out of their path. It left bubbles that popped wetly as they met the air, and dove beneath an ice floe.


    ¡°These things, too,¡± Wander affirmed.


    ¡°Do you fear them, Wander?¡±


    Wander contemplated the inky night that had enveloped them. ¡°I did.¡±


    She turned her head and stared at him with an expectant gaze. Uncertain of it, he tried to focus on rowing before he realised what she wanted.


    ¡°Ih¡­ well, yes. They frighten me.¡±


    ¡°Why?¡±


    ¡°It is right. There is this word, ¡®outness.¡¯ It is how we call it, a warning from the Night Ruler. That we are entering his place, where he and the things he spoke to walked.¡±


    ¡°This displeases him?¡±


    ¡°No.¡± He shook his head lightly. ¡°It was a way of speaking. Sometimes it asks from us, and takes much.¡±


    ¡°The Makars think the dark a place of things to be fought,¡± Wander said. ¡°A home of bad-danced beasts. An incorrect territory. I met a Shamar who said something similar.¡±


    ¡°What do you think of it?¡±


    Wander held her pipe between two teeth. Smoke flowed out from a gap in her lips. ¡°My birthman spoke of ¡®badwork.¡¯ Things in the dark that we did not know, and should not be seen or spoken to. It was feared by us and I was warned of it. But I was younger then. I have worked at night. I have found much there, but it is like all other things I know. ¡±


    Their boat collided with an ice sheet. Wander took out a stone from her fibrous bag and hurled it into the obstruction, which shattered into a million tiny glaciers and opened up their path.


    Wander¡¯s throw rocked the boat with such force that Fragile¡¯s balance was thrown. He teetered on the platform¡¯s edge and lost his footing. Before he hit the water, a hand reached out, grabbed him by his coldover, wrenched him back from the edge, and returned to its seat just as quickly.


    ¡°Do not fall,¡± Wander said. She stuck her pipe back in her mouth. ¡°It is cold. You would freeze.¡±


    He pulled in shallow breaths and gulped air and fixed a hand to his chest. The Stronghoof grunted and blew air from its nose. Then he rowed.


    ¡°I¡­ I have always wondered how far they are. From us,¡± Fragile said.


    ¡°Who?¡±


    ¡°The rulers. They sit in a house outside the riversland. There are those who have seen it when they are about to go; the virtuous fallen find residence there. One day, the riversland will be swallowed up by fire, and then there will be nothing forever. It is the last place anyone will be.¡±


    ¡°And did you see it?¡± Wander asked. ¡°Just now?¡±


    Fragile rowed. He bit his lip.


    Wander turned her head forward.


    -


    On reaching the far shore, Wander leapt into the water. Steam rose from its surface as she locked a hand around their vessel¡¯s edge and dragged it out of the lake. Fragile hopped out, and they continued on their path. Their new hinterland was full of many small young trees, whose buds had retreated due to the cold.


    ¡°Do you know anything of this place?¡± Fragile asked Wander.


    ¡°I should be asking you that.¡±


    ¡°It is the Dip,¡± he replied. ¡°I know the land draws down in places, and that there is a kind of hard rock in its dirt. I know that there are way-keepers, here, but I know little of them. They kept the ways and fought with us. They are like all the others.


    ¡°I have an image of their country. It indicates shells of good size. Any one would make a good spot for us to part ways.¡±


    Fragile looked aside wistfully. ¡°Yes,¡± he said. ¡°A good spot.¡±


    Wander¡¯s eye swivelled in his direction for a half-second before it turned back to the road.


    Five fighters! the Bell shouted.


    ¡°Stop,¡± Wander said. She jerked on The Stronghoof¡¯s lead and held her hand in front of Fragile.


    ¡°Sorry.¡±


    They stopped dead in a snow-covered thicket. Neither spoke. Pearly motes sank down to the forest floor. The Stronghoof shifted its legs and shook its head.


    She decided to question the Bell. Just then, forty yards away, boot-wearing heels crinkled the snow.


    Wander seized Fragile by the chest. She threw him over The Stronghoof¡¯s back and whistled. The Stronghoof bolted into the brush, breaking a path between the trees through branches and small foliage. The lead swung and flailed about behind it.


    Out her blaith and short blade. At the moment of their availability, she was met with five swords. The force and speed required to beat each of them away bent and contorted her wrists. Her opponents recovered quickly, and then struck at her in earnest.


    Wander had no time to assess her attackers, who she could only glean a vague, muddy impression of. The air heated with the temper of their contest. She killed a swing whipped at her head. Sparks shot bright and wild from the rebounding metal.


    She spun free of the blades¡¯ caress and swept her blaith up through the nearest fighter. Every one but he bounded away; a large slice of his scalp and skull splashed down in the snow.


    The five ¨C then four, as the afflicted armsman broke in half ¨C were Goalish people. Three appeared as women to Wander¡¯s eye, along with another man. All were clothed in pointed, piecemeal overs cut from hide and hitched to jagged lumps of wallrock. Each carried a small, narrow length of bendrock, whose surface was stained to cover up any light or shine. Wander did not recognize their style. It was not a blade of Freemen.


    One of the women, a Goal with a grey cloak, spoke. Her words were reminiscent of Fragile¡¯s, but they were in a strange order, and their construction was idiosyncratic. Her voice was bent and scratchy and it thudded to the ground, and Wander could not fully grasp it over the wind. ¡°Outheart¡­ becoming inside¡­ from the heartless words¡­ that heartless thing...¡±


    They think you¡¯re a Larun, the Bell whispered.


    ¡°I¡¯m not a Larun,¡± she said. She sheathed her blades, held up her hands and repeated her words in Sprak and Rootcliff.


    ¡°Outman,¡± the Goal replied.


    They closed in on her. Wander punched her leg into the nearest, flattening her out. She caught the man¡¯s blade in her glove and struck him in the nose. He clamped his hands to his face and his blood ran freely.


    The third and fourth, including the one who had spoken to her, plunged their metal at her chest and abdomen. She dodged their blows, unsheathed her short blade, and brought up its handle. It collided with the third¡¯s jaw, knocking her down.


    The fourth, with grit teeth and bloodshot eyes, narrowly evaded Wander¡¯s blows and thrust at her stomach. Wander let herself be pierced and seized her opponent by the throat. ¡°I¡¯m not a dryman,¡± she said. ¡°I don¡¯t want to hurt you.¡±


    Wander shoved her away, leaving the Goal¡¯s blade stuck in her lower body. She grasped its hilt and tore it free with a flourish, before tossing it beside its owner. The Goal looked at it uncertainly before she snatched it up and leapt to her feet.


    Wander¡¯s assailants alternately groaned and grunted and wailed on the ground. The grounded woman considered their condition before turning back to Wander.


    ¡°Unheart words,¡± the Goal insisted. ¡°Outman.¡±


    Wander sheathed her blade.


    ¡°Who?¡± the Goal asked.


    ¡°Star,¡± Wander said. ¡°Star that wanders. Not Larun.¡±


    She looked Wander over, assessing her more closely. Her eyes traced the unfamiliar contours of her weapons, which poked out from her waist and above her shoulder. ¡°Strange canes,¡± she noted. ¡°Strange mouth.¡±


    At that moment, a deep, rumbling tone sounded in the distance. The Goal¡¯s eyes widened and she rushed to help support her friends.


    ¡°What is that?¡± Wander asked.


    The Goal did not answer. The dawn was coming up and golden light poured into the clearing where they¡¯d fought. The four of them left it in a hurry, shambling off at an awkward pace. Wander watched them go, until it was just her and the corpse of the Goal she¡¯d killed.


    Wander placed a hand over the wound on her chest. She put two fingers in her mouth and blew.


    -


    After Wander had thrown Fragile over The Stronghoof, it proceeded to carry him West at an imperiled pace. Fragile was scared and quite confused for the duration, holding on to The Stronghoof¡¯s leather straps and having his tenders smashed again and again against its hide.


    When at last The Stronghoof stopped up its tireless flight, he drew his eyes open. His ride halted only after it broke from the woods, and carried them into a sparsely dressed marshland. A brook ran by them; in the far distance were hills and trees and tall grass, thin and icy pale.


    They were surrounded by Goals.


    A silent host had enveloped him and The Stronghoof. It was large, in the way of twenty men or more, and wholly comprised of hidewearing backwoodsmen. They bore twisted noses and squat jawlines. Each was heavily armed with metal weapons, waterskins, cutting tools, and braced leather armor. Some were short, and some were like trees, and others stood between the two. Every man was smeared with dirt, dust, black ash, and flakes of red clay; these had been frosted over. All looked down at him from toned, meatless cheekbones.


    Two men lifted Fragile off The Stronghoof and set him on the ground. Another came forward. In addition to bearing similar equipment to his friends, Fragile¡¯s addresser carried a flat paper fan in his hand, and his head was wrapped up in a yellow bundle.


    ¡°I am Voicer,¡± the Goal said. ¡°I and my families are Under. What families are yours, longhaired yon?¡±


    Fragile started at Voicer¡¯s atypical dialect. Words he vaguely recognized were rebuilt strangely, and others had been replaced wholesale. Nevertheless, he endeavored to explain himself. ¡°I was Key,¡± he said. ¡°Key of Six Braids.¡±


    Muttering went through the woodsmen.


    ¡°Sixbraids?¡± Voicer asked. Fragile nodded.


    ¡°You have the mouth of a Sixbraid,¡± he said. ¡°But these are all gone. The Sixbraids, and the others on the river. Their seat is empty. It was heard.¡±


    ¡°It is true.¡±


    ¡°We do not know its reason,¡± he continued. ¡°But we have heard too of fallen Laruns. A great host, cut apart by your families.¡±


    ¡°It was not our families,¡± Fragile said. ¡°It was accomplished by the one I help.¡±


    The muttering continued. Voicer raised an eyebrow. ¡°You have a creator? From where did he come? Does he lead a gathering?¡±


    ¡°She came from the dawn,¡± Fragile said. ¡°She is alone, eldman. She is the greatest power in the entire riversland.¡±


    Whispering began.


    ¡°What is he saying?¡±


    ¡°An outman saved the Sixbraids.¡±


    ¡°An outman?¡±


    ¡°A woman.¡±


    ¡°A To-Light woman.¡±


    ¡°A destroyer.¡±


    ¡°Where is your creator now?¡± Voicer asked.


    ¡°The one I help threw me atop her heart, eldman,¡± Fragile said. ¡°I was dragged this way, but I do not know for how long. I fear she is in danger.¡±


    Voicer raised up his fan about the host, at a place where all could see. He bent it twice, and spun it in a circle clockwise. One of the Unders took up a hollow tube and blew through one end. His device echoed out a low rumble across the riversland. The still company started to slouch and shuffle East, the way Fragile had come.


    ¡°Atop your seat, Key of Six Braids,¡± Voicer said. ¡°We will go to your creator, and see about your words. If they are true, she may be water for our fires.¡±


    A long whistle shot out from the rounds. Fragile had grabbed and wrenched and slid his face onto The Stronghoof¡¯s back just as Wander¡¯s distant note made itself known to them all. The Unders¡¯ eyes widened as his mount scrambled past them and back the way it came, its comports and munitions rattling just as wildly as they had before, and Fragile returned to his turbulent agony.


    -


    The Unders chased Fragile and The Stronghoof back through the rounds and their path, where they found Wander, along with her vanquished foe. They took up the body of her attacker, chopped up trees with which to fabricate a litter, and continued on, shepherding all three of them through the country.


    In spite of the Unders¡¯ easy feeling, Wander could feel eyes on her. All were watching the two of them very carefully.


    ¡°These men,¡± Wander said. ¡°They speak like the felled one. Who are they?¡±


    Fragile didn¡¯t respond. He goggled wearily at the gash in her chest.


    Their guides chattered and giggled to one another, trying to keep their voices down. She could glean only a little of their meaning, anyway.


    She pushed his shoulder. ¡°Aie.¡±


    ¡°Ih!¡± Fragile snapped out of his horrified reverie. He placed a hand on his face. ¡°They are Under. That is the name they gave.¡±


    ¡°Where is their shell?¡±


    ¡°I suppose one is like to be nearby.¡±


    Wander got the sense that he hadn¡¯t understood the question. ¡°I mean their settling spot,¡± she said. ¡°Their always-home. Where they take water and lie down.¡±


    ¡°I do not think they have one,¡± Fragile replied. ¡°The Lodge said those who move are all bites to the Laruns now, because they are too much like fighters elsewhere, and anyone is cut and beaten who does not shell forever.¡±


    ¡°¡®Those who move?¡¯¡±


    ¡°In the rounds,¡± he said. ¡°Those who do not always sit. Those who would press and turn about the riversland, make living, and tell of it to those who could not. It is a thing done.¡±


    They walked along a gentle, ice-encrusted slope. The Stronghoof brayed. In the distance, columns of smoke piled up before the primlight sky. One plume rose larger, thicker, and higher than its peers.


    ¡°Is this your shell-seat, eldbrother?¡± Fragile asked Voicer.


    ¡°It could only be a shell-seat,¡± Voicer said. ¡°This one is called Our. It is small among the others.¡±


    Fragile scratched his head. ¡°Do you have cause there?¡±


    ¡°To help our friends with response, and to gather water. I expect too that some of us will seat here, and wait out the Cold.¡±


    ¡°Response?¡± Fragile questsaid. ¡°Who asks for it?¡±


    ¡°Meeters.¡± Voicer drank from a skin of water, gargled it, and spat into the snow. ¡°A group of hearts. They live in the rounds.¡±


    ¡°¡®Meeters?¡¯¡± Fragile shook his head. ¡°I have heard this word. Is it like a knower?¡±


    ¡°What is ¡®knower¡¯?¡±


    ¡°They work in the rounds.¡±


    Voicer nodded. ¡°For many seasons, they have guarded the outside, and kept safe a great gift to our people. But they have changed and now live a wrong way. They have drawn out seatwomen into it, and small ones from the shell. That has drawn on men and Walls. We will approach them and drive them out.¡±


    Wander watched his discourse with the Under. ¡°You can hear them?¡± she questsaid.


    Fragile looked at her. ¡°It¡¯s hard,¡± he said. ¡°I miss pieces. Can you?¡±


    ¡°Not yet. Too much of it doesn¡¯t make sense.¡±


    This apparently registered with Voicer¡¯s company. The Goals glanced at each other and were eaten up by laughter.


    The smoke stacked taller and taller and soon enough the roundseats of Our had come into sight. Their facade was diverse, filled primarily with seats whose supports and roofs had been devised of long thin fibres rather than chopped wood, the surfaces of which were still fresh with the muddy handprints of those who had stuffed them inside their bindings and supposed their form. Their sloping and uneven construction posed a sharp contrast to the kind Fragile had acclimated to in the Houses, where the vital scent of fired bricks had become a feature he stood up to each morning.


    Their train jaunted past all thresholds, passing through the shell¡¯s main thoroughfare, where the seats became tightly clustered and governed by use and family. The shell was quiet, and only a few watchwalls, adorned by sashes painted yellow, clapped and hollered at them as their company moved beyond its limits.


    They arrived in Our¡¯s Place of Hearing, where a crowd of Unders had gathered. Weapon-dressed movers, the old and the sick, the children and every man were in it. All the people were bundled in furs, coldovers and great black hides. The flames of a wooden mound at their fore flew up and over them. The Unders had set alight a mound of logs and placed three bodies on it, spewing out a scent of ash and soot. It swam up Fragile¡¯s nose and ate at it until his face was heavy and his head had begun to pound.


    ¡°For who was this made, eldbrother?¡± Fragile asked.


    Voicer raised an eyebrow at Fragile¡¯s foreign diction.


    ¡°For who was this made?¡± Fragile sheepishly pointed out the crowd and the fire. ¡°Why was this gathered? Why?¡±


    Voicer pursed his lips as the Sixbraid¡¯s feverish mumbling finally turned up sense. ¡°A voicewoman has been sent to the rulers,¡± he said. ¡°But I do not know her name. We will go to the Lodge, and he will tell you how it is. Keep close; you two will send fear into the seated ones.¡±


    They moved around the crowd, past the roundseats on its periphery, towards a larger building adorned with Goalish script. Many of the shell¡¯s inhabitants turned from veneration to marvel and then snarl at Wander¡¯s hesigns, which elicited accusing and accusation from lumps of Goal that shifted in their direction. By the time they had reached around the mass of people, most eyes had left the fire and turned directly onto them.


    They received a view of the corpse-fire. To Fragile, the bodies were indistinguishable from one another, but Wander could discern their anatomical nuances. Three bodies were on it: the slouched architecture of an elder, the frame of a less injured one, and that of a howl. All had suffered impact fractures.


    In front of the fire before the script-written building was the Unders¡¯ entrance chair. Seated in it was a young man with black hair and a round face, surrounded by eight men who stood higher than he.


    ¡°This is where we part ways,¡± Voicer said. ¡°My own creator is shelling here, with all the friends he could find. We must go to him, and likely move after; then, you may see no more of me.¡±


    ¡°I hope you will be safe, eldbrother,¡± Fragile said.


    ¡°I hope you will be safe, Sixbraid yon.¡± He clasped his hands together and shook them at Fragile, who happily returned the gesture. His eyes turned to Wander. ¡°Be safe by this outish power.¡±


    The Unders began to disperse. Many of them plucked at Fragile¡¯s cheek or pinched his hair as they went by, smiling and laughing.


    Voicer stepped over to the seated Under, spoke to him, and went on his way. With his people¡¯s eyes on him and the fire raging, the man got up from his seat and approached the shell¡¯s visitors.


    ¡°I am a Lodge for Our, once Stonecooker,¡± he said. He gestured to his retinue. ¡°These are my Lodgesons.¡±


    The Lodgesons glared at Wander.


    ¡°Is it true what we are told?¡± Stonecooker asked. ¡°You could touch a meeter?¡±


    Wander looked to Fragile. ¡°His family is named Stonecooker,¡± he interpreted. ¡°He is the Lodge here. He wants to know if you hurt the man they found.¡±


    Wander rubbed her temples. ¡°I did.¡±


    Fragile replied in the affirmative. The Lodge stroked his chin. ¡°Strong,¡± he said. ¡°Very strong. It is a difficult and wrong thing to fight such a one. By what aim have you drawn through this place?¡±


    ¡°I am seeking gifts,¡± she said, ¡°in exchange for my hands and metal. I am searching out a spot for this one.¡± She gestured to Fragile.


    ¡°She is is trying to obtain Larun gifts, eldman,¡± Fragile conveyed. ¡°She offers her push, and her use of weapons.¡±


    Stonecooker stared at him blankly.


    ¡°Larun gifts,¡± Fragile emphasized. ¡°Gifts of rock.¡± He made a small circle with his thumb and forefinger and traced around its edges. ¡°She is a fighter, eldman.¡±


    ¡°What is your name?¡± Stonecooker asked.


    ¡°Fragile, eldman.¡±


    ¡°What is your cause with her?¡±


    Fragile nervously shot his eyes at Wander, who was studying him intently. He wondered how much she could understand. ¡°I am her helper, eldman.¡±


    ¡°You are a braided man? A way-keeper?¡±


    He nodded.


    ¡°Does this outman keep any wrong hold on you?¡±


    ¡°No.¡±


    ¡°Does she want to hurt us?¡±


    Fragile shook his head.


    ¡°Then she shall have gifts.¡± He turned to those by his Chair. ¡°Her heart should be watered.¡±


    One of the Lodgesons yanked The Stronghoof¡¯s lead from Wander and moved it toward a hearthouse on the other end of the Place.


    ¡°You have been cut?¡± Stonecooker questsaid, nodding to her chest.


    ¡°I have been cut.¡±


    ¡°Our firetenders are working, but they will not be soon,¡± he replied. ¡°I will give myself to your name, and they will help you with your injury.¡±


    ¡°I just need food,¡± she said. ¡°And a seat."


    Fragile repeated her request. Stonecooker raised his eyebrow, but assented. ¡°We will find them for her.¡±


    He directed them to the building behind the Entrance Chair. The flames of the mound threw the shadows of Our¡¯s people onto its facade.


    ¡°This is our roof,¡± he said.


    -


    ¡°Why have you come into this place, outman?¡± Stonecooker asked.


    Stonecooker¡¯s roundseat was smaller and more domestic than the Thought Lodge of the Houses. Vines of fruit wound about a round pillar for cultivation in the Spring. There were enough untended sleeping spots wrapped around the center to accommodate a company of visitors. An oval leather covering placed over the dirt floor was populated by baskets of yellow flowers. Stonecooker moved toward a cushion near the head of the covering. Wander fell to her knees on it, trying her best not to claw at her wound. Fragile sat at her side. The Lodgesons stood nearby, talking and listening.


    ¡°Grain,¡± Wander said.


    Fragile looked up at her questioningly.


    ¡°Drink,¡± she said. ¡°Ask for grain. And tell him I already answered that.¡±


    ¡°She needs drink, eldman,¡± Fragile told the Lodge. ¡°She comes for gifts.¡±


    Stonecooker called to one of the Lodgesons, who retrieved a clay jar of liquid from the center of the covering. He brought it and a cup toward Wander. Wander grabbed the jar, pushed back and grabbed the Lodgeson, and threw back her head. She drained it in one gulp, and the bubbling liquid spilled out over her lips and her chin and onto the floor. All looked on the spectacle in amazement.


    She returned the jar to the Lodgeson. ¡°Grain,¡± she repeated.


    He looked to Stonecooker, who nodded. In its pursuit, the Lodgeson rushed off from the covering and out the doors of the seat.


    Stonecooker sat down. ¡°It is this place I speak of. Of this Wild. Of Goal.¡±


    ¡°Goal is a place in trouble,¡± Wander said. She wiped her mouth and licked her fingers. ¡°It pleases my rulers to see it safe.¡±


    ¡°So this is a work of virtue.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ve said it.¡±


    He scratched his head. ¡°Well, if you are strong enough to fight meeters, you are a more virtuous Wall than any of us. There are gifts we would release to you, should you offer to my families¡¯ cause.¡±


    ¡°Who were the ones who attacked us?¡± she asked.


    ¡°They are a group. They are not all of our kind. For many seasons, they have given themselves to the Night Ruler,¡± he said. ¡°They inhabit his virtue, and stay only in the rounds.¡±


    ¡°They¡¯re meeters,¡± Fragile said. ¡°I think this is like a knower. They¡¯ve dedicated themselves to the Night Ruler.¡±


    Stonecooker nodded. ¡°They are strong ones. A gift of the ruler has offered power to them. Once there were many Laruns, and though the meeters¡¯ strength is great, it was much for their hearts to bring conquest into the outmen. They lost many during the response, but it is over. The Laruns are diminished, and so they have come about to their activities again, with such anger that they have been made empty-headed. I suppose it is why they hit at you.¡±


    Fragile relayed his words to Wander with an odd look on his face. ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°It is strange,¡± he said. ¡°You would think they were troubled or attacked, but he is not speaking of it.¡±


    ¡°Ask him what his trouble is,¡± Wander said. ¡°And not a Larun¡¯s.¡±


    Fragile did. Stonecooker shook his head. ¡°Once it was not such trouble. But it has come, between those here and those there.¡±


    ¡°Eldbrother Voicer spoke of it,¡± Fragile replied. ¡°He spoke of taking.¡±


    ¡°It is true.¡± He sighed. ¡°I think the meeters do keep ways, but they offer out their gift to whoever lives, and many have left our place for theirs. So it is supposed between the men of consequence that their way is wrong, and that their help will soon be the end of us. They have begun to think them Laruns, which have always sought to take the women and the children.¡± He rubbed his eyes. ¡°It has not been changed by our most recent indignity.¡±


    ¡°What indignity?¡± Wander asked.


    ¡°You¡¯ve seen our dedications,¡± Stonecooker said, and his brow dropped at the thought of it. ¡°We do not fire without reason. This reason is called Earcatcher. She was going to the rounds. Men shot her in the night.¡±


    Wander tilted her head. ¡°Why would they do it, if it would draw in such crying?¡±


    ¡°They say that it was dark, and they could not see,¡± he replied. ¡°I think they are right. But I think too that she is Earcatcher, and that they would not see her go.¡±


    Wander removed her hat and placed it on the ground. ¡°Ask him about the gift.¡±


    Stonecooker pursed his lips. ¡°It is impressive. It puts light in their eyes and lets them lift heavy things. It also takes much.¡± He shook his head. ¡°It takes the rulers from them, and our way of speaking, and all sense in their head. They are not at that moment like us. They have lost their name, and the name of their family, and the names of where they are.¡±


    ¡°What is it?¡± Fragile asked. ¡°What is the thing itself?¡±


    ¡°It is peace,¡± he explained. ¡°Peace and no trouble. There has been trouble here since they were born. And sweat. A fight. So they go. They forget virtue, their position, and who their birthwoman was.¡±


    ¡°This gift,¡± Wander said. ¡°Is it handed to them through a mouth?¡±


    Stonecooker turned to her even before Fragile had attempted to work her words. ¡°Yes,¡± he said, his eyes wide. ¡°How did you know?¡±


    Before she could answer, they were interrupted by another group of Unders entering the seat. All were dressed in the same rough manner as those who had brought them in to the shell. At their head was a man whose head was wrapped up in a yellow bundle. His skin was cleaned of grit and the sand of the world. A light layer of steam rose off his body, which was damp.


    Fragile scratched his head. ¡°Eldbrother Voicer?¡±


    Voicer nodded to him and to the Lodge. ¡°Our friend wants to see the outman.¡±


    Fragile repeated his message. ¡°What friend?¡± Wander asked.


    ¡°He is called Waterdraw.¡± He extended his hand. ¡°Please follow me. We are not shelling much longer.¡±


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    They turned to Stonecooker.


    ¡°If Waterdraw wants to see you, you shouldn¡¯t wait,¡± he said. ¡°When you have spoken, come back to my roof. Whether or not you wish to enter our cause, you can rest here. I will see to it that nothing bites you.¡±


    -


    Voicer, Wander and Fragile left Stonecooker¡¯s seat. On their way out, the Lodgeson who had ran off returned panting with a jug of grainwater. He bowed his head as he handed it to Wander, who took a swig from it.


    The crowd were dispersed, and the Lodgesons preserving the ashes and embers of the mount in fibrous bags. The fires of Our had been put out and its people returned to their ordinary lives. Its inhabitants still regarded the outman with glares and bewildered chatter. There was a tension underlying that stilled the rocks and the sky and chilled the water in the wells.


    They passed by the center of the Place for Hearing, where a Larun monolith had been dropped. A group of men and women sat at its base in the midst of an offering. They wrote in the sand and surrounded a patch of it with bundles of grain and cuts of meat. A man at the head of them was crying out in an affected and antique strain of his dialect.


    Voicer noticed his companions¡¯ gaze. ¡°He is called Canemaker,¡± he explained. ¡°He is saying that the Unders have made a great pain on everything. He is afraid that the meeters will put them right for it.¡±


    ¡°For what?¡± Wander asked.


    ¡°What pain is this, eldbrother?¡± Fragile inquired of Voicer. ¡°What has he done wrong?¡±


    ¡°I heard that a howl was shot,¡± Voicer replied. ¡°The one we saw? It had fur like heartswater. Those are way-keepers who have come before you and I. It is an error to shoot them, or suffer response in their presence. It must have been brought here to keep out fighting, and it should¡¯ve accomplished this. By the Walls¡¯ choice of virtue, it was not.¡±


    They moved on and reached the edge of the shell.


    Violent life had pierced Our¡¯s air. It was a hooked up, arcane composite, derived from the scents and sounds of the leaking, jittering, convulsant spirits that a master will mass for war. So gathered, the life made stuff had begun to bleed; its armor, the roaring and squawking and stomping of bridled objects, the piss and feces that they bury and burn, and all the pungent acridities exuded by the swamp of roast roots and fermentations eaten up and pounded in by these people were washing into their body¡¯s heat and descending on whatever space they were directed to inhabit.


    Wander drank. She didn¡¯t blame the Goals for the noise, but she could hear it. The air¡¯s weight had become something she inhaled. It was a toxin to beings blinder and more deaf. There was no other way to sustain that antipossible position. It could kill a mind that hadn¡¯t died.


    The features of this gathering grew stronger the more they followed the Unders out of town. They discovered the large host Wander¡¯s acumen had sensed, the match of Voicer¡¯s own company by ten times or more. All manner of Goals milled about in a sea of tents and pens, cutting wood, wrestling, caring for hoofs and maintaining tools.


    ¡°The air is very soft,¡± Fragile murmured to Wander. ¡°I would think it loud.¡±


    ¡°They think of a fight,¡± she replied. ¡°This can end a voice.¡± She drank.


    The association had been anchored around a seat much unlike its peers. It was larger than most; the wood in its columns and walls had warped and rotted and frozen, and these had been adjusted and engorged many times over the years. Above its entrance, which was covered over by a hanging fur, was a circular, antique glyph nearly chipped off by the wind and the rain. Drawing close, Fragile realised it was of the kind which adorned Wander¡¯s body.


    Wander handed her empty jug to Voicer, who delivered them inside. He did not follow them there.


    The seat¡¯s interior was lit by a round gap in the ceiling that permitted light, and beneath which an icy white cone had built up. The floor was little more than cleared and exposed soil. At the center of the complex was a broad circle of stones, bleached white, and stuffed deep in the ground where they had been sown. They were all surrounded by sacks, bundles of grain and feed, casks of water, tools, and piles of every skin and fur which one could derive from the riversland.


    One man stood alone by the far wall, his back turned to the door.


    ¡°Do you know its meaning?¡± he asked in Sprak.


    Fragile followed close behind Wander as she approached the figure. ¡°What?¡± she asked.


    The man turned and stepped into the light. Much of his face had been cut apart by burns or metal, leaving jagged marks. His left eye had turned milky white, the same as the shocks that ran through his hair. A black trench pressed up against his throat, and he spoke in a bubbling hiss. ¡°The word on this place,¡± he continued. ¡°Do you know its meaning?¡±


    ¡°I have my own words,¡± Wander replied. ¡°Yours isn¡¯t one of them.¡±


    ¡°It was never mine.¡± He looked away, at the hesigns that adorned the seat¡¯s walls. ¡°I have heard its sounds. ¡®Murseda,¡¯ we can call it. But I do not know its use. I have found no memory of its purpose or quality; it has been struck from us, like other things.¡± He drew his fingertip across further glyphs etched into the wood. ¡°If I could speak like its creator, I could know it. And we could all hear it together.¡±


    ¡°What do you want?¡±


    ¡°It has been many seasons since I saw a star wander,¡± Waterdraw said. ¡°When last we had, my creators were still here, and leading my friends to defeat in the rounds.¡±


    ¡°There are few stars left to do it.¡±


    ¡°And one has come here,¡± Waterdraw said, ¡°into the place which hates the sky.¡±


    Wander said nothing.


    ¡°I am told you offer to us. That you hit a meeter, and may do it more.¡±


    ¡°I need gifts," Wander said. "So I may.¡±


    ¡°You have bitten off a heart from us. A way-keeping heart. I am curious about your design.¡±


    Fragile had not understood their discourse up until this point, but something did click into place when he heard bitten off, way-keeping and heart, in conjunction with their shared glance at him. ¡°I am not bitten off,¡± he protested in flustered Goalish. ¡°Wander has kept me from the rulers. I would be enjoyed to follow her commands, but she gives me none.¡±


    Wander put a hand on his sleeve. He suddenly shrank back and became quiet. ¡°I am here to work my craft and collect gifts,¡± she said. ¡°I have no further design.¡±


    Waterdraw shrugged. ¡°It may be so. If it is, then our purposes are uncrossed, and we will have no trouble speaking with one another. But if it is not, and they were crossed, then there are other needs I would prefer to tell you.¡±


    Wander inclined her head.


    Waterdraw¡¯s eyes misted up with sentiment. ¡°Have you been told about the fallen ones?¡± he asked.


    ¡°Yes.¡±


    ¡°The eld was our path to happiness,¡± Waterdraw said. ¡°Her words were like the rulers¡¯ water. She could take our words and make a jewel from them. She was all-adored, before these days arrived, and before her birthman tried to bring her out.¡±


    Wander held her head, trying to understand as he jumped between Sprak and Under Goalish. She thought back to the mound.


    ¡°The man in the fire,¡± she said. ¡°He was younger than she.¡±


    ¡°He was a meeter,¡± Waterdraw replied.


    He let it hang in the air.


    ¡°I am tired, eldman,¡± Wander said. ¡°Bring now your need, so that we may sleep.¡±


    ¡°I need only your will.¡± He folded his hands. ¡°I entreat you, word-dressed outman. If you should find our friends first, I wish you would give them greater kindness than virtue should allow, however you should see it.¡±


    ¡°Why?¡±


    ¡°If virtue permitted, I would not cut a point on any meeter,¡± he continued. ¡°Even if they struck us. Their work is the center of what we are. Their name was called in old seasons, before all the tears and hunger the outmen carried in.¡±


    ¡°But I keep ways.¡± He wiped his brow. ¡°I was born into this virtue. And it is not my kind to leave its country in trouble. To do so would be cause for shame, and my defeat.¡±


    Wander mulled over his words, and then she nodded. She turned and made her way back from the circle. Fragile noticed her leaving and followed.


    With one foot out the door, she turned around and spoke to him.


    ¡°You have entreated me to kindness,¡± Wander said. ¡°I entreat you into fear. You have men I see, many hundreds. Do not seek out this kind. They can fight me. So yours will lose. There is no way from it.¡±


    She exited the Murseda.


    -


    They returned to the Lodge, who they found pacing around his roundseat and the spot where they had spoke. He looked up when he heard them enter.


    ¡°I will help remove the problem of your meeters,¡± Wander said. ¡°And I ask a gift for it.¡±


    Stonecooker exhaled in relief when Fragile relayed the news. ¡°Our pickings are not great, outman, but this is a problem for which we will offer all.¡±


    ¡°If I am successful, I wish you would accept my helper in to your houses.¡± She extended her hand to Fragile, who could not meet her gaze or that of the Lodge. ¡°You know that his kind have passed out of this land. He is able, good for work, and offers no burden.¡±


    Fragile mumbled over her request. Stonecooker bowed. ¡°It is in our power, outman, although this is not much of a gift. If he is way-keeping, then he may keep with us. It is virtuous.¡±


    ¡°How are they to be found?¡± Wander asked.


    ¡°They are moving hearts,¡± he replied. ¡°We doubt that they stay in any place at once. But when we have met with them, it was in the rounds To-Sidedark.¡±


    ¡°I move too.¡±


    Stonecooker nodded. "I wish you would know,¡± he said, ¡°The meeters have a possession of ours. You should not touch it, or ever bring it back here.¡±


    ¡°A possession.¡±


    The Lodge crossed his arms. ¡°It is a stone. The stone of the night ruler. It is dark, and of great speaking. That is a power of the meeters, for only they may keep it. It should never be put in our place.¡±


    Wander was perplexed. ¡°Is this common to your hearts?¡± she asked Fragile.


    He bit his lip and tried to recall. ¡°I have not heard such a thing, but I was not often listening.¡±


    ¡°The air would be distended, and the winds incorrect,¡± the Lodge emphasized. ¡°The young children would see differently. Please, outman, let it rest with them, or there will be discontent.¡±


    ¡°I promise that I will do it,¡± she replied.


    He clasped his hands together and shook them at her. ¡°Will you rest before your journey?¡± he asked.


    The fissure in her chest itched. ¡°If you have a spot for me, I will lay in it.¡±


    -


    Fragile and Wander retreated to Our¡¯s hearthouse, which was smelling and had been filled up with meatbearers that groaned and lowed in their stalls. The Stronghoof hummed happily when it saw them.


    Wander picked among The Stronghoof¡¯s saddlebags and equipped herself for the journey ahead. Fragile wrung his hands on her outskirts.


    ¡°Are you going out alone again?¡± he asked.


    ¡°Perhaps not,¡± Wander said.


    Fragile¡¯s eyes widened. ¡°Really?¡±


    ¡°By some means, I have the intent of most people, but I¡¯d like to talk with them. There are already things I struggle to hear from you, and they are afraid of my signs. It may help if I have someone who was born among their ways.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll be there.¡±


    She looked at him. ¡°Why are you smiling?¡± she asked.


    Fragile hadn¡¯t felt his face change, and this upset him. He touched his jaw.


    ¡°I didn¡¯t¡­ I¡¯m sorry.¡±


    He began to squirm beneath her gaze. She turned back to The Stronghoof. ¡°Be ready for tomorrow,¡± she said. ¡°We may search for days.¡±


    -


    The two of them put down in the Lodge¡¯s seat and left Our at dawn. Wander took her weapons and waterskin, and left her hat and hair by The Stronghoof. Although he was loath to do it, Fragile left his bag and three-string with them, taking only his littlecane.


    Their departure was watched by Stonecooker and his sons, the moving Unders of Waterdraw and Voicer, and all the other people of the shell: mothers and infants, the cut and bloody, the pickers and catchers. Every one observed as they were consumed by the white and the green and the shadow of the rounds.


    ¡°Where do you think we¡¯ll find them?¡± Fragile asked. ¡°If they¡¯re as quiet as the Unders say-¡±


    ¡°No life is quiet. It is the hardest thing to conceal. It needs smoke, holes it can hide, and bodies to eat. Do knowers gather together?¡±


    ¡°Not so often,¡± Fragile replied. ¡°It is a work known lonelier. It is attended by women who have been abandoned, by fighters, and by lost children. But this is a strange group, and they are called a different word. Perhaps it is different for them.¡±


    They hiked through steep prickled hills and over winding rivers, over soil and rocky gradients that Fragile would slip and tumble off. Two nights passed, and they made no fires on each, out of fear that they might scare off whatever meeters came near. With her short blade, Wander hacked out and cut together a hideout of sticks and brush from the rounds which would trap in her body¡¯s heat, so that Fragile would not freeze to death.


    Fragile¡¯s body ached, and his mind felt sore. Wander¡¯s body ached and sored the land she touched. Snow fell in the night, and a dark, moist radius formed itself around their shelter each morning.


    Wander ventured out from their hideouts twice in search of food, returning with the carcass of a howl or a roothead. Fragile noted that her weapons were never bloody, and the corpses were never cut. Their necks hung limply, and twisted too well.


    On the third night of their expedition, Wander returned with the body of a brown-coated howl. She threw the beast down on their place, atop a gravelly frozen up bowl of a hill thinly picketed by thicktrees, at a spot where the sky opened up on the sloping landscape of the Dip and the rolling Goalish country that lay further East. The life there was quiet, suffered, and plentiful: sleeping wings and rootheads that shiverred and curled up in the icy Southbound wind, which produced such a constant and trembling whisper throughout their safe place.


    Wander took off her gloves to butcher the howl. Fragile noticed a large, blackened jag on her right hand, but said nothing.


    She took the knife from her belt and sliced up the howl¡¯s stomach. She briefly churned around inside, before ripping a red piece of meat out from its bowels. ¡°This is safe for you,¡± she said, handing it to Fragile. He was starving and the sun was gone, and it smelled like feces and carrion but he trusted her so he put it in his mouth. His mouth filled up with slime and acids, and water poured from his eyes. He retched as his stomach tried to leave his body.


    He forced himself to swallow and take another bite. Then he took his own knife and cut out a portion of the meat and placed it into the snow. He wrote words in the snow with his finger.


    ¡°What are you doing?¡± Wander asked.


    ¡°It is an offering,¡± he said. ¡°I ask the rulers to protect us, and to ensure the happy conclusion of our journey.¡±


    She sawed out a piece of gristle from the Howl and threw it out toward him.


    ¡°You can use that, if you want,¡± she said. ¡°You should eat.¡±


    Fragile replaced the good meat with the gristle, and covered it up. He wiped out the blood on his sleeves, leaving streaks of red over the white coldover.


    ¡°Do you offer, Wander?¡± he asked.


    Wander continued to skin and cut apart the howl. It drained into the snow. ¡°You already asked me that.¡±


    ¡°I know,¡± Fragile replied. ¡°But I think we talked about other things instead. And I have not seen you do it. I thought that you might not.¡±


    Wander took out the howl¡¯s guts and laid them out on the ground. She tore the raw pelt from it and quartered a section of its meat with her knife. ¡°I offer,¡± she said, ¡°with my life, to He Grantar.¡±


    ¡°Who is he?¡± Fragile asked.


    ¡°A man. Like a ruler. Like your rulers. He is the creator of creators. He has rings that shine like the sun, and a great winged beast, and an eye with seven hands.¡±


    Fragile¡¯s jaw dropped. ¡°I have never heard such a thing!¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s surprising.¡±


    ¡°It is?¡±


    She sat back against a rock with a lump of flesh the size of Fragile¡¯s head. She plunged her teeth into it. They and her chin became stained by freezing blood.


    ¡°Josmee,¡± Wander said through her chewing, ¡°where we are now, it¡¯s his home.¡±


    ¡°I thought we were in Goal.¡±


    She took a bite. ¡°Goal is a part of Josmee. To-sidelight-¡± She pointed North. ¡°There are Rootcliffs, and to the dark-¡± She pointed West. ¡°There are Laruns. Most know of He. Some offer to him.¡±


    ¡°Why?¡±


    ¡°His followers were a great power, once,¡± she replied. She took another bite. ¡°Now they are not. There came a new ruler, and new ways.¡±


    ¡°Was it so in Shamkat?¡±


    Wander swallowed. ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°You said you were from Shamkat,¡± he said. ¡°A place called Shamkat. Was this ruler there too?¡±


    ¡°There are rulers everywhere.¡±


    Wander had a sour taste in her mouth. She threw aside her meat.


    The sky had turned a dim blue, carpeting up and curling around the stars. A flock of rootheads massed and galloped by the forest below them. Soon, Fragile and Wander laid down in their shelter and went to sleep.


    -


    A sunless sunset shined on a hand, which scrabbled and clawed its way across a beach, moving toward the surf. The waves gently crashed against something in the water that she could not see. The hand moved toward it.


    Salt and wind blew in her face. As she dreamed, Wander heard the clanging of bells. She saw herself in a featureless world-field before the danceshape. She stood alone there. The beast was drenched in hair and hide that was the color of the sky.


    He looked down at her, past his long nose, through her mother¡¯s eyes. ¡°Where are all the others?¡± he asked.


    She could not speak, and was terrified that she had lost all the sounds she had been given.


    ¡°Where are all the others?¡± it asked. ¡°To where has the sun gone?¡±


    She looked down and saw her father¡¯s head in her lap. A thin trickle descended from his nose and landed on her thigh.


    She felt her hands moving. Blood that no longer pumped surged from the wounds she had been given on her chest, and it spilled out her mouth. It sowed itself in her covering and turned the fabric red.


    -


    ...waken! Awaken! AWAKEN! the Bell cried.


    Wander felt a dull, throbbing pain in her abdomen. Her blade was already in her hands. She jumped to her feet and brandished it.


    No more time! the Bell cried. Fighters! Eight fighters! Nine fighters! Ten fighters! Eleven-


    She dragged Fragile out from their shelter. ¡°Get up,¡± she said, lifting him to his feet. ¡°Get up. Keep standing. Fighters have come.¡±


    He blinked his eyes open. They stood back-to-back. Wander¡¯s vision was hazy. She could only detect fuzzy shapes shifting in the brush, moving in and out of bushes and wingtrees.


    ¡°Wander?¡± Fragile asked. ¡°What¡¯s happening?¡±


    A blur leapt into them from the dark. Wander spun about and reached out her hand. A scream of pain sounded, and Wander tore back a clump of hair from the space where Fragile had stood. A meeter with a vacant patch of scalp pressed up a knife to Fragile¡¯s throat and screamed at her in the Unders¡¯ language. Fragile¡¯s eyes were wide with unseeing fright.


    ¡°S-she wants you to throw over your drycane,¡± Fragile replied. ¡°Your ou-outcane. The-the Wall...¡±


    Wander threw down her blaith. The meeter continued shouting.


    ¡°She asks for¡­ other ones,¡± Fragile said. ¡°Two other ones.¡±


    Wander unfastened her knife and short blade from her belt and let them fall to the ground. The meeter huffed at her companions, who pounced on Wander, threw her down, and collected her weapons.


    Wander¡¯s hands were bound by links of Larun wallrock. They were blindfolded and lead down from their hideout, and marched back into the rounds.


    -


    She was pushed and bashed through the dark. Wander complied with her captors, unsure whether a knife still bit at Quiet Feet¡¯s neck. Sometimes the meeters¡¯ meandering grew quiet for a time, and she thought about breaking up her chains. But then she would hear him cry out, and know he was still alive.


    The terrain flattened, and they were knocked to their knees and pushed onto their chests. A foot came down on Wander¡¯s back, and her blindfold was torn away. Fifty sets of hands and eyes began to prick at her and run over her signs, hair, skin, and clothing.


    ¡°She is an outman!¡± one muttered.


    ¡°She wears the words. The words of Athad.¡±


    ¡°The old words.¡±


    ¡°The words of those who hit the rulers. The words of those who hit the night.¡±


    They poked at her, and sent questions after it.


    ¡°From where have you come?¡± an elderly meeter asked. ¡°What has happened to her eyes?¡±


    ¡°What is your meaning?¡± a man wearing rings demanded. ¡°Have the outhearts sent you? Are you here to take us all away?¡±


    ¡°What is your name?¡±


    ¡°What is your purpose?¡±


    ¡°Who is this heart of yours?¡±


    A short-haired woman spoke. ¡°Why did you cut my friend Lone Wall? My children¡¯s birthman. My most preferred one.¡±


    ¡°Are you here to cut us?¡±


    ¡°Be quiet. Lone Wall ¨C speak of Lone Wall! What path was walked when you took him from us?¡±


    ¡°Yes, speak of Lone Wall!¡±


    ¡°What path was walked?¡±


    ¡°What path?¡±


    They hushed up, and she didn¡¯t realise they expected her to speak.


    ¡°They say that you sent away a friend.¡±


    The voice of Fragile came from her left. Fragile had also been placed in the snow. His face was wet and bloody, and he was shaking. She could see his eyes flailing and turning over the dark, searching for the light that only he of all required.


    ¡°I did,¡± she said. She stood up. She snapped free of her bonds, and the speed of her work shot metal fragments about the crowd. They gasped.


    Wander judged the span of the meeters¡¯ shell. It was beat of a swerving valley, flourished with withering bushes of yellow flowers, and peopled en masse by the prolific swingtree, whose taut, swaying branches would read pink and grey in the light. She looked upward and made out the long walled ridge that cornered their country, concealed by mist, and interpreted the thin and winding gravel slopes beneath it as those which they had been driven down to arrive at this place. The flatter land of the meeters¡¯ shell still tilted their feet, and couched little in the way of monuments. It was flush with a hundred huddles, all wrought from sticks and fur, hide covers stretched out between trees, and splintered wood logs cut into cones and painted figures. The whole place was unlit and freezing cold, but the economic gaze and general ease of the meeters belied its every effect on them.


    ¡°Do you think you will freeze?¡± she asked Fragile.


    ¡°No,¡± he said. He wiggled and vibrated like a waterlogged pup. ¡°I will not freeze.¡±


    She grabbed him by the shoulders, brought him up, and kept close enough that he could benefit from her warmth.


    ¡°They have asked you to explain,¡± he said.


    ¡°Tell them that I will not, until your hands are let out.¡±


    There was angry muttering before Fragile had even started to speak.


    A woman wearing a Goalish blade and a grey cloak emerged from the crowd. ¡°An outman who speaks like river hearts,¡± she said. ¡°An outman who bears two strange canes.¡± She stepped before them and turned to her kinsmen. ¡°This is the outman who kept her blade from us.¡± She pointed at Wander¡¯s effects, held up by the meeters who had apprenhended her. ¡°And those are the canes I have seen.¡±


    A man said to her, ¡°We are sure of it, sister Bestplace. We are sure of it. That is why we went by them when we heard the noise. We have not hurt them, don¡¯t you see? We have lost no virtue here.¡±


    ¡°And yet you strike her in this way?¡± the one called Bestplace replied. ¡°She turned her blade from us without good cause. It is by her hand we are not all fallen. Outman or not, she will not suffer like this, no.¡±


    The meeters began to clamor in protest. Wander spoke at Fragile¡¯s ear. ¡°Ask them if she sits here,¡± she said.


    Fragile repeated her words. He thought that they would be lost in the dark and the cold, but they brought about a lull in the noise, and the crowd turned to him.


    ¡°There is not sitting here,¡± said a woman with grey hair and no brow. She declared, ¡°There is no Lodge, and there are not eldmen. We mind the rulers and the night ruler. Our work is not a sitting heart.¡±


    There were mutters of assent.


    Bestplace went up to the bereaved meeter who had accosted Wander. ¡°Lone Wall is fallen because of me. I wanted to fight this outman, who has pressed on no heart in this country, and has suffered our punishing and hurt due to kindness. Whatever pain you would give her should be put on me. That is the virtuous path.¡±


    The woman stepped forward. She struck the cheek of Bestplace.


    ¡°I will condone your want,¡± she said. ¡°But my pain cannot be put. It is not a touchable thing.¡± She left the crowd and stormed off into the dark.


    Bestplace appeared paralyzed. Then, she wrested a key from the man who had spoken and approached the prisoners.


    -


    Fragile massaged his wrists. Despite much protesting and gnashing of teeth by the meeters, Bestplace guided the freed ones before her huddle. She hit sparks and then fire into a wooden switch and handed it to Fragile, who gripped it tightly and held his hand to the flame. There was a cry of irritation from those nearby, who shied their gazes away from the sudden piercing light.


    ¡°Thank you, eldsister,¡± he said.


    They sat down at a meeting of three trees. In Fragile¡¯s view, the meeters formed tall and dismal shapes that pressed against and painted up and down the darkness.


    ¡°There are no elds here, riverbrother,¡± Bestplace replied. ¡°Only older ones. Could you not hear my friend?¡±


    He gripped the torch. ¡°It was wrong of me to say.¡±


    Bestplace turned to Wander. ¡°This one speaks like us,¡± she said to Fragile. ¡°But you speak for her?¡±


    ¡°I speak for myself,¡± Wander said. Fragile glanced at her in surprise as a rough approximation of the Unders¡¯ words lurched off her tongue. ¡°But speak slow.¡±


    Bestplace frowned. ¡°Outmen are a different kind,¡± she muttered. She sat back and fixed her eyes on Wander. ¡°Have you name, outman?¡±


    Wander stared at her as she thought this over. ¡°I am a star,¡± she concluded. She jerked her head at Fragile. ¡°That is my helper. All this is name enough.¡±


    ¡°It may not be,¡± Bestplace replied. ¡°My friends¡¯ jaws are wide open, outman, and I have snatched you from them. So please tell me ¨C what way has caught you in the rulersland?¡±


    ¡°I have been asked to cut up your hearts, and open your position in the rounds.¡±


    ¡°But we are not cut.¡± Bestplace raised her brow. ¡°And if you meant to start a fight, you have brought a soft friend to it.¡±


    ¡°I did not come to Goal to hurt Goals. It serves my command to keep more standing.¡±


    ¡°Then what is your intention?¡±


    ¡°To measure your kind,¡± Wander replied, ¡°and, if it is sound, to put back your friendship with the Unders.¡±


    Bestplace nodded. ¡°Long have I wished for such a thing. We have been told that the Unders are where we were created - that once, before all this response, there was free exchange between all our hearts and all our shells.¡±


    ¡°You have been told?¡± Fragile questsaid. ¡°You did not know?¡±


    ¡°The gift takes all,¡± Bestplace replied. She pulled down the neck of her over, revealing a black mark on her throat. Wander¡¯s eyes fixed on it in alarm, but she said nothing. ¡°The friendship and adoring of the night ruler. It does not leave in mind our home, our heart, or our words, and we receive them again from the ones without a gift.¡±


    Bestplace stood up. ¡°If you wish to determine our kind, then come on and do it. It is almost time to eat.¡±


    She disposed herself to the black. Wander rose and followed her, with Fragile close behind.


    They set out, guided by Bestplace through the meeters¡¯ shell. Their domain was abuzz with activity that only Bestplace and Wander could see. Fragile¡¯s senses were adrift in unexplained stimulus, in swirling laughter, the rush of water on the ground, a forceful scraping noise, footsteps crunching through the snow and snapping branches, and idle muttering that he could not wholly understand. Only a few fires shone through the dark, surrounded by vague and gesturing figures.


    Wander measured the meeters¡¯ numbers, arms, and construction. She could see shapes of all kinds, primarily Goalish, but there were Laruns among them, and a Freeman. Most were young, and she thought they would prove capable in a fight. Howls loped freely through the shell, and gathered at a trough of meat erected by the meeters. A circle of men performed shadowplay at a fire in the distance. Another recreated Goalish words written in the dirt and spoke aloud those of a meeter at their head. All the meeters passing them by stopped for a moment and looked at Wander whenever they passed with a mixture of indignation and curiosity.


    A thin pack of howls bounded up to Bestplace when they drew near. Fragile yelped and flinched at their sudden emergence, but relaxed when they began to lick and nuzzle him.


    ¡°You¡¯ve befriended beasts,¡± Wander noted, as one sniffed her hand. ¡°I¡¯ve only seen them used for fighting.¡±


    Bestplace knelt and scratched one of their visitors on the head and neck. ¡°Howls like the dark as we do. And we are not sent away as quickly as those without the gift. They are all our friends.¡±


    At the heart of the meeters¡¯ shell, around which the covers and huddles were spread, rose three pillars of stacked rocks. Each was leaned over and united at the apex of a glassy black node. Scattered around the pillars were distributions of tools, meticulously woven overs, red gemstones, and small clay figures.


    ¡°This is the stone of the Night Ruler,¡± Bestplace said, waving at the monument. ¡°It is a cause of our gathering.¡±


    Wander stepped up to the stone. ¡°What does it look like?¡± Fragile asked. ¡°Do you think it adorable?¡±


    ¡°It is dark,¡± she said. ¡°That is all.¡±


    He rubbed his chin. He asked Bestplace, ¡°What purpose does it serve? Why is it carried with you?¡±


    Bestplace shrugged. ¡°I do not know. But we have held it and kept it shining since the days when there were no Laruns and the old word-wearing outmen descended on the rulersland.¡±


    ¡°The Unders know it,¡± Wander said. ¡°They seem afraid to even see it. And you cannot remember why it stays?¡±


    ¡°I know it,¡± Bestplace replied. ¡°It is my friends who prefer it, not I. They offer to the rulers; and, I think, it is a guide. It puts them back somewhere they can no longer know.¡±


    ¡°Has it no past?¡± Fragile asked.


    ¡°Ih, I¡¯m sure it does.¡± She stepped forward. ¡°One of some detail. It is a piece of night or like that kind, carried beyond its passing; a word from the ruler that tells his own as not a place, but a thing touched, and held at our side.¡± She crossed her arms. ¡°If it were my place, I would smash it down and scatter its pieces at every shell in the rulersland.¡±


    Fragile balked. ¡°Why?¡±


    ¡°The stone holds the night, and the night the stone,¡± she explained. ¡°Neither is a thing for just one.¡±


    They passed into an area covered over by pelts and leather. Many meeters sat in circles and drank from wooden bowls. A man in one such circle nearest to them took a littlecane to his palm, and allowed blood to fill his dish. He put it to his lips and then passed it to his neighbors, who lapped from it in kind.


    ¡°Sister Bestplace!¡± Fragile cried. ¡°Those hearts are being hurt!¡±


    Bestplace put a hand on his shoulder. ¡°Be still, riverbrother. It is a meal; their last before sleeping. They have just begun.¡±


    ¡°I have never seen or heard of such a meal,¡± he protested. ¡°Won¡¯t they suffer for it?¡±


    ¡°The cut will sting,¡± she said, ¡°but I do not think many dislike it. We can no longer fill ourselves with meat, nor with the milk of hearts, or with grain from the soil. Heartswater is the last thing we need, and it is made pleasant. There is no cause for catching or growing, and so there are not times of hunger.¡±


    So the mass of meeters merrily slurped one another¡¯s fluid. Fragile¡¯s heart could not totally divorce itself of an essential fright at the idea, but he was brought back to the nature of their eating in the rounds. With it in mind, he began to see an avenue towards their way.


    Wander¡¯s eyes narrowed at the blood feast. She took note of a pair of men on the cusp of the meal-place, watching the many meeters sing out and boister among themselves. Neither had the hair of a Goal, and were shaven in the mouth and head. Their skin was slightly darker than their friends¡¯, and each displayed many more scars than was plausible given such apparent youth. The majority of their wounds did not align with the straight indentation of Larun knives, nor the shivering cuts of Goalish canes. The bending mounds of silver tissue could only have been made by an older styling of metal.


    ¡°Outman?¡± Bestplace tugged at her sleeve.


    Wander turned to her. ¡°Who are those?¡± she asked, pointing at the meeters on the edge of the meal.


    Bestplace looked where she was pointing. ¡°They have been here for a long time,¡± she said. ¡°They bother no-one.¡±


    Wander reluctantly turned away from the couple.


    They approached one of the largest circles, a chuckling and muttering people sitting atop a round sheet of leather. The eyes of the meeters squinted at Fragile¡¯s torch. He hid the light with his hand.


    ¡°This is my family,¡± she said, placing her hand on each diner. ¡°These are my sisters, Pare, Pains and Surl. This is my brother, Cranes, my birthmen Runcatcher, Spool, and Frailmaker. These are my birthwomen, Wellmade, Utter, and Poleraiser. Those are our friends, Fisher, Skyspeaker, and Hearscaller.¡±


    Many of the people that Bestplace introduced bore little physical resemblance to her. They demonstrated wide difference in the angle of their jaws, noses, chins, brows, the tendency of their hair, and the color of their skin. Nevertheless each stood up and greeted her with as much warmth and enthusiasm as she had them, with a tug on the shoulder or a touch of the lips or a vocal embrace.


    ¡°Tender, what have you arranged with these hearts?¡± the birthwoman Utter asked. ¡°What is the sort that moves you?¡±


    ¡°It is no sort but mine, bato,¡± Bestplace said. ¡°These are friends. This is Star and this is Helper. They are here to see us. Come on, sit down. Sit. I¡¯ll bring water for you hearts. Sit and drink.¡±


    So they sat down. Their initial entrance was interrogated by the meeters, who immediately began to push on them with interest and questions, throw back bowls of each other¡¯s blood, and show them scars and gifts and stories.


    Sister Pains picked with amazement at Fragile¡¯s braids. ¡°You¡¯re a river-heart!¡± she said. ¡°When I was younger, there was fighting on the river. I lost my friends and my preference on the shores of the place they called Skymarker. I still yearn for those days, tender one.¡±


    Cranes, one of the smallest meeters, slipped around Wander¡¯s back and tugged at her strange cloak. ¡°Long over!¡± he proclaimed. ¡°Soft over!¡± She flicked his hand away as lightly as she could.


    ¡°The tender is right,¡± Wellmade said. She pinched the fabric of Wander¡¯s garment. Wander removed her hand, lightly. ¡°Strange over. Soft over.¡±


    ¡°What is its kind?¡± Spool asked.


    ¡°From where did it come?¡± Runcatcher asked.


    ¡°From what kind was it spun?¡± Surl asked.


    ¡°Its name is shoulderskin,¡± Wander said quietly. ¡°It is the dress of my home.¡±


    ¡°I think she is from the dawn,¡± Sister Pare proclaimed. ¡°An outman of morning places. Look at that long face! That curling brow! The dawn is somewhere inside her. Have I struck on it, Star?¡±


    ¡°You have struck on it."


    The other meeters exclaimed in amazement.


    ¡°Please tell us of it, outman,¡± Craner said. ¡°We live long. We want to see everything the rulers made.¡±


    Wander thought about it.


    ¡°It was once,¡± she said. ¡°But now it is not.¡±


    Bestplace brought her water, and she drank.


    Fragile had also become huddled by other meeters, who proferred him their works and trophies.


    ¡°This is my own work,¡± birthwoman Utter boasted, holding up an outcane. ¡°I cut the stone for it with my own hands, and assembled it in fire. It is like the ones near the dark, yes. Please, hold it! Tell me what you think!¡±


    ¡°I am not one of weapons, eldwoman,¡± Fragile stuttered. ¡°Wander would surely know it more than me.¡±


    Utter withdrew her cane, and ran a stone across its edge.


    ¡°You¡¯re a river-heart,¡± the friend Fisher said. He held a blue fruit toward Fragile. ¡°None of these grow by the rivers. None of them. You can taste it, if you wish.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m full, eldbrother,¡± Fragile said. ¡°Very full, but you are very kind.¡±


    Fisher withdrew the fruit quickly.


    ¡°You have travelled far, river-brother,¡± sister Surl said. She held up a long smooth branch which had holes bored all along its length. ¡°Have you ever seen a piece such as this? It is a Larun piece. Only Laruns speak into it, and when it is done, there is such a tickling sound. Such a fine, tickling sound. Do you wish to speak into it?¡±


    She offered it to him.


    Fragile took the proferred pipe. The meeter pantomimed putting it to her lips and blowing. He did, and there shot about the circle a pleasant tickling sound, as was predicted. It elicited clapping and laughter from the other meeters.


    As loud as this world was, it enjoyed the qualities of silence that Fragile knew. There was a humming in his ears. His eyes moved around the rollicking silhouettes of the diners, who had infested each other. He observed no anxious hardening of hearts by the men, nor any obligate quiet to be held by the women. There was a grand, honest and pleasant ease. It was adorable and fearmaking in equal measure. He wondered if there had been a waste in his life.


    -


    At the end of the blood feast, many of the meeters dispersed, either to their huddles or the trees. Wander, Fragile and Bestplace were left alone in the circle. Fragile¡¯s torch was burning down to a nub.


    ¡°...and then?¡± Fragile cajoled. ¡°How did you escape the Laruns?¡±


    ¡°They came at dawn,¡± Bestplace continued. ¡°Knowing we would suffer greatly by its light. But we were hiding above, in the branches, and jumped on them. Laruns are not careful about their backs. One cut to it, and with quickness, they were vanished from the rulersland.¡±


    Fragile put his hands to his temples. ¡°Eh ye,¡± he moaned. ¡°How is it you live such a frightening life?¡±


    Bestplace laughed. ¡°Do not be afraid, river-brother,¡± she said. ¡°It is not so frightening. Not so frightening at all. We are meeters! And you and I, way-keepers! It is in our being, now. The things that drove us drive us still, and we are forever wrapped in it. I say - rulers, pass it to us!¡± She clasped her hands together and shook them at the sky.


    She looked to Wander. ¡°What think you, outman? Can you hear our hearts?¡±


    Wander had been listening without comment, observing Bestplace, and tracing her thoughts illegible. ¡°If I could, what would be your aim?¡±


    Bestplace became emptied of mirth. ¡°Are you earnest in your design?¡± she asked. ¡°Do you really wish to bring back the friendship by which we were enjoyed?¡±


    ¡°I am commanded, not earnest. That is the greater power.¡±


    Bestplace grimaced. ¡°I do wish to convince the Lodge that our hearts might repair to their own,¡± she replied. ¡°Even though I do not think that what was could be again. There are those who wish to go to the Unders, and to bring Unders to the meeters. They wish to know their creators. That is my only aim.¡±


    ¡°Why must you plead for such a simple kindness?¡± Fragile asked. ¡°You are kind and adoring hearts. Surely the rulers would approve of it!¡±


    ¡°If I could, I would make your heart my own, riverbrother,¡± Bestplace replied. ¡°But the rulers¡­¡±


    She shook her head and mournfully clucked her tongue. ¡°We have gone where they are. I have sought so long to hear them, these people I once knew. But who I am now... I have found nothing of what was spoken to me, even with their gift. Only the voices of my children.¡±


    Wander¡¯s eyes flicked back and forth between the two of them. Their tongues moved quickly, and their words were fuzzed up by the ease of friendship.


    ¡°We need not speak of this now,¡± Bestplace said. ¡°You¡¯ve had a bad night. I will provide a better one.¡±


    She brought them among the huddles, guiding them to a dome hut comprised of leather and propped up by crossed sticks. ¡°This is the home we made for Earcatcher,¡± she said. ¡°Now it is everyone¡¯s. You can recover here, if you wish. We can speak more tomorrow.¡±


    -


    ¡°The meeters are bryplake?¡±


    Earcatcher¡¯s huddle was dark, cramped, and fresh-smelling. Hashed up bits of an orange root had been sprinkled about its surface. Fragile¡¯s torch began to fill it up with smoke, and it was insulated well enough to conserve Wander¡¯s heat, so she lit her pipe at his flame and he threw it on the ground and stamped it out, consigning himself to temporary blindness. A single spot covered with soft wool and many thick blankets had been prepared on the ground in the corner of the hut. Wander refused to take it, and Fragile did not get into it, so it stayed empty, reminding them both of the unformed kind that was once meant to inhabit this place.


    Wander puffed her pipe. ¡°Bright-plague. That is what they are,¡± Fragile heard her reply. He hugged his knees.


    ¡°But they speak, like us.¡±


    ¡°Beasts can speak like us. And be hurt, like us.¡± Wander held her hands together. ¡°I supposed it back in Our, but I have since become certain. They are night-dwelling eaters. I¡¯ve read about them.¡±


    ¡°What is their wrong?¡± he asked.


    ¡°The wrongs of brightplague. They fight He and his Family.¡±


    ¡°They do not appear to do it.¡±


    Wander threw out her leg and gnawed at her pipe.


    ¡°Do you know what to do?¡± Fragile asked.


    ¡°The Unders are bound to them,¡± Wander said. ¡°Although those we know fear them, my work could make others angry.¡± She paused. ¡°No, I am not sure what to do.¡±


    ¡°I wish that they would live,¡± he said. ¡°I believe it may be good, whatever must bring it in.¡±


    ¡°Do not be so certain,¡± Wander said. ¡°Because a thing looks helpful, it is helpful thereby? We have knowledge only that they truly have done a thing, and by it brought in the leaving of three.¡±


    Fragile became red in the face, and appeared on the verge of impassioned thought, but before it might have burst out, he depressed and bit his nails. ¡°You are right,¡± he said. ¡°I follow too easily.¡±


    Wander watched him sulk with a raised eyebrow. She removed her pipe from her mouth. ¡°Say something wrong,¡± she said.


    He unbit his nails. ¡°''Something wrong''?¡±


    ¡°I think you are afraid to bring in wrongness,¡± she said. ¡°But I should have it. It is some of what I gain from you. If what you would say is the wrong thing, then think it right.¡±


    He clenched the sleeves of his coldover. ¡°We do not know face-speaking,¡± he said. ¡°That is... it is not our craft. They may have learned it before me¡­ or maybe they think differently, and are not right about their position. But my birthman called to the Night Ruler. It was his last word. It was the last thing he said, and did for us. These have given gifts to us and put us in house, even when we have bitten off their yonman. If a foul prospect can do such things, then surely they cannot be worse than us. I think the rulers must have called it in.¡±


    During his sweating plea, the dirty orange glow of Wander¡¯s pipe had faded, and she left no other evidence of herself besides a swirling white thread that rolled up into a thin beam of starlight streaming in from the open tentflap. Fragile tripped over his feet and crawled near the place he believed Wander had been sitting. He crouched beside it, and he heard something nearby shuffle off a ways.


    ¡°There are hearts here,¡± he said. ¡°There is¡­ there is moving. I think there once was not, that it had been stopped. But it is again, and it is happy and kind. It is a becoming place. A coming back place. I have not heard the name of that ruler He, here. If he really does call for life¡¯s emptying, how is it right to help him? If what these are is all a wrong, I think there must be something right inside it. You have seen it, haven¡¯t you? The holding and the speaking and the meeting. You must know it. It is what you have given me.¡±


    As close as he was, Fragile could not make out Wander¡¯s expression in the darkness. Her throat loosed a strange guttural note which he could not decipher. It was not a sob or a laugh, but it emerged from a place beyond her will, and it went as quickly as it¡¯d come. He fell back in surprise.


    ¡°We should sleep,¡± she said, her voice measured and clear. ¡°Day is near.¡±


    -


    ¡°Outman,¡± Bestplace whispered. ¡°Outman!¡±


    Wander shot up and gripped the meeter by the neck, releasing her only when she realised who she had assaulted. A slight gray color, more visual noise than light, mixed in with tongues of red and orange and streamed in from the tent flap behind her. The roar of folk and bruised metal and suffering wood blew in from the outside. ¡°What is it?¡± Wander asked.


    Bestplace rubbed her throat. ¡°It is morning,¡± she said. She unhitched Wander¡¯s weapons from her back and handed them to her. ¡°You must go,¡± Bestplace insisted. ¡°Bring up your helper and go.¡±


    Wander hung her blaith over her shoulder and went to the opposite side of the tent. She shook around Fragile, who blubbered fearfully in his sleep. His eyes grew fat with terror before he remembered where he was.


    ¡°Take this too,¡± Bestplace said. She handed a bundle of yellow cloth to Wander. ¡°What I have done,¡± she muttered, ¡°what I needed to do ¨C the others will not be pleased with me, and it will not end this problem. But it may help. I hope it will help.¡±


    ¡°What have you done, eldwoman?¡± Fragile asked. ¡°What will we do?¡±


    ¡°Follow the outman, Six Braid,¡± Bestplace replied. ¡°Bring it to the outhearts, Six Braid. To their Lodge.¡±


    The three of them emerged from the hut to see many Unders addressing a single meeter, pressing at her with gritting teeth and sweaty knives and splintered clubs. She exploded out of their oppressment and rebelled. She took a knife from the hands of the enfeared and beat it into them and wept exertion.


    Waterdraw¡¯s forces had approached the shell under cover of darkness. As the black started its retreat and offered up concessions of sight, they rushed among the huddles. Fire had been employed and shrouded the huddles and the swingtrees and the mealplaces in ash, smoke, and engorged, distressed flame. The light it threw out cast in the shadows of men and charging things of more legs. Swarming pickets of Unders strung their bows and shot among the meeters, who were dragged sleeping from their dwellings and whose howls were torn and beaten down by arrows and sticks.


    ¡°I must go, yon,¡± Bestplace said. ¡°I must go help my family. The night has moved before. The night has moved a thousand times. This time will not be different.¡±


    She joined the fray. Fragile looked at Wander, wondering what she would do.


    Peopled scenes established and disestablished themselves across the lot of their skinwrought houses, before they would break together and procreate further and greater scratching of eyes and desecration of our bones. It elaborated a screaming array of the distending and dismembering of the association¡¯s littlest, and the providential damning of its greatest and least lucky. Blood sprayed out and hit fire. It seared to smoke and smell of iron.


    Waterdraw¡¯s shape dripped out from the rounds. He lashed his heels into a stonehoof ten miles high and thundered out among the meeters. Any knowing of him was tied to the manic whims of light¡¯s tide. On its shores he had become a sign out of distance which scorned all the quiet and temperate air. He and the riders beneath him bore down on the meeters with great hatred and sheer pointed shafts that jostled back and forth in convicted excitement.


    All seemed terrible and like it was advancing toward ancient and assured disaster. But the meeters turned from scores of their massacred Under kin and shot upon the riders, tearing them from their mounts and dragging hoofs to the ground. The rounds were gouged out and cratered by their collapse, hurling chunks of frozen soil around the encampment. The contest shook all mortal firmament and birthed clouds of dust, murking all that was battered and bashed and scattering its light with light of fires and light of the arrived dawn.


    -


    Stonecooker watched Waterdraw¡¯s Unders leave the shell. Then he awaited all return for three long days.


    On the fourth day, the outman and her under rose up from the rounds. She and her braided companion emerged bearing a yellow lump of cloth, their unwashed faces freckled with ash and soot. The shorter one trailed her, weary from travel.


    They were watched by all manner of folk as they reentered the roundseats. Stonecooker was brought forth by a messenger as soon as they had been sighted by the watchwalls. He rushed out to the broken monolith, eagerly awaiting their arrival.


    They passed down the thoroughfare and stopped at his feet, saying nothing. Wander handed Bestplace¡¯s gift to the Lodge.


    ¡°I was given it by a meeter,¡± Wander said. ¡°I was not told its content. She and all her friends desire your friendship. I expect whatever it is to be joined with that.¡±


    Stonecooker¡¯s eyes widened when she spoke his language. He took the bundle in his arms.


    Wander said nothing more. She and Fragile walked away, toward the hearthouse. She donned her hair and her hat, and guided their hoof out of Our.


    The Lodge started to unfurled the piece he had received. The other Unders crowded around him to see its shape revealed.


    After he had unwound the final ribbon of cloth from his package, he was met by clattering. A rubble mound dissolved from it and pounded out the ground beneath him, skipping and drifting into the soil of the Place for Hearing. The crowding eyes of his kin hugged and tugged as he bent down to pick at the ruined article, and raised it to his eye.


    He brought the piece into the light. Its shape and black color erupted for all to see. He dropped it in shock and recoiled.


    ¡°Outness,¡± the Lodge uttered. ¡°Outness.¡±


    He was afraid he would fall, and slumped against the monolith. The other Unders collected pieces of the Night Ruler¡¯s shattered stone, bubbling amongst themselves about its state and its presence. One man out of Waterdraw¡¯s movers was brought to tears, and sat silently on the ground holding two pieces in its hands. The Unders¡¯ children took up the pebbles and bits created by the snapping and tumbling of the stone on the Place and held it up to the sunlight, seeing its beauty and obtaining it for themselves.


    -


    Wander and Fragile walked West from the seats of Our. Its Walls watched them go; Wander could feel their eyes trail them as they moved down into an icy plain that bordered the shell, below a peak and another patch of forest. Wander stopped for a moment after they had drawn clear of its borders, and Fragile looked up at her.


    ¡°I have worn out my welcome here,¡± Wander said. ¡°But I think they¡¯d still be like to let you stay, if you wanted.¡±


    ¡°I will do it if you tell me.¡±


    Wander tightened her hand around The Stronghoof¡¯s lead, and urged it on.


    They stepped out from the dawn, which beat down from the clouds, and pressed a line of gold over all that lay behind them. The Stronghoof brayed as they cut through the snow and hit their stride.


    ¡°Do you think any of them will mend?¡± Fragile asked. ¡°The meeters, or the Unders?¡±


    ¡°A broken thing cannot do it,¡± Wander replied. ¡°Tot, a man of my place, a man learned of words ¨C he said that there is no thing fixed, nor made whole, in Ourl- in the riversland. There are only new things, and new wholes, forever. That is good to Am, and that is why he returns.¡±


    Fragile thought. ¡°If it is right,¡± he said, ¡°we are much like Ourland. And Ourland is like fire.¡±


    Wander placed a wad of chew in her mouth. ¡°Is it?¡± she asked.


    ¡°My birthman said that fire was the second part of us,¡± he said. ¡°When fire met the waters, a heart was made. One day, fire will swallow up the trees and the ground, and all waters too. He said we would be ended by it.¡± He brushed a lingering spot of ash from his face. ¡°But our kind burns just as well as these things. So maybe it is not an end. Maybe it is something else.¡±


    <hr>


    In the East of the country, there had sprung into being a pick of roundseats beside a half-empty river. By its far shore was a ruined and stained bivouac of punishing ropes and Larun nivmen, stripped to the flesh and then the bone by scavengers of rival genus. Wings the size of men thirsty for rot screamed and stabbed their beaks at a pack of red-furred howls gnawing at the soil and leavings of the battered dead.


    A train of stonehoofs descended from the forests to the North. Their riders wrested them by choice into a compartment of voided bowels, microbial smorgasbords once called manhood, and every article of divine or paranatural significance now congealed and expired and of no use to the beautiful things they must be separate from.


    They rode among the ruined Larun campsite. A cauldron of twisted bodies addressed the common center, deprived of all weaponry. There was evidence of a vast conflagration; tents pitched about a group of punishers had been laid to waste and ash. More bodies were stacked up in a cart by the punishers, with broken throats and no drivers.


    Two men at the head of the group dropped down from their mounts. The first was a small one, his whole body covered up by a ragged maroon shawl, his face concealed by a mask of stone. His whole figure was consumed by twitching and shaking and jopping. He removed a switch wrought of gray metal from his side, stabbed it into the ground and stepped forward.


    The shaking figure¡¯s companion bore a langniv at his side, honed recently. His hair was cropped, combed recently, and he wore a gilded Larun bryst, brushed recently. Strained around his throat, chafing against the veins that bulged and blew out there, was a chain of pure gold. He moved with steadiness and a light step through the bones and their carrion, which recoiled from him. He looked at the ropes and the dead Sixbraids, and a glimmer shined in his eye.


    The shaking figure jittered his way through the Freemen and fell to one knee. He trembled his hand into the blood-rich soil and crushed in a fistful of it. He brought it up to his nose and inhaled.


    ¡°Shaminkat,¡± he whispered.


    He opened up his palm and gave the clump of filth to the breeze. His gaze turned onto the whooping, hollering, screeching scavengers, and the air became untroubled. The howls let go of their bones and stood up with their jaws opened and their eyes wide. The wings went down from the sky.


    After they were finished, the howls sat on the ground, curled up, and quit drawing breath.

 Story 4 - The Buried Treasures

    It seems only days ago that Fragile the Sixbraid was living a quiet life in his people¡¯s village, in the ancient and storied land named Goal. Without provocation, a group of soldiers from a hate-filled empire entered into it, killing his friends, his family, and all the keepers of their tradition. A Wandering Star, a lone warrior from a distant land, arrived just in time to save Fragile and the Sixbraids from complete annihilation. Finding pleasure in each other¡¯s company, these two, a stronghoof, and an enigmatic presence named Bell now plumb the countryside for work and residence. Wander helps the people of Goal, and searches out a new home for her companion; in secret, she pursues her long-standing vendetta against a blind and destructive enemy.


    -


    The digger¡¯s hands found rock. It was found at the point of metal. Metal chipped and bent and broke, so he used his fists. Metal broke, would always break, but fists fixed. The digger¡¯s hands found rock.


    Once the digger was called ¡®heart.¡¯ He was born and met others like him. Then they were taken and put on wheels. They arrived at distant pits and were pushed into them. He grew hungry, and was given bread that was not food. Hearts cooked bread a different way. At first he wouldn¡¯t eat, but then he began to die. So he put it in his mouth. He was a digger, and he went in pits, and he ate more bread.


    The land they dug was cut out and driven off the ruler¡¯s firmament, a canyon built by lash and need. Incident forces poured over them in the mouths they made, and onto porters and their backs, where they were bound. In the darkness the digger and his friends quartered stone, which was stubborn, bit, and was breathable. It did not want to move. It took measure of its porters; it pressured the pumps and veins and subcutaneous cell storms that produced every shape each man could assume. In their guts lightning lit. Water fell from a porter¡¯s brow, and he collapsed. His friends walked over him.


    Once the digger had known day. Now he only knew night. Part of him yearned for the ending of this waste, the ending of this prank called birth. Another part of him loved the prank, and yearned to make others, and to keep the ones his friends had borne. The digger¡¯s hands found rock.


    The diggers went then and went again. Their bodies flooded pits and tunnels, up and out. The sky, which was once divine, had turned hissing and icy and a grey thing now. The sky looked on their stone, and a color emerged that their masters sought, which the hearts had seen in pitwater. Hoisted high and far away were new signals of new divines, wrote on cloth that flapped and whipped and slapped about on the ridges of the pits. They had been raised up to the sky and the stars, where offerings were sent, and now laments. At their side dangled men from rope made weary. Beside those were heart-deprived ones, who no heart could hear, and who had such tired eyes, and would beat them with canes when they were told.


    The porters looked at the hanging dead as they passed. They ascended the slopes of the pit.


    Close by were the huts and staked up roofs where the families of the diggers dwelled, built from sticks and coverings and covered in dirt and dust underneath the new white frozen floods. There, a body¡¯s bearer was pierced and cried out from a hidden place. They fought against the hunger and anger and nightmares of the biggest heaviest.


    A short tune began, carried on high voices. The sun¡¯s rays reached out and cast at them many miles away from a place where it still shone, a place all could see but none could go, because they were entrapped by great Walls with rocks and weapons. Their open spaces were wild and cold and cramped and there were few where they could mingle, but in those they had wandered out a child bruised and blue and half-naked. He sat down in a ditch where an old woman was resting and she took him into her arms and they closed their eyes there. The air was saturated by the tainting odor of pit water and pit drops. The singer¡¯s voice lilted and tripped but continued and continued and continued and continued and continued, a little softer each time and a little less the thing it was.


    A house sat on the edge of this teeming development, on the ridge high above it all and gilded with good stone that shined, possessed of papers, testament, and those who could write them down. It was brought up by the born, brought up by the hunger, and brought up on the backs of those made hungry.


    Torches flickered and the holes where they were buried breathed. The digger and his friends knocked and bashed at a prickly wall of rock. Their ripping was performed with thick lumpen picks that sent down dust and sharp bleeding pieces. Clumps of stone and sand and frozen dirt were cleaved out by their dull and inconsiderate rhythm. On the left edge of them the digger brought down his own shaft in knocks and bashes, with a thrust and demand unlike the others. On his most vicious strike, a clear note pealed out from the rocks.


    He looked at the place where he had been digging. His finger, whittled white and red, brushed up against it. The stain of him spread on smooth cut stone.


    ¡°Aie,¡± he called out. Their fire wavered. The other workers did not hear him.


    He threw down his spike and dropped to his knees. He inspected the flat rock with both hands and began to shout at them. ¡°Aie!¡± he cried. ¡°Aie! Look! All of you look!¡±


    The call was echoed. The Goals glanced at his discovery, prodded its surface, and then clamored around it, discussing its quality. One of them struck the space around it, revealing more of the discovered block. Others began to hack and rip at the jagged mass covering it up, and at last a towering creation was revealed. Eyes looked into it, and palms were set flush to its surface.


    With great heaving energy, the Goals groaned and pulled at the block. The moment it gave way, the dirt crumbled underneath them, and the Walls, and the digger howled as the ground fell out into a bleak and lightless pit. The others jumped away from it, startled, until he howled no longer. They peered into the cloud that his fall had produced.


    The dust settled, and a gap was revealed.


    <hr>


    </a> Once upon a time...


    </a> Near the shell of Sunwood.


    The fire snipped softly and blew out its body¡¯s gleaming wisps. Wind shiverred through the crevice they had climbed through, blowing in blizzard water and snowfall chill. The sun was leaving, and they had hiked so far, so Fragile collected wood from the ground and Wander hoisted the stronghoof on her shoulders and they all crowded in to a small alcove on a nearby cliffside.


    The animal¡¯s smell competed with the smoke for space. Fragile warmed his hands over the fire, took Wander¡¯s shortblade, and tended to it with stone and cloth. He noted with raised eyebrows the vined hammer that addressed the face of her cloth; he liked its color and shape. Wander drank from her skin and sat against their hole¡¯s far slab. The branches¡¯ burning broke color from her face, which shined like bronze and made a ribbon of her figure. She slid a hand across her mouth and threw it at Fragile. ¡°¡®Back,¡¯¡± she said.


    He looked up from her metal and her stone. ¡°¡®Pakh?¡¯¡±


    ¡°¡®Back.¡¯ An important word. This is ¡®me¡¯ in Sprak. ¡®Me.¡¯¡±


    ¡°¡®Back,¡¯¡± Fragile repeated.


    ¡°Back. ¡®Backs¡¯, this is ¡®we.¡¯¡±


    ¡°Backsih.¡±


    Wander cocked her head.


    He tried again. ¡°Back- back-suh.¡±


    ¡°Backs-ss.¡±


    ¡°Bax.¡±


    She nodded. ¡°Back-ss.¡±


    ¡°Bax-ssh.¡±


    ¡°Back-ss.¡±


    -


    ¡°This is the word.¡± Fragile said.


    He drew an arch on the cave wall with a sharp rock. The fire¡¯s light washed against the scar he had produced.


    ¡°The word.¡±


    He nodded. He drew small, multinodal shapes around the arch. ¡°These are the signs,¡± he said. ¡°The signs of the rulers. You can put them anywhere. You can put them all over the place. They will show you how to speak.¡±


    He drew one of the signs at the top of the arch, and put another on its side. ¡°Now the word is, ¡®hear.¡¯¡± He put a line beneath the arch. Its leftmost tip curled upward. ¡°Now the word is, ¡®to hear one¡¯s thought.¡¯¡±


    Wander hobbled next to him, took a rock, and copied his symbol. She scratched it into the stone with such force that a sheer gash was made, bleaching the tip of her instrument. Bits broke off and fell to the ground in a dusty pile.


    ¡°Please keep speaking,¡± she said.


    He made a second version of the word, which she echoed. ¡°I adore this shape,¡± he cried. ¡°Oh, I do adore it. This is the river¡¯s sign, you see? In this way, the word means, ¡®to river-oneself.¡¯ If a change is made-¡± He etched a mark on the symbol¡¯s side. ¡°-it means, ¡®to river-another.¡¯¡±


    ¡°In Sprak, this would be said as, ¡®to push off dirt,¡¯¡± Wander said, producing another gash. ¡°¡®To wash.¡¯ I have never known words like Goal¡¯s. A ruler is a word to you hearts.¡±


    ¡°It is the riversland,¡± Fragile said. ¡°We are in its shape. I think it so adorable. And it is such an adorable word.¡±


    He drew another, and their revels continued.


    -


    Time passed and the fire on the ground died. Colorless baselight, given to no rays or shine, crept in to their hidden rocky spot.


    They departed the cave the next morning and past the cliff, up a long paved road. Fragile held the stronghoof¡¯s lead and walked slowly. His head swayed back and forth. Their shoes crunched through the freshly packed snow and the nearby wingtrees creaked under its pressure. The wind could blow it like sand. It formed kneehigh mesas and warped drifts that they chanced upon in the road, and were forced to move around.


    As the morning advanced, the cold burned and stilled and stung their cheeks. They walked for a time while the sky broke open, and the sun and stars were revealed.


    To entertain herself on one of the long, straight stretches they encountered, Wander released the stronghoof¡¯s lead and scratched its neck. It blinked, nuzzled her, and carried on.


    She reached into her coinpurse and took out a single lofte. With quickness and cool, she spun it on the tip of her finger, flipped it with her thumb, and rolled it through her knuckes.


    She felt Fragile¡¯s gaze on her display and glanced at him; he looked away. She reached for another coin and flicked it at him. His eyes widened when he registered the projectile and it rebounded into the bushes, where he scrambled for it.


    Fragile rushed to return it, but she would not take it back. Instead, she balanced the coin on her pinky in demonstration. He mimicked her.


    She slowly swapped the coin between her pinky and her ring finger. Fragile tried to do it, and it fell through his fingers and onto the ground.


    They continued like it, Wander rolling the coin through her fingers, and Fragile trying and failing to roll his, for a long while.


    On a late attempt, by one nerve¡¯s serendipitous twitch, Fragile managed to roll the coin through two knuckles before it fell from his grip. He gasped in elation and beamed at her.


    Something pulled at Wander¡¯s cheek. She rolled the coin through her knuckles once more and slipped it into her pocket.


    Fragile rubbed the coin she had given him. He stared at it. ¡°Is there only one kind of city gift?¡± he asked.


    ¡°There must be many,¡± Wander replied. ¡°Although I have long wondered why your people name them such.¡±


    ¡°City gifts?¡±


    ¡°Elsewhere in the riversland, a gift, like they would name it, is not a button of nightrock or cityrock,¡± she said. ¡°They call that differently.¡±


    ¡°How do they call it?¡±


    ¡°The Makars have a word ¨C something like ¡®common,¡¯¡± she said. ¡°Parts,¡¯ for the Laruns. Rootcliffs call it ¡®change.¡¯ It¡¯s like a gift for everyone, but not itself a very good gift. They¡¯re only used for getting something else.¡±


    ¡°Then what is a gift, to them?¡±


    ¡°Well,¡± she said, ¡°that also depends. It¡¯s just usually not rock. Not when it¡¯s melt or cut this common way.¡±


    ¡°I knew hearts were different, beyond the houses, but never just so.¡± He shook his head. ¡°How could one possibly get a grip on it all?¡±


    ¡°In all Ourland, I have never met one who did,¡± Wander replied. ¡°I do not think there is any one who will ever again consider the whole. Maybe once, but not anymore. It is all too much.¡±


    Fragile fiddled with this for a time. ¡°How did rocks become gifts?¡± he asked. ¡°How did breathers ever come to adore them in such a strange way?¡±


    ¡°I suppose it is the thing they are. That which is required to retrieve and produce them ¨C and now, what they allow you to obtain otherwise.¡±


    ¡°What are they? What does it take? What do they allow?¡±


    Wander held her chin and narrowed her brow. She held up a finger.


    ¡°What they are ¨C shining things,¡± she said. ¡°Noticeable things. There are not many of them. What it took ¨C water, from the brow and heart. Much strength is expended in their taking. The ground is torn open and pierced and propped up by metal, because that is where they lie. This produces many wounds. What they allow ¨C the answer of needs.¡±


    ¡°Needs?¡±


    ¡°Needs.¡±


    ¡°Could they break apart a block-building?¡± he asked excitedly. ¡°Lift up a fallen heart again? Let one speak with the rulers?¡±


    Wander blinked. ¡°These are your needs?¡± she questsaid.


    ¡°Ih¡­ it is a few of them.¡±


    ¡°They are an odd bunch.¡±


    He shrugged. His cheeks turned red.


    ¡°They cannot break apart a block-building,¡± she continued. ¡°but if there were a way, they could bring together many hearts who could do it. They cannot let a fallen heart come up again, but if there were a way, they could bring together many hearts who would do it. They cannot let one speak with rulers.¡±


    ¡°How would they accomplish these things?¡±


    ¡°By answering the needs of those who are brought.¡±


    ¡°Then¡­¡± Fragile scratched his head. ¡°It sounds as though... the rock¡­ it can not, itself, answer needs.¡±


    Wander¡¯s head had turned away from the road. She tripped over a rock and kicked it aside. ¡°And what can?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± he said. ¡°The gathering? The ways?¡± He paused. ¡°The need?¡±


    ¡°How could a need fill a need?¡±


    He shrugged. She held her chin.


    -


    The morning advanced, and soon came noon and then evening.


    Fragile held Wander¡¯s guide in his hands. It was a broad sheaf of coarse paper that felt like soft bark and whose smell turned his nose; he did his best not to tear it. On its face was painted many symbols and words of used by the Rootcliff people. Wander pointed to a small line tracing through it.


    ¡°This shape speaks of a path,¡± she said. She waved at a group of green blotches. ¡°These tell of thicktrees.¡± She tapped a group of roughly painted roundseats. ¡°And these speak of a sitting place. It¡¯s our last spot. That¡¯s somewhere you can be.¡±


    Fragile, seeing her jaw set, did his best to get behind that idea. He handed the guide back to her. ¡°I cannot hear it,¡± He said. ¡°For it to be made ¨C can the paper see?¡±


    Wander rolled it up and slipped it into a bag on the stronghoof. ¡°The paper cannot see. Why do you suppose it would?¡±


    ¡°It is much for anything to see and write,¡± he replied. ¡°To write something so great ¨C it would be as to assemble a peak from wads of dirt. The wind would soon blow them all away.¡±


    ¡°It is like that,¡± she said. ¡°And the wind does blow.¡±


    The shell soon came into view. The distance flattened it, and it looked quiet. It was a good day and a shell of good size and Fragile imagined that at a time like this, noises would be made. Bread would be cooked and eaten, children would cut skins and crush grain, fireworkers would cut and mend, Walls would wrestle and animals would speak. But the wind was empty and carried neither sound nor stench. The broad limits of the shell loomed. There were no Walls to greet them.


    ¡°Stay close,¡± Wander said. ¡°I may have to push you off again.¡± She tugged the stronghoof¡¯s lead. ¡°Like in Our.¡±


    Fragile turned his nose at the memory, but he obeyed.


    They entered the shell and moved past the hollow roundseats. No bodies or voices emerged. The smell of rot did emerge when they drew close to a doorway, and passed into the gaps between houses. All the wood in the inhabitants¡¯ shacks and huts had been stripped away. They found the stalls of a hearthouse, which lacked hoofs, bearers, or animals of any kind.


    They came upon a Speaking Place, a round open complex where stood a large roundseat, a wicker stool inscribed by lines, and a Larun monolith at its center. Its stone was small, chipped, mottled brown and rough, and of a separate, less tenuous consistency than that of the others they had seen. Its spot was as voiceless as the rest of the shell. A whiff of blood wafted into Wander¡¯s nose, but it was much too faint for Fragile to detect.


    He trudged up to the monolith. ¡°It says this is called, ¡®Sunwood,¡¯¡± he said, ¡°the place of ¡®Threeheads.¡¯ Where could they have gone?¡±


    Wander let go of the stronghoof¡¯s lead and crouched down. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± she replied. ¡°But wherever they are, they left before the snow.¡±


    ¡°How do you know?¡±


    She threw out her palm to the flat white terrain of the Speaking Place. With the exception of their own footprints, only the paws of howls and jumpers had made any impression on its sun-soaked surface.


    ¡°We¡¯re alone,¡± she concluded.


    -


    They picked through the remains of the settlement, moving from seat to seat. The buildings in Sunwood were stacked green wood. A great mass had covered up the sky when, having found no people in any of the places that they checked, they at last entered a seat with a large fireroom and a foul stench. Pale winding lines of exhaust oozed off a rock stove. The room was damp and busily laden with cloth, hammers, knives, bowls, and overs of assorted density and size.


    They stepped inside. A voice ¨C a hissing, burbling croak - called out from a dark corner of the cell, towards Fragile.


    ¡°Yon,¡± the voice moaned. ¡°Yon.¡±


    Wander turned and saw Fragile had become transfixed. Before them was a man covered in filthy sheets of earthy wool. He had streaks of white in his hair and tender folded flesh. He was with spots, and with winding nose hairs, and in his mouth she could see that a tooth had been removed. His legs were thin, discolored and thickly veined.


    ¡°Yon,¡± the man repeated. The two of them sat down at his side.


    ¡°Water,¡± he said. ¡°Be kind to me, yon. Water. I need water.¡± He pointed his finger out towards his seat¡¯s open portal, where sat a well encrusted with ice and snow.


    Fragile jumped up, picked up a bowl sitting next to the man¡¯s head, and lurched out from the seat. He raised up water from the well, hauled it back in, and filled the dish up. Wander pressed it to the man¡¯s lips so that the liquid began to trickle down his chin. The man struggled to keep still. When he swallowed, his eyes figured shut, and he pulled it down his throat in convulsing gulps as though he could not bear it. He shook his head when she offered her more. His hands passed towards his legs. ¡°The offmen would not take me,¡± he said. ¡°I begged them to take me, yon, or to let me in the ruler¡¯s house. But they would not.¡±


    ¡°What did they do, birthman?¡± Wander asked. ¡°Where has your family gone?¡±


    ¡°All of them have been brought out.¡± He took hold of her hand. Her skin crawled and she suppressed a shudder. ¡°They took them lightside, to that smashing place. It is a giftmaker. They have taken all hearts there.¡±


    He rattled his fingers on his chest. ¡°Think of this, yon. Once, I raised grain. My birthman and my birthwoman ¨C these were voicewoman and Lodge. They adored me above all else. They were offered many gifts by the Laruns for my heart, but all was refused. They would not give me out to them. And now, on birth¡¯s edge, do I seek nothing more than to go out to the Laruns, so that I can go on with the hearts I know.¡±


    Wander¡¯s fingers curled around his. ¡°I know your seeking, birthman,¡± Wander said. ¡°I know its kind. But it is not possible. You will not keep here long.¡±


    He shut his eyes and nodded, and shook his head. ¡°But there is a need, yonwoman. There is a need.¡±


    ¡°Tell me your need, birthman.¡±


    ¡°I have no offering,¡± was his lament. ¡°I have no gift. The Laruns see that I have nothing for these. As long as the ones alike suffer, my heart will never rest. Ih, my heart will never rest. It will scratch at the doors of the rulers¡¯ house. It will scratch and tear down its doors and make a hole for all outish things. Ih, my heart will never rest. Ih, my heart will tear down doors!¡±


    ¡°I know, birthman.¡±


    ¡°Will you go to them?¡± the last Threehead asked. ¡°Will you go to them, outman? Will you let them walk around again?¡±


    Wander held his head. ¡°It will be. I am so commanded.¡±


    He held her hand and smiled. Then he breathed one more time and died.


    -


    ¡°They¡¯ve been taken into stabs,¡± Wander said.


    The two of them milled about the stronghoof in the snow outside the dead man¡¯s roundseat. Wander fiddled with its bags, retrieving various moulds, a stick of cloudrock, and other effects. ¡°Stabs?¡± Fragile asked.


    ¡°Stabs. They¡¯re smashing places¡­¡± She retrieved a corked bottle of resin, sniffed it, and stuffed it into her vest. ¡°¡­digging places. It¡¯s where rock is got to make parts with, and weapons, and gilding, and adorable things. They slash holes in the ground and pry it all out. Like I said. They usually use Freemen for it.¡±


    Fragile looked off to the side and bit his lip. ¡°Can we do anything?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m going to,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯ll go there and look at it. The Laruns need stabs, so they send them many fighters, but these have grabbed at Goals. If they¡¯re short of workers, that may mean they¡¯re weak and desperate. Breathing Goals are good, and Laruns should be fought. I am so commanded.¡±


    ¡°Can we stay here for a little while?¡± he asked. ¡°Before we go?¡±


    She turned to him. ¡°What makes you think you¡¯re coming with me?¡±


    ¡°Ih, nothing. I didn¡¯t¡­ I¡¯m not. I don¡¯t.¡±


    He looked away, and felt wrong for his clinging.


    Wander pointed to the seats and peaks and distant woods behind her. ¡°I¡¯m going to go to this place,¡± she said, ¡°and send back the hearts to their shell. You¡¯ll be here to receive them. And our gathering will be ended.¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± Fragile said. He bowed. ¡°I hear you. Thank you, star.¡±


    </a>They stared at each other for a few seconds. Fragile looked away.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know how long I¡¯ll be gone,¡± Wander said, ¡°and this shell¡¯s stores are picked clean. So you will need to go hungry for a while.¡±


    ¡°Yes, Wander.¡±


    ¡°There would be bites and meat-hungry hearts,¡± Wander said, ¡°and these seats are good shelter for them. So you would need to go hide for a while.¡±


    ¡°Yes, Wander.¡±


    ¡°I may not return,¡± Wander said. ¡°If I did not, you would still be hungry. So you would need also to venture out, and be alone for a while.¡±


    ¡°Yes, Wander. I will do whatever you say.¡±


    They were silent.


    ¡°Before you go,¡± Fragile said, ¡°I wish we would do something. It is small. It would not take long.¡±


    She raised an eyebrow.


    -


    The man in the roundseat had emaciated, and likely died because he had not eaten. Fragile learned this when he made to pick him up and drag him outside, and found that he weighed less than himself.


    While he extracted the man from his seat, brought him into the sun and laid him in the snow, Wander removed her short blade and began to chop at the foundations of his house, which had not been stripped totally of its materials. She produced a number of splintered logs smelling of freshwater and mould; Fragile laid them into a pile and dragged the man on top.


    Then quiet came, because he had stopped heaving, and she had stopped chopping. He picked among the seats, walking through cold firerooms and sleeping places, searching for any place where the shell held fire.


    He found what he was looking for in the open air, outside a seat uncovered from the wind or rain. The ones in Sunwood had fashioned a large bowl from stone that he could fit himself inside, and they had filled it with wood and black rocks and put a box of dirt next to it and a long rod of wallrock, and Fragile had seen a thing like them. So he went into the seat where that was couched and found a spot where the ground had been stabbed out and found a jug of something he would name fire water. Then, he poured it over the bowl, and put a branch in the fire he set there, and cast it on the mound where the dead man lay. He sat in front of it and watched it all burn. He took his littlecane and cut open his palm, and shed tears and cried out at the mark¡¯s making. He laid his blood against the snow and the dirt underneath it.


    Wander watched and smoked her pipe. She watched him watch until the mound had burned down to a cinder and the smell of boiling bone and muscle had burned up with the wood. She wondered how it was that the metalworker had become learned of such things.


    -


    In the morning, Wander got up and tugged Fragile awake. ¡°Come on,¡± she said. He did.


    They left before dawn had broken and verged on the stabs in search of Sunwood¡¯s folk. They took the roads Sunwood was attached to, in the way the spoken to had told. It started in the open air and passed into a dense forest where the trees crowded in. They found a place where the road had been covered over with roots and leaves and fresh saplings. A low wailing note swelled beneath their ears. Wander did not chop those trees down, but urged them all around, and set out to abandon that position very quickly.


    They ran up on a column of figures when the road had grown thin and the sky bright blue. The road people wore thick trailing gowns of a shade Fragile had hardly seen anywhere beneath the clouds, and never once in overs or other clothes. They were put up on hoofs, and accompanied by a few Freemen. These provided a rear guard, and drove on or led each rider¡¯s animal.


    ¡°Who are these strange travellers?¡± Fragile asked. ¡°Their overs bear such a soothing face. It is like they took the sky and wove it in.¡±


    ¡°They are skyshade women, from a skyshade house,¡± Wander said. ¡°They should not bother us.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s a skyshade house?¡±


    ¡°An awful place.¡± Wander tugged on the stronghoof¡¯s lead and quickened their pace. ¡°They are probably not bad hearts, but we need not address them. They have nothing we need.¡±


    They went up the road and soon the skyshade women passed by them. Their draping gowns trailed off into the dirt, and curled around their greycoatted servants, but few of them gave the Star or the Sixbraid more than a passing glance. Fragile marvelled at the golden ornaments which threaded through their brows, and at one woman who had had off her nose and replaced it with a green crystal simulacrum.


    ¡°Ha, friend!¡±


    Just as they were about to surpass the retinue, a woman dipped from the front of the column, approached them, and addressed Wander. The group halted, and turned in curiosity toward the strangers in white and black.


    The woman had pins of gold in her chin and cheeks, accentuating her sharp features. Her hair was bound by a red sheet. ¡°Can you speak like a thinker?¡± she asked.


    Wander stopped walking, and Fragile with her. She switched her eyes off the road. ¡°Yes,¡± she replied in Sprak.


    ¡°You are dressed up for fighting,¡± the woman said. ¡°Are you Seen? Are you walking for Eighty?¡±


    ¡°Eighty?¡±


    ¡°Eighty,¡± she said. She tilted her head. ¡°It¡¯s a stabbing place. It sits a while past this road.¡±


    Wander did not answer immediately. She considered resuming the ruse she had employed with the Freemen, but she supposed this had been rendered impossible. ¡°I am a star that wanders,¡± she said, ¡°and my work is not for speaking, skymarked woman.¡±


    The woman pressed her hands together and raised them to her temple. ¡°My design was not indignity, star. But if we are to share this path, perhaps we might share our parts. This is a needy and feurkun country, and it has many dangers for us both.¡±


    Wander hesitated, and then bowed her head.


    The woman placed a hand on her chest. ¡°I am Sunmeasure,¡± she said. ¡°We are glad for your companionship.¡±


    ¡°My name is Hillmeasure.¡± Wander gestured at Fragile. ¡°This is my feurkun helper, Camp. He cannot think yet, but he is learning.¡±


    ¡°By what means did you come by a helper, star?¡± Sunmeasure asked. ¡°Have you Tjeni papers?¡±


    ¡°He likes to help,¡± she said. ¡°These are simple breathers. I found him in the Wild; ours is a company, now.¡±


    She supposed it was partly true.


    Friend, the Bell whispered.


    Sunmeasure and the other skyshade women nodded and paid her glances of admiration. As they did it, their tallest member, a woman near the front, glared at Wander. She was on foot, and not gilded like her peers. In the back of her light bleu gown, thin and shorter than the others, hung a long, thick lump of cloth that tapered near its end.


    Friend, the Bell repeated. Strong thing. Speak. Listen. Know.


    ¡°Who is that?¡± Wander asked Sunmeasure.


    Seeing the hard gaze of her companion, Sunmeasure beckoned the bleu-dressed woman out from the crowd and put a hand on her shoulder. ¡°This is Virtuous,¡± Sunmeasure said. ¡°She is new to our company, and kind. But she is always suspicious of new ones. That is her great concern ¨C the knowing of the new.¡±


    ¡°It is a fine grain to have,¡± Wander replied. ¡°There is no wrong in it.¡±


    Virtuous did not speak. She only glared. The wind whistled by.


    Tell me of her feeling, Wander told the Bell. And why she seeks a fight.


    She has known many fights, the Bell replied. They are like yours. Speak. Listen. Know.


    </a>-


    They walked along the road with the skyshade women. Two peaks in the distance touched the clouds. In the darkness of early evening the stars were still bright enough to see by, and they walked toward the horizon¡¯s gold. Fragile sniffed the air.


    ¡°What is that smell?¡± he asked Wander. The heads of the skyshade-women remained set forward, and did not address his lilting chatter. ¡°It¡¯s adorable!¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s¡­¡± Wander thought of a way to explain it. She took off her hat and scratched her scalp. ¡°Have you smelled a flower?¡±


    Fragile nodded.


    She lifted her palm. ¡°There are those who learned ¨C you can take the smell. You can put it in water.¡± She waved at their companions. ¡°These do. And they put the water on themselves.¡±


    ¡°A smell in water!¡± He shook his head. ¡°Why would they do it?¡±


    ¡°¡­because of their work.¡±


    Fragile was naturally inclined to ask what their work was, but Wander seemed unusually tightlipped on the subject. So he let it be.


    Just then, their column halted. In the distance, the shape of a stonehoof stood in profile in the middle of the road. Its black hair and skin stood out against the pearly Goalish barren. She could see weapons at its rider¡¯s side, and that they wore a captured fit of Larun armor dyed the snow¡¯s white.


    Wander reached over her shoulder and brandished her blaith. Fighters?


    The Bell was silent for a moment. Yes, she said. Takers. Rule-breakers. Bites.


    They want coins?


    No. The Bell¡¯s gaze turned to the skyshade women. Wander turned with her.


    The one named Virtuous stepped forward and stood behind Sunmeasure, who did not flinch in the face of this wannabe extortioner. The man unsheathed his drycane, dressed at the hilt by a wide paper fan, raised it up and urged his hoof forward. A crowd of stonehoofs emerged from over the faraway hills and descent at their leisure.


    Sunmeasure noticed Wander¡¯s glance. ¡°We will be safe if they attack us, Star,¡± Sunmeasure said. ¡°We have our own protection.¡±


    Wander did not bother to inquire what that protection was, anticipating that the answer concerned the few timid Freemen who they surrounded. They shortly became encircled by the bites, whose animals snuffled and whinnied as their passengers directed them.


    The bite who had been standing in the road reared his hoof and pointed at Fragile. ¡°You,¡± he said, in Goalish. ¡°Can you hear me?¡±


    Fragile frowned and looked up at Wander. She stepped forward, and their eyes turned to her.


    ¡°I can hear you,¡± Wander said, ¡°if you will speak, eld.¡±


    The bites scoffed. ¡°She speaks like a Dip heart,¡± said one. ¡°Did the Dip teach you that, offman?¡±


    Another giggled. ¡°Listen to that nose! She says it like a little one!¡±


    ¡°An offman who can speak. An offman who has words.¡±


    ¡°Think: it is an offman who can speak. Any offman who can speak - it is a strange new one.¡±


    ¡°Where come you, offman?¡± the first bite asked. ¡°Is your cane with these Laruns?¡±


    ¡°It is not with them. I come from the dawn. I am a star that wanders.¡±


    ¡°Very good,¡± he said. ¡°Give us the Laruns, and all your Larun gifts, offman. If you don¡¯t, we¡¯ll cut off your heads, and put you all in a hole.¡±


    ¡°I have Larun gifts,¡± Wander said. ¡°And I would gladly give them into you. But these others are not all Laruns, nor are they mine to give.¡±


    ¡°We will take them, then.¡±


    ¡°They are neither yours to take.¡±


    The bites grumbled. ¡°And who are you to hold them, star?¡± the first bite barked. ¡°All the rulersland has been wasted and disjoined under their arms. Our parts of the rulersland; your parts of the rulersland. Where could we find such keeping when the Laruns came down for their heartgifts? We will take them, what is ours now, and restore the qualities taken from us.¡±


    Fragile stepped forward and shook his fists at them. ¡°Wander is the sign of lightning,¡± he cried. ¡°If any were to hold them, there would be no better in the riversland to do it. You are not anywhere near her position!¡±


    The bites laughed and looked at him. ¡°Look at the little howl,¡± one jeered. ¡°Hitting the ones who attack his master. Sweet little howl! Good little howl!¡±


    ¡°She is not a master,¡± Fragile insisted. ¡°She is not like a master. She is a wall! She has eaten whole the Laruns who would eat riverhearts. She has touched her cane to the meeters of the Night Ruler. You are little bites, and if you do not seek out virtue, she will send you all to the ruler''s house!¡±


    The bites¡¯ amusement turned to concerned mumbling.


    ¡°The Laruns who cut the riverhearts?¡±


    ¡°Is it true?¡±


    ¡°It cannot be. One could not fight so many men.¡±


    ¡°She wears the words. She is a star! Perhaps it is so.¡±


    The first bite sniffed. His eyes ran over her hesigns, numerous and glowing. He adjusted his grip on his drycane.


    It is not enough, the Bell said. He will still demand, even if he must freeze.


    I do not wish to fight them, Wander replied. What shall I do?


    Do not use coins, the Bell replied. That will not work. He thinks himself a virtuous man.


    Wander walked toward the first bite, until she could look down into the eye of his hoof. She loosened her shoulderskin and let it drop to the ground. She turned her back to the bites, such that Fragile could not she what she showed them. She pulled down the neck of her shirt.


    ¡°Do you know what this means?¡± she asked.


    The bites studied her neck with curious and furrowed brows. ¡°Yes,¡± the first bite said. ¡°I know what that means.¡±


    She covered herself up and turned back around. ¡°I am here for its giver,¡± she said. ¡°I have carried it for fourteen colds. I am bringing it back to him, everything he gave me."


    She picked up her garment and threw it back around her shoulders. ¡°We should not be enemies.¡±


    The bite pressed his lips together. They quivered. His fellow riders looked between him and Wander. ¡°You think this should make us go away?¡± he questsaid. ¡°You have been hurt, star. You have been hurt, it is true. An offman offmen hurt. There are many of you.¡±


    ¡°There are no more of me.¡±


    He snorted. He spit off the side of his stonehoof, and shook his head.


    ¡°Give me gifts,¡± he exhaled. ¡°Some gifts, star. Perhaps I will give you one.¡±


    Wander removed the whole of her purse, still bursting with coins, and tossed it up to him. He caught it.


    He weighed the bag in his hand for a moment before tossing it to one of his companions. ¡°We¡¯ll speak of you to our friends,¡± he said. ¡°They call me Throat. We will be making response here soon, for all that the Laruns have done to us. But you should leave while you can. Those we know are harder and many more than us. And they do not hear as well as we do.¡±


    ¡°We can hear it.¡±


    The bites swept past her in a rude and mingling column, and past Fragile and the skyshade women too, until they had become a smudge and then a fading mist on the horizon.


    <h4></a>-</h4>


    In the hours beyond their run-in with the bites, the light bent away from their hemisphere and Sunmeasure¡¯s company decided to pause in a snow-covered plain on the side of the road. The Freemen hitched their stonehoofs and the stronghoof to a dead tree and threw in poles to the ground and stretched leather coverings about and over them, producing a round shielded place for their charges to wait and sleep. Then they stood guard on the icy moors outside, watching the starlit perimeter with unblinking eyes as rivers of white drifted over the icedrowned marsh.


    The women crowded inside their facility, and laid out sleeping rolls of soft plush fabric that Fragile yearned to touch. When Wander first looked at the cramped shelter, so full of hands and bodies and errant limbs, a chill went through her.


    So Wander grabbed a sack of feed from the stronghoof and put it down in the snow and sat on it and smoked and watched along with the Freemen. Fragile wrapped himself up in his coldover and threw out his own sleeping roll by her spot. She produced no objection.


    ¡°That was cunning of you, star.¡±


    Sunmeasure¡¯s voice came out of nowhere. Wander turned around. The skyshade woman had emerged from the tent. She laid out a cloth over the snow next to Wander and sat down, rubbing her hands for warmth.


    ¡°It is a cold night, proddi,¡± Wander told her, eyeing her thin blue dress.


    ¡°I¡¯ve known colder.¡±


    Wander removed her pipe from her mouth and offered it. Sunmeasure accepted the gesture. ¡°Of what cunning do you speak?¡± Wander asked. ¡°Even if you knew their words, they were just angry ones. Their needs are not unknowable. And now I am with less.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t think so,¡± Sunmeasure replied. She put the pipe in her mouth and puffed. She removed the ornaments from her brow and a set of jewels pinned around her cheeks. ¡°Only purest cunning could change taking to acquiry. I cannot know Goalish words, but I can see Goalish faces. Those ones missed something when they walked away from you.¡±


    Wander did not respond. Sunmeasure paused. ¡°You must not cut yourself down,¡± she said. ¡°All this-¡± She let the jewels fall on her blanket, where they sparkled in the starlight. ¡°It is all we have. It is our only shine to them. And you shine well, it is true.¡±


    ¡°Them?¡±


    ¡°Ones who hold,¡± she said. ¡°Ones who want. And the holding itself.¡±


    She passed the pipe back to Wander, who replaced it in her mouth.


    ¡°I am not a thing,¡± Wander said.


    ¡°We are things all to it, star.¡± She gathered up the jewels and placed them in an embroidered pouch. ¡°To the takers. To the houses built big. To the papers that made them. To their hoards and hoardings.¡± She pinched her own cheek and tossed away the gems. ¡°Dispose of these rocks. This is the shining thing. It can shine very well, and we may be well cared for. But there will always be a winning sought of it.¡±


    Wander looked out to the snow and blew smoke. ¡°Then it must not be won,¡± she said.


    They continued to pass the pipe back and forth between them before Sunmeasure got up, folded her arms and padded back inside the tent.


    Wander and Fragile bedded down.


    ¡°I could not hear it, Wander,¡± Fragile whispered to her. ¡°What were you speaking of to that bite? What was it he knew? What was it you showed him? Why did they leave at all?¡±


    Wander sat with her head against the sack. Steam rose up from the snow. She tilted her hat over her eyes. ¡°You will never need to know the answers to those questions,¡± Wander said. ¡°I am sure of little, but I am sure of that.¡±


    Then she went to sleep. Fragile got on his side and followed her.


    -


    Ten-Six could feel the wires in her body, and she could feel them being pulled.


    She saw sculptures built from gold. They had faces she recognized. She knew that they were people trapped, and not sculptures, and that they had been replaced long ago.


    She could feel her stomach being filled up with sand. She felt as though she were being bitten away by fire.


    She knelt down and saw the hesigns on her body. When she looked again, they had turned to gold coins, and the heat had welded them to her flesh.


    Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.


    She could feel grass on her knees. She looked to the sky, searching for Am and his sons, but it was black and empty of them. The contours of a massive living shape protruded from the dark, its mouth quickening and its body shaking in a way that shook the ground. She could not move herself.


    She looked down, and saw that the sky had gone under her feet. The whole world had become dark.


    She heard a scream, and a wire in her body snapped. She heard another scream, and another wire snapped. She started falling through the darkness, and back onto the ground.


    -


    ¡°Don m''ke''mih!¡± was the scream. ¡°Don make mih!¡±


    Fragile¡¯s slurred caterwauling jolted Ten-Six awake. Wander got up from her sleeping spot and saw Fragile thrashing in his sleep, his jaw wired open.


    ¡°Bada,¡± he screamed. ¡°Bada!¡± he howled. ¡°Bada! Bada!¡± His throat bruised and burned and his voice became a scorched yowl.


    The skyshade-women had stirred. A few of them wandered out from their covered house at the noise, including Sunmeasure, and the one called Virtuous. The Freemen had turned their attention to him too, and some had rushed to his side and reached out to touch him.


    Wander got to her feet and waved them away. She knelt at his side. ¡°What is wrong with you?¡± she asked. She did not receive an answer.


    ¡°Wake up,¡± she insisted. ¡°Wake up.¡±


    Fragile whimpered and clutched his arm tight. He bit his lip and Wander saw blood.


    ¡°Wake up,¡± she repeated, confounded. She pushed his head. He flailed wildly at her touch and clutched his chest.


    ¡°Wake up!¡± she roared. She mustered up and shot out her bare hands to shake him. ¡°Wake up, you disable man!¡±


    In her frustration, Wander lost track of her strength. Her attempt to lightly rattle him slammed his head against the ground. He cried out in pain and curled up into a ball. Water leaked out from his eyes, which had welded themselves shut.


    Her brow unfurled and her eyes bulbed as she released him. She pulled away as though she had touched fire. Her hands hovered over him and shivered uncertainly.


    ¡°Am,¡± she exclaimed. ¡°Am, please help. Key, I wish I didn¡¯t do that. Please hear me. I wish I didn¡¯t do that. Please wake up. Please. Wake up, my friend. There¡¯s nothing that can hurt you. I will let nothing hurt you. Am.¡±


    Sunmeasure and her companions watched Wander head hang over Fragile¡¯s violent, wrenched figure. In spite of her efforts, the Sixbraid did not wake up. But something in him did hear and did grow quiet. A muscle unclenched. His breathing eased, and the screams went back inside him.


    The others returned to their repose. Virtuous stood alone and watched until the two had fallen back asleep.


    <h4></a>-</h4>


    Fragile opened his eyes to Wander¡¯s unconscious, supine body, positioned a foot away from his. He thought that she looked troubled, and very tired. Her eyelids shook slightly. It was the first time he had woken up before she ¨C at least unintentionally.


    He sat up and rubbed his face. From a distance, Sunmeasure and Virtuous were chattering quietly and looking at them. The sun had shot a wave of yellow light onto the rolling plains and staggering mountains and onto the sheets of white snow and ice that made a canvas of them. The skyshade women had begun to pack up and leave, wrapping themselves up in their cloaks and leaping on the hoofs with their Freeman pilots.


    Fragile assembled his effects in a hurry, throwing on his three-string and tuskleather bag. Then he grabbed Wander¡¯s shoulders and shook her. ¡°Wander,¡± he whispered. ¡°Wander!¡± His little shakes did not stir the warrior. If it weren¡¯t for her heat, he might have thought her a corpse.


    Someone reached down from a distant perch with a smooth, pruned, delicate hand. It took hold of Wander¡¯s cheek, pinched it and withdrew. A moment later, her eyes blared open.


    ¡°Quiet Feet,¡± she accused.


    ¡°I didn¡¯t-¡± Fragile looked up, back, and around, finding nothing and noone, in a panicked attempt to exonerate himself.


    Then, the two of them spotted her. Virtuous stalked away, back toward Sunmeasure and their retreating company. Her boots pushed lightly through the windswept snow.


    -


    Black clouds had begun to stack up over the horizon. They were much larger than any Fragile had ever seen, except in the summer, when fire would join the rounds. The road passed by a gaping ravine. Fragile peered down into it and stumbled, sending rocks plummeting into a rushing torrent of underground water. Wander¡¯s hand reached out and latched onto his arm, leaving him teetering over the side, and he yelped. Just before she could yank him back to safety, Fragile began to make out teeming rock spires and cream-colored crystal which glimmered in the darkness below. He saw something else in the current. She hauled him back from the edge.


    ¡°Wander,¡± Fragile said, ¡°there¡¯s a man down there.¡±


    She stopped, though the skyshade-women and their helpers continued. He pointed to a spot at the bottom of the chasm. Beige rocks surrounded it and the blue-green water, covered in snow and ice. A tangle of red and grey disrupted their facade, held up by a stubborn node of stone that the river ran against and had smoothed down into a dark green nub. Sunlight shined past them and glinted off the victim¡¯s langniv.


    ¡°That¡¯s a Freeman.¡±


    Wander and Fragile turned around. Virtuous was looking at them, and had spoken in high, lilting Goalish.


    ¡°He walked in,¡± she continued, ¡°most like. Or he jumped. They don¡¯t jump often.¡±


    ¡°How do you know?¡± Wander asked.


    ¡°Because they do it.¡± She went to their side and looked down. ¡°Their work is terrible. They are good at terrible work. They will not fight it, flee it, or fight themselves. But sometimes they go off, and do a thing like this.¡±


    She looked at Wander. ¡°It is the only path they have.¡±


    Then she walked away, going after their departed company. Wander and Fragile followed her.


    As they moved closer to Eighty, Virtuous¡¯ theory was strengthened by the territory. They spied a bryst and its owner keeled over beneath a tree obscured by fog. They passed over a frozen river, and saw three holes near the middle where the ice had broken. They found a man in a ditch, his head and face rent apart by claws and teeth. His weapon was sheathed.


    In the meanwhile, Fragile and Wander walked alongside Virtuous at the rear of the column, where Fragile¡¯s curiosity rapidly overwhelmed his hiding.


    ¡°You have amazing words, eldsister,¡± he told her. ¡°It is as though you learned them in my shell!¡±


    ¡°When I learned your words, I had not seen twenty colds,¡± Virtuous replied. ¡°The heart that did it feels so different than I. But I¡¯m happy she learned them well.¡±


    ¡°How have you come by them?¡± he asked eagerly. ¡°How have you become so learned of Freemen?¡±


    ¡°Everyone in a skyshade house is accustomed to such things.¡± She brushed her hair back. ¡°We must speak with all those who come to us, and we must be known by the Laruns. It is all our work.¡±


    She speaks falsely, the Bell whispered.


    Why? Wander asked.


    She knows you more. But she does not know it all yet. She could still fight, if you brought her to it. Speak, listen, know.


    ¡°It is surely a splendid work,¡± Fragile was saying. ¡°What kind is it?¡±


    Virtuous¡¯ face soured. ¡°I¡¯m not sure you want to know,¡± she replied. ¡°You¡¯re wordy for a Goal. How did you go work for this little lost star?¡±


    ¡°It is everything I said.¡± Fragile tugged at his coldover. ¡°It feels as though everything I saw was once dark. Now there is light in it. The Laruns came to our place. They fixed me in rope, and I was very scared. I would have gone to the rulers, but she defeated them. I have followed her for a while. Now, we travel with you, and when we-¡±


    He stopped. Wander was giving him a wide-eyed look that he tried to interpret. He realized, with shock, that he had just been about to reveal their venture¡¯s aim. Virtuous raised an eyebrow at their silent, gawking exchange.


    ¡°-and... I do it still,¡± he said. ¡°I still do. Follow her. For a while.¡±


    Virtuous nodded.


    ¡°How did you become a skyshade woman?¡± he asked.


    ¡°I chose it,¡± she replied. ¡°Which may come as a surprise to your friend.¡±


    ¡°It does,¡± Wander said.


    ¡°That¡¯s good,¡± Virtuous replied. ¡°If it gets you to speak.¡±


    ¡°I was told that the Laruns marked hearts and drove them into it,¡± Wander continued. ¡°I have never met one who followed them inside.¡±


    ¡°It has happened the way you say. But one does not forbid the other.¡± Virtuous frowned. ¡°And they need us, now. They need Freemen. More than they did before.¡±


    ¡°And you chose to fill their need.¡±


    Fragile noticed a sharp edge to Wander¡¯s tone. The thunder in her voice had grown closer.


    Virtuous recognized the anger in Wander¡¯s voice and turned towards the road. ¡°If I did,¡± Virtuous said, ¡°what would that make me to you?¡±


    ¡°Strange,¡± Wander said. ¡°There are other ways toward power. Your work walks among the poorest of them.¡±


    ¡°My work,¡± Virtuous echoed. She squinted her eyes and her lip bent inward. ¡°And how do you think of your work, hm?¡± Virtuous asked. She turned to Fragile. ¡°How do you think of it, Goal?¡±


    ¡°My work is help,¡± he said. ¡°It is help for her.¡±


    Virtuous scoffed. ¡°Your work is for an armed fighter,¡± she said. ¡°Your work supports her and supports her command, regardless of your need. Or your cane¡¯s.¡±


    He tilted his head and searched for the need she meant. He turned to Wander.


    ¡°She¡¯s playing with you,¡± she assured him.


    ¡°Your creator has commanders, yes?¡± Virtuous asked Fragile.


    ¡°I don¡¯t-¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t have to answer her,¡± Wander said. ¡°I have commanders. What are you saying?¡±


    ¡°You have commanders,¡± Virtuous said. ¡°And I have commanders. All these ones do. It is the commanding,¡± she insisted. She poked Fragile¡¯s head. ¡°This is what the commander needs. All else is play. All else is play. Vicious play, and wind and raging fire. That is all it seeks. That is the work of the whole world. You take commands; it is your work too.¡±


    Fragile frowned. ¡°But she has never commanded me,¡± he said.


    ¡°She wanders. She seeks to be commanded. You pillar her commands.¡± She waggled a finger at him. ¡°And do not tell me you do not receive. You do receive. You can breath and burst because of her. Isn¡¯t it true?¡±


    ¡°It is true!¡± he exclaimed gladly.


    She smiled. ¡°Hegrantar, Hegrantar, Hegrantar. You are a soft one.¡±


    Fragile blushed.


    Virtuous raised her eyes to Wander. ¡°I can be a part of it. I have learned to keep with that. But I shake against the one who will not see it ¨C this telling and this knowing and this moving.¡±


    ¡°I can see them,¡± Wander said. She looked away. ¡°I was born to be told. This telling leads me right. So I will do it.¡±


    Virtuous regarded her with contempt.


    ¡°Do what you will,¡± she said, ¡°little star.¡±


    <h4></a>-</h4>


    Sunmeasure¡¯s company entered their final approach to Eighty, and began to witness its touch.


    First they passed by many clusters of black-barked and leafless trees. Between them worked companies of panting and shouting woodcutters. They dredged up dustclouds that filled the air with an exciting scent in their hacking and bleeding of the trees, which they killed with slabs of serrated metal. Their hands became covered in red and green liquid.


    One group of Freemen pulled a tree down with a rope and staked hooks. The pullers stumbled, and one of their members was caught under the tree¡¯s wayward body, sending up a scream. More Freemen scaled the trees with hooks and short knives, dismembering them, and throwing them into harnesses that the ones below might pull on them some more. A loud thud shook the forest, and Fragile jumped; one Freeman, balanced precariously on a too-thin branch, fell down from the canopy and produced a tremor in their company. It put only a moment¡¯s pause to their sawing and hacking and chatter. These resumed.


    A craning assembly of wheels and ropes stacked up log frames that were hammered together by the Freemen, and then placed on creaking hoofdrawn carts that carried them up the road into the cutset. Here there were no trees, and all one could see was the stump-speckled ground stretching out everywhere and the smoke of Eighty.


    More hoofdrawn carts rattled past them, carrying grain, jingling with coins, jangling with loads of hammers and straight iron picks, brimming with meal and feed for animals that careened over their sides. An enclosed cart rocked past them gently, guarded by Freemen on hoofs, equipped with see-holes, Sprak phonograms, and a bone-and-arrow insignia that Wander regarded with suspicion. Columns of Freemen stamped past them porting loads of raw rock, glittering with flecks of gold and silver. They tramped along in synchronous parade, their backs hunched and their faces smiling.


    The cutset gave way to buildings wrought of stone and wood. Fragile gazed up at them with his mouth open. They passed dwellings and facilities built in a square way. Tall portalled houses spilling over with grain and snow stood by pens that milled with hoofs drinking from ice-covered pools of ripping green water, spread out both near and far away from them. The road became paved with rock.


    They reached a gate populated by three groups of Larun nivmen. Behind it, the source of the black clouds loomed. Crumbling gray walls proceeded out from the gate on either side and wrapped up the facility they concealed. They passed through it quickly, undeterred by its keepers, who averted their eyes from the skyshade women and all who accompanied them.


    The yard where they arrived was broad and circular. Carts, hoofs and riders had set themselves into place there either by arrival or departure from the stabs. The thick, jutting broon soil was frozen solid and kept clear of snow. Some hoofs galloped and carts rolled past them as they arrived, bearing loads of rock or people. In other spots, teams of ten Freemen unloaded the carts, bearing sacks of grain, jars of liquid, and people.


    The skyshade women halted. Sunmeasure approached Wander and Fragile. The women and their attendants observed them all.


    ¡°I believe this is where we part,¡± Sunmeasure said softly.


    ¡°I believe it is,¡± Wander replied.


    Sunmeasure took two fingers and pointed to the sky. ¡°We keep always in your memory,¡± she said. ¡°May that which is seen see you, star. I hope your work meets its happy conclusion. Whatever it is.¡±


    Wander echoed her gesture. Sunmeasure turned away and the skyshade women rode on, out of the cartplace, up toward a highly placed stone palazzo on a ridge far above the complex. As she passed them, Virtuous gave a short look at the two, and then followed Sunmeasure.


    They were left alone in the cartplace. The Laruns moved around them, wheels rolled, and the stronghoof looked at them questioningly.


    Fragile looked at Wander. ¡°These are stabs?¡± he questsaid.


    ¡°Yes,¡± she replied. ¡°These are stabs.¡±


    -


    The smell of spoil and feces was overwhelming. As they pressed into the huts and places where Goalish people poked out their heads, they found that every Goal in the complex had had their hair cut off. Each was marked on the back of the neck with the symbol Fragile had seen on Manor.


    The Goals inhabited crude approximations of roundseats comprised of sticks and mud bricks that appeared to have been gleaned from the numerous cast-off demands of the facility and its sprawl. The bodies of the Goalish were covered by rags; they were dirty, bruised, and many were too thin. They looked up at Wander and down at Fragile as they moved past, comporting baskets made from cracked clay and bowls of water. There was no friendliness sent to them, but neither was there an air of unfamiliarity or agony, and they were left unmolested as they descended through this territory towards the sounds of metal on rock.


    They walked to the edge of the Goalish residences, where the ground had been lifted and parted and gouged out by the Laruns, forming a large canyon filled with tunnels. It was populated in the distance by men with picks and Laruns wearing brysts. The clanging that it produced tilted the air.


    As they had descended toward the stabs, Fragile had grown more horrified, until his eyes were wide and cold sweat beaded his forehead. While they surveilled the scale of the Laruns¡¯ operation, he looked up and saw that Wander appeared untouched by the conditions of the Goals.


    They turned away from the stabs and moved to a place where a crowd had gathered. A punisher, more permanently established and raised above them on its own platform, had been set up next to flags displaying the divine sigil of the Laruns. Freemen had begun the process of cutting down eight rotting bodies that still hung there. When they had removed them, a Larun in a bryst and wearing the insignia beneath the flag led a young Goal onto the platform, his hands bound by rope.


    ¡°Now begins the work of fire,¡± the Larun said in Goalish. ¡°Listen, all you who can! This man stole from us, but he is a good worker. We will turn him to a thinking one.¡±


    The Goal was forced to his knees. Oil was dripped over his scalp. One of the Freemen put a torch to it and it was set alight.


    The Goals who had gathered shouted out in protest as his head was scorched. He screamed. Some of them tried to leap up onto the platform and intercede, but they were beaten and pitched from it by the Freemen. Those who threw rocks were skewered by arrows. The shouting only grew louder.


    ¡°Who will dig?¡± a Goal with one arm shouted, the Sprak falling off his tongue like shards of glass. ¡°Who will dig? Who will dig if we are all broken?¡±


    They screamed at the Laruns in shredded Sprak. ¡°Who digs it?¡± they demanded. ¡°Who digs it?¡±


    The sound escalated to a fever pitch, outstripping even the suffering lament of the tortured Goal. Wander¡¯s hand gripped the handle of her short blade, and trembled as she did. Before she could draw it out, the Goals swarmed the punisher, clambering up on it en masse. The Freemen swung at them wildly with clubs and langnivs, but the blood they shed did not deter the Goals; with rocks and sticks and digging spikes, they drove the Laruns from their spot and buried the victim¡¯s head in cloth, suffocating the flames. A group of men took the Larun who had poured the oil and dragged him over to the ridge. His flailing body tumbled into the stabs, and the slopes flensed the cloth and skin from it before it had reached the bottom.


    As the temper of the Goals coolled, the shouting was replaced by crying and then silence. A party of hoofs thundered down from the gilded house. The crowd had already dispersed; they moved past the few remaining bystanders unpposed. They stormed up to Wander and Fragile, kicking up snow that splashed onto her shoulderskin and his coldover.


    The highest Freeman among the posse leapt off his hoof. He was adorned in hesigns. His body¡¯s skin appeared smooth and curated.


    ¡°You are new,¡± he said to Wander.


    ¡°I am,¡± she replied.


    ¡°You came with women.¡±


    ¡°I did.¡±


    The Freeman pointed to the house on the hill. ¡°You must come with us,¡± he said. ¡°We will take your animal. There is a need.¡±


    Wander looked at the house. ¡°So uncover it," she said.


    ¡°There is a need,¡± he repeated.


    ¡°Wander?¡± Fragile asked uncertainly.


    Wander¡¯s hand twitched toward and then away from her short blade.


    ¡°Come on,¡± she muttered.


    The Freemen surrounded them. They pulled away the stronghoof, who let out a distressed cry. They lead them away from the stabs.


    -


    They rode up to the head of the complex, and started on the road to the house of stone. It was surrounded by a low slab wall and many nivmen wearing the gray raiment of the Laruns. A man in a purple cloak stood at the stairs leading up the building¡¯s ornate wooden door.


    The path that the Freemen guided them up was well-produced, laid with precious stones and stone lamps that bald-headed tenders dressed in tightly woven dirt-covered clothes lit with long matches. They passed through the fencing and the nivmen near it, and the Freemen leading the stronghoof guided it toward a large covered shelter below the big house, where large stonehoofs milled about drinking from wooden trenches. The man in purple stepped down to greet them.


    ¡°A star of Azad,¡± he said. ¡°Does she have a name?¡±


    Wander said nothing. She looked at the stranger¡¯s face. There were weary lines on it, and behind his smile lay irration. Although his hands were smooth and unfussed from the handling of metal, the back of his right hand was bruised, and she could smell blood from it.


    ¡°We have heard of your work,¡± he continued. ¡°I suppose you¡¯ve done something for the new parts of my house. You have entered us into obligation; that is unacceptable.¡±


    ¡°I never agreed to coins,¡± Wander said. ¡°We came to help your friends by chance, not by work."


    ¡°That¡¯s true.¡± He gestured to the estate. ¡°You must take our food, now. You and your feurkun too, and you must also use our roof. A good man replies well. And if I do not, I will not be a good man.¡±


    ¡°That isn¡¯t needed.¡±


    ¡°I think it is.¡±


    The Freemen surrounded them. ¡°You must take our food, and use our roof,¡± Priceless repeated. ¡°After that, you will depart the Otiser¡¯s stabs.¡±


    Wander eyed the Freemen warily.


    Will he hurt us? she asked the Bell.


    He would if he could, she said. But he is learned. He knows it would be hard.


    They walked toward the house.


    <h4></a>-</h4>


    The door to Priceless¡¯ estate was large, ornamented, carved and open. The interior was filled with good and ornate furnitures carved with women, winged figures and throned men, that one might use to sit, reflect, or contemplate. Teams of attendants ¨C Freemen and Goals ¨C with scalps flat in a Larun way attended to Priceless and those men and women surrounding him. The attendants were clean, and cloaked in garments spun from liq, a temperate material whose qualities Wander had only read about, but the body of every Freeman and every Goal bent and snapped, displayed scars and bruises of the cheek and burns on the head or hand, and all the Goals shook in a constant struggle to stay upright. Wander could feel their legs wobbling like jelly, rippling air throughout the room.


    There were stairs built by great masters that led to the upper floor, and clear containers of many fluids different and shining and stacked up on a wall. The room was lit by many small, condensed fires, rather than the great snapping rough ones Fragile had always known. Each was confined to a single black fibre wrapped in wax, and Fragile could not smell the smoke of one. He looked to the sky and saw many little ports in the ceiling, whose arrangement had been dreamed and paid for by the merits of this place. Its glow and shape turned around his mind, and the room was much larger by it.


    To Wander¡¯s mind, it put her in sight of the stabs ¨C the digging and turning out of places which one found useful and enjoying about the world.


    They were brought up the stairs, where there sat a long ornate wood table gilded with silver. There sat two Larun women adjacent to the table¡¯s head, three Larun men, and three Goalish women who sat beside those. Aside them, to her surprise, were Sunmeasure and Virtuous. The skyshade women glanced up at Wander, but their eyes said nothing.


    The table¡¯s surface was covered by twelve sets of tools, placed before seats painted the same hue as the table. Before each woman at the table was an egg-shaped cup and a bowl, filled with steaming broth, and before each man was a dark cut of meat. Each set included a handheld scoop, akin to a metal shell, and a hooked lance the size of Fragile¡¯s hand. He wondered what they were for.


    Before he could wonder further, one of the Goalish attendants snatched him by the ear and dragged him back, Wander¡¯s hand reached out and locked onto his arm.


    The attendant, a short man with brown hair dressed in a blue cloak, pulled harder. ¡°Not him,¡± he insisted in thickly accented Sprak.


    ¡°Why not?¡± Wander asked.


    ¡°Firkun ones do not eat with knowing ones.¡± He yanked roughly at Fragile¡¯s ear and arm, causing him to cry out, but Wander¡¯s grip fixed him in place. ¡°It is not a thing done.¡±


    Priceless turned himself around and cast his weary gaze on them. ¡°Will you not be easy, Newpoint Highmind?¡± he implored.


    ¡°You would eat with him, Firstpoint?¡±


    ¡°Is he touched?¡±


    Highmind wrenched down the scruff of Fragile¡¯s coldover and exposed the back of his neck. He explored with his eyes and fingers as he searched for a mark. At the sight of this, Wander applied another pound of pressure to Fragile¡¯s arm. He cringed.


    At last, Highmind looked up, frustrated. ¡°He is not touched.¡±


    ¡°Then he is not in our care,¡± Priceless said, ¡°and it does not matter whether I would eat with him or not.¡± He took a seat at the head of the table.


    Highmind released him. The moment he had been set free, Fragile broke away, and his shoulder pressed tightly to Wander¡¯s. She shoved it away.


    Priceless waved his hand at the other diners, who chattered among themselves and observed them curiously.


    ¡°You know your friends,¡± Priceless said. He pointed to each person sitting down. ¡°These two are my house. These three are my sons, and those three are the houses for my sons.¡±


    Like the other women at the table, Sunmeasure and Virtuous were dressed in gold ornaments and a white garment that covered their whole body below the neck. Its fabric flowed and splashed like liquid. The men were dressed in comfortable cloaks the same color as their father¡¯s. Although their hair was cut and their skin glowed with moisture, they reeked of ash and soil. They had scars, and much smaller ones.


    Priceless addressed Sunmeasure, pointing to Wander and Fragile. ¡°These are the ones you spoke of?¡±


    Sunmeasure nodded.


    ¡°Then we can begin again.¡±


    Highmind and another Goal pulled out two of the table¡¯s high-backed seats for Fragile and Wander at its end, a few places down from the main host. The two women sitting beside Priceless looked at their guests with suspicion. The Goalish women, sitting beside Priceless¡¯ sons, looked at Wander¡¯s hesigns angrily. The men looked at nothing. They paused from their eating like halted automatons, occasionally shifting to blink or breath.


    Fragile went to sit alongside Wander. He scurried to the seat at his place, poking his hands between the patterns carved into the rear, running his hands over its fine material, and inhaling its fresh, oily scent. Wander hooked one finger under his arm, gently tugged him to his feet, and guided him into it.


    When they were seated Priceless stood. He took a cup, a larger one glazed with silver, in both hands.


    ¡°The Executor saw fit to place me and my family in this trying place,¡± He said. He raised the cup to the left of the table, where the sun would set and where lay Larunkat. ¡°The Otiser¡¯s qualities continue to shape us, inside and out.¡±


    His family, Sunmeasure and Virtuous all raised their cups the same way. Priceless dropped his; it fell to the floor with a screeching bounce and bled out its contents in a pool that smelled of fruit and liquor. The attendants beside Highmind, standing dutifully on the table¡¯s periphery, rushed over to correct the mess with bundles of cloth. Priceless sat down and slouched as they reseated and refilled his cup and the diners resumed their meal.


    As the men carved up their flesh and the women sipped from their bowls, the attendants placed down platters of food before Wander and Fragile. Neither had received meat or broth. Instead, they had been provided a potpourri of crusts, rinds, and small, veiny cuts of some pack animal¡¯s muscle, diced into a fine hash.


    One of the attendants bent into Fragile¡¯s ear as he gave him his food and whispered in Goalish: ¡°Pinch your nose,¡± he said, ¡°and you need not taste it.¡± Fragile suddenly took up a fascination with the cloth that he had been provided to guard his chest and lap, woven with a smoothness and precision that he had only seen like in Wander¡¯s shoulderskin.


    Wander, for her part, ate prodigiously; Priceless swallowed a bite of meat with grit teeth and a retch as he watched her chomp away at even her most grotesque and inedible portions. After she had cleared them away, she looked into his eyes, got up from her seat, and walked over to the middle of the table. The whole host was stunned as she snatched a glass pitcher of juice from the table¡¯s center and drank it down in a single chugging gulp, replaced it nearly, and crashed back into her seat.


    One of Priceless¡¯ sons, the youngest of them, attempted to engage her. ¡°What was your first region, star?¡± he asked. ¡°We see so many breathers here. They come and go, but I have never heard anyone with words like yours.¡±


    She looked at him. She chewed on a bone and there was a pop and a crunch. ¡°My region was in the laif,¡± she said. ¡°It went under yours, many fourseasons ago.¡±


    ¡°The laif,¡± he repeated. ¡°I see. We have never had such people here. No Shamins, no Shamars. What little nightsights you must have had out there! I¡¯m sure you prefer it here.¡±


    ¡°You are.¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± he said excitedly. ¡°Do you know it? It was uncovered ¨C Laruns can see bigger sights than those in laif regions. It is a fundamental article. Laif countries are lower, with lower valleys; dacif countries are higher, with higher peaks. So many more breathers in our land think of places bigger than those in Shaminland or Shamarland.¡±


    ¡°Is that so?¡±


    ¡°It is,¡± he said. ¡°A fundamental article. What is seen is certain. Breathers in high places. Breathers in low places seek out high places. That is a central leg of totalitet.¡±


    One of his brothers nodded like he knew what was being discussed. The other shook his head.


    ¡°You have too many thoughts, Partsmany,¡± the dissenter said. He stabbed a piece of meat. ¡°Too many papers. You should take some of your time and produce something. Produce a house, at least.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not as intrepid as you, Pointstrong,¡± Partsmany replied. ¡°I could not possibly produce from these feurkun gaps. Yours cannot even speak. They are good for fun and one afternoon, but little else.¡±


    He picked and chopped at his dish. ¡°On this article, there has been a blocking element, here in Goalland. Have you encountered it, star?¡±


    She said nothing. He spoke anyway. ¡°You see, there are those who have looked for what the Goals can find when they lie down ¨C if they can find anything at all. What has the Goal been given? What is certain to her?¡± He smiled playfully and shook his head. ¡°Those who search ¨C Peer, Worthmaking, Collector ¨C beside all the Otiseran¡¯s working places, they have never found the answer here. No Goal will speak of what he sees. They do not think it good! So greatly has their ¡®vertoo¡¯ weighed them down. Can you believe it?¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± she said. ¡°I can believe it.¡±


    His eyes lit up when he received a response.


    Their father picked at his food. ¡°See now,¡± Partsmany said. ¡°Our producer. He had such an excellent sight, and now, in the stabs, its truth has been told and revealed to us. That sort of thing is not concealed from one¡¯s family. Tell it to her, prodda. Tell her your sight of parts. Your sight of holes.¡±


    Priceless¡¯ lips soured. He took a drink from his cup. ¡°I do not wish to do it.¡±


    The tall woman seated next to Priceless noticed his melancholy and put a hand on his.


    ¡°She knows, prodda,¡± Partsmany said. ¡°Tell it like you do. It was true enough, wasn¡¯t it? What have you to feel wrong about?¡±


    Priceless put down his cup and closed his eyes. The table became silent and all its diners waited for him to speak.


    ¡°I saw myself,¡± Priceless said, ¡°as a man without parts.¡±


    He continued, ¡°I was walking. I was walking on the Ash Road. I met a man; his chest was shot through. I have seen him before, in Litonland. A Palestoneman.¡± His eyes unfocused. ¡°And I had few parts. I became certain that he had fewer still. His body had lost all its shapes; the fingers he could touch with. The eyes he could see with. The ears he could hear with. The feet he could walk with. I asked him then, how he had been so hurt. He said that¡­¡±


    Priceless breathed heavily and a bead of sweat fell from his brow. ¡°¡­he said that he was searching for something. He was searching for a hole. He said that his shapes had been buried underneath there. He promised me parts, and a share of them, his shapes, if I could stand the risk of digging. I agreed. I would do whatever was needed to gain my own parts.¡± He held a hand to his head. ¡°I dug. When I had finished, I found myself in darkness. There were no shapes there. But I know that there were parts.¡±


    As suddenly as his demeanor had fallen, it rose up again. Priceless wiped the sweat from his brow, took his thumb and forefinger and stroked his chin.


    ¡°Three days later, we stumbled on them,¡± he said. ¡°The rooms in the fourth stab, and all its precious materials.¡±


    ¡°It is like I said,¡± Partsmany exclaimed, ¡°a much bigger sight! What is seen is certain.¡±


    Priceless nodded. Wander¡¯s brow furrowed at the mention of the ¡®rooms.¡¯ She did not inquire further.


    At this point in time, Priceless¡¯ gaze turned to Fragile, who had been poking at the tools he had been provided to eat with, and had not touched any portion of the meal he had been offered.


    ¡°Star, your feurkun does not eat,¡± Pointstrong said. ¡°He is so weak. He must grow strong to carry your loads.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s true,¡± Priceless affirmed. ¡°Is he turned around? What has happened?¡±


    Wander looked at Fragile. ¡°They want to know why you won¡¯t eat.¡±


    ¡°I-¡± His eyes flickered between the men and women and the nivmen in the room. ¡°I cannot.¡±


    ¡°Why not?¡±


    ¡°The ruler.¡±


    Wander blinked. She had forgotten the Goals¡¯ daytime prohibition on meals. ¡°He will not eat,¡± she said. ¡°They do not do it before nightfall.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s their feurkun way,¡± Partsmany said. ¡°Don¡¯t you know it, producer? For as long as light shines, all the plants and animals are beloved by itself, and they see an injury in the eating of anything it enjoys.¡±


    ¡°I remember that,¡± Priceless responded, rubbing his chin, ¡°But it seems many fourseasons ago when we did tell this out of them. He is feurkun, star, and it is a feurkun way. He must have these disintegrating items lifted off of him eventually. What better time than now?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m tired,¡± Wander said. ¡°I will let him be.¡±


    There was a prolonged silence. Priceless waved at the hulking Freeman who had brought them up. He moved to Fragile.


    ¡°If you are not inclined to do it, we will help,¡± Priceless said. ¡°It is always a happy thing to reduce unknowing.¡±


    The Freeman seized Fragile¡¯s jaw. He wrapped his fingers around Fragile¡¯s chin and cheeks and squeezed. Fragile¡¯s eyes went wide and watered, and he began to rattle and thrash and squeal. The Blade picked up the dish and tilted it toward his throat.


    Wander¡¯s vision went red. She felt her nerves tense and flex. Then the Freeman was pinned against the wall, and his throat had gone inside her hand. She admired its delicacy.


    Somewhere in the back of her mind, she heard someone crying out for her to stop. She looked down and saw Fragile¡¯s arms wrapped around her waist. Around her were three Freemen with weapons drawn. One of them appeared to have a broken hand.


    The Freeman gargled and gasped for air. She released him. He fell to the floor and slumped against the wall, wheezing.


    Priceless drank. Sunmeasure gawked at the scene in horror.


    The Freemen pushed past Wander to help up their friend, hauled him away from her, and ripped off his bryst to let him breath. When they did it, Wander saw the beginning of long clawing welts on his neck and collarbone, moving down onto his body.


    Priceless turned to Highmind, who trembled in fear with the other attendants at the far end of the room. ¡°Our visitor is tired,¡± Priceless said, ¡°Find somewhere for her.¡±


    <h4></a>-</h4>


    The quarters Fragile and Wander were lead to was small, with four beds. It was more of a storage or a cell than somewhere good to sleep, and it was drafty. It was on the top floor of the estate and lit by a candle, and they could see out onto the slopes and scape of Eighty through a small shuttered window. The shadow of one or more Freeman drifted in from under the door. The beds were flat, short, and hard, but they were full of blankets woven from fibre and thick wool.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± Fragile said in Goalish.


    ¡°That wouldn¡¯t be right,¡± Wander said. She took out a corked bottle from her vest full of a bitter-smelling ointment, dabbed it on her glove, and lightly rubbed in the places Fragile¡¯s jaw had been rent open by the Freeman. She could feel him shaking. ¡°So do not be.¡±


    ¡°The virtue has made things hard for you. I wish it did not.¡±


    Wander said nothing.


    ¡°What is this place?¡± Fragile asked. ¡°Why are we here?¡±


    Wander corked up her bottle and put it in her vest. Then she sat down on the bed across from him. ¡°There is a word for this place in Sprak: ¡®papersquare.¡¯ Those men we saw decide what happens here, and down below.¡±


    ¡°Did they take the Threeheads?¡±


    ¡°Probably.¡±


    ¡°Can you fight them?¡±


    ¡°Yes. They¡¯re hurt, and I am in a good place to hit from.¡±


    ¡°Will you?¡±


    Wander looked out the window. ¡°If you were safe, I would now, and let go all the hearts they carry,¡± she said. ¡°But you are not.¡±


    She laid down on her bed. ¡°Tomorrow I¡¯ll bring you out of this place, and then I¡¯ll bring out a path for the others. Try to shut your eyes. This is your first time on a cushion, isn¡¯t it?¡±


    He felt the plush fabric of the bed in his hands. ¡°Is that its name?¡±


    She nodded. ¡°It may feel wrong to your skin. But try not to leave it. It¡¯s better for your body.¡±


    She shut her eyes.


    -


    The sky hissed with ice. The sun went away, and mounds covered up the night.


    The houses and facilities of Eighty stood. The smell of the many hoofs and tusks and bearers bred, kept and cut apart by the Laruns wafted through the Goalish section and the sloping, ice-hitched homes made up by the people there. Some hearts could sleep. The work had burned them away, and they shiverred together in blanketed spots with whatever material they could scrounge. Others kept still and their eyes stayed open.


    Bites arrived at dawn. They arrived in many gatherings; they emerged over the hills, climbed up from cliffs and gulches and rode out from the woods. They carried fire with them on poles and lances and mounted wreathes. They came over the horizon, beyond the quarters of the workers, who were first awoke by shouting and thunder, and beyond the pens where the hooves were saddled, beyond the Freeman houses. And over the ditches, atop the frozen desert of the cutset, in rows and packs and mobs, the bites all massed. A group came among them, of men and women and children, their throats marked with black ashen stripes, and they screamed out a Goalish phobiphony.


    This phobiphony was screaming and howling. It had few names, but all knew its shape, which was carried by the wind into the skull of every fighter and lasher and keeper and rich man of Eighty. Twenty men squealed like pigs. Forty women howled like wolves. Sixty boys and girls cried and wept and screamed like human children. Then they rejoined and yelled all common and simple rage, erupting their throats and digging them apart with the sheer terror and invasion which had produced their proclaim.


    So the phobiphony began, and the bites swept across the complex, throwing about wood and flames, leaping on Freeman guards, hacking them to death with knives, and lancing them in the throat. All the diggers and their families rushed out of their homes and heard the phobiphony and knew that response was given. Every heart took up the weapons of the fallen and wooden branches and rusted knives and scraps of iron and rocks and stones and fists and legs and exploded apart Eighty with tired and excoriating mutiny. Flames shot up and Fragile could see them from the window.


    All the Freemen and Laruns not awake woke suddenly, falling out of their beds in darkened halls and orderly sleepplaces and knife-racks, and whipped up a tempest of voices and commands and running and mustering. Soon there was shouting and clattering in their yards and stables and stockhouses and tabled eateries, and in the encampments of those visitors outside these who had come to feed the stabs.


    The battering commotion of screams and banging metal had dragged Fragile from a dull and muddy sleep. He tore himself off the floor next to the bed, and realized Wander¡¯s bed was empty. After he had seen the swarming pickets overrun and throw up fire in the facilities below, he heard began to hear crying elsewhere in the house, and the ground vibrated with resound of distant and direct contacts. The door to the chamber was ajar.


    He descended the stairs and walked through an access corridor. Thunder shook the papersquare with every step. He emerged into the main hall.


    Wander stood among a crowd of fallen Freemen. To Fragile, she looked a myth. She was washed in red and black that stuck to her face. She gripped her short blade in her left hand, wet with fresh blood. She looked towards Fragile. A number of Goalish servants stood nearby, wailing in grief and terror.


    -


    The bites surrounded the house of Priceless. They leapt over its walls and set up a ring around it and levelled their weapons at its gates. There remained some fading wails in the distance and more fires sprouting up from the houses of Freemen, grain stocks, and hoofpens. But the phobiphony had ended, the air was clear, and they girded themselves for a quiet fight.


    The bites took up fire and wood and marched up to the door of the estate. At their head were many people; a large Goal with a burnt scalp, a short Goal with a scar on his cheek, a tall Goal with short hair.


    The door creaked open. Jingling boots descended the steps to it. The bites watched the descent of the figure and the package she carried in a sack of cloth, which dripped red onto the extracted rock of the estate¡¯s stairs.


    Wander approached the Goal at their center, and stood eye to eye with him. She uncovered her package, revealing the head of Priceless.


    She threw it by the hair to one of his companions. ¡°This face belonged to the creator here,¡± she said. ¡°The one who has driven your brothers and thrust on your sisters for many seasons.¡±


    The Goal¡¯s friend handed it to him. He laughed and spat on it. He tossed it to the side.


    ¡°So you are an offman without virtue,¡± he boomed. ¡°Like every other offman we¡¯ve known. We burnt them away and lowered them. How do you expect to be treated?¡±


    The Goals glowered at her, but she didn¡¯t move.


    ¡°Voicecane,¡± a voice from the crowd called.


    The bites turned into the crowd, onto the body of a man who stepped forward. Wander recognized him as the bite who had robbed them on the road to Eighty.


    Throat looked up at Wander and then toward her accuser. ¡°I know this star,¡± he said. ¡°Please friend, turn away for now. I would like to speak with her.¡±


    Voicecane looked between Wander and Throat.


    ¡°I will stay,¡± he said. ¡°If Throat Giver will hear an offman before he hits her, she is an offman worth hearing.¡±


    Throat nodded. He turned to Wander and clasped his hands behind his back.


    ¡°The offman with Dip words,¡± He intoned. ¡°It has not been so long since we met.¡±


    ¡°How come you here?¡± he asked. He nodded at the head of Priceless, which had begun to run dry on the stone. ¡°How does it come into you, this adorable gift?¡±


    ¡°The Laruns¡¯ way,¡± Wander said, ¡°I think. Our work against you was a good thing for them. Their virtue demands that they offer for it.¡±


    ¡°Offman ways.¡± Throat shook his head. ¡°They are a mystery to me.¡±


    ¡°They are not so unlike others,¡± she replied. ¡°And this is not only a gift. I wish something in return for it.¡±


    Throat inclined his head.


    ¡°I know you will destroy this house,¡± she continued. ¡°I wish you would let out and let past the hearts in it who remain. I have thrown out all the wrong ones. Everyone left is unarmed or like your own.¡±


    ¡°My friends would like gifts,¡± he said. ¡°And the ones who reside there would make good ones. This would be a great offering.¡±


    ¡°The house is already filled with city rocks. I want none of them.¡±


    Throat looked back at the head of Priceless. ¡°Why treat with us?¡± he asked. ¡°It puts a strangeness to your character. I doubt your intent.¡±


    ¡°I am glad to demonstrate my qualities.¡±


    ¡°And what are those?¡±


    ¡°I want Laruns gone,¡± she said. ¡°And the happiness of Goals. I am so commanded.¡±


    He bit his lip. ¡°There is a way,¡± he replied. ¡°There is a way you can demonstrate these. And then, perhaps, we can speak further. And I can give you the gifts you want.¡±


    ¡°What way is that?¡±


    He lifted a cautious hand to her shoulder and tugged it. ¡°Come, star,¡± he said. ¡°Come and see.¡±


    -


    Throat, Voicecane and Wander went down from the guarded cloisters of Priceless¡¯ mansion, toward a ridge where their lord once might¡¯ve looked out onto the gutted chamber of soil that he governed. Many bites gathered around a tunnel in its far end.


    ¡°What do you see?¡± Throat asked Wander.


    She raised an eyebrow. ¡°I see rock. There is dirt, too. There are holes.¡±


    ¡°There is rock,¡± he replied. ¡°And there is dirt. And there are holes.¡± He threw his arm out to the cleaved territory ¨C to its piles of rubble and soil and unmelted metal. It occupied the senses. ¡°We know that this can be used to produce a change. They think that we do not know. This is fire. This is cities. It is learned ways to bring up what is under us. Have you read the words of Flowered?¡±


    ¡°I have.¡±


    ¡°His papers. He called them Beliefs. I found them, and a reader of them, in the pouch of a Larun body. He wrote down that the only way forward for the unthinkers, the feurkun, was to take up the cutting and digging and stabbing of this place ourselves.¡± He looked out at the stabs. ¡°What do you think?¡±


    Wander looked at the tunnels.


    ¡°A tunnel is a tunnel,¡± she said. ¡°I do not know what it does besides itself. I have never wondered. It is hot, and lies heavy. That is all I know.¡±


    Throat nodded.


    ¡°What will you do?¡± Wander asked.


    ¡°I think that I will take everything of this place,¡± Throat replied, ¡°I will take some wood into it. I will make fire, and encourage fire. It will not theirs. It will be our fire. A feurkun fire. I would like to see what kind of change it makes.¡±


    He pointed to a tunnel at the far end of the canyon, marked with a thin white strip, where the bites had gathered.


    ¡°The last of the thrusting offmen have gone into that place,¡± he said. ¡°A party of twenty men or more. It would be difficult for us to fight. Many of my friends would go away. If you will go into it, I will know your qualities. And they too will be known to others.¡±


    -


    Wander walked past columns of Goalish fighters as she descended the muddy slopes leading down into Eighty¡¯s stabs. Rock mounds that loomed over everything turned to fingershapes in the mist. As the bites set fire to the punisher and Larun flags on the ridge, she pressed toward the tunnel she had been directed toward. Fragile and Throat watched her from above.


    On her approach to the tunnel, she stumbled on deserted tools. The canyon was rife everywhere with abandoned carts and rubbish pits and gaping maws in the ground. A small pocket of bites aimed arrows and drycanes and langnivs at the entrance. They watched her with stern, ashy brows as the darkness buried her underneath. Her eyes shrivelled away, and she saw with sweatsight.


    Wander walked down into the aperture the Laruns had stabbed open. She saw tools and smelled perspiry, blood, and a stinging hint of urine. The opening curved into a long tunnel that she descended, going further into the stabbed place. She began to make out a hole dropping off into the side of the cavern. She stopped in front of it, where a slope lead down into a circle full of more tools and an entranceway in the wall it was.


    The hole was part of a wide round building, part of whose tremendous frame had been dug away and revealed to be an insulation of white stone. A large block had been tugged away from its upper tiers. She drew her short blade and stepped inside the complex.


    She emerged into a cavernous chamber. The ground was flat and grooved. Oval gaps had been carved out in the floor, and it smelled of ancient mould. The room was round. Above the door to the next chamber, a lithograph had been carved into the rock. It depicted a squat figure with exaggerated and various sexual organs, one that had been separated into two halves.


    The chamber was empty of people. She gripped her shortblade and pressed past it, beneath the lithograph, into the next.


    The second chamber was as round as the first, although the ground was flat. She saw a table and a blade coated in sticking, jagged red dust. The same figure that had been carved above the prior door was carved above the next. The smell of ancient blood filled the room, and in the corner she spied a cast-off thighbone. It was as empty as the facility¡¯s other parts, and she passed through it.


    The land gasped as Wander crept inside the third room. A gust of wind blew past her head.


    The final chamber was the largest. It was filled with long rows of blocks, consisting of stacked grey metal. She touched her hand to them, and realized they were not made of iron or steel. Stacks of rotten wood also stood by, and statues and garments and weapons gilded with the same material. They were stacked in orderly loaves until the coming of the chamber¡¯s far end, where laying on an altar was a rectangular stone receptacle. Behind it were many more of its same type, raised vertically and in rows, each marked with a particular symbol on its face.


    The room was populated.


    She first saw one Larun nivman on the floor. He lay in his bryst with his knife unsheathed and his tanned waterskin splayed out on his smooth stone floor. There was excavated a thin crevice in his chest, whose color would surely be red in the light. There were two Larun nivmen, with four arms between them. Then there were three and four, and five and six, and numbers gave way to singular mass and note of their affection of the territory. Pools of them poured out into stains on the floor. The damaged ones reminded her of the field she had produced in Fragile¡¯s original shell.


    A pair of black, pea-sized eyes stared at her from across the room. Their owner gripped a long blaith dressed with hesigns and running blood.


    ¡°How are you, Hillmeasure?¡± Virtuous asked.


    Wander stepped forward, over the bodies.


    Virtuous peered back into the uncovered receptacle, eyeing something Wander couldn¡¯t see. ¡°This was a place once for breathless ones,¡± she continued. ¡°Now it is again. It is I think, a more labored place to breath last than any you or I might once have wished for. It is twice a shame that neither of us will do it here.¡±


    ¡°You seem sure.¡±


    ¡°If I wanted you gone, I would¡¯ve taken your head on the first night.¡± Virtuous looked back at Wander, removed a cloth from her vest, and began to wipe off her sword. The skyshade woman¡¯s sweatsight flickered in the dark. ¡°I am sure.¡±


    Wander stepped over the corpse of a man whose right arm had been severed at the shoulder. ¡°My count is Ten-Six,¡± she said. ¡°Uncover yours.¡±


    ¡°I have no count,¡± Virtuous replied. ¡°I am Virtuous. That is my name. I am not an animal, nor a worker, nor a coin, Shamin shorttooth.¡±


    ¡°Then what are you?¡±


    Virtuous shoved her blaith into its sheath and hung it over her back. Wander guessed it was the lump she''d perceived. ¡°I am what you claim to be.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re a Wandering Star?¡±


    ¡°Did you really think me a skyshade woman?¡± She beat herself free of dust. Wander could see now that she had discarded the tight blue cloak that she wore in the company of Sunmeasure and adopted a raiment of patchwork guards and tanned coverings, layered over a vest similar to the one Wander wore. Out from these came the telltale glimmer of hesigns. ¡°Well, you¡¯re young.¡±


    ¡°I am. What are you doing here?¡±


    She tossed a fibrous bag to the ground. Metal bricks spilled out of it. ¡°I heard about this place from a hoof-driving man.¡± she said. ¡°There are many men here, with many mouths, or there were. Such shining parts are noisy. They can be heard from far away. So I met with Sunmeasure, and made my price passage here. Laruns do so dislike us, even when we aren¡¯t unsettling their territory.¡±


    Wander gripped her blaith. Virtuous¡¯ eyes flicked to it.


    ¡°I wonder what you¡¯re planning to do with that,¡± she said.


    ¡°If you are uncommanded,¡± Wander said, ¡°you know what is required.¡±


    ¡°I do.¡± Virtuous leaned on her leg easily.


    ¡°Then put out your weapon.¡±


    ¡°I see no reason to,¡± Virtuous said. ¡°The Family is not precious to me. Nor you, I don¡¯t think.¡±


    ¡°They command,¡± Wander replied. ¡°I am commanded. And they provide. It is what I need.¡±


    ¡°Is that why you call out the name of a forgotten ruler, instead of their own?¡±


    Wander flexed her fingers. Her grip loosened.


    ¡°Before I go,¡± Virtuous said. ¡°I did want to ask why you keep him around. The Goal.¡±


    ¡°That doesn¡¯t matter.¡±


    ¡°No, it doesn¡¯t. But it does make you strange to me.¡±


    ¡°He didn¡¯t make me strange.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t think he did.¡± Virtuous paused. ¡°You must know he¡¯d be safer away from a place like this, but you brought him here. And you¡¯re here now, with me.¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± Wander said. ¡°I am.¡± Her eyes fell.


    Virtuous nodded to herself. She picked up her bag, threw it over her shoulder, and walked toward the exit. Wander kept a hand on the hilt of her blade and looked forward. Virtuous stopped briefly as she passed.


    ¡°We can breath today, star,¡± she said. ¡°I have a hope. I think that you might adore what is precious. Not the things they¡¯ve been made to build. But the next time we meet, I may be in a new mood. And you are still commanded. We will see then what your kind really is.¡±


    Another gust of wind blew through the chamber. Wander turned around. The room was empty, and she was alone. On a whim, she walked toward the opened receptacle, and peered down into it.


    Within it, cut into two halves, were the remains of a man. All he was had turned white and bleached.


    </a> -


    The fires of the papersquare raged as Wander and Fragile departed Eighty. Sunmeasure, the skyshade women, and the Goalish inhabitants of Priceless¡¯ domain were in tow, trailing behind them in a long column of stonehoofs. In the distance, the Threehead Goals, among others, made their way out from the destroyed stabs, leading bound animals, sacks of grain and metal and tools, and carrying those among them too hurt to walk.


    They came to the top of a hill in a cutset and turned back. They could see the fires consume the stabs¡¯ dozen risen points, and everything beneath them.


    Sunmeasure went up to them again. ¡°We must go again, star,¡± she said.


    ¡°I know,¡± Wander replied. ¡°I¡¯m sorry to foist the Goals on you.¡±


    ¡°They¡¯re no burden,¡± Sunmeasure said. ¡°We will drive toward Lowcliff. They can find places there.¡±


    She paused.


    ¡°Who are you?¡± Sunmeasure asked. She looked to Fragile and then back to Wander. ¡°You and he. From the start, I thought you had offered less. But now I think that you have offered everything, and nothing at all.¡±


    It was a long time before Wander answered. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± she said.


    Sunmeasure watched her for signs of deceit. ¡°I wish you would find out." She pointed to the sky again. ¡°I hope that we will meet again.¡±


    Wander nodded. Sunmeasure leapt on a hoof, and the skyshade women started off to the North.


    Wander and Fragile observed the masses of departing Threeheads, mingling with columns of hoof-mounted bites and captured carts of supplies.


    "They''ll be going back home," she said. "You should follow them."


    Fragile felt cold. "I will," he said. He smiled in the way he was taught. "They will surely need new hands wherever they decide to go. It will bring up great excitement."


    "Yes." Her gaze shifted. "You should know that the Laruns will surely come back here soon. They''ll do their cutting. Their anger will be great; the bites will be like to hide quickly. They will not stay in one place long."


    He perked up. "I think so," he said. "It would be best if they split apart and went elsewhere. That would be very safe."


    They looked at each other silently for a moment.


    "There''s places to be still," she said. "If you want, you can accompany us a little further."


    Fragile tried to stop smiling, the way he was taught. He nodded frantically.


    They watched the Threeheads pass and pass until they too had disappeared into the rounds. Then, they set out once more, heading further South.


    ¡°What happened to eldsister Virtuous?¡± Fragile asked Wander. ¡°I did not see her among the others.¡±


    ¡°She was inside the stabs,¡± Wander replied.


    ¡°Inside the¡­?¡± Fragile¡¯s mouth opened in awe.


    ¡°We talked,¡± Wander continued. She rubbed her chin. ¡°She¡¯s gone now. We may see her again.¡±


    ¡°I hope so,¡± Fragile said. ¡°I did not mind her friendship.¡±


    ¡°And I did not,¡± Wander concurred.


    As they trudged through the snow, putting more distance between themselves and the pits of Eighty, Fragile fiddled with a plant petalled yellow and deep purple. He spun its stem about his fingers, and Wander took notice.


    ¡°Where did you get that?¡± she asked.


    ¡°It was in the house,¡± he replied. ¡°They had many more.¡±


    ¡°There are not many like those,¡± she said. She paused. ¡°It is a difficult kind to care for. It will fall very easily. But while it is, it is adorable.¡±


    He smiled. He smelled it and offered to her. She could smell it from where she was, but she took it anyway, and put it up to her nose, basking in its sweetness.


    ¡°Yes,¡± she said. ¡°It is adorable.¡±


    She handed it back to him. He tucked the flower¡¯s stem inside his tuskleather bag. Its petals stuck out and looked up at the sky.


    <hr>


    <h4 align="center">


    </h4>


    The Unders had recovered slowly from their defeat at the hands of the meeters. Those who had survived their kin¡¯s onslaught slunk back to Our and its neighbors from the rounds, addressing its street with bodies that had been cracked and melted and cut apart by the conflagration they had wrought.


    Between them, people pulled water from the wells. Children chased wings that squawked and ran about, flapping their arms. People painted statues yellow and green.


    Some time after their defeat, Voicer had limped back into the shell after his master had been torn apart and slain. He brought a shaky hand to his lips and drank from his waterskin, pulled a coldover closer to his shoulders and shivered. He considered the last words of the voicewoman, adorned with a large chunk of the night ruler¡¯s stone. The light nearby fell into it.


    Voicer¡¯s men surrounded him. They changed one another''s wrappings, which guarded their limbs, torsos, and eyes. They sharpened their drycanes, and drank. One of them sang under his voice, recounting the problems of Hone. He and his friends sat in the Place for Hearing, shivering beneath the Larun monolith and surrounded by each other. Voicer brought a shaky hand to his lips, emptied his waterskin in his mouth, and contemplated the last words of the voicewoman. Any sunlight that managed to break through the clouds fell into a large chunk of the night ruler¡¯s stone, which had been committed to the writing¡¯s side.


    The clouds curled around the sun and made a shadow.


    A group of Laruns on the backs of the stonehoofs pranced into the shell. They surveyed the carnage and suffering of the Unders. They stopped by the Speaking Place, and two figures descended from their hoofs. Voicer struggled to his feet and hefted his drycane before going to meet them.


    One of the figures was short, shaking, and covered in robes. The other was tall and broadchested. His muscles exploded from his body. His neck was bound by a gold chain.


    Voicer pointed his sword at the tall man. ¡°We have had enough business with outmen,¡± he growled. ¡°Leave now, or you will be thrown out.¡±


    The tall man stepped over to them. He smiled.


    "''Outmen?''" He laughed happily. ¡°Little feurkun. This place ¨C it is yours and mine. We are in it. There is nothing that can keep us out.

 Story 5 - The Meats of Withoutwind

    It seems only days ago that Fragile the Sixbraid was living a quiet life in his people¡¯s village, in the ancient and storied land named Goal. Without provocation, a group of soldiers from a hate-filled empire entered into it, killing his friends, his family, and all the keepers of their tradition. A Wandering Star, a lone warrior from a distant land, arrived just in time to save Fragile and the Sixbraids from complete annihilation. Finding pleasure in each other¡¯s company, these two, a stronghoof, and an enigmatic presence named Bell now plumb the countryside for work and residence. Wander helps the people of Goal, and searches out a new home for her companion; in secret, she pursues her long-standing vendetta against a blind and destructive enemy.


    -


    Grainer the catchcutter and his companions stepped around trees and bushes. They carried the bodies of animals tied up to sticks and stuffed in large fibrous pouches. They carried knives cut of stone, and one hid an iron blade beneath his covering.


    The snow poured on as they reentered view of their shell. Outside of it they could see light from fires springing up all around as the ones from everywhere gathered for the Centercold party.


    ¡°The catches are strong and many,¡± one of the Cutters said. ¡°Many smiles will be won with them.¡±


    ¡°They were strong for the cold,¡± retort another. ¡°We still need the hearts we cut in the warmth.¡±


    ¡°If we had the power of the Dry Man,¡± said Grainer, ¡°then, the sparsity would not matter. We could change all the rounds to our meal, and there would be no hunger.¡±


    A ripple of recognition went through the catchcutters as he declared her name.


    ¡°It is now said,¡± Grainer continued. ¡°Did you hear it? It is now said, of the Dry Man: she slew one hundreds Larun. Fiveten by her hands, twoten by her blades. Her bendrock blades. Her To-Sidedark blades. The rest she sent to fire, and so kept the Braided Changers, who build by rivers. The Braided Changers still breath; the Braided Changers still do it - for the end of one hundreds Larun.¡±


    ¡°One against one hundreds,¡± one of the cutters muttered. ¡°Empty-headed words. No outborn could do it; no Changer could do it.¡±


    ¡°I heard it was three hundreds,¡± another replied. ¡°Three hundreds, all crushed, all of hands.¡±


    ¡°She has words, Foldrunner,¡± one of the catchers said. ¡°Words from an outside place. That¡¯s how she does great things. And she can do them. Of that, there is no question.¡±


    Grainer¡¯s tale persisted. ¡°It is now said,¡± he said, ¡°that the Dry Man keeps with her a lost and screaming one. A Changer who has no sight of his position; a Changer who can be lead and eaten up.¡±


    There was whispering and great disquiet in the company.


    ¡°What kind of a Changer is he?¡± Foldrunner asked.


    ¡°Such a one could have no heart. He could not be virtuous. He would not know what it is.¡±


    They went into the shell, outside which were many sweeping roofs of flax and fabric. The people gathering there all bore long thin blades or stone knives and spoke among themselves. The shell itself was made of wooden longstanding houses, and there were those around them spread out in circling appointments. In each there was a fire, and in each speaking was heard before laughing. Words came out from each, some different than the others, all concerned with jubilation. By the circles were hoofs tied up, and living meatbearers, who lowed quietly and chewed from chests of grain and salivated their smell.


    They went up to a damp cell, elevated on stilts, and moved aside the block which kept its entrance. No smell went out of it. They went inside.


    The meats contained within that were exposed to the air were full of dust. The cutters poked and prodded at the withered stock. Grainer brought down a segmented thigh wrapped in rough paper, placed it on the ground, and cut it open with his knife. The meat contained within had been eaten up without teeth, denatured from bone to joint to fibre. One of the catchers reached out with his finger; on pushing it, he shifted foul dust.


    ¡°Outness,¡± they all muttered. ¡°Outness.¡±


    The morning came and light went into this shed. The thing that rode on it observed their shape and the characteristics of their fear. It bled its gaze of the world around as blue light laughing, jostling silent cells that every man could feel but none could name, places where the cattle could feel their stomachs become destined for the body of another, and the spots where these men first emerged.


    <hr>


    <h4 align="center"> </h4>


    </a> Once upon a time...


    </a> Near the shell of Withoutwind.


    </a>


    Snow fell slow and gently over the beginning of Goal¡¯s Black Open, where the soil grew dark and gave itself especially to roots and seeds. Wander and Fragile set up camp beside a wide, flowing river as light began to subside.


    Wander stalked into camp with a tusk over her shoulders. It was a massive beast twice her size or more, run over by a thick broon hide. She threw it down by their fire.


    Wander held out a bag of grain and the stronghoof buried its snout inside and munched. She looked over at Fragile, who was standing shin-deep in the middle of silver rushing water. ¡°Eating comes soon,¡± she called out. ¡°What are you doing?¡±


    An ice floe hit him and drifted around his legs. ¡°Nothing,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯m not- it¡¯s- I cannot say.¡±


    ¡°If you stay there much longer, your water will freeze.¡±


    He did not reply. Wander continued to feed the stronghoof. Fragile shot out his hand in an effort to grab something, kicking up cold flecks into his skin. They stung, and he exclaimed in surprise.


    He repeated the motion again and again, but each time came up with nothing. A shadow bent over him and shot out a gloved hand. It seized the swimmer he was seeking by its long, slippery body. Wander plucked it up from the swirling and rushing and bubbling.


    She stepped back and held it out to him. ¡°If you wanted watermeat, you could¡¯ve just asked,¡± she said.


    He took it from her, struggling to keep hold as its impotent flops worked toward suffocation. ¡°It¡¯s not for me,¡± he said.


    Fragile and Wander stomped back through the water into their camp. When they emerged, Fragile felt the feeling in his feet return slowly. The swimmer wriggled in his hands, its slime and scales almost winning their freedom half a dozen times. He retrieved a hoofplate from the stronghoof¡¯s saddlebags, held the creature to it, and got down on his knees by the fire.


    He drew out the littlecane from his tuskleather bag. Its edge gleamed in the firelight. He looked into the swimmer¡¯s eye as he put the blade to its head. He was surprised when he saw blood come from his cut, colored like his own. He stopped for a moment, and the swimmer began to squirm and thrash around in pain, so he started to stab it, searching for the spot that would work. When it finally seized up, he had driven many thin gashes in and around its face and skull.


    He was out of breath. Wander watched the whole thing.


    ¡°Have you ever done this before?¡± she asked.


    He brushed tears out of his eyes. ¡°No,¡± he said. ¡°I have seen nobody do it. Not since I was a little one, when the river still ran.¡±


    The swimmer was dead. He tried to remember what came next. He made cuts to drain it, while Wander took her own knife and began to transform the tusk.


    First, Fragile cleaned the swimmer¡¯s body and cut away its scales. He was unprepared for how delicate they were, and they spilled apart between his fingers. Wander¡¯s knife swept underneath the back of her tusk, and she quickly pulled off its dripping, fuzzy exterior.


    After he had stripped the creature Fragile began to remove the calcic twigs buried in its skin, prying them up with incisions of the cane; each torn support carried out chunks of flesh from the body. Wander whisked apart her tusk and extracted a bone the size of her thigh from its leg, and continued in like fashion until all that remained was meat.


    Fragile dug his cane into the swimmer and cut it fully in half. One portion was larger than the other. He raked out lines a short length apart from one another all along each halve, producing a field of milky white ditches in the swimmer¡¯s viscera. His hand jittered and played, bringing the flesh to squelch and ruin. Wander sent her blade through one of the tusk¡¯s thighs, and it went through.


    He glanced over at her display in envy. ¡°I wish I could work so well,¡± he said. ¡°It is a helpful craft.¡±


    ¡°Cutting meat is hard,¡± she replied. She took her blade and shaved down a heavy branchlogge into a skewer. The acrid odor of the wood¡¯s open wound joined the bitter, bubbling nasal chorus produced by the reek of their freshly degloved corpses. ¡°Harder, if the kind you¡¯re cutting is new.¡±


    ¡°Have you cut apart that kind before?¡±


    She nodded. ¡°It was needed. There were times I would not be fed.¡±


    Fragile took a pinch of tasterocks from a pouch in his coldover and sprinkled them into each line he had made. Then he arranged both halves of the swimmer on a flat stone and held them in the fire. Wander pierced the leg with her logge and stuck it next to his. The bodies cooked.


    Fragile chewed his lip watching the swimmer light up with the fire¡¯s heat. He wondered when they should be removed. He took them off once they had begun to turn light brown, and Wander removed her own soon after.


    She took a bite out of the leg. She raised an eyebrow when Fragile proferred the swimmer to her.


    ¡°For me,¡± she said.


    He nodded and proferred it again. ¡°If you want.¡±


    Wander took the stone. She scooped up one of the slices and stuffed in her mouth. Fragile held his knees and watched for her reaction. As she worked through the slice, a crunch split through the air.


    Fragile wrung his hair and gnashed his teeth. ¡°The rulers should refuse me,¡± he lamented.


    ¡°I like it,¡± Wander said. She continued to chew, grinding the bone into dust.


    ¡°Are you face-speaking?¡±


    ¡°I like it,¡± she repeated. She swallowed. ¡°Does it have a name?¡±


    He scratched the back of his head.


    ¡°The way it was cut. And then burnt and then covered.¡±


    He unwrung his hair. ¡°I¡¯m not sure. I heard them say swimmer-and-grain. But that was because they had grain with it. So maybe it should be just called ¡®swimmer.¡¯¡±


    ¡°I like it.¡±


    The corners of his mouth bent upward, against his will. ¡°Does yours have a name?¡±


    ¡°No.¡±


    ¡°Did they name eatings in your home? In Shomkat?¡±


    Her gaze flicked upward as she chomped on her leg and mulled. ¡°Yes,¡± she said. ¡°There were certain days when we would do nothing but eat. They had many names for it then.¡±


    ¡°What sort?¡±


    ¡°There was one eating,¡± she said. ¡°¡®Little horn.¡¯ Another, ¡®red pieces.¡¯ My most preferred was ¡®sweet sticks.¡¯¡±


    ¡°¡®Sweet sticks''?¡±


    ¡°A very rare eating. It was¡­ a heart, I think, cooked and given to dust. It made pleasant moves inside your mouth.¡±


    ¡°How did these things become?¡± Fragile asked. ¡°It is as though they were not in being one day, until they jumped up and became what we are.¡±


    Wander laid against the stronghoof. ¡°It is spoken of on papers,¡± she said.


    ¡°It is?¡±


    ¡°Hm. My papers. Papers in the Sidedark. Papers in Ard Makaris. Many papers in all sections where there are mouths for food and eyes to see it.¡±


    ¡°What do yours say about it?¡±


    She wondered. The details were murky. ¡°That eating comes out of all moving things, and that they must be tended to in a right way,¡± she said. "Their water should be completely released, and they should be touched by a man with words. By this way, the thing it was is ended, and after that it is an eating.¡±


    ¡°What are the words he says?¡±


    ¡°There is an offering to He, who is adored and sang about.¡±


    ¡°Why is it done?¡±


    Wander scratched her head. ¡°I don¡¯t know. I can¡¯t explain all their songs.¡±


    ¡°Ih.¡±


    They sat in silence. ¡°Why?¡± Wander asked.


    ¡°I just...¡± Fragile replied. ¡°I don¡¯t know why it would be done.¡±


    ¡°Food fills and enjoys.¡± Wander looked at him. ¡°It did.¡±


    Fragile shuffled uncomfortably. He felt as though he was pressing up against some nerve that he could not see.


    Wander watched him squirm. ¡°Your kind has one or two goods. Eating is one. Why wouldn¡¯t one sing?¡±


    ¡°I was not told it,¡± Fragile said.


    Wander waited for him to say more.


    ¡°The hearts we eat breath,¡± he continued.


    ¡°Yes.¡±


    ¡°We have stopped them,¡± he said. ¡°We have hurt them. There was never joy in this. There was never a smile in this. It is ending.¡±


    ¡°What is eaten is not like riverborn,¡± Wander replied. ¡°Or like breathers.¡±


    ¡°What is its difference?¡±


    Wander rubbed her chin. ¡°The eating has no words. No eating offers. The eating has no I. It does not remain.¡±


    ¡°¡®I?¡¯¡±


    Wander curled her fingers. ¡°You don¡¯t know this word?¡±


    He shook his head.


    ¡°When the rulersland is in fire, the I is what will progress. To the rulers¡¯ house.¡±


    ¡°It is¡­¡± He was mumbling. ¡°¡­it is not so.¡±


    She raised her eyebrow. ¡°Then what is progressed?¡±


    ¡°The body.¡± He hugged his knees. ¡°Carried on the wind. That is the reason for fire. Or passed down the river, towards a lake, and towards the water-plains, which are unending. That is the reason for waters.¡±


    She shook her head. ¡°So you will arrive to your rulers in the way of ash.¡±


    He nodded excitedly.


    ¡°Ash cannot speak,¡± she said. ¡°Have you ever seen ash with words?¡±


    ¡°The rulers are strong. They hear what we can cannot.¡±


    He took a charred stick from the fire and waddled on his shins over to the ground before her, where the flames and her heat had thawed out the dirt. He scrawled the symbols of the thought ruler in it. ¡°And some of theirs, we can only see.¡±


    He laid down the stick. ¡°The word,¡± he said. ¡°The telling shape, it is theirs. One day we will hear it, and we will not need its names anymore.¡±


    He nodded to himself and made some trailing consemes on its periphery. She watched him as he did it.


    She pushed out her finger and contributed a shape. He opened his mouth in surprise.


    She traced another letter in the snow and he followed it with one of his own, and they continued to mix and adjust their respective symbols.


    ¡°I think eating may be like a word,¡± he said. ¡°Like speaking. We have water like eaten things do. When we are put to fire, we smell of it. Perhaps that is what the rulers hear.¡±


    Wander tilted her head. ¡°I think it may stand. A word is put inside the ear, like meat. The thing becomes of you, and some part knows of it. I think it may stand.


    They continued to draw.


    -


    Morning arrived. Wander awoke to Fragile fully clothed and scrubbing clean one of her pots, into which she had rendered down the other parts of the tusk. She pinned on her vest and shoulderskin and strapped her weapons to her back and hip.


    Fragile brushed his hand across the three-string and threw it on his back. He hung his tuskleather bag over his shoulder. He dusted the tails of his coldover.


    Wander unrolled her guide and chewed on her pipe as Fragile unhitched the stronghoof and brought it down to the water. The paper was crusty and mouldy and rough. She looked at a black line on its corner section, delineating the regions after it with special intensity, and a thick dot that sat on its border. She realized that they had almost penetrated it. She rolled it up and stuffed it in her pocket.


    They drowned the fire¡¯s floundering embers in dirt and snow and leaves. The stronghoof shook its back, rattling its comports, and brayed. Fragile handed Wander its lead, and they urged it away from the river and into the trees again.


    The path was long. They became visited by a gang of howls, who lurked between the woods around them. They trailed along Wander and Fragile in the half-dark, directing hungry eyes at the stronghoof. They only stopped when Wander hurled a stone in their direction, which produced a thunderous crack as it embedded itself in a trunk and scattered their group.


    They found speckled wings picking at the ribs and face of a dead roothead, pecking away its eyes and entrails and all that was well-preserved by the cold. One of the wings fell over and became quiet as they passed, and the other wings poked at its motionless body wordlessly with their beady, gaping eyes.


    On their approach to a shell of many houses, they walked up a hill and were enabled to see a broad part of the Goalish country they had thus surpassed. On its edge they could grasp the beginning of a cutset, which stripped the hills naked and bare. As they went higher Wander could see the distant stabs of Eighty and everything desecrated by the bites of Throat Giver.


    They encountered a Goal on their way up to the houses and columns of smoke and smells. She wore bone ornaments to bind her hair, which was long and thick. She leaned on a tall sharp shaft covered with white rings, an ivory figure, and knotted rope. ¡°You¡¯d call me Foracts,¡± she said. ¡°Will you speak your aim, outborn?¡±


    Wander considered her aliases. ¡°I am Star,¡± she said. She gestured to the stronghoof and Fragile. ¡°These help me. We search out work.¡±


    Foracts looked at them warily. ¡°We know well the work of stars.¡±


    ¡°It is not mine,¡± Wander said. ¡°I am alone. It is mine to blow out trouble, and the frames of its creation.¡±


    Foracts chewed a root between her teeth. ¡°The shells here are burdened by great trouble,¡± she said. ¡°One of ending times, which produces hunger.¡±


    ¡°Will you tell me of it?¡±


    Foracts chewed. She looked at the Walls surrounding her, who were men, and carried stone swords and shafts and sacks filled with sharp rocks. She handed her spear to one of them.


    ¡°Bring out one from the others,¡± she said. ¡°I must tend to this.¡± He scurried away.


    ¡°We know this as the place Withoutwind,¡± she told Wander. ¡°We are hearts that change. Follow me, outborn.¡±


    -


    They were entered into the shell and watched closely by Foracts and her kin. They walked past the leather housings propped up by sticks of those who had arrived, and were sat around fires drinking water and huddling in cloaks. Wander watched birthmen drink water and Walls drink water, slaking emptiness after thirst with skins and bowls and chipped, mottled cups of wood and clay. Many appeared strain-faced and tense, and she could hear their intestines twist and shrink up. A woman nursed her daughter at her breast, and her children also drank milk.


    Wander estimated perhaps thirty roundseats throughout the whole settlement, and over a thousand people to roam its bounds. The buildings, built of clay and wood, were arranged in intentional corridors and spaced more widely than those of the Unders or the Threeheads. They arrived at a round open space where sat a stone carved with Larun words. Neither Wander nor Fragile were let be to look at it, for their attention was claimed by another.


    A meatbearer had been brought out from the pens of the shell. It was a big animal with a short tail and folding ears and a pink coat. Crowds had begun to gather in Withoutwind¡¯s speaking place, which took the form of an intentional square in which all building dropped away from lines delineated with piled stones. In its center, men gathered with sharp sticks and secret blades.


    Two ropes were fastened around the meatbearer, which lowed and groaned, and they were tied around wooden shafts that had been wrest into the soil. Its leader coaxed it onto the ground with an eight-pointed leaf. It snorted and munched on its prize. Many of the men laid their hands on it, taking a firm grip of tufts of hair. One laid his head against it.


    Two men went to its front. A blow was delivered to its skull with a rock and it began to thrash violently. The men held it in place. Many more blows were struck and it fell silent.


    The meatbearer¡¯s head was held up and a bowl laid beneath it. A broad-bladed littlecane was hooked into its throat and used to produce a cut. Its blood was thick and it dripped down into the bowl through dropping, honing strands. It began to roil and coagulate and knot as it landed; as soon as the bowl was filled, it was replaced and distributed to the crowd, where some people took it on to drink or chew.


    Soon the wound ran dry, and the work was complete. The men with canes went up to the carcass and hit with their blades. They sawed out parts of it and gave these to a nearby fire, and then the stumbling and wrinkled and coughing among the shell-dwellers were lead up to the body by the steady and put their teeth to it while its heartbeat ebbed. They were followed in the feast by their companions and then their children. Some managed to push the body down, and others vomitted.


    Fragile¡¯s eyes widened in terror. He drew closer to Wander. ¡°Is this your custom?¡± she asked the Wallwoman.


    ¡°No,¡± Foracts replied. ¡°It¡¯s the only way we can eat. There is nothing else will stay.¡±


    Wander raised an eyebrow.


    ¡°The catchers will uncover it. The Lodges will uncover it. Follow me; we are drawing near the place.¡±


    They passed away from the biting, choking crowd, and followed the path until they drew upon a large hall at a place in slight earshot of the commotion. The seat was tall, and its entrance was a maw higher than each of them. It was unadorned with signs or scripts. The twisting light of fire leaked out its entrance and played wildly on the snow.


    ¡°This is our Changinghouse,¡± Foracts said. ¡°What enters does not emerge in its own way. Wait while I secure your entrance.¡±


    Foracts entered the Changinghouse and left the two of them outside. They kicked at snow for a while as the sounds of the feast drew down and went away.


    After some time, Foracts reemerged from the maw. ¡°You may enter,¡± she said to Wander. She nodded to Fragile. ¡°The helper must stay.¡±


    ¡°Do you have a place for animals?¡± Wander asked. Foracts nodded and pointed to a spot across the way, where lie a distant smudge filled with stonehoofs and more meatbearers.


    Wander handed the lead to Fragile. ¡°I¡¯ll meet you outside,¡± she said.


    Fragile scratched the stronghoof¡¯s chin and tugged it toward the pens. It nuzzled her with its head before leaving and she followed Foracts through the gap.


    -


    The inside of the Changinghouse was round and lit by fires. It was unlike the houses of the Unders and the Sixbraids; there was no sign of domestic habitation or equipment for offering. It was filled with an assortment of men and women. ¡°Wall woman,¡± one dressed in hanging yellow bones called out to Foracts. She stretched out her arm. ¡°Reveal to us the things you carry.¡±


    ¡°I carry a star,¡± Foracts said. ¡°She offers to blow out our problems.¡±


    The Changers gasped in surprise. ¡°You are a star?¡± the woman asked. ¡°The star? The one who walks?¡±


    ¡°We have heard of you from our kind in the Light,¡± a man said. ¡°That there is a Dry Man of words, who moves around with a hoof, a braided one, and two strange canes.¡±


    Before Wander could respond, the Changers went up to her and placed their hands on her blades, hat, and shoulderskin. ¡°The Dry Man?¡± they whispered.


    ¡°The Outborn. The Outborn of words.¡±


    ¡°The Outborn of two strange canes.¡±


    They moved back and watched her, their big red scratched eyes dressed in filthy overs looking at her with fear and awe without exception. Every body was in the same way, whether it curved or rippled.


    ¡°I am such a one,¡± Wander said.


    There was gasping among the Changers. ¡°Then you are a one who blows out problems,¡± Foracts said. ¡°It is retrieved.¡±


    ¡°I have rarely done it,¡± Wander said. ¡°But I would hear your plea.¡±


    The voicewoman who had spoken moved toward Wander and crossed her hands. ¡°My name is Movingone,¡± she said. ¡°Our stock has lost its flavor. It has dropped all water and become heartless before its time. And there are so many of us who have come here to eat, to be enjoyed at the greatest part of the cold. All other hearts that we have obtained have continued in like fashion. We fear that our gathering may be forced to end in a season, if it persisted.¡±


    Wander thought. She lifted her hat, revealing her brown hair, and thumbed the rim. ¡°It is a singular problem,¡± Wander said, ¡°and I am unsure I would find out its ways.¡±


    ¡°You are outborn,¡± Movingone said. ¡°You wear the words of Athad. You are like the Dry Man, who has come by our rounds to fight Laruns.¡±


    ¡°Great gifts should be replied, outborn,¡± a catchcutter added. ¡°We will give you teeth, which the Laruns seek, and adorable waters. We will give you the fur coverings of our best catches. We will give you the city rocks we have.¡±


    ¡°I will not take that reply,¡± Wander said. ¡°I have one urgent concern, and I would leave all for it.¡±


    ¡°Tell it to us,¡± Foracts said.


    -


    Wander emerged from the Changers¡¯ seat and saw Fragile waiting dutifully by the entrance. She walked over to him.


    ¡°Your friend has been given a place,¡± he said. ¡°A cell. The house it is given into is covered, and thickly-built.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve arranged for your residence,¡± Wander said. She took her gloves off and stuffed them in her vest pocket.


    Fragile balked. ¡°You have?¡±


    ¡°Yes. There is a family here that has lost men to the cold. They¡¯ve offered you their seat.¡±


    He looked aside. ¡°So¡­¡±


    ¡°So, our arrangement is complete. You can stay here now. There¡¯s a place for you.¡±


    ¡°I-¡± Fragile stuttered. He¡¯d been unmoored.


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°I¡­¡± He tilted his head. ¡°I do not really¡­ have to.¡±


    Wander said nothing. She looked at him unblinking, as though she expected him to speak further.


    ¡°If it please you, I would follow,¡± he said. He bent his head. ¡°I mean, I could. Or I could stay. It is what you offered, and you have given me all and more of it. But I wish that you would know ¨C I have smiled very much in your company. I liked your teaching. And there is still much I do not know.¡±


    She paused before speaking. ¡°You will stay,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯ve put you in many dangerous places, and there are only ones more dangerous. You¡¯ll be safe here. They have many strong breathers and there will come those who know Sprak. They¡¯ll teach it to you.¡±


    Fragile struggled to retain his composure. But he relaxed and bowed to her. ¡°You were a great friend, star,¡± he said. ¡°I hope you find what you are looking for.¡±


    ¡°I will,¡± she said. ¡°I hope you will be well, Quiet Feet.¡±


    She curled her fingers once and then left the seat quickly, accompanied by Movingone. She kept her gaze away and twisted in no direction.


    -


    Fragile was left alone in the roundseat. There were eyes on him. The bone carvings in the walls shivered. He was like an alien and had the feeling of it.


    He would¡¯ve wondered further, but the ways in his mind did not permit him. They moved continuously as the hiding pumped and prodded them fresh again. It wracked his center.


    The Walls and other Changers emerged from the house and approached him. He sought to run away or shrink himself, but before he could, he was addressed by the Wallwoman, Foracts. ¡°The outborn says you keep ways.¡±


    ¡°I do, eldsister,¡± Fragile replied.


    ¡°The Seeders have asked me to speak of needs,¡± Foracts continued. ¡°If you would not keep by a Lodge, I will offer my name to you, and give you in to their position.¡±


    Fragile nodded, his head bowed. A small Changer emerged from the others - a young boy with yellow clay figures hitched to the shoulders of his over. ¡°Come with us,¡± he said. ¡°Come with us, eldbrother. They call me Willow. Move with us, now.¡±


    Fragile accompanied Foracts, Willow, and three other Changers out from the Changinghouse, and they passed among the shell¡¯s roundseats. The ones he was surrounded by smelled differently and had a dialogue among themselves which Fragile could hear but not understand. Each had a bone or a hanging around their neck.


    Willow¡¯s voice lit up the shell as they walked. ¡°Ih, the rulers who are always full and continued, bring now us water for new meat!¡± Nobody commented on the matter, and Fragile anticipated that it was only a new way to himself.


    The group approached a cluster of roundseats by Withoutwind¡¯s fields. The winter had laid white over the rise and decline of all things in the Changers¡¯ sector of the world, and it was difficult to tell a growing place from another in the way that it had been covered. They seats were guarded by howls who put barks at them, raising up the hair on Fragile¡¯s neck.


    They went up to a seat in the center of the population. On passing into it, the light of the world faded, replaced by dense darkness lit only by small flames. A large man sat on a cushion in the center of the room, beside several women; they sat among themselves and drank water. He wore a cover that closed up his eyes.


    Willow, Foracts, and Fragile approached the retinue, and they fell silent. One of the women whispered in the man¡¯s ear, and he looked upward.


    ¡°Aie, Wallwoman,¡± he said. ¡°What has sent you in to the Seeders? Who are the ones you have brought?¡±


    ¡°I bring you gentle ones,¡± Foracts said. ¡°The wet-handed thing, who is here already, and a new and moved one, who has no place anywhere.¡±


    He raised his hands and beckoned. ¡°Send them in.¡±


    Foracts shoved them inside and departed the seat. Fragile looked back at the Changer in fear before the little Seeder tugged his Coldover. He went toward the gathering.


    There was silence. Fragile looked at the great Changer. The other Seeders gazed back at him, and muttered to themselves about the Sixbraid.


    ¡°I am Over, new one,¡± he said. ¡°The Seeders are in my seat. Are you one who needs others?¡±


    He grit his teeth and bowed. ¡°Yes, eldman.¡±


    ¡°By what way have you come?¡± Over asked. ¡°I cannot place the curve of your word. Are you from the dawn?¡±


    ¡°I was one of six braids, eldman,¡± Fragile replied. He gripped his breeches, exploiting the Changer¡¯s condition to avert his eyes. ¡°Heartless ones came. Mine have gone away from this land.¡±


    Over and his companions bowed their heads. ¡°It has been told. What are your works?¡±


    He fidgeted. ¡°I can shape rock, eldman,¡± he said. ¡°Wallrock. Littlecanes. I can seek out some good hearts in the rounds. I can carry-¡±


    Over held up his hands and Fragile fell silent. ¡°Come close,¡± he said, ¡°son of catchers.¡±


    Fragile leapt to do as he was told, but Willow put a hand on his arm, tugged him back, and shook his head. He went up to Over and knelt down. ¡°I am closer, eldman.¡±


    ¡°Bring the river-brother to Hoofspeaker, little one. He will be shown tools. This one sounds a kind like yourself. I would offer your kind to him.¡±


    Willow nodded. ¡°It will be done, eldman.¡±


    He stood and retreated. The two of them bowed, and Willow tugged on Fragile¡¯s sleeve. They departed the shell.


    ¡°Preference,¡± a woman standing next to Over said to him, ¡°this one is hardly a man. Is this what you will for our kind?¡±


    ¡°The river-hearts have been eaten up,¡± he replied. ¡°It is their virtue we need, eldwoman.¡±


    -


    Wander was brought to the Changers¡¯ meatcutting place by Movingone. Goals stood, sat and smoked there, lingering around the heaps of spoiled carcasses and charnel excavated from their stilted redoubt.


    ¡°The catches were kept here,¡± Movingone said. ¡°Those who can catch made this a seat for them ¨C that they might rest, and that the price of them might be read.¡±


    ¡°You read their price?¡±


    ¡°We must. We send some away to other places, in the city.¡±


    Wander stepped up to one of the piles surrounded by men. She reached inside and pulled out a large bone, akin to those of the tusk she had slaughtered. She snapped it open and poured it out; a light dusting of mineral powder spilled over the other carcasses.


    ¡°This happened right after some movers arrived, outborn,¡± one of the Changers said. ¡°Not ours. A different kind. I hope you will go and have it out from them, so that we may be taken from this awful arrangement.¡±


    Wander looked at him. ¡°You speak with certainty,¡± she said.


    ¡°It must be so,¡± he affirmed. ¡°I have seen all the virtuous doing of my friends in preparing for the good days. If you do not do it, we will do what we did many season ago. At that time, the heartless things arrived and took up every heart of ours that we laid down into the soil. And our creators ¨C to keep from it ¨C they made themselves like it. Like things in soil.¡± He wept openly.


    ¡°I do not want to be like it,¡± he said. ¡°I will do anything to get from it. I am so hungry.¡±


    -


    Willow lead Fragile out of the house of Over and outside the roundseats, beside an area with crops and dug pits and water places that had all ben swarmed and covered up by snow.


    Willow pointed to a nearby hill, where Withoutwind¡¯s sprawl continued onto its ridge. ¡°We can wait here until the eldman returns,¡± Willow said. ¡°He is a busy one, and he is our most learned man of rocks. He would be working them for others, now. When he has returned, smoke will emerge; his ovens do not go out until he goes.¡±


    A certain warmth settled into Fragile¡¯s chest. ¡°Who is your fireworker?¡± he asked.


    Willow cocked his head at him.


    ¡°One who works fire,¡± Fragile said, ¡°and attends all its figures.¡±


    ¡°I do not know this kind, eldbrother.¡±


    Fragile bent his head, and the warmth slipped out. Willow noticed his brow fall and his gaze flick about. He tugged on the Sixbraid¡¯s shoulder.


    ¡°Follow me, eldbrother,¡± he said. ¡°Please, follow me. I want to show you something.¡±


    They sat down in a hidden place, behind a ditch in the Changers¡¯ fields. Willow cleared away the snow from a space of hard red soil and a pit of frozen water. He pried up a jagged slate rock and pulled out burnt orange figures from underneath it. Each of them resembled one of the Seeders they had just seen. Willow propped them up along the sides of the water pit.


    ¡°Is this why she called you that?¡± Fragile asked. ¡°¡®Wet-handed thing¡¯?¡±


    Willow broke open the ice with his rock and dipped his fingers inside. He took a clump of the spongy material comprising the figures and warmed it with his hands. He placed it into the water. ¡°Yes, river-brother.¡±


    The material drunk well. Willow rolled the material into a ball and then began to elongate it, forming extremities and a scalp. Fragile¡¯s mouth drew open in awe at Willow¡¯s minute, tender adjustments. ¡°If its aim is to be adored, it is well-accomplished,¡± he said.


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    ¡°I can make one for you,¡± Willow replied. ¡°I hope to make one for every kind in our family.¡±


    Willow handed him the smallest figure of the bunch. On closer inspection, Fragile realized its little hands and arms were shaped in the way of Willow himself. ¡°What will you do when you run out?¡±


    ¡°Of what?¡±


    ¡°Family.¡±


    ¡°I cannot do it,¡± Willow said. ¡°I was given into this family from another. From one with more. My first birthman taught it to me; the hearts are the rounds, and the families are the lines, but these are signs that men make, not rulers. If I create every born, I would produce the birds in the trees, and the tusk-wearing hearts, and the ones with hoofs.¡±


    ¡°You can call these others family?¡± Fragile asked.


    Willow extracted his hands from the water. Fragile¡¯s figure was half-completed; its hair, longer and kept more carefully than the others, fell out from it in a cascade of orange and black. Willow had even etched out a pair of twists with his fingernail. ¡°If I could not, I would be alone then,¡± Willow said. ¡°And that is the thing I fear of all.¡±


    He continued to produce Fragile. As his subject watched, he gave the figure eyes.


    </a></a> -


    Wander and Movingone the voicewoman exited the Changers¡¯ estate. They moved to a part of the shell that was packed with other roundseats. It was populated by catchers, wearing leather pelts and howlskin overs. They wore teeth of different angles and sizes, cut into twists and small figures. Goalish script had been carved into each; from what Fragile had shown Wander, the stories they told involved death and a chase.


    The catchers stepped out from their houses and approached Wander. One had a blasted yellow painting in the shape of a bird on his cheek. Another had his hair moulded into a series of rings. The third missed several fingers and had a bone pierced through his left ear.


    ¡°Come, all of you, who have discovered broken eatings,¡± Movingone said. ¡°There is one who would be told of that finding.¡±


    ¡°What is this one called?¡± one of the catchers asked. He was a small man with padded breeches, and a Larun missile-flinger.


    Movingone turned to Wander. ¡°I am a star,¡± she replied. ¡°A way-keeper calls me Wander.¡±


    The catcher rubbed his chin. ¡°And I am called Grainer,¡± he replied.


    A round platter was brought out and cushions were sat, and cups on the platter. ¡°Although you do not know our ways,¡± he said, pouring out water from a pitcher, ¡°I regret our lack of virtue. Our problem has made any right water impossible.¡±


    She took the water. ¡°Its way is beyond your means. If your rulers saw it right to take from you in this way, I would not put much offering to them.¡±


    ¡°The seeking and having are our ways alone,¡± he said. ¡°The rulers are not in a stripping. They are far from us now. The losing itself is the stripping thing.¡±


    He sat back against a cushion. ¡°What is it you want to know?¡±


    ¡°All about your encounter,¡± she said. ¡°Everything you can remember.¡±


    He poured a cup for himself. ¡°It began when we brought in gifts for the Seeder family, outborn. That is where my little one, Willow, has gone into. Ours was stock for the joy and dancing.¡±


    ¡°Dancing?¡±


    ¡°Centercold,¡± Grainer explained. ¡°The passing of ice and wind from the rulersland. We need only do as we have before to reach the warmth.¡±


    ¡°What was the condition of your catches then?¡±


    ¡°The way it is. That has not changed.¡±


    ¡°And what are the edges of its being?¡± she asked. ¡°The hearts you took from the rounds - when was it they lost their shape?¡±


    ¡°Perhaps one step-of-the-sun did pass, and no more time after that. Are you the problem¡¯s voice?¡±


    Wander cocked her head at him.


    ¡°Are you the problem¡¯s voice?¡± he repeated.


    ¡°I am born. How would I speak for a problem?¡±


    The catcher thumbed at his wrist, rubbing a scratched Larun coin he had bound up in a bracelet. ¡°You look a kind of older days. Of the ones my birthman said. When the land knew more and spoke more. The rulers were here, and there were fewer men still.¡±


    ¡°Did a problem speak then?¡±


    ¡°They do now.¡±


    She furrowed her brow.


    ¡°The thunder is the voice of lightning,¡± Grainer said. ¡°There is a howling of howls, and a shouting of bites. The problem has a voice. But we have heard nothing of these ¨C the greatest problems. And I wonder if the last time will still be told, or if it will creep in silent from the night.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean?¡±


    ¡°Our land is without ease,¡± he replied. ¡°Some say there is a one or two who have made an ashing of the rulers¡¯ ways, and perhaps it is so. But every season, we all enter into the rounds, and we all catch out less. Every season, we all bring up hearts from the ground, and we all cut down less. Every season, we all put ourselves together, and we all bring out less. We know that the rulers have gone away from this land; that the ways of heartless things have come upon it, and made eating of our hearts; that they do not desire we remain any longer. In the night, I hear the houses waiting for us. I can see my creators going to the last path. They are calling my name.¡±


    -


    In time, the roundseat on the hill began to send up smoke, and Willow tugged on Fragile¡¯s shoulder.


    They found the seat covered by sharpening stones, oils, a pitcher of water, a set of great belching fires, and other Changers taking canes. It had round open walls, a thatched roof, and a mud floor. It was built circular, and inside, many rooms had outward openings.


    They saw Hoofspeaker they had drawn close. He was a muscular Changer with bent eyebrows, narrowed eyes, flared nostrils, and sharp teeth that they could see through his open lips. His hair was bound up in a braid and his body was in a thick flapping over stained by grease and oil. Around his neck hung the bone-complex of a human finger, rooted together by string.


    They approached and he wiped his ashy fingers on a rag. ¡°Wethands,¡± Hoofspeaker boomed. ¡°What kind have you brought into me?¡±


    ¡°This one knows rock, eldman,¡± Willow replied. ¡°He is a way-keeper. He is arrived from the braided ones. He wants to work with you.¡±


    Hoofspeaker turned and looked to Fragile. ¡°You know the rock?¡± he questsaid.


    ¡°Yes, eldman,¡± Fragile replied.


    ¡°I will suppose it.¡± He sniffed. ¡°Go on, wet thing. This one is offered. There are other ways to keep.¡±


    Willow bowed and looked at Fragile before departing Hoofspeaker¡¯s seat.


    ¡°Follow me, new one,¡± Hoofspeaker said.


    They went to a patch of snow behind the seat. The Changer went to the ground and brushed all the white away, he shifted a large rock, and brought out a pair of blades from a secret dig. He held them out to Fragile.


    ¡°Outcanes,¡± he said. ¡°My outcanes. Sharpen them, please.


    Fragile took one of the canes in his hand. They returned to the seat and he took a sharpening stone from a nearby table. He ran it across the blade. On his many strokes about its edge he stumbled, and then went very slowly and carefully to prevent this. Hoofspeaker narrowed his eyes at this display.


    ¡°You do not know the rock,¡± he said.


    Fragile dropped the stone again. ¡°Our canes were smaller, eldman.¡±


    ¡°You do not know the rock.¡±


    Fragile¡¯s careening strike sent a chip flying off the drycane. ¡°Ih ¨C ih, I ¨C I can -¡± When he tried to further hone out his mistake, Hoofspeaker jerked the weapon away from him.


    ¡°You¡¯ve done no wrong,¡± he said. ¡°But do not touch my canes. You¡¯ll break them.¡±


    Fragile bowed his head and handed him the stone. He took it.


    ¡°You do not know the rock,¡± Hoofspeaker repeated. ¡°So what do you know?¡±


    Fragile blanched. ¡°Nothing,¡± he said. ¡°I know nothing, eldman.¡±


    ¡°Nobody knows nothing.¡± Hoofspeaker wiped his mouth. ¡°Tell me your name.¡±


    ¡°I¡­¡± Fragile¡¯s eyes flicked back and forth. ¡°I am named...¡±


    Hoofspeaker¡¯s eyes widened when they saw his struggle. ¡°Eh ye. Perhaps he really does know nothing!¡±


    ¡°I am Fragile,¡± he said. ¡°I am called ¡®Fragile,¡¯ eldman, just as I said. That¡¯s it.¡±


    ¡°That is not a good name,¡± Hoofspeaker replied. ¡°It does not sound a name given.¡±


    ¡°But it is mine.¡±


    ¡°Never have I seen yonman so smooth,¡± he said. ¡°Yonman so whole. Offer me your hands, please.¡±


    Fragile slowly raised up his hands. Hoofspeaker reached out and grabbed them, yanking him forward. He flipped them over, looking at Fragile¡¯s palms.


    ¡°No bites,¡± he said. ¡°No holes. I smell ¨C dirt and good water. Do you cut ground hearts?¡±


    ¡°No. We were in the rounds, eldman. There was water there.¡±


    He gave him back his hands. ¡°I have seen one hundreds hand,¡± Hoofspeaker said. ¡°I have seen the hands of Walls. I have seen the hands of knowers. I have seen the hands of the things without hearts. None were so soft.¡± He held up a finger. ¡°Except one.¡±


    ¡°Whose hand was it, eldman?¡±


    ¡°She is gone now,¡± Hoofspeaker replied. ¡°She was little when I was a little one. They threw her in water, those things without hearts. The knowing she had, the knowing she took with her, was of fire, and fire¡¯s work.¡±


    Fragile could not meet his gaze. He chewed his lip.


    ¡°So I have struck on it,¡± Hoofspeaker said.


    Fragile nodded slightly.


    ¡°Why would you release virtue for this?¡± Hoofspeaker asked. ¡°To hide it? The keeping of fire is a thing of smiles. We have needed it. There are surely many places for you to work.¡±


    ¡°It is as though I know nothing,¡± Fragile said. ¡°The work I cannot do. I make bad mistakes. If you give yourself to me, you will go to the rulers, as others have.¡±


    Hoofspeaker rubbed his chin. ¡°Then you will show us the work, and make us know it. Can you do this?¡±


    Fragile wrung his hands. ¡°A little. I can try.¡±


    -


    Movingone and Wander moved out to the houses built of cloth and poles where Changers from the rounds had gathered. They heard the high cutting laughter of children, and saw men staving off hunger in sitting circles chewing mud or grass or moss. Some men and women filled large vessels and bladders with water from icy holes in the ground.


    They came before a circle in the center of the Changers. There were three men there who towered over the others in height and breadth. They had seated themselves on elaborate wicker stools and muttered among one another, thrusting and brandishing paper fans. They caught sight of Movingone and Wander striding in to the spot their encampments meet. When they arrived at their feet, Movingone clasped her hands together.


    ¡°This place will not receive you, voicewoman,¡± one of the fan-holders said. ¡°There is no outborn who can bring you into it.¡±


    ¡°We have come at her request,¡± Movingone replied. She extended her hand to Wander. ¡°Here we will remain, until she has found her help in you.¡±


    ¡°Who is she?¡±


    ¡°She says she is a star,¡± Movingone said. ¡°A star who has words. She says she does not know the heartless things. She seeks to blow out our problem.¡±


    The Changers looked among one another. ¡°She should sit,¡± the watching ones said. ¡°If it will make us eat!¡±


    ¡°Give her sitting. Someone, give her sitting!¡±


    ¡°Make us eating things again!¡±


    A sack was brought forth by a large male changer in a massive over. He threw it down before the fan-holders. ¡°This is sitting,¡± he said. He pointed Wander to it, and stepped away.


    Wander was taller than the men standing. All knew and feared it, and in their sitting they felt smaller still. She consented to rest on the sack and tilt her gaze up at them. This seemed to sooth the Changers, and the legs of one shifted open.


    ¡°I have need. I would learn of the way you came,¡± Wander said. ¡°This problem is concealed and knowing how it arrived will help me uncover it.¡±


    The Changers looked to one another in anger, but they nodded.


    ¡°When did you arrive?¡± she asked.


    ¡°Our groups moved into this no-wind place seven mornings ago,¡± the one in the center said. ¡°By the third morning, we had come, and more followed in still.¡± He sniffed and drank from a waterskin. ¡°Is this problem of a kind?¡± he asked.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± Wander said. ¡°It is not like any I have read. There are some in which eating is concerned and changed, but not in this way.¡±


    ¡°¡®Some¡¯?¡± He threw out his hands and raised his brow.


    ¡°Some problems.¡± Wander lifted her own skin from her hip, popped it open, and drank from it. ¡°Did you carry your own eatings?¡±


    ¡°It is virtuous to do it. The shell we have provided, but in spite of it, we must catch for our own.¡±


    ¡°How much was brought?¡±


    ¡°In our group?¡± He scratched his chin. ¡°Perhaps fifteen carcasses of winged meat. Twenten carcasses of roothead meat. Fourten carcasses of groundhearts. Twoten carcasses of water, off of hearts and grains and grounds.¡± He turned to the others.


    ¡°In our group,¡± the blue-robed one aside him said, ¡°Twenten carcasses of roothead meat. Five carcasses of Howl meat. Fivten carcasses of groundhearts. Fivten carcasses of water.¡±


    The third spoke in a low rumble. ¡°Fivten carcasses of groundhearts. Ten carcasses of water.¡±


    ¡°When did it lose its smell?¡±


    ¡°All was lost by the second day.¡±


    ¡°And the bones?¡±


    ¡°Those, too, were emptied of all eating.¡±


    Wander nodded.


    The other Changers shifted. ¡°Can you touch whatever eats from us, outborn?¡± asked the Changer to her right. ¡°Will this knowing help you?¡±


    ¡°It might,¡± she said. ¡°I think that something may eat from it.¡±


    ¡°It must be those who dwell in shells,¡± the center insisted. The others seated looked at him in anger.


    ¡°That is not assured, Goalman,¡± the Changer in blue admonished.


    ¡°Why does he say it?¡± Wander asked.


    ¡°You all know, as I do, that they have stopped moving,¡± he said. ¡°It is not the problem all of the Laruns and their lack of virtue. They have taken out the good work of ones who move, and foisted it all on a sitting place. To the jaws of ones who come in and snatch us out to the rulers.¡±


    ¡°That looks a strange wrong for such a grievous mark,¡± she replied.


    Goalman snorted. ¡°You are outborn. You are not in the way or the shape of us.¡±


    ¡°Goalman is an empty-head,¡± said the one to the right. ¡°And he is not the voice of our kind. But there have been such concerns.¡±


    ¡°The shell-dwellers stay more in their houses,¡± the one to the left said. ¡°They put weapons to women when there are less men for them. This was done among the born in older days, but it cannot be done now. There are Laruns in the country, and they seek to hurt our fighters. We do not know, star, but perhaps there is a thing made angry. A ruler returned to suffer us.¡±


    Wander looked between them for any hint of mocking, derision, or disdain. She found none.


    ¡°I will see about it,¡± she said.


    -


    Hoofspeaker returned Fragile to the Seeders¡¯ houses and those nearby gathered about his spot at his calling.


    ¡°This is a new one,¡± Hoofspeaker said. ¡°Come, all of you. All of you come, and hear the ways you have not heard.¡±


    The Seeders drew by them. ¡°What is this, Hoofspeaker?¡± a woman asked. Fragilerealized she was one of those who had sat at Over¡¯s side. She carried an unfinished grass weave in her hands.¡°What sort have you arranged?¡±


    ¡°This is a new one, eldsister Vanning,¡± Hoofspeaker replied. ¡°There is a keeping of ways in him, of fire and repairing. I have seen it and took it out. The many of you will need it after this problem, when our kind have been made to go out from our home, or when it has ended and the problems of hunger have called on care and right roots. The sitting and quiet of you should come closer and so find them. You should hear the ways of river hearts.¡±


    So the Seeders like Vanning and Willow and young men wearing bracelets of bone and the middle-aged, who wore city gifts and necklaces of colored stone and etching gathered around Fragile while a cold wind rustled the bushes and countryside sprawled out before them.


    Hoofspeaker crossed his arms. The others waited with bated breath to hear the words of the new one, who fidgeted and wondered how to begin.


    ¡°I was told of fire by my creator,¡± he said. ¡°I was told of fire and of the pair.¡± He snapped off a branch from a bush and held it up to them in his hands.


    ¡°I was first told that fire is half of us,¡± he continued. ¡°A voicewoman later told me of fire work and how it is aimed ¨C that it is a building of all kinds. That it is a sort which seeks to end the problems seen by rulers.¡±


    ¡°A voicewoman said it to you?¡± asked a Seeder.


    ¡°Yes, eldman,¡± Fragile responded. ¡°Her name was Wellborn.¡±


    He took another branch on the ground and placed it aside the other. ¡°There is an adorable togetherness of all things, and in the work of fire it is started up. I think that the fire cannot be separated from this way; it is the place from which all its parts emerge.¡±


    The Seeders looked at each other. Small smiles sprouted up on their faces as the Sixbraid mumbled and lilted, and there was amusement at the creature that he was, hitherto unconsidered.


    ¡°We know that the fire can stop up heartswater,¡± Vanning said. ¡°We know that the fire can stop cold troubles. We know that the fire can burn away little hearts, which prick upon us in the night and in the rounds. We know that fire, given to water, puts itself in it, and that their meeting will not produce bad fluid as unmet water might. What do you know that we do not?¡±


    Fragile sweat. ¡°I will seek it out, eldwoman.¡±


    So he drew on the topics given into him by Peak. He spoke of the movements and observed qualities of heartswater. He spoke of the proper way to entreat a cutting rock. He spoke of the airs that the Sixbraids had noticed and written down, and of the eight stinging hearts which address all men. Some men built a fire and Fragile extracted branches from it and demonstrated the burning that they displayed and the ways to end it.


    He took one of the Seeders to the ground and demonstrated on his arm with a piece of cloudrock. ¡°As the heart explores the arm, she should begin to freeze up,¡± Fragile said. ¡°That is the worst of cases. Eh ye, we have seen so many fall down by it. When it is done¡­ well, one must first seek out another thing. You see, the heart does not persist in the arm. It is totally met by the man. But you must know, before this-¡±


    His mind began to melt with angles of approach. At the sight of his excited vigor, the Seeders laughed. ¡°Look at how he wanders!¡± cried one. ¡°He could not be moved moments ago. Now, even when he is stopped, he is like a wandering thing! Have you ever seen it?¡±


    They laughed more and pressed on him, while Fragile blanched. One strode up to the Sixbraid and pinched his shoulder. ¡°Give us more, Fireknower,¡± he exclaimed. ¡°Give us more knowing. Give us more holy ways!¡±


    Fragile shivered and smiled. He placed a branch in the fire, and he breathed.


    -


    Throughout the day had the Bell been coiling herself invisibly about Wander¡¯s skull. She could feel its wriggling pulsations in her head and received frequent, frightened twinges from their involuntary contact. She returned to the Changinghouse after she was finished with the visiting Goals, and received inquests from the other catchers and producers who sought signs from the rulers: burning shapes in wood, consulting stones, and writing into rock. Wander decided to address her aide¡¯s condition, and called on the Bell in speaking to a scarred and spearwielding Changer from the company of Foracts.


    Speak now, Wander whispered to the Bell. Deliver this one¡¯s intention. The Bell made no reply.


    ¡°Outborn?¡± Her visitor reached out her hand and placed it on Wander¡¯s shoulder.


    Wander blinked. ¡°I have to go,¡± she said. ¡°We should discuss what you saw later. I need to take care of something.¡±


    Her visitor nodded and left. Wander turned her attention to the Bell.


    I know you¡¯re angry, Wander said.


    I¡¯m not angry.


    What?


    I¡¯m not angry. Why would I be?


    Wander¡¯s face did not change. We are parted from your interest.


    I see. The Bell paused. The weak thing was touched. The weak thing was embraced. The weak thing was held. Now we will make him safe. The joyous one is enjoyed. I will find others.


    A vague heat that she did not fully understand rose up in Wander¡¯s chest. She suppressed it. If you¡¯re not angry, why won¡¯t you help me?


    Help you? I cannot hear you. This place is very loud.


    ''Loud''?


    There is much talking - much thinking - much seeing.


    Who is thinking?


    I don¡¯t know. It has no name. It has words, but it will not use them. It is pushing everything.


    The Changers? The meat?


    It is pushing everything.


    -


    ¡°Bring in the new one,¡± Over said. He held his hands out to Fragile. ¡°Knower of fire and hearts. Goer of paths. River-brother. Gonespeaker.¡±


    The day had near ended. The sun went down the horizon and dark chills ran free. The seeders sat around a fire enclosed by their seat, wrapped in blankets and coldovers that hid them from their appetites. Over¡¯s outstretched fingers curled into a fist that he placed on his own forehead; his gesture was echoed by no others, so Fragile did nothing.


    There was a long silence as Over held his position.


    ¡°You must turn it to him,¡± Willow whispered. ¡°That is the right way.¡±


    Fragile was alarmed. He produced a fist and pressed it to the base of his brow. The other Seeders¡¯ eyes lit with vague amusement before the lot clasped their hands together shook them at one another.


    Fragile¡¯s young interlocutor scooted closer to him when the chatter had risen up beneath the soft cry of the wind. ¡°Is it true what they have said?¡± he asked Fragile. ¡°Are you a kind that meets with fire?¡±


    Fragile tensed up. ¡°No,¡± he said. ¡°I have just been told some things.¡±


    ¡°There has not been a fireknower in Withoutwind for many seasons,¡± one named Yeller said. Fragile could see her loose, twisted teeth rise and fall in the firelight, and he questioned how she had heard them from her position at Over¡¯s side. ¡°We have long felt emptied of such a one.¡±


    ¡°You are a river-brother?¡± Willow questsaid.


    ¡°He is.¡± Another woman answered Willow¡¯s question, sitting in a shawl just outside the light. She was half-turned out of it, and strands of thin gray emerged from her covering, and the light rolled over the creases in her face. ¡°His hair folds. That¡¯s the river-born way.¡±


    ¡°What is the condition of your like?¡± Vanning asked him. She too was on the opposite side of the fire, and those by her had begun to pay more attention to their calls. ¡°We have heard they were attacked, and that they destroyed the ones who did it.¡±


    ¡°It wasn¡¯t their work, Vanning,¡± Yeller said. ¡°It was that one they say. The one he emerged from. The cane-carried outborn.¡±


    ¡°That speaking is false,¡± Vanning insisted. ¡°None have said it in the same way. He is here, now. He can tell us.¡±


    All turned to Fragile in anticipation. The earlier sense that Fragile had managed to evade the whole interest of his kin was now disturbed, and he felt sick.


    ¡°I do not know their condition,¡± Fragile said. ¡°If they still walk, they are gone in the way they sought.¡±


    ¡°What of your fellows?¡± another Seeder asked. ¡°Ones born along or from? Why wouldn¡¯t they take your kind?¡±


    ¡°I¡­¡±


    Fragile hid, but the whys and whynots found him out, uncovered him, and pushed it all into his eyes. He saw the rope swinging and felt it chafe about his neck; there was the voicewoman¡¯s burnt and daggerd skin, and all subsequent visions, self-invented to remind and address him in the night.


    His nerves flung themselves apart and enveloped him. He closed his eyes and tried his best to steady himself, but this took the form of silence. He felt that if he tried to send out words, he would not be able to contain the noise beneath. So he kept quiet.


    The Seeders watched him bite his lip and look down and go away while he was in plain view. Some of them bowed their heads at the lamentations he would not sing, or crinkled their eyes when they saw him move in the way that their friends had moved during response, in younger days. ¡°Let the man still,¡± Yeller said. ¡°He is one who has walked with a star. Who knows what that Point did to him?¡±


    ¡°The one I help,¡± Fragile whispered.


    The Changers turned toward him.


    He grit his teeth and hoist up his lungs. He set them down, and tears fell out. He smeared them with the sleeve of his coldover and lived in their stickiness. ¡°I have been learned of dry hearts and far places,¡± he said. ¡°Beyond any place I was born. They have ways a far kind from ours, but I have learned that they have water like our own, and rulers who rule beyond our rounds and eyes. It was given me by the one I help. She was the one who helped us. She was the one who brought us out.¡±


    The Seeders burbled. ¡°What is her name?¡± Vanning asked.


    Fragile¡¯s eyes cast downward, beneath the fire. ¡°I do not know,¡± he said. ¡°I wish I did.¡±


    ¡°The name is the smaller kind,¡± Vanning said. ¡°To be with a thing is to take its pain, and there is no descent in that. All words fall away. The knowing changes and remains."


    The other Seeders murmured in agreement.


    Fragile wrung his hands. ¡°It sounds like an eating,¡± he said.


    Vanning thought. She nodded.


    -


    The Changinghouse lit by the light of torches in nightfall and filled with the concerned Changers creaked and rumbled under the weight of the snow.


    ¡°The work in your shell is caused by fallpiece,¡± Wander said.


    Foracts, Movingone, and many of the catchers and movers who Wander had convened with about the day were assembled in the hall¡¯s cavernous round center. They looked at one other in bewilderment, whispering about the strange out-sounding word. ¡°What is ¡®fallpiece¡¯?¡± she asked Wander.


    ¡°It is a consequential mark that cannot be seen. It is produced to affect disaster. In being, it is opposed to He, the ruler of the Rootcliff hearts,¡± she explained. ¡°It does not have a limb you can cut at, or a body you can hit on. A more learned one could get help from better forces against it, but I don¡¯t have the words for them. So these troubles won¡¯t stop until you¡¯ve ended your infringement of it.¡±


    Movingone ground her teeth in frustration. ¡°If this heart cannot speak, how could we uncover the spot of our infringement?¡±


    ¡°It is not a heart. All account that this problem began at your gathering¡¯s onset. I expect some part of it is its chafe.¡±


    The Changers chatted among themselves, disturbed.


    ¡°We needed to destroy this problem, not go out from the place we need,¡± a Wall said. ¡°If we send away all others and hand them off without gifts, we would release much virtue from ourselves.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll search for a way to hear it,¡± Wander said. ¡°But you should still go. I may find nothing, so that some are lost. I do not say that leaving will send it out either; so, I send these items to you.¡±


    The Goals nodded, although some wrung their hair and gnashed their teeth.


    ¡°If I can do my work,¡± Wander said, ¡°you must burn all the eatings you have kept. They are like to return to their old appearance and present themselves as whole. But they are touched by fallpiece, so they will be a wrong thing forever.¡±


    There was whispering. ¡°The hearts we cut would mend?¡± the Wall questsaid.


    ¡°I have read of it on papers,¡± Wander replied. ¡°They may appear to, yes.¡±


    Foracts balked. ¡°If we did that, we could all eat. We would lose noone!¡±


    ¡°I need to tell you what is told, and not drive you to a point of my own.¡± Wander withdrew her shortblade and sharpened it once with her stone. ¡°I will catch hearts for you anyway. Your rounds are still heavy with water and bodies.¡±


    The listeners muttered among themselves in amazement. ¡°You cannot¡­ you cannot feed our whole group,¡± Foracts said. ¡°Not by yourself.¡±


    ¡°Maybe not,¡± she said. She hefted her blaith. ¡°Maybe half.¡±


    ¡°Even if you could do this, it would keep us for a few days only!¡± Movingone exclaimed. ¡°How will we eat when you have gone?¡±


    Wander looked at her. ¡°I will produce it,¡± she said. ¡°This will be a safe and laughing place. Noone will need to go away from here. Can you hear me?¡±


    There was lightning in her eyes and thunder in her voice. "Yes, star," Foracts said. ¡°We can hear you.¡±


    -


    Arrived night and great decline. The heat went away, and the light. All noise died and the air settled down. There was only the patter, chip and hiss of fire to keep certain that the Changers, who were many and hungry, all remained.


    Fragile stayed with the Seeder family in their seat. Wrapped up in his sleeping sack, he contemplated the lessons of the day, and memories of Wander¡¯s warmth, the sound of her voice, and the things she would say.


    So when everyone had gone to sleep he went up silently from his sleeping spot, as though it were a practiced move, bundled himself in his coldover, took up fire and his three-string and his tuskleather, and went out into the snow.


    Wander returned to the Changinghouse at night, weary from catching birds and putting them in pens, and dragging out animals headfirst to be locked in the cages and patches of the Changers.


    She sat herself down against a wall in the Changinghouse, locked in position with her weapon gripped and her hat over her head. She shut her eyes, but despite her fatigue, she was not brought in to the secondland. Her exhausted dark-drenched mind wondered when she would be woken by the Sixbraid¡¯s early, fumbling bushward excursions, or when she would next watch him curl up by fire in his Goal-coat. She wondered on the next time she would hear him say something normally odd or unpalatable, and she remembered he was gone.


    In search of sleep, she left the Changinghouse and went to the hearthouse.


    She sat down onto the dirt floor by the stronghoof to rest. She scratched its chin. ¡°Hey,¡± she muttered. It grunted in appreciation.


    A floorboard creaked. She turned to the entrance and saw Fragile, his every contour shiverring and snowblasted, carrying a torch that was nearly half his size.


    ¡°Oh.¡± He started. ¡°I can go.¡±


    ¡°What are you doing here?¡± she asked.


    He hesitated and rubbed his torch like a pet. ¡°My eyes would not shut.¡±


    ¡°I see,¡± she said. She got up. ¡°Well, I¡¯m the one who¡¯s intruding. This is your home, not mine.¡±


    ¡°Please stay!¡± he said. Her eyes widened slightly at the electricity in his voice, and he collected himself. ¡°I mean, you can, if you want.¡±


    She sat down. Fragile sat across from her. The stronghoof¡¯s eyes flickered and then closed.


    ¡°I have been learned of this problem,¡± Fragile said. ¡°The one that troubles them. Will you tell me of your search for it?¡±


    Her eyes moved downward. ¡°There¡¯s little to tell,¡± she said. ¡°Someone is like to have found a way to wish disaster on this places. Sometimes it can produce a condition such as this. The end to it is near revealed, but the Changers will not budge until its certainty.¡±


    ¡°Is it something you can fight?¡±


    She shook her head. ¡°Not me, no.¡±


    ¡°Can you speak with it?¡± I would walk through fire if it should help.


    ¡°You need not bother. I do not think it is a speaking thing.¡±


    He bowed his head. She looked at him. ¡°What about you?¡± she asked. ¡°Can these ones hear you?¡±


    The lines of his mouth floated upward. ¡°Some of them can, I think,¡± he said. ¡°They seem very precious hearts. As precious as the ones I knew¡±, but they are not as precious as yours, and I feel a great plummet when we are apart.


    Wander looked up at him curiously. ¡°What did you say?¡± she asked.


    ¡°They are precious hearts,¡± he said. ¡°As precious as the ones I knew.¡±


    ¡°After that,¡± she said.


    He furrowed his brow at her.


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°I said nothing otherwise.¡±


    Wander massaged her temples. Wind pounded against the hearthouse. Fragile shiverred and gasped; his breath moved out in a cloud and he shrunk up, putting a hand close by his fire. An image leapt unbidden to Wander¡¯s mind that put a hunger in her chest.


    She got up to leave. ¡°You should go home, now,¡± she said. ¡°Get somewhere warm. And stay there.¡±


    She stalked out into the snow, leaving him alone. Fragile watched her go.


    -


    The snow¡¯s whirl and tempest became soothed for a while, and it danced rather than cut through the rise and play of the Goalish plains. Up above, the whipped, tumbling massives that birthed them continued to collect in the hard darkness of the horizon, which promised shapes to the Walls on watch that could only be sensed and not seen. Withoutwind¡¯s tight causeways became broad canals for a sea of white powder. A group of howls galloped by the shell, placing the weary Changers on edge. They sang out songs of fruitless bloodshed from aching, unfilled bellies before moving on, in search of easier prey.


    Fragile attempted to quell his nerves. He lit up a larger fire with his small one and surrounded it with rocks, and nestled in a place where the snow had not swept in so much. He plucked awkwardly at his three-string, fumbling together the lines of a half-remembered tune before he gave up. He put the instrument aside and took his head in his hands and listened to the wind whine beyond the confines of the hearthouse. He thought and briefly wept.


    While he did it, he gazed out of mind at a clay bowl of hoofsgrain set down front of him, whose contents had become stale and dead. On approaching and then electing a course of action, he emptied it into the snow outside.


    He took out the littlecane. He put his hand over the bowl and drew the edge over himself. He winced and bit his lip as water fell away from him.


    The bowl filled up. It was agonizing, but soon it was halfway full. He bound up his wrist with shredded cloth that began to give up drops of scarlet. He bound it further and tighter.


    When he set the bowl down, he saw his body in it grow red and roiling. It flashed with silent agitation and knotted itself up, contorting and producing a putrid odor. Before it could wring itself any further, the fire roared and snapped up sparks and he put it to his lips and drank.


    He gagged halfway through the draught and continued. Once it had fully reentered his body, a distressed gargle passed away from his mouth. He clutched his hands to his stomach and chest and they began to shake. He fell over and shook violently on the floor and, from the deepest recesses of his gut, exhaled.


    The stronghoof reached out toward him. It stamped and snorted and brayed.


    -


    After Wander had returned to the Changinghouse, her fatigue pursued her throughout the night. Just as she was about to secure a reasonable position in the unconscious, the Bell rose up from her brooding and pushed on her.


    The weak thing, she murmured. You should...


    She opened her eyes. What?


    The Bell did not respond. When Wander tried to touch her, her thoughts became tangled, she grew a need to vomit, and it rose up the hackles on her neck.


    She heard shouting. She slid on her blaith and got up and left the Changinghouse again. She was greeted by the dim morning light and the stone of Withoutwind and the cold, snowbound square outside the Lodge.


    She went past the square and approached the gathering. She could see that the commotion was fixed around a seat at the shell¡¯s edge, where the houses met the visiting Changers. A small shape was running away from it and cut for her path when it caught sight of her.


    ¡°There¡¯s hitting,¡± Willow gasped when he got in her reach. He was out of breath, but he did not stop to catch any. ¡°There¡¯s hitting, star. You must go now. It¡¯s the river brother. It¡¯s the fire-knower. It¡¯s the river-brother.¡±


    She put her eyes on the group of people and heard the screams again. She quickened her pace for it.


    -


    As Wander and Willow approached the roundseat, the screaming grew louder and louder. It did not come to her as Fragile¡¯s. Sometimes it was hoarse and contorted; other times, it was bright and sweet, like the voice of someone younger.


    She moved around the seat, into the still-growing mass of Changers.


    When they turned and saw her, the crowd - which consisted of men, younger ones, and two women - became a formation and held their backs around Fragile.


    ¡°Step away, outborn,¡± Hoofspeaker warned. ¡°This is not a place for you.¡±


    ¡°Eldman, she has words!¡± Willow insisted. ¡°She can surely help!¡±


    Hoofspeaker turned his glare to the boy and blustered. ¡°What have you done, Wethands? What sort have you become?¡±


    Before Willow could respond, Wander advanced. She swung out her blaith with grace and ease. ¡°I won¡¯t touch him,¡± Wander said. ¡°But I will see. And I would push you for it.¡±


    Hoofspeaker licked his lips. He sheathed his cane and shoved aside the other Goals, who broke ranks. Over and the older Seeders watched from the shade at the entrance to their seat. Wander walked forward unopposed and came in view of Fragile.


    The Sixbraid had been tied to a tall wingtree. Much of his skin had turned grey and murky. He had a trail of urine running down his thigh, but it produced no smell. He belted out a cry. His eyes had been covered by a blindfold.


    ¡°Why did you do that?¡± Wander asked Hoofspeaker.


    ¡°Scratches,¡± he replied.


    Wander went closer to the noise. She could see inside Fragile¡¯s mouth that his tongue had turned rigid and cold. His teeth were wriggling frantically as though they were made of flesh.


    ¡°Quiet Feet,¡± Wander said. ¡°Can you hear me?¡±


    His moaning stopped and his head turned toward her voice. She put a gloved hand on his face and he leaned into it.


    She cut Fragile free and carried him in her arms to the Seeders¡¯ seat. The Changers who had been guarding Fragile followed and crowded around the seat at its openings and see-holes. She laid him on the ground. She peeled off his clothes and visually inspected his body.


    Every touch brought apparent anguish to him, even though his clamor had declined somewhat. He reached up his hand to toward his eyes. When she gently pushed them away, she caught sight of the binding on his wrist. She unwound it and revealed the gash he had made.


    She continued to read him for a step-of-the-sun. At that point, the clouds collapsed on them with wash and bluster and the flats of the Black Open became driven by tides of snow. The Changers at the seat trickled and then hurried away, seeking fire and shelter in their own clothseats. They walked out of that place and when they had, as Wander heard the footsteps crunch and peter off beyond where she could hear, the color in Fragile began to slow and pause its departing, although it did not halt at any point. Wander¡¯s eyes widened as she saw it.


    ¡°Bring more here,¡± she said to Hoofspeaker.


    Hoofspeaker¡¯s attention had long since decayed and given way to sleep. Willow¡¯s shade perked up and spoke instead. ¡°¡®More,¡¯ outborn?¡±


    ¡°More hearts,¡± she said. ¡°Bring them from all quarters, from those who stay and those who move. The problem has a voice.¡±


    -


    Somewhere concealed, the sun pressed a glow to the clouds.


    Wander hoisted Fragile up onto the stronghoof. He exuded a smell and head that were plainly visible in the morning light, and although Wander had driven the Changers from him at knifepoint, he continued to sweat and shiver.


    The Changers approached Wander, risen from their panicked and hungry night. Foracts emerged from them.


    ¡°Please star,¡± she entreated, ¡°where are you going?¡±


    ¡°The problem that hurts you is joined to hearts,¡± Wander replied. She looked at them briefly before returning to the stronghoof. ¡°To their size and presence. It is not a matter of shell-dwellers only, or round-dwellers only. It was uncovered. If many of all will go away from this place, the problems are like to end.¡±


    ¡°So we must go?¡±


    Wander nodded. She threw one leg over their stronghoof, behind Fragile, and lifted herself up. ¡°I regret my promises,¡± she said. ¡°I am made to have spoken falsely.¡±


    Willow broke from the crowd. The Walls tried to grab him before he reached Wander. He struggled against them.


    ¡°Where are you going?¡± Willow asked. ¡°Where are you taking the fireknower?¡± There was a rumble of echoed interest from the watching Seeders. The ones who had made to grab Willow back released him and looked to Wander curiously.


    ¡°I¡¯m taking him back,¡± Wander replied. ¡°We will ride far and quickly. He has made your problem into his own, and I think he would freeze if he stayed.¡±


    She said it as a matter of fact, and no argument was raised. Willow approached Wander and shoved a clay figure up at her.


    ¡°Please take this,¡± he said. ¡°I made it for him.¡±


    She took it, look at it, and stuffed it in a saddlebag. Willow reached up and pressed his hand to Fragile for only a moment; this caused him to recoil. ¡°Be safe,¡± Willow said, ¡°keeper of ways.¡±


    He retreated to the watching Seeders. Wander grasped the stronghoof¡¯s mane and guided it out of the shell, past the hearthouse, the Changinghouse, the roundseats, the shelters and their fire circles, and the houses of Willow. When they had a direct line to the rounds, she whistled and sent the stronghoof galloping off into the trees and bushes. The Changers watched from afar with a mixture of weeps and shouting. Vanning clutched at her piece. She knelt on the ground and wrote signs in the snow.


    ¡°Make straight the way of the Dry Man and the Fragile Seeder.¡±


    -


    The stronghoof brayed as it carried the two of them through the flats and thickets of the Black Open, kicking up flecks of snow. The clouds swelled and did not cease disbursing; their pace quickened and soon corralled every hill of rise of frozen dirt with new layers of ice, and flocks of sharp edges buried into the trees and soil and Wander¡¯s face. She did not relent, and she urged on the stronghoof even as the white¡¯s speed and depth began to bury away the countryside and herald itself with blasting gales.


    Fragile clung to Wander. The hazy grey pallor that had entered his skin crept across his arms and face and covered him up. The stronghoof grunted and threw itself forward at Wander¡¯s request. Its carries and munitions jangled more apart with every thrust of its hoofs.


    After a while, the noise Fragile was making dried up. She turned his face toward her, removed one of her gloves and placed her hand near his cheek. His air was cold.


    ¡°Stay awake,¡± she said. She slapped his cheek with her glove. ¡°Stay awake, Quiet Feet.¡±


    She halted the stronghoof in a place clustered with trees and stone columns clinging to a steep ridge. She slid him off the stronghoof, faced him up, wrapped blankets around him. She dragged him and the stronghoof beneath a rock outcropping, where they could find some shelter from the blow and tumble of the storm.


    She removed her blaith and timbered a tree when she could find no sticks for kindling, entombed as they were by the ice. She snapped off its branches, hauled them underneath the rocks and stacked them together into a roaring fire. It spat out hunks of swirling glitterbugs that contested the snow for space. She laid him next to the flames, wrapped him in more blankets, and coaxed him again.


    ¡°Stay awake,¡± she repeated. ¡°Can you hear me, Quiet Feet? You have to stay awake. Stay-¡±


    Joyous one, the Bell said, he is not awake.


    She stopped.


    She bent her head down to his chest. His eyes, half-hidden by his eyelids, were glassy.


    Her head held in place. Her eyes twitched and flickered about his frozen corpse. Her fingers curled and uncurled, and her flesh felt as though it were about to sweeten and melt away. There was a ringing in her ears that sounded like bells, and she felt much smaller than she was.


    She stood up, and her lungs took in air.


    -


    The snow fell. It found and sank into the trunks and roots and soil and longhaired flocks which passed the forests by. The last drifting waves of the sky¡¯s crushing massives buried themselves in the Black Open of Goal, their swarms and strands blowing more distant and individual with each measure of light that slipped from the sky.


    The warrior watched the corpse until the wind fell away. When it had, she emerged from her stone covering, and threw down a tree that stretched into the air. She ripped it up with her hands, which became covered in its green and sticking water.


    In the plains outside their shelter, where one could more fully see the grand extent of the pathways North, she took up a pair of logs and plowed it free of snow, driving it to give way to the inky soil beneath. She assembled the wood she had chopped into a flat, prickling mound. Then she retrieved the corpse from its spot, threw it over her shoulder, and carried it through the dust.


    She tossed it on the mound. The instrument on its back clattered at the impact. A fissure formed in the sky, allowing the sun to etch shine on lower clouds and on the green tree masses that threw themselves rolling over every horizon in the world circular. She lit up a fire with her mould and put a branchlogge to it. She began to set its tip over the mound.


    She hesitated. After a moment, she struck the torch into the dirt and removed her short blade, setting off back toward the trees. As she did it, a brown tint affixed itself to the corpse¡¯s skin.


    -


    Fragile had been sent to the air and swam there.


    An aching pulsed below him, as though he were being beaten by canes. He felt afraid beyond his own fear. He felt the fear of one who touched rocks, the fear of one who touched soils, and the fear of one who touched meats. He felt the fear of things in pain, and how they were gnawed on. He wondered if he might be such a thing ¨C a gnawed on type. A divisible shape. A subordinate species. When the thought struck, fears sheerly compelled him toward any course that would fix away from it.


    The great medium through which he progressed swirled around him and pressed into everything he had seen. He saw flashes of times past.


    He saw a winding river in a distant land, where the ground was not as dark, and there not words as loud and as numerous as his own. He adored the river for what was said, and what was retrieved from it. Men with braided hair, floating on it in boats, pulled nets of screamers wriggling with fins and scales from the space underneath. This was a thing adorable?


    We could not see it otherwise, Fragile said. The medium moved on.


    He saw the stronghoof, and the decrepit, reduced ones who had populated the stabs of Eighty, and he heard them all speak. He saw the babbling Freemen of the Couth, and their bodies hanging from a punisher on its stakewall. The face of one had been mauled, and another had been pierced by rocks. They asked him what they were.


    Fragile didn¡¯t know how to answer. And then suddenly, the impulse arrived to him - a clarified and descript substance. A moving thing was a moving thing; a dying thing was dead. A thing that should move is not gnawed on. What fear lie between gnawing things and gnawed on things! What was dead should surely be.


    The medium saw the lines of Fragile¡¯s realization, and rested.


    But, Fragile said, I am an eaten thing.


    The medium pressed into him.


    I am devoured, Fragile cried. We are devoured. ¡°All of my words! I linger in the shape. The shape lingers in me! The line was of men written. What is written is not real!¡±


    The medium and Fragile pressed into and around one another. They swirled in a circle of continuing consumption. It swam through Fragile, and Fragile swam through it, stretching out his arms and fingers and skin. He had lips; he licked them. He relearned what darkness was.


    His chest expanded and he gasped.


    Fragile¡¯s body bent upward, and one of his hands clutched and tore at his blindfold. He ripped it off his head and was blinded by the sun, shining in by the clouds retreating East.


    His entire body was slick with freezing sweat, and he began to shiver. His teeth chattered and he put his feet on the ground. There was a clatter nearby, and he turned.


    The warrior had dropped apart a bundle of hauled kindling, which had shattered on the ground. Her eyes were sharp. Her hand twitched toward her hip.


    He rubbed his head. ¡°Wander?¡± he croaked. He posted up the icy, creaking joints his legs had frozen into.


    She remained still.


    The pressure collapsed. She unsheathed her short blade and advanced on him. The world turned dark and creviced. In the distance, a bell pealed, and the torch burned.


    <hr>


    A group on hoofs wearing gray cloaks galloped through the forests and flats of the Black Open. Their hoofs tore over wind-battered water and mounds of snow spun and wound by the wind, and buds in bushes that had just begun to realize the winter had not killed them. They passed by the corpse of a roothead and urged their hoofs up a steep slope, rising into a hilltop shell that spanned a wide part of their country. The shaking man who led them shook his shawl free of ice and dust. The tall man beside him thumbed at a dried-out tongue adorning the golden thread that braced his neck.


    The shell they had entered into was lonely and quiet. They were not met by fighters as they crossed into it. On the outskirts, there was soot and scorched sticks where fire had been, and pits and cleared snow where nothing was built, and only stake debris and droppings to say that anyone had sat there once. They reached the built seats and found limping and wrinkled Goals hauling wood to new fires and searing cuts of meat over them, which dripped water and bled freely. The Laruns drove their animals through the snow, following their leader, who dismounted once they came upon an emptied covering for animal pens.


    He shook and shiverred and hobbled inside the enclosure. It stunk of wild and untamed scents, of grain and feces, and of more. He reached down to the ground and brought up a bowl stained red with blood. He put it to his mask and breathed.


    ¡°Aie, eldmen,¡± a voice said in Goalish.


    The Laruns turned to the sound. A young boy stood in the snow just outside the hearthouse. Moulded figures were kept fastened to his shoulders by wood and string.


    ¡°What are you doing here?¡± he asked.


    The necklaced man approached Willow and smiled. ¡°Ours is a looking, yon,¡± he said. ¡°Ours is a seeing.¡±


    ¡°What are you looking for?¡±


    The Laruns turned and their leader shuffled out from the pens¡¯ dark embrace. His jivvering hand unclenched the bowl, and it shattered on the ground. Willow looked up at him curiously.


    He whispered into the necklaced man''s ear.


    "He says," the necklaced man said, "''the one I smell on you.''"

 The Strangers (Part 1 of 5) - This Cane Finds Throats

    It seems only days ago that Fragile the Sixbraid was living a quiet life in his people¡¯s village, in the ancient and storied land named Goal. Without provocation, a group of soldiers from a hate-filled empire entered into it, killing his friends, his family, and all the keepers of their tradition. A Wandering Star, a lone warrior from a distant land, arrived just in time to save Fragile and the Sixbraids from complete annihilation. Finding pleasure in each other¡¯s company, these two, a stronghoof, and an enigmatic presence named Bell now plumb the countryside for work and residence. Wander helps the people of Goal, and searches out a new home for her companion; in secret, she pursues her long-standing vendetta against a blind and destructive enemy.


    A visit to the Goalish village of Withoutwind left Fragile comatose and dead before he experienced an apparently miraculous revival. As villainous forces close in, Wander and Fragile find themselves approaching a crossroads for both their relationship and their journey to the heart of the New Wild.


    <hr>


    Wander stood over Fragile, gripping her short blade. He looked at her grip; her fingers did not squeeze, curl about, or choke the hilt of the weapon. They were still.


    The curtained layers of Wander¡¯s black shoulderskin swept in the wind, clinging to her neck by its plated scarlet thread, giving her an inky kind of plumage. Fragile hugged his coldover tight to his frame, its damp and dappled white blending with the snow and giving him chill. He was even smaller on the ground. His hair¡¯s twin braids blew elsewhere, and the whole head had become frosted with ice.


    Wander¡¯s hesigns burned across her body with imperiled disease. The thick gloves around her hands stretched out, and she felt that if she did not keep calm, she would explode out of them. The long weight of the blaith on her back strained against her extended covering.


    The Black Open of Goal was throwing off a storm. Clouds of snow tumbled over and flew past its pitchy soil with liberated delight. Grey mountains rolled into the horizon, blocking out the daylight stars and spanning all that stranger firmament, with roar and churning back North by heady and blustering tide, draping its quiet country with icy sheets and air that smacked and screamed. The sun¡¯s golding coronal put a gaze on them. It glinted off Wander¡¯s sword and shot a ray of warmth through Fragile¡¯s eye. He looked up at Wander. The hair she had chosen to wear that morning was brown; it blew through the light and made her shine. The rim of her hat placed her eyes in shadow.


    ¡°If you don¡¯t move, I¡¯m going to cut you,¡± Wander said. ¡°If you do move, I will not stop you. I will not pursue you.¡± She pointed out the way they had came. ¡°We are still close to Changers. If you go back, you are like to encounter their kind again. You must avoid lots of them, or your pain might resume. They are marked hearts.¡±


    Fragile didn¡¯t move. His was shocked silence. His eyes were full of fear and he clung to fistfuls of snow.


    Wander waited, gazing down at him as he bent his head and girded himself.


    ¡°If you stay, I will send you to your rulers,¡± she said. ¡°Can you hear me?¡± She pressed the metal to his throat, letting it touch him. He inhaled. ¡°I will send you. You are risen without breath. That is wrong. So this is a needed way. I am commanded to do it. Can you hear me?¡±


    A long draft of wind whistled over the trees.


    ¡°I can hear you,¡± Fragile replied with a gulp. His voice hushed and wavered. He shut his eyes.


    She waited a while longer, and he did not move, so she turned the edge on him, grazing his skin. Freezing sweat washed over Fragile¡¯s body. His chest heaved and he shut his eyes.


    Wander held her blaith to his neck, which his shivers jolted to and from the metal. A folding red liquid began to trickle out of it and create a stain.


    She contemplated the blood¡¯s color and consistency. After a lingering period, she drew back her weapon, put a finger to the stain, and inspected it.


    She looked down at his face. His eyes were closed and his lip quivered and he continued to shiver. He was crying.


    Her blaith stepped back into its sheath. Her legs started walking her back to shelter, so that her hands could retrieve the stronghoof. As they untied it from the rocks, she heard soft deformities shift about the snow behind her, skittering in her direction, and settling in to a creeping stumble that trailed the path she took as she lead it out into the light. The quiet feet followed her as she departed the exploded scope of the Black Open.


    -


    They sojourned further South, into vast and thinly grown rounds. Fragile hobbled along that way, trying to keep up. His body was seized and rattled by constant tremors. He and Wander stayed on opposite sides of the stronghoof.


    Fragile would not draw close to Wander, whose heat could warm him, and she supposed he was now afraid. Once, shifted by an icy gale, he was jostled closer to her side than he had been, and his cheeks flushed. He retreated from it.


    The day had already drawn up to its shady hours and they quit their path. The sky dimmed and a cavernous galaxy crest up and down the night¡¯s dark, panoptic domenant, bearing down on everywhere in all directions with unmooring sprawl and memories of light.


    They let the stronghoof rest in a warm alcove on high ground, bristling with snow-cradled thicktrees. The ice encrusting the wood and bush had begun to sweat. A gust of wind sailed past, tinged by fire, and Wander was alerted to the thaw it drew from, availed of the East and its more temperate currents.


    ¡°May I fill your waterskin?¡± asked Fragile.


    She looked down to her hip and shook it. It sloshed. She untied it and handed it to him.


    He kneaded the skin and shivered. ¡°Is your over wanting?¡± asked Wander.


    He hesitated. ¡°I think it¡¯s wet.¡±


    She displaced the shoulderskin and stepped toward him, holding it with two hands and bringing it around his back. He averted his gaze and yanked in his shoulders as she wrapped him in it. He pulled it close, and shivered in relish of the warmth that Wander¡¯s heat had imbued it with.


    She stepped away and turned back toward the stronghoof. ¡°Would you let me work your metal?¡± Fragile piped.


    She looked back at him. ¡°Fill the skin first,¡± she said. He cringed, bent his head and nodded.


    Fragile went down to a dark, frozen pond they had settled by, of indeterminate size. He took out the small, rolling blade of his littlecane out from his hoofleather bag and hacked a hole in the ice. He dropped the skin¡¯s tip inside, siphoning a drip of water. The light of the stars skittered apart on the silver surface, coloring it with winking freckles that shone and glowed. In the distance a high-pitched clicking emerged from the windripped reeds, weeds and sunsetters. It was followed by a song whose sound pitched and swayed and reminded Fragile of a howl¡¯s call.


    While he did it, Wander loaded an armful of stones into her fibrous bag and went through shaded glens and tightly packed bushes, her eyes bent up in search of flying creatures. She threw three times, and carried three wings back to camp. She cleaned them and cooked them over the fire, plucking out their feathers and pearlescent plumes and wrapping them up in a padded satchel on the stronghoof. After she was finished, she removed a blanket she had cut from the skin of a tusk, and placed it within reach of Fragile¡¯s sleeping spot while he tended to her weapons. When he saw her do it, he visited his duties with a greater tenderness.


    All was finished. Once the dry-heaving produced by their scent had subsided, Fragile sat alone by the fire spreading water onto the stains that he had given in to his leggings. He glanced up at Wander.


    The warrior stood on the edges of their woodland keep, looking out across the pond, chewing her pipe unlit between her teeth, and wiping her knife¡¯s dry metal with the sigil-stitched cloth she kept in her vest. Its fabric was so dirty and covered with entrails that it soiled the blade, but she took no notice. Fragile slid on his clothes and approached her.


    He pushed together his fingers. ¡°May¡­ may I have something from you?¡±


    She chewed on her pipe and did not move. ¡°Maybe.¡±


    Fragile rubbed his fingers. ¡°Have I- have I done some wrong work? While my eyes were shut? Is that the cause for your frowning?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not frowning.¡±


    He looked away and her head tilted. ¡°What can you remember?¡± she asked.


    He took another step closer and stood beside her. ¡°I remember the shell,¡± he said. ¡°I remember that I was frightened. But I could see nothing. I could feel nothing. Otherwise, it is silent.¡±


    ¡°Tell me about your arm.¡±


    His eyes went wide and the blood ran from his face. ¡°My arm?¡±


    She said nothing. He turned up the sleeve on the skin below his left hand, where a long red canal had been carved out in the flesh. ¡°I¡­ I drank my heartswater.¡±


    ¡°Why?¡±


    Fragile¡¯s brow creased. ¡°The problem was within eating,¡± he said. ¡°I hoped it might- let me know it. I hoped that might help.¡±


    ¡°It did. But you did not breath.¡±


    ¡°Do you want me to return to the Changers?¡± he asked. He hugged his chest.


    Wander looked out into the darkness of the ice and brush, watching wings flap between the stars through the veining, rayless pores provided by the gappy treeline. Fragile could only discern what was flying by its bellowing song, which they beat out across the thicks and snowdrifts. He had heard it before. ¡°You could do it, if you wished,¡± she said. ¡°The kind that hurt them may be passed out of you, or it may finish its work if you should arrive. I don¡¯t know.¡±


    He said nothing. A little whispering came in from the dark over the water. Fragile could not tell if it was a voice, or a ripple of the wind.


    ¡°We have come very far,¡± he said. ¡°We are in a different place. Aren¡¯t we?¡±


    Wander replaced her cloth in her vest and her weapon in its sheath, and removed a bottle of residue from her belt. She uncorked it at the tip of her pipe, and the glowing white fluid jumped to the Hesign on its face, sending up a glow and orange sparks.


    ¡°Yes,¡± she said. She let out a trail of smoke. ¡°We are.¡±


    -


    The morning came. Wander silently thumbed the handle of her short blade as gleaming mists wandered in and overran their possessions. She watched the scars on Fragile¡¯s neck and wrist, and then watched him stretch and rise and scrub clean her cooking pot with placid enthuse. He applied a shining oil to her breastplate with a smile on his face that shook and teeth that grit when her eyes left him after some time. His hands would not stop shaking, until he nuzzled and kissed and caressed the stronghoof, and fed it as she smoked her pipe. She watched him shiver and expel clouds of drifting vapor that joined the mist when he covered up the fire and wrapped himself back up in his coldover. She took the lead of the stronghoof and watched him scramble up alongside with vigor and excitement. Every movement of his that was new and breathing entered her eye.


    She turned away and they departed the Changers¡¯ land.


    They set out to intercept a road that worked toward the blotch on Wander¡¯s guide. They found it harder and dug deeper than those in the more distant parts of the territory; in its survey, they came across trails tug towards streams and staked-out refuse pits, filled with urine and leavings.


    There were omens too. No such facilities had been maintained, and the sigils of their construction were very old. They found a prolong white monolith dug into the ground that spoke of issuers and work-drivers whose contributions had been made a hundred years past, far beyond those who presently endured the firms of Larunkat. On their way over the final streams and frost meadows of East Goal, they moved through a muddy marsh where the ground clicked and cracked as they walked over it and the warming ice crystals were forced to give way.


    A white fog fell over them, and it was only by keeping close to Wander¡¯s side that Fragile did not lose her or the stronghoof in the field¡¯s damp occlusions.


    Suddenly, Wander came to a halt and looked to the distance. Fragile kept moving after Wander stopped. He was jerked back by her glove. ¡°Wait,¡± she said.


    He looked to the side, and saw that her eyes were wide.


    ¡°What is it?¡± he asked.


    He looked forward, seeking to align his gaze with hers. He spotted it through the fog, which was still thickening and smelled of rain and sweet carrion.


    ¡°I think¡­¡± Fragile furrowed his brow, and then raised it. He began to walk forward again, but Wander¡¯s grip held firm.


    ¡°Why would you go to him?¡± she asked.


    ¡°It¡¯s a woman.¡±


    They looked back at the fog.


    ¡°She is looking at us,¡± he said. ¡°Why does she do it?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not sure.¡± Wander narrowed her gaze.


    It continued to look. The more it did, the warmer the air became. The sheets of mist that contained the two of them filled up their spot and bound their breath together in a hugging humid fire. The thicktrees¡¯ acrid foliage and syrups joined their company and filled up their lungs, bringing to mind soil and rain and smoke in winter.


    ¡°We should find a way around,¡± Wander said. She pulled on Fragile gently.


    He took one last look and exhaled. ¡°Okay.¡±


    She tugged on the stronghoof¡¯s lead. As they departed, she glanced backward, watching the figure and its gaze until both had melted back beyond the territory.


    -


    Wander and Fragile followed the road until they began to see houses rise in the distance. They passed by fields that laborers would work when the warmth came, growing golden shoots of laq and the snaking kinsbreath crop in the moist, squirming dirt of the Black Open. In the cold the ground was hard and had cut apart the weeds, deserting their foreign expanse. The big houses which they served stood tall, shaped like stars, and they were accompanied by creaking wooden watchtowers that scoured the horizon. They gave place for shooters, waiting patiently in fur- and crop-woven vests.


    More buildings stood past the growing complex. Most of the people past its limits, where the roads became shorter and along which personal hovels and stalls and stilted fabric shades had blossomed, were Laruns and Freemen. They sold their wares for parts, drove cattle, sharpened metal tools and fixtures, and exchanged quiet talk over grain and cups of milksit. Wander noted that she had not seen so many since she had departed Longfur.


    The postings in this Larun place, filled by sellers of milk and cakes and brews, as well as workers who sewed and hit metal and cured skin were pointed in their forefathers¡¯ way, all packed by sibling towers which jut about in reinforcing parapets that fought toward a celestial firm; to their cousins in the West, these would be low and shabby. Timber had fashioned them, and only the least quarried stone had been embraced round their frame and foundations to let them remain steady upon the sky. Wander supposed, from the rotted cuts, crackling wounds and gaps which she had assessed, that they had been assembled quickly, with speed and intent in mind.


    Some Goals inhabited the mass as well. Most worked harder positions as servants or porters, but they often worked alongside Freemen, and they were not spat at even by the more partsfull Laruns. These, draped in extract scents and dyes sought out for their price and engrossment, would look past them, putting nothing of their sight inside. The Goals were not as wretched as those Fragile and Wander had observed in Eighty, and some of these were dressed in smooth buttoned coverings and itching gray waistties rather than rags or bloodstained overs. He could not observe a larger amount of shaking against the Goals or their type. One they passed by walking next to a tall and liq-robed Larun dropped a jar of oil and shattered it.


    ¡°Oh, feurkun,¡± his companion moaned.


    There were nivmen present. Many of them looked bedraggled and worn, and more than one was missing limbs. The pole¡¯s pallor was found in full view as they arrived at a long wooden building.


    They stopped the stronghoof outside. The house of their interest was squat, pale, and some parts of it were charred. It was sandwiched between seller stalls and dour sleepries where nivmen milled. The building was dark grey covered with the white of snow and brewing smoke fell out from its viewlets and a number of round gaps in its webbed rooftop. In this place it was small, but it outsized most other works Fragile had seen outside those of Eighty. His eyes were drawn shut and his nose snatched tight by the smell of a familiar kind of meat, crisping somewhere nearby. ¡°Is this a salin?¡± Fragile asked. ¡°Like at the Couth? The Couth by the smiling place?¡±


    Wander deposited the stronghoof with a waiting Freeman, gave him some coins and Sprak words and walked inside. The Freeman lead off the moaning animal as Fragile followed her.


    -


    They entered the Salon. The stench of sweat hit them immediately. The place was populated with a few road people, sitting on stools and drinking from bowls that sloshed with milky fermentation. These were mostly men, but there were a few women. The men were clad in unpolished metal armor and grey drapes, spun from liq and distant alloys like only could be produced in the Western country. The women dressed in breeches and thick brown coats, their hair and hands adorned with plucked feathers that had been washed, dipped in oil, and painted by workers. The whole place was populated by their kind.


    A few women had took men up, and took to dancing in the middle of the room, twirling about on a central platform dressed with crushed up yellow dust that hitched itself to their boots, whirling words and patterns in its absence. The Salon¡¯s corners were dark and hidden from the light of the burning logs that lit up its spots closer to the door; people sat there too, kept in chairs and tables of shaved coolwood, inhaling smoke from red rods whose bowls were flush with a flaky, acrid fabric.


    Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.


    Fragile gaped at the sights he saw peculiar, and Wander took note of the glances their entry earned, and gazes paid their way. Meetings were accepted in this Larun place, and without the sexless temper of the Freemen, she and he were seen. Hunger bled and bounced past the pores of their company, and all eyes drift about their bodies, touching what one could find a license for.


    She spied a man pouring drinks stood at a chest of blown glass bottles, sorting them. She laid a hand on Fragile¡¯s shoulder.


    ¡°I¡¯m going to the salonier,¡± Wander said. ¡°I¡¯ll find you when I¡¯m done. I don¡¯t think we should talk to anyone.¡±


    Fragile nodded.


    The salonier Wander observed was another man, taller and younger than their previous host in the Couth. His stiff, angled features told he was a Larun, dressed up from chest to knee in a dangling white sweep, secured at the waist with a strip of skin. A cloak of liq, painted blue, wrapped around his shoulders. His hair was clipped short, and his nose had a slight mould around it to pronounce the edges. A flower nestled in to the space between his head and ear. He only had eyes for his work; he weaved together a shawl like the ones draping up his walls, showing clouds and large water-plains and big-eyed animals. His gaze set itself in weary lines that fixed tenderly on his needles and cloth. His hair pricked up when Wander approached; he paid it little mind. ¡°A new friend,¡± he muttered. ¡°Good day on the road?¡± He looked up at Wander, dressed in her blades and scars and signs, and the blood drained from his face.


    ¡°A good day, Firstpoint,¡± Wander said.


    ¡°A Seenblade?¡± he gasped. He threw down his tools and stood up before her. ¡°What will you take, Goodpoint?¡±


    ¡°I will take talk. And grain.¡±


    He gulped and nodded.


    The Salonier removed a gourdish shell filled with coins from behind one of his weavings that gleamed in the fireslight, and set out cups. His haggard mood subsided as she dropped parts into it.


    He asked, ¡°Are you new to the plant?¡±


    ¡°We are.¡±


    He poured. ¡°What have you found in it?¡±


    ¡°Cold,¡± she said, ¡°and dark.¡±


    He poured a cup for himself. ¡°The tippers have shaded it so.¡±


    Her head turned. ¡°Tippers?¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± he said. ¡°The Dzhrymin, and his face eating friends. Haven¡¯t you heard?¡±


    She looked at him.


    ¡°He is a knot-wrapped fighter. Some other men follow him.¡± The salonier shivered. ¡°They have come down from the hills twice in past sixty days. Each time, they have burned fields, and cut off the heads of a hundred men with papers. There has been no end to that noise.¡±


    ¡°The nivmen,¡± she said. He nodded.


    ¡°They must send some more,¡± he said. ¡°The firm in Herdetopp, or another. They will come for us all, otherwise.¡±


    ¡°I had not heard,¡± she said. ¡°And that was not what I spoke to.¡±


    He looked up at her from his scrubbing, his brow raised.


    She looked out the shutters into the street, where hoofs and wagons trenched the snow and mud. People of different kind ¨C Goals, Laruns, Rootcliffs, and a man of stone waded by, carrying bags of spilling seed and sellwood and dragging along horned cattle. ¡°This plant is known,¡± Wander said. ¡°Known in its unknown. I think I was in one like it, once. But I no longer can make sense of its kind. It can only be a To-Dark place.¡±


    ¡°Its kind exposes kind,¡± the salonier said. He pushed the cup towards her. ¡®The massing turns out sights.¡±


    Now she raised an eyebrow at him. ¡°Really?¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡± He nodded. ¡°That is its aim. To be unseen, in a place where others are not. It is like the springs that way. Or that is what I measure.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ve measured this?¡±


    He shrugged. ¡°It is what we were made to do,¡± he chortled. He drank. ¡°That is what I have found it does.¡±


    She drank, and their gazes crossed over as they looked at the road.


    Wander laid out her last few coins on the table. ¡°I want a room,¡± she said, ¡°and something else.¡±


    The Salonier raised an eyebrow.


    ¡°The man in the corner,¡± she said. She closed her eyes. ¡°...touching your windwheel. Do you see him?¡±


    A clacking sounded as the windwheel spun.


    ¡°I can see him.¡±


    ¡°I want you to take him for at least two hundred days,¡± Wander said. ¡°Work him, if he¡¯s willing. He has no place else to stay. And I can¡¯t keep him.¡±


    ¡°You make him sound like a child.¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s not. But I can¡¯t keep him.¡±


    The Salonier nodded slowly. He looked down at her purse and parsed the parts with a finger. Air hissed past his teeth. ¡°This is¡­ it¡¯s enough for a night. Five, maybe.¡±


    ¡°How much do you need?¡±


    He looked at her swords and her frame and the words shining out from beneath her vest.


    ¡°I¡¯m not a tipper,¡± she said. ¡°I will not hit it from you.¡±


    His brow eased. ¡°Two hundred parts,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯m sorry. You need me to take on a worker. I can do it, but I grow hungry.¡±


    She picked up her coins and hitched the purse back on to her belt.


    ¡°If you get the parts, you can bring him back here,¡± the Salonier said. ¡°I will take care of it. And you can grab a place this night. There¡¯s room above us with covered openings. We do not stay there. Not until the warmth, when the dark will not cool it.¡±


    ¡°And what is its price?¡±


    ¡°The price I have taken,¡± he said. ¡°The words of a foreigner are a part of their own.¡±


    -


    So they remained at the salon that night.


    The sun went down. The fibrous buds of Partplant were lit, and their shine squeezed every iris tight and made its own warmth as it embraced them. The koropole¡¯s paths and organs glistened in the darkness. Goalish, Larun and Freeman guards, stuffed toward same by the gray livery of the Otisrat, patrolled its borders in groups and aside gates and from the perch of towers, all their spots lantern-marked and blossomed in the darkness, throwing out shadows which stood higher than they.


    Wander and Fragile sat a table in the Salon¡¯s public room, which only became brighter and more crowded as the evening turned, swelling with the dust-soaked light and heat of the whole koropole. Fragile nibbled on a bowl of boilt river guts, and Wander nursed a pitcher of grain. She measured her drinks out into a cup, and her eyes grew dark as she sipped. Fragile¡¯s grew wide.


    ¡°What?¡±


    Fragile perked up. He realized that his gaze was fixed on Wander¡¯s hands. He craned his head toward her eyes. ¡°Are we close?¡± he asked. ¡°To where you must go? This place seems like it.¡±


    ¡°This is not Herdetopp,¡± she said. ¡°And it is to Herdetopp I must go.¡±


    ¡°Will you stay there?¡± He squeezed and released one of the table¡¯s legs. ¡°I mean, will you go away?¡±


    Wander rolled around her drink and sipped it. ¡°My work is until the cold. Next cold. Then I will leave.¡±


    ¡°Where will you go?¡±


    ¡°Where I am commanded,¡± she said. ¡°It is my Family¡¯s choice. Not mine.¡±


    They were silent. Fragile felt a pressure building in his gut.


    ¡°Star,¡± he said, ¡°I will leave here tonight.¡±


    She looked at him curiously. Her head tilted.


    ¡°I-¡± he sputtered. ¡°I will go out. I will find somewhere here to be. We¡¯ve found a good place, now.¡±


    She studied him. ¡°You are afraid, because I cut you.¡±


    His face turned red. ¡°N-no!¡±


    ¡°Then why would you do this?¡±


    He looked away. ¡°I just ¨C we have found a place. Wasn¡¯t that why you helped me? I need not burden you any longer.¡±


    ¡°It doesn¡¯t make sense,¡± she said. She poured herself a new cup from the jug. ¡°The room is paid for. You wouldn¡¯t have anywhere to stay.¡±


    ¡°I know,¡± he said. ¡°But I could find somewhere. It¡¯s very warm out. And there is food everywhere. It¡¯s a very good place. You have¡­ it¡¯s a very good place.¡±


    ¡°There are bites in the hills. It isn¡¯t safe.¡±


    ¡°There are many everywhere, aren¡¯t there?¡± he pleaded. ¡°And there are walls here. So many walls.¡±


    She drank dry her cup and turned to him. He could not read her expression.


    ¡°You can go if you want,¡± she said. She placed down her cup, whose rim displayed light indentation.


    She took out her pipe and got up, ascending the stairs to the rooms. Fragile was left alone.


    Some time after Wander had departed, a crowd of squat nivmen burst through the Salon¡¯s carved threshhold, firm with meat and mud and laughter. Many of their voices lilted and cracked as they fetched an array of drinks from the Salon¡¯s stores, undeterred by the Salonier or the road people. Fragile looked past their brysts then, and he realized that the whole association was younger than him.


    The last of the boys poured in. They were followed by a man, whose height was great enough that he had to crouch to fit through the passage. He wore a bryst too, a smile, and hair that flowed, cascading through three-pointed webs that spun and twisted. A golden necklace was tied close to his skin, weighed down by a dull black lump adorned by jewels. The remains of scratches and a gash faded beneath his eye.


    A high-pitched, windy note blew throughout the Salon. Fragile looked around and saw a swaddled guest sitting in darkness, blowing into a tube filled with holes. His song was blown softly, like a whisper meted out in chords. It inclined Fragile to a smile and to memories of youth. The figure¡¯s silhouette shivered and his song slowed. Fragile stepped over to the player.


    When he came close enough to see their features, he grew wary. The player was swept from scalp to sole in a thick maroon robe. Much of its flourish was scratched and torn. Their shape shook violently, and this did not stop for a moment. Their music shook with them.


    The player¡¯s noted feature was the mask they wore, the appearance of which ran up the hair on Fragile¡¯s neck. Lines ran up and down the face of it, and the fireslight washing over all found no purchase there, so flickering black edges were rent instead at the dives in its skin. It was roughly textured dark red wood. The brows carved above its eyes were relaxed, and the whole face was without clear feeling.


    A piece of the covering, where the stranger¡¯s mouth would been concealed, had been snapped off, revealing their skin as awash in many unusual colors - shifting in texture from moment to moment, blossoming in reds and pinks and purple spots that compressed and conjoined as easily as they breathed. Their lips adjoined to a piped device and two of their fingers pressed on its stem, producing a high, rueful note. Fragile¡¯s ears pricked up at the odd quality of the noise.


    The figure beckoned him with two fingers. They gestured their fingers over Fragile¡¯s shoulder and grunted in Sprak.


    Fragile grasped his instrument, unlooped its strap from his shoulder and brought it forward where they could see. They extended their hand, which shook so violently that Fragile thought it might come apart, to an adjacent seat.


    He sat down and plucked at the three-string. The Salon shivered as their trilling fell out from the darkness. He turned to the stranger, who nodded, and blew.


    The Salon¡¯s inhabitants pricked up their ears at the noise. Fragile and the stranger¡¯s melody was stumbling and sometimes dissonant, but it was earnestly devised, as the sound of each rotated around the other and sought a way in to the harmonies they desired.


    One of those sitting, a knife-wrapped catcher rapt by the tune, began to sing along.


    The stranger let out a hoarse cry. As soon as the first syllable of Sprak left the patron¡¯s lips, the stranger sprang up from their chair, grabbed the nearest blunt object ¨C a stool ¨C and hurled it at the interloper¡¯s head. It went past him, into the wall, where it disintegrated. Fragile¡¯s hands clenched the three-string and he stumbled away in fear, knocking over his seat.


    The interloper fell back into his chair, and the stranger sat down. Without further pronouncement, their posture sank, a little more strained and off-kilter. They righted Fragile¡¯s stool and waved their hands at it, and brought the pipe back to their lips.


    The melody grew twisted, simmering between speeds that Fragile struggled to complement. He sweat, and his brow squeezed itself together. His hands spun over the three-string, drumming out air that swept and sang and delivered good tidings. It jousted around the fluttering condemnations of the stranger, whose mask tilted in Fragile¡¯s direction. They began to shift their tune.


    Fragile¡¯s cheeks grew heated as he gripped the wood and cut his hands on the wiry threads that they employed. When the stranger picked up his melody, he knew it in the back of his mind, but his expression could not be changed. Their tunes wrapped and threw themselves together, snapping out peaks in turn that spun the heads of those nearby. The stranger¡¯s shaking had nearly abated, and the air near Fragile was freezing, taking in the fire that his expenditure had produced.


    The orchestra keyed together, and fell away from them both. The salon was quiet. The roadpeople, the salonier, and the nivmen gazed at them.


    Fragile released his three-string and looked over at the stranger, whose gaze was shifting away. As soon as it did, their shivering crept back in. Fragile looked down at his fingers, which also shivered, and bore the throbbing red notes he had earned by his ministry.


    ¡°Quiet Feet.¡±


    Fragile flinched and looked up, where Wander and the world had come back into being. The stranger slipped their device back into their robe and brought out their mouthpiece, snapping it into place.


    A thumping chest squared up behind Wander herself, and she turned. The tall Larun stood there, meeting her just below eye-level. He still wore his smile, which grew wider as their sight began to grapple. He was accompanied by a pair of nivmen, and the others bashed and threw the remaining roadpeople from the public room, leaving them alone.


    -


    ¡°First,¡± the Larun said, ¡°may we see your sign?¡±


    Wander sat in silence, her hat obscuring her eyes. Fragile sat at her side; Wander¡¯s slouch put him only a few inches below her.


    The young nivmen hung around the empty salon, drinking and keeping their sideeyes on their table, where Fragile and Wander had been invited to oppose themselves. The masked player¡¯s cane rapped and rattled next to the Larun, who folded his hands on the flattop. They were smooth.


    ¡°I have inspect your words, friend Seenblade,¡± he continued. His head tilted and his long, thick hair moved more loosely than it should¡¯ve. Wander could smell rot beneath his perfume. ¡°But to see a sign is something done. Something for a friend ¨C for us to learn who the other is.¡±


    Wander took her cloth out from a vest pocket and placed it on the table. He picked it up with two fingers and his nose inhaled its rancid scent. He squinted at it.


    ¡°Haaa,¡± he exclaimed. ¡°You are Firstpoint Coster¡¯s.¡± He tried to show it to the player, but they would not lift their gaze from Wander¡¯s.


    ¡°That explains some things,¡± the Larun said. ¡°That shows us some things.¡±


    She said nothing.


    ¡°Have you spent many days in Shamarkat?¡± he asked.


    ¡°I was produced there.¡±


    ¡°A destroyed country.¡± He held his chest. ¡°Hegrantar-Hegrantar-Hegrantar, I am struck still that our own kontor emerged from it.¡± He pushed her sign back over, leaving a trail of dirt, ash, blood and sweat. ¡°Were you affected?¡±


    ¡°By his destruction?¡±


    She watched him knit a frown over his smile. ¡°Yes. That towering work.¡±


    ¡°He met a good end,¡± Wander replied. ¡°The firm will appreciate him.¡±


    He twisted his necklace. ¡°It could not do otherwise... what is it brings you so far past his face, friend Seenblade?¡±


    ¡°I am ordered to Herdetopp,¡± she said. ¡°The new Coster has work that way. I will speak with the kontor of those squares.¡±


    ¡°A precious kind.¡± The Larun scratched at the table. ¡°That is a command of our own.¡±


    Wander tilted her hat upward.


    ¡°I will speak.¡± He cleared his throat. ¡°We have heard of your work, and your name, friend Hill-Measure. You have made men who think these weighty. They¡¯ve produced a sign of some size, in the Couth you passed. They have spoken for you, in more ways than one.¡±


    The Salonier brought cups of milksit to their table and Wander took her drink. ¡°Who has heard of me?¡± she asked.


    The Larun drained his cup with two hands and set it down. He placed five fingers around his heart. ¡°What I am,¡± he said, ¡°is Joyborn. Partless Joyborn. Do you know Lowcliff?¡±


    ¡°I have friends there.¡±


    ¡°They are mine,¡± he said. ¡°Lowcliff is mine. Its call is the call of me.¡±


    He turned his head to the nivmen scattered around the Salon. ¡°These ones are my Seeds,¡± he said. ¡°I have given much to them since they were small. I have produced them. They are friends of mine, when they sit beneath me.¡±


    He gripped the shoulder of the shaking player. ¡°I am enjoyed too, to sit beneath this man. Perhaps you know his call.¡±


    She looked at him. The sight of the player made her nauseous, but she did not.


    Joyborn¡¯s smiled prepared to widen as he searched for some straining confusion in her eyes. It shrunk into a pout when, despite her silence, he found none. ¡°The Goallandish do have a call for you, don¡¯t they kontor? Do you wish to port it?¡±


    The player raised his head. Out from his mask he looked at the two of them, watching Wander¡¯s disaffected gaze and Fragile¡¯s avoidant one.


    His voice emerged. ¡°C-Cane,¡± he said. His voice was a gravelled, bubbling well of spit and choking. ¡°T-they c-call me C-Cane.¡±


    He gulped. ¡°B-but I - am-m De.¡±


    Wander did not know what to think. She turned inward.


    Tell me, Wander told the Bell, looking at Partless Joyborn.


    He does not know you, the Bell said. But he would hurt you anyway.


    Why?


    To prove he can.


    The mask of ¡°De¡± was illegible. And him?


    Him I cannot see.


    Wander paused. You can¡¯t.


    No. Be careful, joyous one.


    Wander couldn¡¯t throw off a pressure that locked up her chest as she looked at him. Her fist clenched beneath the table. Fragile glanced down at it.


    Joyborn addressed Wander. ¡°We are looking for someone. The tipper who follows and now hurts this breathy mass. From your path, we expect you have been following him, and we do not know why. Would you hand out those parts to us?¡±


    Wander raised her eyebrow. ¡°Tell me what they give to you.¡±


    Joyborn stroked his chin. ¡°The Dzhrymin.¡±


    Wander looked into his eyes. She sat up.


    ¡°I am inclined, too, to pursue that one,¡± she said. ¡°The Dzhrymin has pleased the Goals. He has destroyed many of a more knowing kind.¡±


    Joyborn smiled. ¡°Then our purposes are aligned,¡± he said. ¡°I suppose that is your use for this feurkun. My friend has found it on him. The tipper should be a Shamar too, or it would not be there so much. Perhaps you two are of one firm.¡±


    Wander did not explore the notion. She switched her eyes to Quiet Feet, who quivered. ¡°It has seen the tipper¡¯s face,¡± Wander said. ¡°It has given the face to me. I collected it on the first day of our meet.¡± She looked back at Joyborn. ¡°When the path was ended, it will give it one more time.¡±


    ¡°Is that right?¡± Joyborn brushed the hair from his face. ¡°Just how is it you got their little one, Seen?¡±


    ¡°An unlearned thing tied him out, and made up to break him.¡± Wander drank. ¡°You ventured To-Silaif?¡±


    Joyborn nodded.


    ¡°You have seen his works. This one tells me secrets. I am happy to give it service, and receive them.¡±


    Joyborn itched his hands, which were clean and displayed no marks. His cheeks burned and his hair unsettled. ¡°Then there is one more point we should speak about.¡±


    Wander said nothing.


    ¡°The firm has offered parts for this tipper,¡± Joyborn said. ¡°Its order is posted on tables and firmhouses here and in other points. Whoever retrieved a quarter of that bunch would be well-equipped, and would not want for any shine or delight in the meanwhile. Another hand will catch this tipper quicker, and more surely, and if you come with us, your feurkun can do his pointing; then, we could hand it out among ourselves.¡±


    Wander¡¯s gaze fixed on the two men. Joyborn grinned and she could not make out De¡¯s eyes behind his mask. He continued to shiver and shake, and his head tilted downwards, as though he were sleeping or lost in thought. Her mind turned it over.


    ¡°The feurkun should stay,¡± she said. Joyborn¡¯s eyes lit up. ¡°It can be placed here. If its breath is taken, there will be none who can see the man.¡±


    ¡°If it is taken, Seen?¡± Joyborn laughed. ¡°From we three Blades, and this gathering of He? He follows.¡±


    Wander glowered at him. Her hand twitched toward her short blade.


    ¡°He follows!¡± Fragile squeaked in Sprak.


    Joyborn smiled.


    ¡°He follows,¡± Fragile repeated. ¡°He¡­ he pass? He smile. He follows.¡±


    She turned to look at him. His gaze was wretched and would not meet hers.


    She looked back at Joyborn and stood up. ¡°He follows.¡±

 The Strangers (Part 2 of 5) - The Search for a Shamin Tipper

    They remained at the salon that night.


    Fragile and Wander could hear the Seeds drink and boister down in the public room. For the moment, the clamor remained in a faraway space.


    They had taken up residence in the cell that the Salonier had offered them. They accessed it with a short flight of steps that brought them above the hall, up to a hinged wooden door. Many large, raised, covered frames awaited therein, each equipped with a smooth blanket that only regained a bit of softness after Wander¡¯s presence had brought up the temperature. The mats they were expected to sleep on were built of liq, sewn together and stuffed with soft red seeds. Some of these spilled out of tears in the fabric, and the corners were littered with them.


    The room featured a series of shutters which gazed out over the houses of Partplant, onto cloudless dark. Soft starlight swept across the country and flitted within their lampless quarters. They sat down by one of the viewlets, and looked out from it.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± Fragile said.


    ¡°It¡¯s okay. But why did you speak?¡±


    Fragile looked away and squeezed and tugged at his robes. ¡°I believed you were about to hurt them.¡±


    Wander studied him and placed an arm onto the sill, looking about the koropole. ¡°So did I.¡±


    They watched the stars for a while.


    She flicked her gaze back to Fragile. ¡°You¡¯re going to need to be very careful.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll stay close to the stronghoof.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s not what I mean.¡± Wander untied the knot binding her shoulderskin, which dropped to the ground. ¡°I¡¯m going to show you something.¡±


    She gripped Fragile¡¯s hand with her glove and guided him to the back of her neck. ¡°Look,¡± she said.


    The room was dim, but Fragile could make out a mark something like the one pressed into the neck of Manor and the workers of Eighty. It was lighter than Manor¡¯s; his had kept a dark slash through the middle. Wander¡¯s had no such mark.


    ¡°What does it mean?¡± he asked.


    ¡°It is something they must not find.¡± She put away his hand and pushed him back, then stood up and threw the shoulderskin on one of the mats. ¡°So you must not speak about it, and if its place is uncovered, you should tell me. If you do not need to talk, I will not want for it.¡±


    Fragile nodded. Wander walked over to one of the mats and sat on it. She laid her blaith across her knees. ¡°I¡¯m going to need you to point to someone,¡± she said. She looked up at him. ¡°They won¡¯t be breathing. I will show you with my hand. When I do, you must say the words: ¡®dzhry-min.¡¯ Can you hear me? ¡®Dzhry-min.¡¯¡±


    Fragile mouthed the peculiar Sprak phrase, which resembled a half-remembered noise with extra sounds attached, and sprang out from the chest rather than the mouth. ¡°I can hear you,¡± he said.


    ¡°We¡¯re not going to walk,¡± she said. ¡°The hoof will carry us. That¡¯s how Laruns move. Can you hear me?¡±


    He nodded, and tilted his head. ¡°Wander¡­¡±


    ¡°What is it?¡±


    Fragile kneaded his fingertips. ¡°Why are we going with these men?¡±


    Wander squeezed and released the grip of her weapon.


    ¡°You seem to shake at them,¡± he said. ¡°I am afraid of the big one.¡±


    ¡°I need parts,¡± she said. ¡°Many parts. I need them now. Laruns have many. If we do this, they will give some to me.¡±


    Fragile did not inquire further. He removed his coldover and the pads that bound his feet, covered himself with a blanket, and laid down on the floor. They rested.


    -


    Fragile tossed and turned in his sleep. He always cried, and he was crying now.


    Wander watched him as the sunrise swam inside and across the clouds from their room¡¯s viewlet. She sat on the edge of her cushion, her gaze unblinking in the absence of any strangers to set at ease.


    His whispers were half-formed and infrequent, and little more than unanswered protestations and apologies. He blub-blubbed out pleas to names she didn¡¯t recognize and put claw marks in the floor. Splinters bit at his fingertips.


    His eyes fluttered open. Wander was binding up her vest and tying on her shoulderskin.


    ¡°Get dressed,¡± she said. He ran an arm against his face, which he was surprised to find as wet and dripping.


    They left the salon. They moved out into Partplant; in the night, the fog had cleared from it, depositing itself wholly in the countryside, over fathoms of watery snow, perking plentitudes of wingtrees that looked like grains of thorned sand, and crouching wings that pecked at the seed of the soil and fled a howl who stopped at the treeline. The houses of Partplant were still, and the dawnsun painted their sky with strokes of gold. The houses¡¯ pointed, starry silhouettes cast shadows much bigger than the way they lay.


    They arrived at Partplant¡¯s tithechest. It was dissimilar to the hearthouses of the Goals, in that it was dark, cramped, tall, and difficult to access.


    They found entry through a door on its side, clinging to a hinge. The animals were kept in tight pens stretched out in long lines, fenced off from each other. The stink of their breath, feces and vomit permuded the building and its air. Slates of rock were kept on the swinging barricade of each pen, covered with marks that Fragile could not read, detailing minutiae he could not grasp the significance of. Wander saw all the lines; she saw that they kept the drag of each one, how many each would feed if its throat was cut, how angry they were, what their kind was, how far their kind could walk, and how fast it could run.


    The stronghoof was there, locked in a stall and moaning. Fragile leapt to free it.


    Joyborn, De, and their followers were waiting there, the spots for their mounts open and exposed to the dawnsun and clean winter air. They ate cakes of white bread, filled skins of water from a cracked well, and belted weapons to their person. Each was covered in straight langnivs, short bevelled ones for chopping wood, and the wooden arch of a broad shooter that they kept roped over their back.


    Joyborn saw Wander approaching from the stalls. He picked up and turned towards them. ¡°Little sister,¡± he shouted. ¡°What did you see?¡±


    Wander ripped the metal binding off the stronghoof¡¯s pen. It snapped into pieces and the door swung open. She led the animal out before the nivmen.


    ¡°I have seen a fall,¡± she said.


    He smiled. ¡°Then let us go into it.¡±


    -


    The company rode out into Partplant¡¯s countryside, towards the distant woods.


    Wander and Fragile rode the stronghoof. Fragile sat behind Wander, and he steadied himself by gripping the saddlebags. He was hesitant to cling to her, and she did not tell him to do it.


    De and Joyborn rode in front. The little player wiggled and shivered and guided the whole column, occasionally slowing to tilt up his nose and catch the wind, before leading them on. He tugged his animal to a broad distance from Joyborn¡¯s.


    They went past the last of the formed and cultivated fields of Partplant and entered a sight which had long awaited Wander. A tall stone block of some twenty tons, blustered smooth and bleached, stood upright in the snow on the side of the road. A nest of wings garnished its peak, and a message had been hammered into it in Sprak. It was large enough that all could read as they passed by.


    THESE WORDS ARE PLACED BY THE KEEPER OF THESE POINTS


    THEY ARE HERE TO HELP BUYERS SELLERS AND GATHERINGS OF THE OTISER AN


    BUYERS SELLERS AND GATHERINGS OF THE OTISERANHAVE LOST FRIENDS BEHIND THIS ROCK


    BEHIND THIS ROCK THERE IS MUCH DESTRUCTION


    BEHIND THIS ROCK THERE IS MUCH DESTRUCTION


    PATHS CHANGE BEHIND THIS ROCK


    THE FIRM CHANGES BEHIND THIS ROCK


    WIND AND RAIN ARRIVE SUDDENLY BEHIND THIS ROCK


    THERE ARE MANY TIPPERS BEHIND THIS ROCK


    BEHIND THIS ROCK YOUR LEARNERS WILL LEARN WRONG THINGS


    YOU WILL LEARN SCREAMING THAT CANNOT BE FOUND


    YOU WILL LEARN SHAPES THAT CANNOT BE FOUND


    YOU WILL LEARN ASH THAT CANNOT BE FOUND


    ALL LEARNING SHOULD BE PASSED OVER FRIENDS


    BRING NO FEWER THAN TEN FRIENDS IF YOU GO BEHIND THIS ROCK


    BRING LANGNIVS IF YOU GO BEHIND THIS ROCK


    BRING A FEURKUN ONE IF YOU GO BEHIND THIS ROCK


    DO NOT GO BEHIND THIS ROCK ALONE


    DO NOT GO BEHIND THIS ROCK ALONE


    DO NOT GO BEHIND THIS ROCK ALONE


    Fragile squinted at it. The message was not repeated in Goalish.


    ¡°Do you know what it says?¡± he asked Wander.


    Her eyes flicked back at him. ¡°Nothing,¡± she said. ¡°It¡¯s a list. Some names.¡±


    He looked away from it and focused on the growing pain between his legs. Joyborn¡¯s head tilted when he heard their exchange. He fondled the hilt of his langniv.


    ¡°Seen,¡± Joyborn ventured, ¡°have you ever moved through this cantfowkat?¡±


    ¡°I have moved in Partplant,¡± Wander answered. ¡°The places before that one.¡±


    ¡°And the ones after?¡±


    ¡°No.¡±


    ¡°Then we will share something precious,¡± he said. The cant of his mount bounced and swaggered them and his smile rolled with it. ¡°The Goallandish price high a firm¡¯s scarcest parts, in theirs and ours. So we will see them too. An unseen place. Isn¡¯t it wonderful?¡±


    Wander urged on the stronghoof.


    Hours passed as they drew into the bushy, uncut country. The sun rose overhead and the stars circled around it. The warmth began to weaken and liquify the layers of snow, and streams glittered on its surface over the covered flats and tree trunks and twisting complexes of black-blue rock, which formed fingershapes and prickling hulls and stone slices that they filed through and around.


    At noon, they dismounted, and lead their animals while they ate. The Seeds stuffed themselves with thick loaves of grain. Wander gnawed on a bone, and Fragile pretended to drink water. De ate nothing; Joyborn ate cuts of dried meat from a species that Fragile didn¡¯t recognize. In spite of its confounding hue and stringy texture, the smell was familiar. An image of brambles and fire flashed in his mind, and he gagged, falling to his knees and vomiting on the side of their path.


    As he coughed up the dregs his stomach, and as Wander knelt to steady him, most of the Laruns ¨C save De ¨C turned. ¡°These feurkuns are breakable,¡± Joyborn laughed. ¡°And in ways unexpected.¡±


    ¡°What is it?¡± Wander asked Fragile.


    ¡°I¡¯m okay,¡± he said.


    She helped him stand up.


    ¡°What is it?¡± she asked again.


    ¡°I¡¯m okay,¡± he said. ¡°Really, I¡¯m okay.¡±


    De watched the two of them. They pressed forward.


    The way lead them in the direction of a frozen highland, and Joyborn became restless. ¡°Ehhh- such a chafing, so long before the clash!¡± Joyborn shouted. He wiped sweat from his brow. ¡°And this silence does it further.¡± He glanced over at Wander. ¡°How is it you became Seen, Hill-Measure? Discover that knowing to us, your newest friends.¡±


    Wander strode along on the stronghoof. She clicked its harness. ¡°What is there you want discovered?¡±


    ¡°A one like you, who carries nivs, is unseen,¡± Joyborn said. ¡°A one like you, who does work like mine, is seen less. A one like you, with her own steps, who does not move them for Points, or for any telling firm, is seen less too. And I am brought to wonder by what cause this new Coster has emplaced you in his gathering. It is surely a fastening report!¡±


    Most of the Seeds greeted his words with nods and assent. Two did not.


    ¡°My kind does like.¡±


    Joyborn¡¯s teeth caught the light. ¡°Well, show it to me, little sister,¡± he said, ¡°and if I cannot see it, you can show me farther still.¡±


    ¡°It is written. It is so everywhere.¡±


    ¡°It is easy work, little sister,¡± Joyborn replied. ¡°It is only delight which is required. You will not put away, little sister, the knowing and seeing of men in fights, and men who carry metal.¡±


    ¡°I would.¡±


    She did not elaborate. ¡°What would you put away?¡± Joyborn asked.


    ¡°I have seen metal carried. It cuts meat.¡±


    ¡°Carrying metal? Cutting meat? That is not a fight.¡± he said. ¡°It is simple, little sister. A fight is a journey towards knowing. Metal set against its kind. Screaming learners, who come so near to breath¡¯s end. That cannot be found in the cutting of meat.¡± He shook his head. ¡°A fight will teach the breath of its contestants, and whose good is the keeping of it. That is the cut of blades. It lets out the ordered qualities of our people, and puts breath where it once was absent. Have you read Abhokar, little sister?¡±


    ¡°I have read the Otiseran.¡±


    Joyborn¡¯s heartbeat jumped with delight.


    ¡°The Otiseran has colored her blade with fights,¡± Wander said. ¡°The contest ¡®we can observe, brings itself out in all conditions. It does not begin or end with hands, but with the movement of eyes, the exchange of calls, and the direction of the I.¡¯¡±


    Joyborn¡¯s gaze shifted and for a brief instant, the course of his words shivered. Something pulled at Wander¡¯s cheek. ¡°If it is so,¡± he said. ¡°Then the infant is fighting. And you would use that way? The Otiseran is a valiant leader, little sister, but she is no reader.¡±


    ¡°The infant is fighting,¡± Wander said. ¡°The fight is continuous condition. A fallen producer is a thing that brightens our mass, has our Otiseran shot in.¡± A drop of venom flew off her tongue.


    Joyborn¡¯s grin fell. ¡°She is no reader, little sister,¡± he said. ¡°And her words are unneeded. We certainly cannot throw out the steps of your type, or your breath, which is closed, and preserved to smiling in big numbers. They have been hit, circled and won over, and the need for it is revealed.¡±


    ¡°A smile is a garment,¡± Wander said. ¡°In Harmony they are thin, and few of parts or warmth.¡±


    He frowned. His stonehoof reared its head, and would go no further. He extracted a wooden cane from his saddle and whipped it. It belched out pain, and he returned the cane to its place.


    Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.


    ¡°Let it beside,¡± he said. ¡°Hand it to us, little sister. Your beginning.¡±


    ¡°The Lotaslager took me,¡± she said. ¡°They stole me out of house with tricks. I rode into Sidacif places, and discovered the Otiseran¡¯s promise.¡±


    Joyborn laughed again. ¡°A delighting vision. You have breathed always in the Laif, with Laifsh breathers?¡±


    ¡°No,¡± she said. ¡°Now I breath in Goalland.¡±


    ¡°Goal,¡± Joyborn murmured, ¡°and the Goallandish.¡± He sucked air through his teeth. ¡°That, I am sure, is something we can speak in one voice on.¡±


    ¡°I would not expect it,¡± she replied. The stronghoof grunted.


    He laughed again. ¡°Little sister, do not tell me you have not put learning to it.¡± He threw his hand at Fragile. ¡°You have looked at this hillkind for many days. Your eye so able must have discovered some room for its collection! It calls us out ¨C in all regard, this hillkind must be the closest of any to the Freemen, and without their gifts so precious. They are a kind of lowerness. They have such a desire for cuts and beating, such an out-of-place easiness of the I and brow. And they have stubbornness ¨C like they were made in your shape.¡±


    He shook his head. ¡°Even for it, there is still waste. Theirs is delivered to an even more intense fight versus firms and firmmakers, delivered even less way to find new words, new parts, and new gazing at the all-every. And there are Points, Hill Measure. This is accepted. There are Points, and there are slopes sat between all hills. We can expect caprice in this arrangement, shot in by any mixture of I and fluid. And these can diminish and preserve the less-well sides of their number. I have seen it happen.¡±


    Joyborn shrugged. ¡°Still, this lowerness persists. Perhaps you have found a preferred way in this one overall. Perhaps, with time, their number may be cut down into the way of him, split apart from the most descending sides of their current. It need not be in the way of fire ¨C although fire is a good device. This I have looked at; and what must one really do, but cut away their producers? It is the feurkun producer who empties the mind; the feurkun producer that shapes them with pillars that no Firms needs. We can be kind, Hill-Measure. We can find them some precious end. Wouldn¡¯t you say?¡±


    ¡°Speak in Goalish,¡± Wander said.


    Joyborn turned to her, tilting back himself and his expression.


    The column had halted. Wander had departed the stronghoof and stepped closer to Joyborn, such that even he was forced to roll his eyes up at her. Her gait remained loose, and her finger drifted around the handle of her short-blade. Her placid affect had been replaced by that which Fragile had seen only once, in the papersquare of Eighty. ¡°Speak in Goalish,¡± Wander repeated.


    Joyborn opened his mouth in amazement. When she said nothing else, he burst out in laughter. ¡°What fun is this, little sister?¡± he cawed. ¡°What aim do you shoot through?¡±


    ¡°I want the feurkun to hear,¡± she said. ¡°I want him to have words.¡±


    Joyborn looked to Fragile, who shrank back behind her. He laughed again. ¡°Little sister, even if I did it, why do you think this one would consider them? He is a feurkun. He cannot yet learn the precious way.¡±


    She kept her gaze. Her glove gripped the hilt of her weapon. Although he maintained his feeling, Joyborn placed both hands behind his back. When this happened, The Seeds flanked Wander and unsheathed their weapons.


    At this instant, De burst inbetween them, facing Joyborn.


    The Larun stared down at The Cane, who shiverred against him. His smile broke.


    ¡°Kontor?¡±


    Crack!


    Joyborn fell backwards onto the snow, reeling from a stroke of lightning. Blood leaked out from a long, thin cut that split across his cheek.


    De stumbled forward. His hand displayed a red streak. He jammed a knee to the Larun¡¯s chest, making him a screaming bellows. He lifted up his cane.


    Crack!¡­ Crack!


    Crack!¡­ Crack!


    Crack.


    Joyborn¡¯s roaring grew softer and withered away to quiet. De lifted himself up. He wiped his bloodsoaked cane on his shawl, and turned back toward Wander.


    ¡°T-thank - y-you-u,¡± De said.


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°T-thank...¡± De said. The bindings of his mask shook. ¡°...y- you.¡±


    Joyborn writhed on the ground. None of the Seeds moved to his aid, their gazes switching quickly between Wander and De. Her hand fell from her blade, to her side.


    De dragged Joyborn to his feet and pushed him by the throat at his hoof. He remounted his own and urged it forward.


    Joyborn turned toward them, panting. He smiled at them, revealing his chipped and broken teeth. The wound under his eye had been reopened by De¡¯s hits and flowed freely, pouring down his face. One of his boys rushed forward to bind it. At that moment Joyborn struck him, putting him down into the snow. His smiled never broke, and he clung to it with a gashing grip.


    With no way of interpreting the violence, Fragile looked to Wander.


    She plucked him off the ground and jumped on the stronghoof wordlessly, setting him in place behind her. The other Seeds mounted as well, and they rode forward.


    -


    When evening came, the group settled down in a concealed, precarious alcove beside an oval pit. Its entrance wound with prickly vines sprouting flagellae that drifted in the wind. The rocks overhead would help conceal any smoke they made, and they got stuck into it.


    The Seeds chopped away the webs and stalks with their knives. Wood was cut apart and set on fire, and they pressed themselves and their mounts in to the cramped spot. The Seeds laid out blankets spun from liq, and cushions whose surfaces were wove from hoofskin. They helped Joyborn - whose broken bones kept him from moving except to scream - to bed down, and they bound his jaw shut.


    Wander knelt down by the fire, where De and Fragile sat amid the other bodies tucked in and spread around. ¡°We should go out and watch,¡± she said. ¡°Three steps each. Everyone must rest.¡±


    De failed to move or give any indication of interest in the job. He held his bare hands by the fire. His fingers were an explosive coupling of red, orange and silver wrinkles, and they took on a steadiness from the heat.


    She looked to Fragile. ¡°If you need anything, I¡¯ll be nearby,¡± she said in Goalish. She briefly threw her eyes at De. ¡°Prefer the side of that one.¡±


    Fragile nodded.


    She took out her pipe and climbed out of their slog, into the brush. Joyborn snored softly, and De moved closer to the fire. Fragile¡¯s hiding managed a great pressure in his presence, one that pushed on him and made him afraid. They were left alone, in silence.


    The stars spun overhead. Sometimes Fragile watched De, on the outskirts of his vision, but he restricted his best attention to plucking out notes on his three-string, which he only did after scurrying over to the entrance to ensure that Wander was not anywhere nearby.


    As Fragile struck his chords, De shifted. He brought up his knee, so that blood would be able to flow to his posterior. It was a thing that Fragile himself had done.


    Fragile put down his three-string and licked his lips. He looked up at De. ¡°P-pain?¡± he stuttered in Sprak.


    De looked over at him.


    He shook himself in the way De did. ¡°Pain?¡± he repeated, louder. ¡°Pain?¡±


    De shook his head. ¡°C-cold,¡± he whispered. ¡°Cold.¡±


    Fragile bent his head. Then he slipped an arm out of his coldover and scooted over, scraping aside rocks that brought on a dry knuckling as they were swept elsewhere. He slightly, hesitantly, pushed the garment out towards De.


    De¡¯s gaze held on Fragile and his shivering green eyes, filled with fire-glitter. He looked back at the flames and shook his head again.


    Fragile looked away and flushed, but he slipped his robe back on. ¡°Cold always you?¡± he asked.


    De nodded. He poked at the flames with his cane.


    Fragile wrung his hands. De tilted his head toward the little Sixbraid, who rubbed the wound on his arm, which was still red and tender.


    De lifted his cane and pointed to it. ¡°P-pain?¡±


    Fragile looked up. ¡°Cut.¡± He shook his head. ¡°Cut good. Cut good ¨C cut¡­ help. Close ¨C pain, close was.¡± He rubbed his hand, searching for a sound that would serve. ¡°Man, close was. Hand, close was. Close pain. Cut¡­¡± He shrugged his shoulders, and waved his hands to and then away from the scar, pouting emphatically.


    ¡°Touch pain?¡±


    Fragile cocked his head at De. ¡°¡®Tuch?¡¯¡±


    De put down his cane and plucked at the fabric of his cloak. He reached a shaking hand over to Fragile and poked him. ¡°T-touch,¡± De said. He poked his fingers together. ¡°T-touch.¡± He pressed his hands to his knees and arms. ¡°T-touch.¡±


    Fragile put his hands together. ¡°Touch?¡± De pointed at him and bent his head forward. Fragile nodded. ¡°Touch pain.¡±


    De looked at him for a long time. ¡°T-touch p-pain,¡± he said. ¡°T-touch ¨C al-w-ways ¨C p-pain.¡±


    Fragile wrung his hands and bit his lip.


    De held up his hands and touched them to his shoulders. He formed a ring with his thumb and forefinger and swirled one through the middle of it. He held it to his chest and wrapped his other palm around the loop.


    ¡°Y-yes?¡± De asked.


    Fragile watched as he completed the circuit, and wanted to cry. He held his breath.


    ¡°N-no,¡± Fragile said. His breathing became heavy. He did not know why he was about to behave in this way.


    Before he could change his mind, he went over to De and placed his hands around the icy, shaking palm.


    ¡°No,¡± Fragile pleaded.


    De did not throw him off. He looked at Fragile. One or two of Joyborn¡¯s boys who were still awake watched the spectacle. The others dozed.


    After some time, he wrapped his hand around Fragile¡¯s, held it, and pushed it away.


    He turned to the fire and put his hands back over it, pushing them closer. The flames twisted and inject his fingers, searing them black. The smell of cooked flesh crept out of their corner, and reached Wander¡¯s nose.


    A mass that they could not see drained itself from the space where De had been. A gust of wind blew past the fire and onto Fragile, before the world turned silent again.


    </a>-


    They pressed on the morning after, extracting from their alcove and driving into a dense, rocky wood which sat beneath a range of corktop hills.


    They rode into a narrow pass surrounded by steep cliffs. Fragile shivered and wiped his nose. He and Wander rode side-by-side with De. Joyborn rode alone; his face was stitched together by tight red cloth. As they entered a narrow pass, filled with rocks and ice, the wings stopped speaking.


    De halted his hoof, and Wander turned the stronghoof to him. Their position in front stopped up the column.


    She looked at him. His eyes were cast up to the slopes beside their company. ¡°What is it?¡± she asked.


    ¡°S-smell,¡± he stuttered. ¡°V-very - s-strong.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s good.¡±


    ¡°N-no,¡± he insisted. He lifted a shaking finger and pointed around. All the Seeds arched their necks at the discursing stone ridges, which were packed dense and offered many embankments. One of the boys removed a sleeve of water from his belt and began to unbutton it.


    De turned back to Wander. He placed a hand on his weapon.


    ¡°Turn your tithes around,¡± she said to the Seeds. They looked at her and then at Joyborn with open mouths. He did not command them.


    ¡°Turn them around,¡± she insisted. ¡°Your kontor wants us to turn around now.¡±


    Some of them tried to obey, however difficult it was to maneuver in the thin and choppy ground. She turned her head to Fragile. ¡°Get a grip,¡± she said. His eyes widened. The boy threw back the sleeve, gulping down the liquid.


    Water and blood mixed, spat through the air as his throat was shot through.


    Ground and dirt erupted and clouds and dust flying from impacts and exploding birds from the treetops and fifty shadows rising from the rocks and dust, teeth baring and blades and shooters and sticking poles they rattled all clad in brysts strapped by metal and skin, racks of hooked arrows and long metal nivs that glared in the sun.


    The bodies descended on the Seeds. They shot missiles and hurled stones into them all. A group leapt up from the road in front of them, concealed in the snow by smattered roothide coldovers. Their foremost was half blind, and his head was bound by a white sash and hesigns ran across his body. A punisher¡¯s rope was strung tight around his neck and trailed around his shoulder, flapping and swirling by the sprint. He drove against them with his friends, brandishing nothing but a rusty knife.


    The Seeds rallied in columns against each mass of tippers, who attacked with avalanche. Walls of poking rods and ranks of shooters projected at them as Wander¡¯s hand rose over her shoulder, took hold of her blaith, and eject its blade. She swung off the stronghoof, pushed Fragile down against it, and whistled. It was off, thundering past the contest to gallop clear of its centre. As soon as she leapt into battle, a wayward shaft struck it in the leg, causing it to groan and trip and crash into the snow. Fragile was thrown clear.


    The Cane leapt to the fore of the first melee, and Wander the other. Each time De swung his bludgeon, the cheek and head of a tipper was broken open, tearing apart the flesh and bone and cutting out loose blood and exposing pale, contorted joints. It colored his weapon.


    The knot-wrapped fighter and his friends wreaked havoc at the party forward, meeting Joyborn face-to-face. He fought the tipper, heaving angry gasps through his nose and keeping his jaw set and twisted. He knocked aside the fighter¡¯s weapon and threw him. He kicked him on the ground and mounted him and wrapped his hands around the tipper¡¯s neck as his Seeds sliced and despoiled the tipper¡¯s companions. A fire started on the garment tying up Joyborn¡¯s jaw. He could not scream, so his grip loosened and flailed wildly at the cloth. The tipper project him Eastward, where he crashed into the snow and rolled around bellowing.


    De sprang to Joyborn¡¯s defense. Before he could bring down the cane, the tipper turned his eye on De, and his hand stilled. Then he and his gown erupt in flames, and De appeared frozen by it. His fingers curled and his head tilted to the sky and his shivers receded for a moment.


    Undeterred, the fighter threw his knife into the Seeds, cutting apart and burning the ones who remained. Wander broke from her section to press against him. As she approached, he turned his eye to her, and she too went to fire, which land and germinated on her armor, shoulderskin, and vest. The Bell screamed and a great heat and wind blew against the battlefield.


    Stop! The Bell screamed. Do not burn me! I cannot see you!


    In Wander¡¯s absence, Fragile stayed by the stronghoof, holding onto it and breathing quickly as he tried to press against the bleeding in its leg. It screamed and he cried. A mass of arms and legs seized him from behind and covered his mouth, dragging him away from the stronghoof and up one of the slopes.


    The knot-wrapped tipper cut the throat of another Seed. A silent volume thundered toward him, and he turned to see Wander¡¯s immolating, flame-frothed spectre stampede through his guard and break him in half. They became a writhing tangle of limbs and withering fire as Wander wrest him down to the dirt and snow. She knocked him twice on the nose and chin, shooting his head back and forth. She reached around her side and pulled out her skinning knife.


    The flames that ate away at De receded. He shook, and then he bashed and swept his way through the tippers that remained towards Wander and her opponent. He raised his cane above his head.


    The knot-wrapped tipper broke his hand free of Wander¡¯s grasp and clenched her knife¡¯s blade as it snapped at his throat. He canted his wrist, breaking the metal, and kicked out his leg. De was knocked backward into a thicktree, where the crust and barks splintered into a fine spray of dust. Wander¡¯s hits rebounded against his forearm. He dislodged her with a strike from his boot and ran, scrambling up the slopes and into the hinterland.


    -


    The hand that had squeezed shut Fragile¡¯s mouth did not release him. He was hauled into the rounds, far and fast.


    ¡°Be still, feurkun,¡± the tipper whispered. ¡°We will bring you to an open place.¡±


    The hours passed. The sounds of fighting became more distant. The impassioned breathing of his captors became measured and husky. He saw the forest move around him. They haulted him up on a fighter¡¯s back, going past the places safe for trees, up sheer ascents and narrow gaps where the ground would part. From these points, one could observe the whole of the descent, and see the only swellings of the world where their territory was matched in grandeur and cloudy refrain.


    They climbed up a plate of rocks and then slid down into a sprawling cavity where the stone split apart. Fragile could hear water rushing, and the light retreated from him. It gave way to darkness, firelight, and foresting spines that dripped water. He was placed on a jagged, half-steady rock, and there he was released.


    Fragile looked out at the forty faces that had been revealed, gleaming from rays of burn. The tippers were clad in armor and weapons patched together from rags of cloth, the gray cloaks and armor of Larun nivmen, as well as disparate belts, pouches, hooks, sacks, robes, skins and coats that spoke of no clear set. Their eyes looked at his, wide and searching, brows narrowed.


    The day passed by and the angle of the sun shining into the keep changed. The tippers reassembled when a large tipper, missing an eye and neck-laced by the severed rope of a Larun punisher, lumbered inside with a companion. They approached Fragile, who had tears in his eyes.


    ¡°What is your way?¡± asked the knot-wrapped tipper. His Goalish was accented in much the way of Joyborn¡¯s. Fragile was too cowed to speak. His captor blinked. ¡°Have you any way at all?¡±


    Fragile nodded.


    ¡°That is a beginning,¡± the tipper said.


    He sat down on a rock in front of Fragile. The other tippers dispersed, honing knives and sparking fires, and they continued to measure the stranger in assembly. The ones who stood next to the knot-wrapped tipper kept in front of them, glowering, while he continued. ¡°I am Unseen,¡± he said. ¡°That is what you say.¡±


    He gestured to the kind around him. ¡°You have met my Points.¡±


    Fragile looked at the cross-armed tipper who had accompanied Unseen. The others regarded Fragile quietly, but the eyes of that one bulged at his face and at his braids and at his cloak. Fragile opened his mouth in questioning, but breath would not leave his chest and his stomach tensed up.


    Unseen folded his hands. ¡°You are wondering how it could be?¡± he questsaid.


    Fragile struggled to sit upright. He was shaking. ¡°I believed a Point,¡± he whispered, ¡°was a Larun thing.¡±


    ¡°Some of them are Laruns.¡±


    Fragile realized he was right. Not all of the tippers were Goalish people; some had skin that was like Wander¡¯s, and hair that was wild and grey. The skin of others was dull or burned some brighter color. Others had flatter, rounder noses and chins and cheeks. Half of the assembly could have come from a different place.


    ¡°What creates a Point?¡± he asked.


    Unseen furrowed his brow at him. He answered, ¡°Well, a thing must not be feurkun. It must see great things, and handle them. That is all I know.¡±


    ¡°That is your call? Eldman?¡±


    He nodded.


    The man before Fragile shouted at him. Fragile had never heard his words before. A few of them sounded similar to Wander¡¯s, but they were still very different. He looked between them as they discoursed.


    ¡°He is called the Looking One,¡± Unseen said, ¡°He asks, ¡®to whom do you offer?¡¯¡±


    ¡°To the rulers,¡± Fragile said.


    Unseen shook his head. ¡°I think he means something else.¡±


    The Looking One unsheathed his langniv and walked up to Fragile. He grasped Fragile¡¯s arm and pressed his head forward with the flat of the blade, inspecting the back of his neck. Fragile choked and sputtered.


    He threw Fragile forward onto the jagged stone. He barked at Unseen.


    ¡°He says, ¡®you are not one of us,¡¯¡± Unseen said. ¡°He says you are not like them.¡±


    The Looking One spoke again and craned his neck at Fragile.


    ¡°He wonders if he should cut you open.¡± Unseen said.


    The other tippers, listening quietly, escaped their leisure and erupted into arguments. Fragile looked around at them in terror, shrinking back against the stone escarpment. Some of them raised arms and struck one another. Unseen kept his spot.


    The Looking One stepped forward as the brawl progressed.


    ¡°Is feurkun,¡± he said in Goalish. ¡°And man. Is you?¡±


    ¡°I am Fragile.¡±


    ¡°Fragile ¨C travel it.¡±


    ¡°A Fragile thing is weak,¡± Fragile said.


    ¡°Fragile is weak.¡± The Looking One nodded. ¡°Fragile is weak?¡±


    Fragile¡¯s hands gripped the rocks behind him. ¡°Fragile¡­¡± he stuttered. ¡°Fragile¡­ is me.¡±


    The Looking One held his gaze and sniffed. ¡°What is you walk on them?¡± He pinched his nose as the words spilled out, and reverted to his preferred tongue. Unseen stepped forward, gently brushing aside a thrown rock that landed at his feet.


    ¡°He will know why you would walk with stars, and Laruns,¡± Unseen said, ¡°if there is no sign that put you to it.¡±


    ¡°I do not know,¡± Fragile said.


    Unseen repeated his words. The Looking One spoke, and Unseen listened.


    ¡°He is saying that he does not hate your kind,¡± he continued, ¡°but that he will cut you open if you have no answer. They must know who your eyes are for.¡±


    Fragile¡¯s breathing rushed, and became shallow. He struggled to speak while he cried. ¡°My eyes are for me,¡± he said, ¡°And my friend. I do not know her name. She is a Star that Wanders. She fights for riverborn hearts. For breathers.¡±


    Unseen repeated his words. The Looking One kicked Fragile in the jaw, silencing the slap and bellow behind them. A blade dropped to the ground and rattled sharp against the stone.


    The Looking One barked. ¡°He says your eyes belong to an enemy,¡± Unseen said. ¡°It is an enemy I have hit, and who has hit me. Your Larun is filled with great power, and she has put it to my commanders.¡± His mouth soured.


    ¡°She is not a Larun,¡± Fragile gasped. ¡°She has cut apart many with that name!¡±


    Unseen chattered at The Looking One.


    ¡°The name is nothing,¡± The Looking One muttered. ¡°And Laruns cut their kind.¡±


    Then he put his knife to Fragile¡¯s cheek. His blood splashed upon the rocks.

 The Strangers (Part 3 of 5) - Their Fight and Its Consequences

    The pass was quiet, except for the light rustling of metal. One of Joyborn¡¯s three remaining Seeds, an older Rootcliff boy who now missed an ear, collected weapons and trinkets from the dead tippers and his fallen brothers. His eyes drooped as he ripped up coins from their pockets and bloody knives clutched by their hands and placed them in a leather sack. Another cared for their commander in an impromptu, tented chamber, from which his thrashing moans and roaring radiated out to the mounds of ice and thickwoods.


    The third Seed cared for the animals who had survived. The hoofs sat in a line outside the tent, where he tended to the stronghoof. It bellowed in pain as he extracted the metal from its leg, spread a jelly on it, and wrapped it up in cloth. The Cane shuddered on the edge of the battleground, running his hands through the rocky soil.


    A high, thumping shadow stepped back through the trees at the top of the Eastern slope. De gazed up at it and found the ragged silhouette of Wander, cut to pieces by the chase with no prey in hand. They shared a glance before he looked down again.


    Wander she slid down the slope onto the battlefield, spying absently among the fallen. Her gaze became consumed by the body of a tipper who had been thrown on his back with his head cracked open. The rear of his neck had been exposed by his injury, leaving the beginnings of an inky black mark.


    She went up to the body and pulled it back, revealing the whole image. It was an open black circle. No line ran through it.


    Her eyes lingered on the brand. Then she went to another body and kicked it over, where she found it again. She checked another and found it again.


    She looked at it. The clinking and clattering of the Seed¡¯s scavenges piped and rang and screeched against her eardrums. The ringing made her muscles bulge, her jaw clench and


    ¡°Where is the feurkun?¡± she asked.


    The Seed looked up. ¡°Where is the Goal?¡± she repeated. She turned her head and body. The stronghoof and the Seeds were there; Quiet Feet was gone.


    ¡°I last saw him by your side,¡± the Seed replied, ¡°kontor.¡±


    She went from body to body, searching for Quiet Feet. She walked between each, checking the face and head and then moving on when she realized it wasn¡¯t him. The Seed watched her with searching mutters and a tilted head. De observed from a distance.


    She threw the last man to the ground. She let out a lingering propelled roar, and a flock of wings nestled in the labyrinthine brush of a nearby thicktree were thrown up into the sky, exploding a shrill chorus of overlapping chirps and screams that dimmed as they retreated into the sky.


    Wander collected herself and sat down on a tree that had been smashed apart by the violence. She brought out her pipe and chewed on it.


    ¡°Can you see him?¡± she asked the Bell.


    I cannot see, the Bell moaned. I cannot see! I cannot see!


    ¡°I can,¡± De said.


    She looked up at him. Half of his mask had been broken and his eyes were cast in shadow. He put a jittering finger to the nose of his mask and nudged it.


    Wander chewed her pipe.


    She fished out a necklace from her belt. The yellow shell hanging from its loop had not been hurt. She threw it up to him; his constant shaking crystallized when he extended his hand to catch it.


    He raised the shell to the tip of his nose and inhaled.


    -


    The night began.


    Fragile was sent to a pit at the bottom of the cave. He was kicked and slapped and struck with sticks. His hands were placed in rope. The tippers assigned to watch him studied him for a long time, and then left.


    Unseen came to visit him.


    He stepped down into the pit, his features a crop of mangled skin and scars that had evolved from his fight with the company of De. His chin and nose were beat and crooked and let blood slip. For all his injuries he had not shifted in key and as he brought a slick bowl of dinner down to Fragile¡¯s cage and stirred it around with a wooden scoop, he hummed to himself. Fragile did not retreat from him at first, but he bunched up and prepared to do so quickly.


    As Unseen ate, a disturbance slipped out in the air between them, rippling the metal and stone that separated Fragile from his captors. He kicked himself away from the presence and breathed quickly.


    ¡°Why are you shaking?¡± Unseen asked.


    Fragile looked at it. ¡°I have never seen such a thing,¡± he said.


    ¡°If your words have really pointed your way,¡± Unseen said. ¡°then you know nothing about this star.¡±


    A fire embraced the edges of the bowl Unseen held and it began to steam. Unseen hummed and pushed around the food in it. He held out a piece to Fragile: a gilled, fraying piece of yellow meat, which began to dissolve at its edges. Fragile could see that it was dark outside, so he crawled over and bit it with his mouth.


    ¡°Your star has someone, as I do,¡± he said. He plucked a white, bulbed growth from his bowl and put it in his mouth. ¡°Behind her.¡± He threw back his hand with the scoop. ¡°It¡¯s why I could not win.¡±


    Fragile gazed at the heated bowl. ¡°Someone makes fire?¡± he said.


    ¡°He does,¡± Unseen said. ¡°It is given to me.¡±


    ¡°Someone gives it?¡±


    He nodded. ¡°We need fire. It keeps us warm. It sends away fear. That is what he says.¡±


    ¡°Does he make it? By himself?¡±


    Unseen chewed. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± he said. ¡°I don¡¯t think he knows. He will burn things that must have it. And when he is afraid for me. He is often confused. But he is my friend.¡±


    Tears silently ran down Fragile¡¯s face and his gaze shifted. Unseen stirred around his food, and brought in another mouthful of the meat.


    He held out another piece to Fragile, who took it and rested his head against the cage.


    ¡°Have you really come into this that way?¡± Unseen questsaid. ¡°The one you named?¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± Fragile replied.


    ¡°What happened to your friends? Your creators?¡±


    ¡°They are gone.¡±


    Unseen nodded. His teeth closed around another lump. ¡°I have come into these that way. I think that many hearts have gone.¡±


    Fragile tried to sit up, on his knees. ¡°How did you do it?¡± he asked. ¡°E- ¡­ eldbrother?¡±


    Unseen glanced at his face as he chewed, watching him cringe and fluster himself. ¡°We worked together once,¡± he muffled. ¡°I did not like how they were regarded. The work made us close.¡± He pushed around his food. ¡°They helped me to escape. Now they have my breath, and it will dry up for them.¡±


    ¡°Are you a star?¡± Fragile asked. ¡°A star of the Family?¡±


    ¡°I was a Seenblade.¡±


    ¡°What is a Seenblade?¡±


    Unseen raised his brow. ¡°You have travelled with one.¡±


    Fragile¡¯s face twisted up, and then he remembered De and Joyborn. ¡°I did not know.¡±


    ¡°A Seenblade is a man,¡± Unseen said, ¡°with a cane.¡±


    ¡°I have seen many like that.¡±


    ¡°You have,¡± Unseen said. ¡°The cane may be bigger and different, and they may lift it easier. But they are seen. And that makes them what they are.¡±


    ¡°What can see them?¡±


    Unseen scraped up the last bits of meat in his bowl. He held them out to Fragile, who turned away, and dumped them in his mouth. He drew a hand across his lips, smearing them, and set the bowl aside.


    ¡°Rulers,¡± Unseen said.


    Unseen brushed the juices from his lips and watch Fragile¡¯s expression twist up again. He came closer to Fragile¡¯s cage, and Fragile shrank into the corner. He did not know whether to shut his eyes or watch the man descend on him.


    ¡°If this star of yours could throw me down,¡± Unseen whispered, ¡°would she go away?¡±


    Fragile turned his head at the question. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± he said.


    ¡°You do not know why you came.¡±


    ¡°I came to show a body,¡± Fragile said. ¡°And say some words. But that is all.¡±


    Unseen smacked his lips and rubbed his hands.


    ¡°I adore my friends,¡± he said. ¡°Do you know that?¡±


    He looked down. ¡°They enjoy me to completion. From the day I was given breath, my I entertained a cut of itself. The breath I had was half of one. I will meet them until I exit the rulersland.


    He turned his gaze to Fragile. ¡°Do you adore your friends?¡±


    A thin bead burned its way down The Stringplayer¡¯s face. ¡°Yes.¡±


    Unseen pressed his lips together.


    He placed down the empty bowl and walked up the pit, leaving Fragile in darkness.


    -


    De held Quiet Feet¡¯s necklace and smelled it. He looked left and right through the trees, and hobbled left. He and Wander progressed through the rounds, walking up to see the rise of the woods and know how their path had sent them in to the cloudy peak of a corktopped hill.


    They travelled in silence. Wander spoke with the Bell, whose conception dissolved and flit around when a wing shrieked or De tripped on a branch or the wind blew by a clump of leaves. She clung as close to Wander then as she had in the aftermath, smothering her and producing a fog that she was forced to press through.


    You go to the cold! The Bell screamed.


    What?


    We cannot fight them! she cried. We cannot! I will burn!


    Who?


    The other one! she screamed. I do not know how!


    Who have you fought?


    They said horrible things, she cried. They said I am like them. They said I am not a servant. They said that Am is not there.


    The Bell continued to gibber. Wander turned her attention to De. ¡°What caused the fire?¡± Wander asked.


    ¡°H-has worker,¡± De said. ¡°S-signs. Old b-b-blade. Maybe.¡±


    They came across a fallen tree that blocked their path. De crouched down, put his hands under it, and jerked upward. The tree sailed over Wander¡¯s head and crashed tumbling down the slope, until it banged against a pair of wingtrees and came to a stop. They kept moving.


    ¡°The old blades lost their workers,¡± she said.


    ¡°M-most,¡± De replied.


    The Bell¡¯s fear shook her. ¡°If it is an enemy,¡± she continued, ¡°how can we hit it?¡±


    ¡°W-we h-hav-ve,¡± he said.


    She pushed past a branch. ¡°We have what?¡±


    ¡°W-worker.¡±


    She looked at him. He stopped and brushed his cane free of ice and snow. His hand flicked out at her.


    ¡°Y-you h-have,¡± he said.


    ¡°I don¡¯t have a worker.¡±


    De¡¯s mask bored into Wander. He planted his cane in the ground.


    ¡°She is not a worker,¡± Wander said.


    ¡°¡®S-sh-she,¡¯¡± De mumbled. He walked on.


    ¡°I have my friends,¡± Wander said. ¡°You have yours. How did you know?¡±


    ¡°I h-have,¡± he said. ¡°H-he c-can s-s-see.¡±


    ¡°Why didn¡¯t it protect us?¡±


    ¡°Will ob- b-bey,¡± De said. ¡°T-this-s t-time.¡±


    ¡°It didn¡¯t?¡±


    Something in De¡¯s back rapidly distended, kicking up a section of his gown. It settled back into place, and emit clicking. His head twitched.


    ¡°No,¡± he said.


    He kept marching up the hill.


    Need hands for friends! The Bell screamed. Need hands! Need hands!


    -


    The hilltop entrance to the tipper¡¯s descent lair was silent, except for the pittering drip of icy riverlets that fell down into its crevice. A leaf crunched in the icepiked bush on the land below it. The crushing boot rolled itself up, over snow, past the twisting pillars and cavernous fissure which produced the way into their chamber.


    Wander and De crept down the path where Fragile¡¯s smell lead. It gave way to a space surrounded by sloping rock walls and cones. They found tattered, tented dwellings whose gray was fraying into threads black and white, forming gappy webs of fabric that would translate the chill of the darkness therein. Four-footed bisect carcasses, chopped wooden stakes, hammering tools, a langniv without a blade, boards marked by legible cuts, and an empty clay jug that had been wrapped in wool lay about, remnant of empty space. The dwellings were without people and animals, all except one.


    The knot-wrapped tipper lay down in the center of the place, looking up at the roof, his legs crossed. He turned his head when they approached and withdrew their weapons.


    He breathed and stood up. His fingers displaced the knife from his belt, and he gripped it with his left hand.


    He struck at them in a flash, and neither could bring response before they were engulfed in fire, and forced to address the slashes of his little blade.


    Wander brought her blaith down on the tipper¡¯s side, and it met open air. Her eyes remained set and her mouth closed as she swung at his neck and chest, biting at him with a speed and shape which twisted space.


    De swept forward. His gown slithered along the stone and he swung his cane through empty air. He did not desist. He pressed on with frantic vigor, piercing through the rocks. The effort shot his garment into the air and it came alive.


    While they fought, the lair filled with screams and screeches coming from three spots. Their combat was colored by the cries of Laruns, Goals, and other dark, jumping voices that licked one another and mixed themselves apart.


    De was not faster than the tipper. He was beaten back and cast over one of the cavern¡¯s cliffs, creating a missile of his gown that hurtled through the darkness.


    The tipper seized Wander by the hands and belched a roar into her that splayed itself over the rocks and spires.


    Wander and the tipper wrestled, pressing against the other in still and silent exertion. The work sent stabbing bolts into her hands and arms and legs and chest. A muscle tugged on her brow, which was unaffected.


    The tipper gripped her palms and pushed her back. She watched him grind apart his teeth and throw himself against her. Her feet splintered the rocks. Their skin split and bled, and she began to think about where she had gone and how she had arrived at her position. She thought about where she would go and who she was. She could find nothing to hold onto, except her hatred, and even that was slipping through her fingers.


    As the shadow began to overtake her, a brilliant image arrived in her eye. A flower.


    It was Fragile¡¯s flower ¨C his seventy-petalled, violet blossom, which he had plucked from the boughs of Eighty¡¯s papersquare. He brought it up to his nose with both hands, and it put a smile on his face. The sky had cleared that day, and the warmth of the sun and stars fell over his skin and he seemed to glow from the black of his hair.


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    One of the petals broke away and began to drift to the ground. So a part of her reached out for it, and took it in her hands.


    The tipper was thrown to the ground, his hands crushed into wrinkled, bony weeds. A pressure uncoiled itself from Wander¡¯s head, and a silent wave of white light resounded throughout the chamber. When he recovered, she cracked her fist across the tipper¡¯s jaw, and did it again, and again, and again, and again. She replaced him on the floor and placed her knee on his chest. She followed it with the short blade, which she pressed against his throat. She made a cut there.


    ¡°I don¡¯t want to do this,¡± she said.


    The tipper stopped moving and began to gargle. Viscous black fluid was pushed out between his teeth. ¡°Why not?¡±


    ¡°I know what you are. I don¡¯t want to hurt you. I just want the Goal.¡±


    ¡°We protect the things we price,¡± he said. His hand broke free of his grip and seized her; her edge broke forward, through everything between it and stone. His body went limp, but the light in his eyes remained. His lips moved; Wander saw the opening stanzas of an offering in Shamar. He did not get far, and soon his silence was true.


    She sat up on his body. She rested her weapon on her knee, and for a while her gaze had no aim.


    A rocky scrambling gained her attention. At the edge of the cliff, a gloved hand found purchase in a spindly crag on the ledge. The figure it belonged to looked up; his mask followed up Wander¡¯s battered ascent, looming over him and tense with her fading exertions. She put out her hand, which he took.


    As she hauled him to his feet, they assessed the screaming, which had moved down to the ground and begun to dissipate. Another flash of white light skittered about the cavern. Wander could not hear the Bell anymore.


    ¡°What is that?¡± she asked.


    ¡°W-workers,¡± De replied. He fell to the ground again, wracked by tremors and the shaking of the cave. Strange shapes animated his gown, clicking and writhing. They arched outward, hoist his covering into the air, and shot it down into the stone.


    ¡°T-tired,¡± he gasped. ¡°M-must rest. Must!¡±


    He shook out Quiet Feet¡¯s necklace from his robe and shivered it into her hand. ¡°The b-braid,¡± he whispered. ¡°Find the b-braid.¡±


    -


    Wander attempted to entreat the Bell as she moved away. Where is he? she asked. Tell me. But the Bell would still not speak, and Wander could not feel much of her at all.


    She threw up her voice. ¡°Quiet Feet?¡± Wander called. She tossed apart the tipper dwellings, tearing out their beams and branches and tanned hide walls. ¡°Quiet Feet!¡±


    ¡°Wander.¡±


    A faint, muffled cry broke from a shadowy depression in the rear of the tents. She investigated, and saw his cage at the bottom. She saw him bound by the feet and hands and she saw the slashing on his face and the black soiling that twisted up his skin.


    She walked down into the pit, making sure not to trip. When she reached the cage she cracked it open, divorcing the metal bars from their post and crushing them in her hands. She pulled him out by the chest and legs and laid him down.


    The string that bound Fragile met her short blade, as did the coils that tied his feet. She helped him sit up and put her gauntletted hands on his shoulder and side and brushed back his hair, which had become tangled and knotted.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡±


    Wander shook her head. ¡°Do not say it. Are you hurt?¡± She traced the crescent scar on his cheek. ¡°Who did this?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not hurt.¡± She held the nape of his neck with her glove. His cheeks grew warm. Tears flowed and he clenched her arms.


    A shadow with shifting edges fell over them from the top of the pit. They both looked at it, and Wander released him.


    De shivered. He watched the decaying rays of warmth bubble about between the Seenblade and her feurkun hand, and for a moment he grew still. Then, he raised up his wobbling, bloodstained club, and shifted it in the direction of the lair¡¯s ascent.


    Wander shook Fragile¡¯s arm. ¡°Come,¡± she said.


    A shivering inhabited the empty space surrounding the body of Unseen and enveloped him. Another began to shake up the rocks which surrounded their space. It crept up, watching its opponent¡¯s caress.


    Interesting, thought the Bell. You chose to stay with this one.¡±


    We¡¯ve both done things we were never meant to do, the shadow said. Gone against our points. We had nothing in the world but one another. That is how breathers do it; I will have nothing again. And we will be like.


    The shadow lost its form and dispelled.


    ¡°What a stumbled animal, said the Bell. So full of well-danced words.¡±


    Wander and Fragile, who had exited the pit, approached the Bell. Revealed now in the light, the rope Unseen had used slithered toward them. It spun whirling shapes around Fragile and Wander¡¯s feet. ¡°Triumph!¡± the rope said. ¡°Triumph! We are in triumph! Our company is returned!¡± Her voice, high and warm, burrowed into Fragile¡¯s ear. The experience was less strange to Wander, but she was amazed to find it all outside herself.


    It rushed toward Fragile, who feel back and recoiled. Wander reached out to catch him, and seized him by the chest. A heated disturbance entered Fragile¡¯s chest as she brought her arm around his back, which he lacked the ease of mind to interrogate.


    ¡°What is that?!¡± he exclaimed.


    ¡°I am the Bell,¡± the Bell shouted. ¡°She is my joy-filled one. I find friends for her.¡± She wove around Fragile¡¯s waist, squeezing tight. ¡°I found you, friend! We became a heart adorable! A sight beyond flaws! An unquestionable kind!¡±


    Wander set him down on the ground and violently ripped The Bell free of his waist. It coiled around her arm and throat, tying them together.


    ¡°I think this is the Bell,¡± Wander said. ¡°I didn¡¯t tell you about her.¡±


    She glanced at Fragile. His eyes were orbing and green and they waited for her to say something more. She didn¡¯t.


    ¡°What is her kind?¡± he asked.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± Wander replied. ¡°I¡¯m not sure if she has one. She helps He Grantar. So she helps me.¡±


    ¡°I am the one and only,¡± The Bell affirmed. ¡°I am all my own.¡±


    Wander frowned as the Bell continued to wind knots around her shoulders and torso. ¡°She came to me at another time. When I was young.¡±


    Fragile¡¯s mouth opened and then closed. ¡°How did she take that shape?¡± he asked. ¡°It was not moving, a moment ago.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. She¡¯s never done this before.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m smiling,¡± the Bell said. ¡°Smiling that she has friends. The joyous one needs friends. She needs them to breath. Everyone needs friends to breath!¡±


    Wander knelt down, extracting The Bell from her body and placing it on the ground. The tension in Fragile¡¯s body was dissipating. ¡°She must hold all manner of strength,¡± he said. ¡°Does she have any different works?¡±


    The Bell curled around him with such speed that Fragile¡¯s eyes could not keep up. ¡°I can hear. I can talk to you. I can talk to the joyous one.¡±


    ¡°She has some sight into you and others,¡± Wander said. ¡°Sometimes she tells me of it.¡±


    Fragile¡¯s eyes widened.


    While they revelled, De contemplated the body of Unseen. He cleaned the blood from his metal and struck it in the ground, turning their heads towards him.


    ¡°C-come,¡± he called to Wander. He directed his cane at Fragile. ¡°C-c-come.¡±


    They ventured over to the corpse. Wander approached De, who knelt down by it.


    He looked to Wander.


    ¡°P-point,¡± De said.


    Wander turned to Fragile. ¡°You need to say it now,¡± she said in Goalish. She bent her head in the direction of the corpse.


    Fragile tried to remember the words she had told him. ¡°J-j-¡­¡± He stuttered. ¡°Jy¡­ emen. Jy-emen.¡±


    De¡¯s mask held on Fragile. Fragile watched him, wondering what he had said and what its significance was.


    It satisfied De. He looked back at Unseen and stumbled down to him and drew his hand across his written chest.


    ¡°Others,¡± De said.


    ¡°What happened to the rest of them?¡± Wander asked Fragile. ¡°Did you see?¡±


    ¡°They left,¡± he replied. ¡°One night ago.¡±


    Wander repeated his answer in Sprak.


    De picked up the corpse, hoisting it under one arm, and he grabbed the head by its hair. He stumbled away, hauling them up into the light. Fragile limped up to Wander with the Bell wrapped around his waist. It slipped down onto his leg and slithered through the snow, winding up her calf and going to adorn her shoulders.


    Wander turned to Fragile. His hair was ripped and torn. His skin had been opened up into a canvas for lines and spots. They were red, black and blue, and she could only see him in a place underneath.


    ¡°Can you walk?¡± she asked.


    His legs were shivering and he felt like he would collapse. ¡°I¡­ I don¡¯t know.¡±


    So she swept him up in her arms, bringing out a sudden gasp.


    As they rose up through the pits and then descended the hill, Unseen filled his empty gaze with the bodies of the three invaders. His eyes never left, and all could feel their sightless touch. Even once they had put the place far behind, Wander did not feel whole. She wondered why she had expected to.


    -


    They rode back through the rounds.


    Their company returned to Partplant on the evening of the second day. De visited the koropole¡¯s papersquare with the body of Unseen, ported inside by the Seeds atop a cloth litter.


    They reemerged from the doors and their pointed battlements. De approached Wander and Fragile, while the surviving Seeds removed to their hoofs and Joyborn, who sat secured on the back of one.


    De stepped forward, and Wander cast her eyes down at him. He held up a carved wooden box whose walls folded inward.


    ¡°P-parts,¡± he said.


    She took it. De kept his hand out and struggled to keep it steady, cracking opening his palm and nodding it in offering. She took hold of his wrist, and he reciprocated. She looked into his eyes; the peculiar shadows of the papersquare and a severed ray of the sun enabled her at last to fully appreciate their shape and shade. Each was mossed, burst with black freckles, and muddy. But their centers had clear and insistent color, shifting between silky white and mottled brown.


    Something struck into place in Wander¡¯s I and snapped apart. Her grip clenched, and it did not seem to pain him. She removed her hand.


    De placed down his cane and leaned on it with both hands. ¡°I¡­ am¡­ old-d,¡± he said. ¡°We ¨C will ¨C n-not ¨C m¡­ meet¡­ a-gain.¡±


    His mask turned to Fragile, who stood level to him. Again he lingered without a word, and Fragile¡¯s hiding began to itch. Then, he stepped away.


    De walked back toward the Seeds; Wander watched him mount his white-coatted hoof and gallop South out of Partplant, guiding Joyborn¡¯s hapless ride, body, and three remaining boys back into the Wild. Joyborn¡¯s eyes followed them as he was trotted past the bounds of the house and hills, which hid his gaze at last.


    ¡°Wander?¡± Fragile inquired, after she failed to move or speak at all. ¡°Is something wrong?¡±


    Her eyes were trained on the horizon, and they declined. ¡°I¡¯m tired,¡± she said.


    She swaggered back into Partplant, making for the salon.


    </a>-


    Wander remained in their room for much of the evening, and she would not speak, so Fragile went out from it. He spent his time in the public room plucking at his three-string.


    The Warrior came out for one of the Salon¡¯s meals. She clanked up to the Salonier, whose weaving was halfway finished. Fragile saw her descend the steps from a distance, her armor strapped on and ashy.


    ¡°What have you seen, Goodpoint?¡± he greeted.


    ¡°I want a barrel of grain.¡±


    The Salonier raised his eyebrows. He set his needlework aside. Wander laid the box of parts she had received on the table and opened it, unhinging his jaw. He ran his fingers through the heap and plucked out a coin. ¡°This is enough.¡±


    ¡°Where do you keep it?¡±


    The Salonier brought her to a passage at the rear of the room, where steps lead down into a dark chamber.


    ¡°I can bring a light, if you need it,¡± he said.


    ¡°I don¡¯t.¡± She walked toward it.


    ¡°Goodpoint,¡± The Salonier called. Wander turned her head.


    ¡°This other spot we spoke about,¡± he said. He lifted the box in his hands. ¡°Do you want-?¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± she said. ¡°If you will still do it.¡±


    ¡°What I mean is, there is more than enough-¡±


    ¡°So take it all.¡± She turned back to the cellar. ¡°I don¡¯t want to see it.¡±


    Wander retrieved her barrel and cracked it open by one of the tables in the Salon¡¯s public room. She collected a pitcher from a rack by the Salonier¡¯s gourd and dunked it inside, and she sat drinking among the laughter of the Laruns, the carpenters, the Rootcliffs, the sellers, and the mercenary fighters of the Salon. As her eyes grew dark and fell, and she downed the whole of it, Fragile kept his distance. She seemed oblivious or indifferent to the characters which she had gone to inhabit, which was not something he had always seen. No matter how much she drank, the water did not shake her.


    At the very end of the night, most of the road people had trailed out or retired, save Wander and Fragile. The fire on the walls burned low. Wander put back one last pail of grain. Then she grasped the barrel by its sides and poured it into her mouth. It bounced and rolled away when she dropped it, trailing a thin, clear stream.


    She looked over to where Quiet Feet had been sitting, in the dark and distant corner where he had played for De. He was sleeping, leaned up against the wall, where he hugged his three-string.


    She stumbled over to him, knocking over a table and tripping on a stool. The drink had steeled her nerves and she used it to pick him up, supporting him against her armor. She carried him in her arms up the stairs.


    She laid Fragile down on a sheet on the floor and put a sheet over him. Then she dragged herself onto a feathered platform and grasped her short blade tight to her chest. The spaces she could see seemed much darker, and she knew she would depart them soon.


    -


    She was the mind. She had forgotten her name. She was in the fourth cell she had ever been, because she smelled water, thunder, metal, and steam. She could hear the voices of the Amwraiths echoing out over the Songlake.


    A pair of white and brown irises burned themselves into hers, as they had each day last. She sat herself before the mirror in her room, and observed her body, how it had been buttoned and craft against knives by signmarked agents, and covered at last by the Family¡¯s words. She looked up into her reflection, where she saw it all with stillness and clarity. She looked into the eyes of her oppressor, and picked up the blade which sat at her feet.


    She pushed the metal into her chest, and she found it could cut through her skin only after she applied her second hand. The gash did not bleed, but she could feel it. Like the others, it stirred up fire in her belly, and turned her mind, and caused great revolt. She wrestled them all to the ground. It did not send out any part of her she thought to miss, and so she continued.


    It felt as it had before, and it did not injure her, or send out any part of her that she missed. So she continued.


    Someone knelt down beside her. A pair of blue eyes emerged in the mirror and watched her enemy. ¡°Work faster,¡± they said.


    She pushed it in again.


    ¡°Again,¡± they whispered. She pushed.


    ¡°Again.¡±


    ¡°Again.¡±


    ¡°They will have nothing else of mine.¡±


    She pushed. In the mirror she saw him, looked up and found him there, sitting past the mask.


    She pushed.


    -


    ¡°Stand up, weak thing! STAND UP, WEAK THING!¡±


    Fragile cried out in terror as he was jerked upwards. He felt the visceral terror of the Bell wrap around his mind and body. The knotting creature bound up his torso and yanked him forward.


    Someone was sat on their knees in the middle of the room. The starlight produced the barest frame for Fragile to gauge her by, glinting off her short blade, which was aimed at her torso. Wander¡¯s image hardened, and he could see her eyelids drooping, and her mouth, which was caught up in a busy and unconscious articulation of her mother tongue.


    ¡°The joyous one is pained!¡± the Bell bellowed. ¡°The joyous one needs help! Stop her! Stop her now!¡±


    He rushed over to her and clutched her wrist with both hands. The Bell snaked over his forearm and bound his hand to her glove, giving him a tighter grip.


    The weapon came down and brought them with it, pushing deep into her sternum. She brought it up and down again, and again, yanking him back and forth. He let go of it, shook her shoulders and wailed. ¡°Wander! Wander! Stop this! Do not do it!¡±


    ¡°and¡­ pain whichis more¡­ pain whichis more¡­ faster whichis move¡­ pain whichis more¡­¡±


    He realised she would not stop and his eyes bulged. He watched her muscles clench and her blood clot and harden and heard the groan her blade forced out with each strike and suddenly he was squirreling himself under her arms and throwing his arms around her neck. Intense warmth sealed up a place in his chest. A very small and distant part of him wanted to smile, and he wept.


    The blade came down again, and the length of it drove into Fragile¡¯s back. The worst pain he had ever felt excavated a gape between two ribs. He screamed, and water gushed past his eyes. He hugged her tight and bit his lip, eliciting scarlet rivulets that bled down his chin.


    The metal slowed its entrance and he gasped quickly. It steadied and then stilled. The blade shook and withdrew, leaving an icy tunnel of nerves that mourned and flailed in panic when he moved. He looked at Wander, whose eyes had opened into thin slits. The dark had made them beady and black, and they enlarged as they fell on him. Her lips bubbled apart. ¡°Quiet Feet?¡±


    Fragile¡¯s vision became watery and the moisture decomposed Wander into many parts. She and the room dissolved, consumed by the great power that the work had invoked.


    -


    The beginnings of light streamed in from the shutters of the Salon.


    ¡°Ach!¡± Fragile gasped. Wander tugged a new strip of cloth around his chest.


    ¡°Keep still. Or it won¡¯t fix.¡±


    He blushed.


    She wrapped the cloth under his shoulders. ¡°That was a very wrong thing to do,¡± she said. ¡°A very wrong thing.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± Fragile said. ¡°I tried others. If I hadn¡¯t¡­ you would¡¯ve¡­¡±


    ¡°What?¡± Wander flattened out the binding and began to tie it. When he didn¡¯t reply, she spoke. ¡°This isn¡¯t the first time this has happened. You¡¯ve seen me hit and struck and cut. Why would some holes be enough?¡±


    ¡°I don''t know.¡± He flinched as her gloves grazed his sensitive skin. "It was dark. Maybe... I could not see."


    ¡°If you had done anything, a finger to the left, it would¡¯ve sent you to the rulers.¡± She pulled the knot tight, and he cringed. She took the initial, bloodsoaked arrangement of torn bedding that she had used as a temporary stanche the night before and stood up.


    ¡°That¡¯s all I can do for now,¡± she said. ¡°The gap should fill, but it¡¯ll be sore for a while. And it will lump. There¡¯s nothing can be done about that.¡±


    Fragile¡¯s blood had pooled in a small stain near the bed. He pulled on his hoofskin over and retrieved a cloth and water to wipe it out. Wander replaced her needles and corks of spice in the pouches of her vest. When she thought Fragile wasn¡¯t looking, she pressed a hand to her side and her fingers tore a chunk out of the wall.


    Fragile perked his ears up at the wood¡¯s sharp splintering and his scrubbing stopped for a moment. Then he continued.


    ¡°I wish you would not speak of this to anyone,¡± she said. ¡°It reveals more than I¡¯d prefer.¡±


    Fragile nodded. ¡°Yes, Wander. Of course.¡± He began to work the red out of the floor. She threw on the black covering beneath her shoulderskin and continued to dress.


    ¡°How long has it been happening?¡± he asked.


    She pulled on her thick brown leggings and fastened the ties on her vest. ¡°Five colds.¡±


    ¡°Do they know? Your family?¡±


    She made the sheath on her back taut. ¡°They could learn. If they have, they haven¡¯t told me, or it doesn¡¯t bother them.¡±


    ¡°What causes it?¡±


    Wander picked up her blaith, which sat on her bed. A scarlet crust had seeped into the Hesigns¡¯ detail, which had been cut fine enough that she could not scrub it out with her cloth. It glinted in the light. ¡°A thing that is passed.¡±


    She shut the blade into its sleeve.


    Fragile threw water from a bucket onto the stain, which was beginning to thin. ¡°I hope there is a way to make it stop.¡±


    ¡°If there is,¡± she said, ¡°I will uncover it.¡±


    She shut the blade into its sleeve.


    Somewhere behind him, Wander strapped on her belt. ¡°I¡¯m going,¡± she said. ¡°I need to speak with the Salonier. We¡¯ll stay here an extra day to let you rest.¡±


    ¡°Ih?¡± Fragile said, turning to look at her. ¡°That¡¯s¡­ good of you, but Wander-¡±


    A sharp pain cut into his neck, and everything fell away.


    When his body went limp, Wander caught his head and eased it down onto the floor. She picked up her tools and weapons and threw on her shoulderskin, fastening it around her neck. She got up to leave, began to walk out of the room, and stopped.


    She looked back at Quiet Feet, whose slumped, peaceful countenance was locked by sleep.


    She turned around. She rolled her feet as she approached him, muffling the sound of her boots on the creaking thickwood. She knelt down by his side.


    Quiet Feet breathed in and out. He pumped air with his nose. A sigh loosed past his lips with each release. His eyelids fluttered. A clump of hair, dislodged by her hit, had fallen down before his eyes.


    She was close on it now. She grasped the glove of her right hand and pulled it off. She reached out, put a finger around the bundle, and drew it behind his ear. While she did, the tip of her nail nearly grazed the edge of his skin.


    Before it could touch, she pulled her hand back. The hair fell back into place and she waited. She flexed her hands. A wave of nausea, directed at her I, rolled through her skull. She closed her eyes and held a hand to her mouth.


    She fumbled her glove back on and stumbled out. The door to the Salon crashed apart in the distance, tearing loose of its frame and splintering through the wood. It dangled and creaked at its post and he breathed, and sighed. He shifted in his sleep and the door creaked. He breathed and sighed, and the door creaked. He breathed.

 The Strangers (Part 4 of 5) - The Warriors Advance

    Wander headed South. She reached the road she had seen De follow. The Wild¡¯s horizon scraped out before her. Many marshes and thicktrees spread out among it. A wing stood perched on a branch in the distance, tapping out a chiming call with its throat. The gurgling of water blustered nearby. The road was dug out and intermittently lined with caged and covered nodes of silver.


    The monolith came into view, screaming out its warning.


    DO NOT GO BEHIND THIS ROCK ALONE


    DO NOT GO BEHIND THIS ROCK ALONE


    DO NOT GO BEHIND THIS ROCK ALONE


    It came and it went. She lifted the stronghoof onto her shoulders and ran into the country.


    She ran over frozen glades, lakes and trees. Hills and horizons emerged and were surpassed. Her body burned with effort, and she grew hot enough that the around her and the snow could steam thick enough to form a tall drifting trail, one which broadcast her path like a combustion engine. The temperature was such that the stronghoof started to writhe and complain in her grip. It could do little else.


    She could feel the Bell in the back of her mind again. The length of rope whose appearance she had taken coiled itself in the stronghoof¡¯s saddlebags, keeping quiet.


    Wander¡¯s pace fell back to a pounding. The stronghoof brayed as the measure between each step decreased, going from a frantic tempering that rattled the trees to thunder that grew more distant by the moment. It became soft and silent as she stopped for good.


    ¡°Come out,¡± she said, ¡°and tell me the shape of my doing.¡±


    The Bell¡¯s rope emerged from her bag. ¡°You do as you are commanded,¡± she replied.


    She set the stronghoof down. Before it stumbled off and collapsed, Wander thrust a hand into the satchel and tore out the Bell. It wriggled and snapped in her grip. ¡°You feel another way to me,¡± she said. ¡°What has this change put into you? You do not pry or pull. You do not chatter.¡±


    She squeezed. ¡°I knew another kind in the warmth. Now you are gone from my spot, and move around, and can be touched; what has this change put into you?¡±


    ¡°I am your Bell.¡±


    ¡°Why can I hear words unsaid?¡±


    ¡°I give them to you.¡±


    ¡°How?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡±


    ¡°Why not?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡±


    Wander squeezed harder. ¡°You hurt the Sixbraid.¡±


    ¡°You needed help,¡± the Bell replied. ¡°I didn¡¯t know what he would do.¡±


    ¡°I didn¡¯t need help. You stood him up. What did you tell him?¡±


    ¡°That you needed help.¡±


    Wander¡¯s grip tightened again and did not fray or pressure the Bell¡¯s shape, so she dropped it. It slithered up Wander¡¯s body and whispered into her ear.


    ¡°We knew less in the Warmth,¡± The Bell said. ¡°You shook more. You have moved. Nothing is still, joyous one.¡±


    Wander¡¯s brow shifted slightly. It levelled.


    ¡°I am,¡± The Warrior said.


    She grabbed the Bell and stuffed her back in her bag. The stronghoof went back over her shoulders. They continued along the road, almost alone.


    -


    The Warrior walked on the road. The stronghoof cart her tools past bunched mounds of trees and continued in to the rounds. During the day, she could navigate by the stars. The road warped, curled, and disappeared often, but the stars did not.


    She looked at Goal and drank from her skin, which spilled out grain over her lips and down her chin. When evening came, she set down her stronghoof, who grunted in exhaustion and collapsed. She thought about gathering sticks for a fire and then remembered she did not need it, and that she could walk a while further in the dark without Quiet Feet or his weary. She did that, and then she went up to the bough of a wingtree with the Wild, perched on a hill; it creaked and swayed in the midnight wind. Wings, stars, and mats of needled black rolled out to East and West before her. She was hungry, but didn¡¯t care enough to hunt. She took off her gloves and smoked her pipe.


    She thought about the Family. She remembered faces there, and ones from her youth. She looked at her hands, which were worn and full of cuts, and which had guided her to so many people. She rubbed them and closed her fingers.


    A twig snapped somewhere in the woods below and she heard light chatter. She replaced her pipe and looked down, her sweatsight deriving a group of hot, shining lumps climbing past the trees. Each wore a long coat similar to the Laruns¡¯ bryst. She stepped off the branch and descended.


    The crowd of walkers moved when she dropped onto a man. Their talking ended and they scattered in silence, running and throwing themselves down among the snow and bushes and dips. The ones armed with shooters took up covered positions behind rocks and trunks while they shot low into the place where they had heard her fall. She caught the missiles and tossed them aside.


    She looked at the one she had pinned. He had the clothing of a Goal, and their long hair. His coat, and that of his companions¡¯, was a heavy, trailing coldover, whose consistency The Warrior realized was the same kind as Quiet Feet¡¯s. Her victim gripped a shooter tight in his hand. His teeth grit and his brow furled as he recognized her hesigns.


    The Warrior stepped off of him. He scrambled away and rejoined his friends, whose shapes, brought to shine by her sweatsight, levelled blades at her and shouted in the dark. The shooters shot again, and again she batted them away.


    The Goals glared at her as she retreated. She turned to leave.


    ¡°Do not hit her!¡± a voice screamed. ¡°Do not hit this one!¡±


    She turned back, to see the Goal she had hit laying down his weapons. ¡°This is the Dry Man of the River!¡± he said. ¡°This is the one who wears signs! This is the one who wears two strange canes! This is the destroyer of everything outborn!¡±


    The Goals approached her with measured eyes and steps, and the shooters lowered their weapons slowly. The host looked at her signs. She could hear them whisper.


    ¡°The Dry Man,¡± one gasped. ¡°The Dry Man?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s her?¡± an old woman asked. ¡°The bite, struck out the Unders?¡±


    ¡°She is a wall, bato,¡± a young Goalish woman said. ¡°She has broken up one thousand offmen. She has brought out the Threeheads.¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t touch her. Does she have our words? Don¡¯t touch her.¡±


    ¡°Wasn¡¯t she by the Larun bunch?¡± another woman asked. ¡°Breaking them apart? Why is she here?¡±


    ¡°This one is the gift-heavy Wall,¡± a man said, putting his face to her shoulderskin. ¡°This one has put away the outness out of the Open. I was back there.¡± She pushed him away.


    The Goal she had landed on stepped forward. ¡°What is your name?¡± he asked. ¡°Dry Man? By what call can we offer to you?¡±


    She said nothing.


    ¡°Will you eat with us?¡± he asked. ¡°We have food. We have food, now, and you have created it. We wish you would take it too.¡±


    -


    She did eat with them.


    Their fires burned low as the stars turned and echoes of sunlight began to drift over the Eastern horizon. The world went from darkness and stars to shadow and blue. The Warrior leaned against a rock, taking chunks of meat from a spitted jumper, smoking, and watching the movers¡¯ difference. Loudvoicer came over to her and sat down.


    The Warrior offered her pipe. Loudvoicer brushed it away; he removed a flute of blue wood from his over, about the length and width of his forefinger, and set it on a log. Then he removed a pouch wrapped with thread, untied it, and took out a clump of the fraying dust which it had been filled with. He stuffed it in the end, put its tip in the fire, clocked his teeth over it and inhaled.


    The Warrior rested against the rock. ¡°I¡¯ve seen that man before,¡± she said.


    Loudvoicer looked for her gaze, and found it in one of the Movers sitting by a tree, talking with two others.


    He coughed. ¡°That is Howlscut,¡± Loudvoicer said. ¡°He was born closer to the peaks.¡±


    ¡°He is an Under.¡±


    ¡°He knew that knot.¡±


    ¡°Why is he here?¡± The Warrior asked. ¡°What has he become?¡±


    Loudvoicer inhaled his dust and blew. ¡°He left.¡± His brow bent softly. Sweet, acrid mist surrounded them. ¡°Now we create him. And he is fixed to us.¡±


    The Warrior looked away and draped an arm over her knee. ¡°Where I come from,¡± the Warrior said, ¡°Heartswater produces a knot that is unbreakable. It binds together. It tells about what you are.¡±


    ¡°The offmen have strange ways,¡± Loudvoicer said. ¡°And their interests are strange also.¡±


    The Warrior remained impassive. He puffed. ¡°You do not know what you are?¡± he questsaid.


    ¡°I am born,¡± she said.


    ¡°Who creates you?¡±


    The Warrior arched her brow.


    ¡°Who creates you?¡± he repeated.


    ¡°I cannot hear you.¡±


    Loudvoicer rolled the pipe between his hands, pushing down on the end. ¡°A catcher creates a shooter,¡± he said, ¡°and shots. An ovener creates canes. The kind creates the kind underneath; that which is born heeds and rises. You will find these words in the rulersland.¡±


    The Warrior looked over the fire. Loudvoicer looked into it. ¡°I was created by a birthwoman,¡± he said. He puffed. ¡°The ones who made me were cut apart with ropes. But that cannot release a heart from its creation. Nothing can do that. Maybe you need to find who has done this to you, and where it happened. Maybe that will show you your position, Dry-Man.¡±


    ¡°I know my position,¡± she replied.


    He looked at her. ¡°Then you know of your creator.¡±


    She considered the fire then, and they didn¡¯t speak after that.


    -


    The movers prepared their move in the darkness, before the sun rose. They picked up their hitters and priers and canes, and they collected branch bundles that they wrapped up in rope and tied to their backs. They rolled up their coverings.


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    The Warrior watched them from a distance, unhitching the stronghoof from a tree. Loudvoicer departed his group and crept up to her.


    ¡°We will move away from the path,¡± he said. ¡°Finding it was not our aim. These woods are wandering. Where will you go?¡±


    ¡°To Herdetopp.¡±


    While they spoke, some more movers hauled sacks over and attached them to the stronghoof, who whined. ¡°What are you doing?¡± The Warrior asked.


    ¡°That is eating,¡± Loudvoicer said. ¡°They hope you will take it. Some carcasses, stuffed with staysand. They have seen how much you eat. They want you to do it more.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t need it,¡± The Warrior said. ¡°You should take it for wherever you are going.¡±


    Loudvoicer raised an eyebrow. ¡°Where should we be going?¡± he asked. He splayed a hand out to the rounds. ¡°We are in the rulersland. Don¡¯t you see?¡±


    The Warrior looked out into the mist. She looked all around. Nothing caught her eye.


    ¡°We hope you will be safe, Dry Man,¡± Loudvoicer said. ¡°You have created all of us.¡±


    He clasped his hands together and shook them at her. Then he and the porters rejoined their mass and they broke apart, fading into the trees until they were nothing but a mash of clickings and chatter somewhere on the edge of her ear. She picked up the stronghoof and went into the way the path had been, but it was not there; the night had covered it up with dirt and bushes. So she located herself with the stars and headed South.


    -


    They renavigated the forest. The Warrior travelled past a thin web of trees that the snow collided with and papered. A storm had struck them down, blowing them in half and turning their halves into manysplintered longwoods. In the night, a pack of howls rushed past her, riverring the trunks and branches with glowing light. A pair of them stopped to measure her at a distance, before they moved on.


    She followed the contours of an upsurge, where scars of forest and soil had been turned up into a trio of steep longitudes that cut across the terrain. She found an opening there at the base of one, a dark crevice encrusted by veins of silver stone. Her sweatsight found a round, furred ball of heat in the blackness therein, curled up and breathing with a snarl. She laid down by its side.


    When The Warrior awoke, she found that the sleeper had not moved at all. She departed the gap, going out to the morning winds where no star shined and the clouds held in a dash of night.


    They came up on a frozen plain of water, where she began to feel The Bell spin and tumble. A large, tangled shrub stood along the banks of the lake. It padded its feet and snorted, and she saw it could be breathing. Hair tumbled down its sides in knotted bundles that something of it would use to keep its hot. Its legs stopped with hooves, in the way of a Goalish meatbearer. The water it studied had begun to thaw and show its bounty, but the thing did not bathe or drink. Its head grazed the tip of a nearby wingtree, and its bulk was enough to hold many men.


    The Warrior laid down the stronghoof when it came into view and approached it. ¡°What is it?¡± she asked the Bell.


    She popped out from her bag and swam up The Warrior¡¯s boot, winding up and around it. ¡°It has words,¡± the Bell said. ¡°It is not like other things.¡±


    The Warrior brought out her blaith. ¡°Can you cut it?¡± the Bell asked.


    ¡°We have cut bigger ones,¡± she said. ¡°They were angrier.¡±


    ¡°We have,¡± the Bell said. ¡°And it is not angry.¡±


    She approached the meatbearer, which continued to gaze into the water. Her foot crunched up the snow, and it turned. Its eyes were large and brown.


    A voice babbled at her, rising out from the skin of it. The Warrior did not recognize its sounds. It looked back and moaned, but did not threaten or attack her. She raised up her blaith and pressed the point of it to the meatbearer¡¯s side.


    The signs that had been scratched and beaten into the metal of her blade flicked and jumped and giggled as they grew closer to the object. Her hand shook as she sent it out, and a wave of gold coursed through her, as her parts recognized and fell into the lines of this encounter. There was something fine and right taking place about it. A sigh built somewhere in her gut.


    It looked at her.


    Her grip clenched and her nose flared. The Warrior¡¯s hand shoved the weapon halfway into the bulk of the meatbearer. It let out no cry or scream. She withdrew halfway, and watched as her many urges dissolved into a sea of questions. She touched her forefinger to the blade. The signs glowed bright, and the creature splashed apart into a heap of liquid.


    The Warrior went over to the water, which had thawed enough to reflect images. She stood where the meatbearer had and looked down. The rippling of the lake bubbled and turned her face into something she could not name.


    -


    They traversed the Wild.


    The Warrior and the stronghoof lumbered into a section of the rounds filled with rusty blades and fields of black, charred trunks. The night was flush with stars that seemed much brighter than they had been, and the black between them was streaked with silver bolts. She watched clouds pass underneath, form fingers, reach across the sky and cover her in darkness.


    She sat down in a brushless gap seated atop a rocky jut that looked over a crop of thicktrees. She fell on her back and began to hear thumping, the clattering of metal and chains, deep chatter, and shallow, mourning breath. She got up went to the stronghoof and put a hand beneath its jaw, causing it to hinge, its ears to lower, and its eyes to open.


    She followed the sounds from her vantage, which bent and twist as they passed the wood. They stopped moving, and a fire began to burn in the rounds nearby, putting a licking sweep of light across the trees, which glistened with shadow.


    The Warrior climbed down from the jut and went into the treetrops. She crept from branch to branch and clung to a limb where the smoke of a fire flew into her nose, and the stacks and the Laruns that had taken root were made plain. She unsheathed her shortblade and loosened her grip.


    ¡°What is her name?¡± a voice asked. Her grip clenched, and she looked closer.


    Goals were sitting among the nivmen. The Warrior could see their bodies, how they had been bruised and unbrushed, put in links of metal and heavy coats that weighed them down at the neck. There were many children, who were split apart from the older ones and looked to be dead from exhaustion. The others she could see were in a pack, and every one of them had been gagged with grey ribbons.


    The Laruns sat around reclining, smoking pipes, drinking milksit from pinkish jugs, and warming their hands over roaring fires while their captives kept silently in the darkness. The bryst-bodies gathered around the smoke most directly beneath her were held by, first, a tall Larun, who leaned his back against a metal sticker that he had planted in the ground; second, a short, clean shaven Larun, who sat beside a discarded shooter, a sack of missiles, and a drinking skin; and third, a heavyset Larun, who was wiping down the mirror-clear blade of his langniv.


    This nivman, to whom the question had been directed, looked up at the sticker. ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°The one you had,¡± the sticker said. ¡°Have you got her name?¡±


    ¡°Why would I get that?¡±


    ¡°Sometimes,¡± the sticker said, ¡°they want to know. Especially for this kind. They will want it when we reach the squares.¡±


    ¡°They do not have names.¡± The nivman poured a dark liquid on his rag and scrubbed it. ¡°They will get ones then.¡±


    The shooter drank from his skin, whose fabric was cut and fraying. He looked at the ground, and he did not watch or listen to the others next to him. He huddled and shivered in his bryst and his legs pulled closer to the fire as the cold wind poured in.


    ¡°They like it,¡± the sticker insisted. ¡°We should do it. We should tell the kontor. That will get us all parts. They gather up the names, and stain their shape in sheets. Thereafter they are burned.¡±


    ¡°Why?¡±


    He shook his head. ¡°Perhaps these are names they do not like.¡±


    ¡°They are not names,¡± the nivman repeated.


    The sticker leaned back against his weapon. ¡°The Goals-¡± he said. ¡°The words they speak are different. Ours is a firm-able kind. Perhaps this is how they learn their way. We find the names, put them out, and create a different one.¡±


    ¡°I do not need to burn a word to know my own,¡± the nivman said. The sound of wood cracking splintered out from the trees. The shooter¡¯s head swiveled to the fire n curiosity, and then around, as the nivman continued. ¡°I do not know how that would help.¡± He finished wiping off the blade and stuck it in a thick gray sleeve. ¡°Why would they go that way?¡±


    ¡°Consider your metal,¡± the sticker said. ¡°We must put into ones like ourselves. Ones with mouth and metal and shine. If they did not have it, we would not eat them so. Perhaps you cannot see it, friend. But I say the name could grab a hold of you. It has hands, in a way. They snatch your mouth; maybe they can snatch you too, and bring you closer. Bring you into words. If it were so, much that is wrong could be learned ¨C and preferred.¡±


    ¡°It is not so. I have eyes. I can see that their hair is wrong. I can see that they are smaller, and do not end in the right way. They are feurkun, like you; they do not know what it is.¡± He sniffed. ¡°My words are my producers. There is nothing that can take them.¡±


    He threw a stick into the fire and leaned back. ¡°All there is left to learn,¡± he said, ¡°is how many of them we must eat.¡±


    At that moment, the Wild reached in from the dark, placed a hand on his shoulder, and pulled him in.


    The sticker and the shooter fell back into the dirt, gasping, shouting for aid, and scrambling for their weapons.


    The fire crackled. It burned low, with grin and whistle as the blundering furor enveloped it. Wisps of snow washed onto its center. Wind rained over the flames, gasping and twisting their shape before it moved on. It was blocked up by others which were not things. They were thrown down and they were warm.


    -


    She put her hands to the nivmen.


    She carried the stronghoof, and the length of her journey had begun to make its clattering, shifting baggage, along with its heavy head and hindquarters weigh on her in a burning way. With its burden she pressed into a section of dead forest, where tarred, fuzzing mats of trees that had not survived a fire flowed over hills and soaked the soil in their ashes.


    She descended a spur where the chalky roots and weeds and brambles of the discarded brush were becoming unstuck of water, spitting up a mist that packed the country overhead and made the sun shining a hazy coin at the center of the sky, pissing light. The Warrior drifted on and off the road, slouching through boughs of chipping mud.


    She could feel eyes around her. There were none, but she could feel a touch like that. She supposed that the air could take herself, and that she was making words by the footprints that she crushed in the ground. She wondered if it was like an eating, or if her heat was a kind of song that could speak. She heard a sharpwing call and saw the stronghoof¡¯s head turn at her. When she looked at it, it returned its gaze to the brush.


    A shadow pressed itself into the mist.


    She could see it coming from a long way off, as she had before, but it was different this time. The frothing darkness was taller, and had a disk adorning its head. She placed the stronghoof on the ground, where it complained and nuzzled her. She tossed its lead aside and it collapsed onto the road.


    For some time, she waited in consideration of the stranger. She thought long enough for the sun to move behind the tallest peak of a foreign mountain.


    At last, she made the first step forward. The shape of the figure did not become any more clear as she approached, but words that surrounded and produced her crept in from the blanched smoke.


    ¡°What¡¯s your name?¡±


    She stopped.


    ¡°What¡¯s your name?¡± again called Loudvoicer, wailing out from the mist. The shadow glowed.


    She walked forward again.


    ¡°I want to grab your name,¡± Bigeyes called out to her. She kept walking.


    ¡°Who are you?¡± Sunmeasure called out to her. ¡°From where do you come?¡± She kept walking.


    ¡°What is your name?¡± Bestplace called out to her. She walked.


    ¡°Who are you?¡±


    ¡°Have you got her name?¡±


    ¡°From where do you come?¡±


    ¡°Tell me your name.¡±


    ¡°Tjeni.¡±


    ¡°What is your home, feurkun?¡±


    ¡°Feurkun.¡±


    ¡°Ten-Six.¡±


    ¡°Nameless Tjeni.¡±


    ¡°What is your place?¡±


    ¡°Give me your name, Shamin.¡±


    ¡°Tell us why you¡¯re here.¡±


    ¡°Say what you are¡°Say your name. Say it.¡±


    ¡°Say your name.¡±


    ¡°Say your name.¡±


    ¡°Say your name.¡±


    ¡°Can I know your name?¡± Key asked.


    Her hand flashed through the smoke and snapped shut around the shadow¡¯s throat. She slammed it down hard enough that the ground caved in, producing a bipedal frame in the snow and mud. Its back glowed with a white light that blew out and reflected off the snow. She put her short blade through the neck of it.


    In their time together, The Warrior recognized the face as her own. Blue eyes stared up at her, along with rough and crooked features scarred and hashed apart by blades and fingers. Ripples shocked the skin of her double, and the hue of it shifted in pallor. Its hair thickened and spread apart and shed itself before it all regrew. Its body cinched and twisted around, joining with plates and metal braces that sprouted from her shape and moved into others. It had no definite design.


    The light retreated. Without opening its mouth, the creature spoke in four languages, and fell apart in her hands. It dissolved into a puddle of liquid that thinned and escaped into the soil. Drops of it continued to drip through her fingers.


    -


    A spot just past a wood-cluttered river, where water slurred its way past chipped and bitten logs and growths. In the valley was a place below a rock outcropping, littered with paths deep into the soil which emit a low buzzing. In the sky, a wispy blot of clarity showed out stars, who pushed in where the clouds had begun to dissipate.


    The Warrior awoke here, rising up in the morning from her sleeping place. When she left her spot, stretching her battered joints, she didn¡¯t bother belting on her armor.


    She watered the stronghoof with a heavy bladder. It gulped and snuffled at the liquid and glanced up at her once or twice, weighted and moonish. She ran a finger under its chin and scratched it.


    The Bell snaked out of the stronghoof¡¯s saddlebags and shifted around the bushes by their space, which lay at the bottom of a flat road that climbed the hill adjacent to the water. Then she returned.


    ¡°Joyous one,¡± the Bell said.


    She didn¡¯t turn from the stronghoof. ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°A weak thing is coming.¡±


    The stronghoof choked and sneezed as it drank. ¡°You must speak louder,¡± she said. ¡°or into my ear.¡±


    A weak thing is coming.¡±


    She drew away the pouch and tied it up. She looked at the Bell.


    ¡°A weak thing is coming,¡± she repeated.


    The Warrior went to the road and spied it out. On the horizon, a wriggling black spot had sprouted up around the forest decline, fronted by a seated figure.


    The weak thing was atop a stonehoof, although The Warrior could not say that they were riding it. Her visitor was rocked and shang by its mount, letting it control the route and kicking up sweeping pillars of dust as rider and ride wrestled for control.


    The Bell became excited. She swirled around The Warrior¡¯s feet and up her legs and around her neck. ¡°Isn¡¯t it strange?¡± she asked.


    The figure continued to approach. He was small, and his hair was black. A white over hung around his shoulders and crested through the wind. It spoke of him.

 The Strangers (Part 5 of 5) - The Stringplayer Flees & The End of Company

    The light shining in from the shuttings was ribbed and bright. Fragile awoke splayed out on the floor with a throbbing ache at the back of his neck. He stumbled to his feet, his head pounding.


    Wander, her equipment, and all evidence of her habitation had disappeared. The stain he had been working on had dried, along with the water he¡¯d thrown into it. He looked around; then, he went down to the salon, searching for her through its tabled halls.


    ¡°Wander?¡± he exclaimed. ¡°Wander!¡±


    He accost the sets of road people he could find, Larun and Freeman and all the other, stranger ones who were passing through. ¡°I¡¯m looking for someone,¡± he said. ¡°A high fighter, addressed in words and canes. Have you seen her?¡± The road people, those who could understand him, shook their heads. The others shrugged him off, frothing and barking at him in Sprak. He found a Rootcliff, a tall bearded man from the North wearing one of Wander¡¯s words around his neck in a clay fixture. The Stringplayer went up to him in excitement, but the Rootcliff pushed him and jabbed a knife in his face. He shouted in his language and The Stringplayer fled in terror.


    He found a sympathetic pair of Freemen sitting by themselves in the public room. They listened patiently as The Stringplayer relayed the twists and overtures of his tale. After he had finished talking, one of them lifted up a cut of red meat he was eating and proferred it to him.


    The Stringplayer¡¯s eyes searched endlessly for her, but they grew empty, and they found that a diminishing prospect.


    At last he struck upon the Salonier himself, and inquired. He pointed at the tithechest outside the Salon as he knit and sew, putting the finishing touches on his blanket. ¡°Gone,¡± he said in Goalish. ¡°She give price for you.¡±


    ¡°Did she say where she was going?¡± The Stringplayer asked.


    He shook his head. ¡°Gone. Gone To-Sidedark.¡±


    The Stringplayer shuddered and exhaled. ¡°Then that is where I will go.¡±


    The Salonier raised an eyebrow. ¡°Go?¡± he said. ¡°Gave price. Many days good. I took. In danger you?¡±


    ¡°No,¡± The Stringplayer replied. ¡°I am¡­ ih. There is something¡­ I must go away.¡±


    The Salonier tilted his head.


    ¡°I must,¡± The Stringplayer repeated. ¡°I¡¯m sorry. Would you be willing to return her gifts?¡±


    The Salonier went over to the wall, and from a stow kept behind one of his weavings, he brought out a hollowed out, gourdish shell. It was filled with coins, and he began to count them out on their table. ¡°I smile for it,¡± he said. ¡°You hand it to her?¡±


    ¡°I will try,¡± The Stringplayer said. ¡°But I can¡¯t take all of it.¡±


    He stopped counting. The Stringplayer looked to the hoofs tramping by outside.


    -


    The Stringplayer and his mount trampled the Southern bounds of Partplant, kicking up waves of snow and dirt.


    His stonehoof had a coat that was red like blood. It bucked around and their hair blew in the wind. The Stringplayer grasped the leather straps that bound it until they cut his skin, but he could only loosely guide his mount in any one direction. It let out a neighing scream at him, and he was glad, because it made him afraid, which made him move when he would not.


    They went past the illegible white monolith and entered the rounds.


    They rode for half a day. When the sun crested the sky The Stringplayer yanked the stonehoof¡¯s straps and begged it to halt. It was not very late, but his legs were burning and had been cut by the riding. Until another mile had past, the hoof would not oblige him.


    Once it had, he fell off its back and crumbled to the ground. He was soon forced to jump up, when the hoof immediately began to Wander away. He rushed to it and wrenched at its leads. It whined and knocked its head away, pulling forward.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± he whispered. ¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡±


    His apologies did nothing, and he could not pull it back. It wrestled through the woods for another mile and he followed, clinging to the leads. It reached a patch of snow where shoots of grass had emerged from beneath the white and began to nip at them, enabling the Stringplayer to tie it up to a tree. When it was done, it tugged at the ropes and ground away from them with screams that spat smoke and water, but it folded up its legs once it could find no escape.


    The Stringplayer shivered at a distance. He still had no means to make a fire, having relied on The Wandering Star¡¯s expertise for it. When night came the hoof bundled itself up in a nearby bush, and breathed quickly. He risked its fury to sit by it, finding it very hot, and when morning had come again, he had snuggled up against it.


    -


    They took a slower pace that day. The hoof trotted and The Stringplayer¡¯s hair waved in the wind, raven-black. His coldover was dried of all the spit and blood which his captivity had thrown into it. Even with the sun on him and the wind drawing down, the stab in The Stringplayer¡¯s chest tore with their every jerking bounce and a small red trickle began to overrun his binding. Tears came at first, and they kept wanting to, but after some time his eyes could no longer lift them out, and all that was left was a scalding white light that he could only see because it had carved itself into his brain, where an ordinary volume of panic kept its place.


    He shit through his mouth, over the left side of the hoof. Its coat and the snow beneath it were sprayed with chunky acid refuse. The hoof bucked and screamed at him. His head fell against it, and he resolved to ask the first person he met if they had the whereabouts of the Wandering Star.


    At an icy causeway, where the road traced the foot of a cliff, a pack of Larun nivmen came into view and started to pass them by. Many of them were patched, limping, cut apart, and dragged on litters made of sticks and heavy branches. Some of them were Freemen and some were Goalborn given Western weapons, shaved scalps, and unseeing eyes. Some also were Laruns from the To-Dark place that She had spoke of. He saw a shooting-man, the remains of whose weapon were strung about his back. He clutched his bryst as though it were the only thing keeping him alive.


    Believing that he could speak with the fighters, he halted the hoof. Members of the dismembered company - the ones who listened, and did not walk on - tilted their heads at his choking speech.


    One of the nivmen, a plumed Larun on a scratched and haggard hoof, shouted, ¡°Why is that Goal on a tithe? Why is that Goal on a tithe?!¡±


    One of the Goalborn spoke up at The Stringplayer. The Laruns took wonder at their passioned exchange, which rose up. The nivman shot his hand down the road and shouted at The Stringplayer. He smacked the back of his own neck and interrupted apparent protest. The Stringplayer and his words shrunk, but he shook further in hoarse, sprinted Goalish.


    At last, the Goalborn turned to the rider. ¡°He is looking for a woman,¡± he shouted.


    ¡°What does a Goal want with a woman?¡± the rider shouted back. ¡°Get him off that tithe. Get him off.¡±


    A pair of Laruns limped up to the hoof and reached for him. The hoof reared and kicked one of them in the face, punching him into the snow and causing the other to recoil. It exploded off past the column, whereupon missiles were shot and chased the two of them. From then on, The Stringplayer resolved to take De¡¯s advice.


    -


    They went into the Wild, following the Southern road.


    When he had first found the Wild, The Stringplayer had been hungry, thirsty, frightened, and alone. He had not seen many places or living people. He had heard the Wild, at that time, call up fighting hearts to hunt him. He had heard it call up air to freeze him, and he had heard it call up stones to throw themselves between his feet, that he might fall down and scrape himself and cry. He was here again, and he knew rounds, and he could hear many different voices. None of them shared timbre with the others.


    The Stringplayer and the hoof tramped over a greystone arch above a shifting river. They cut a wrenched, arguing path through a field of thicktrees with their needles flared, where clumps of flowers would one day sprout when the warmth had returned. He chattered to the woods as he had once, and to the hoof, whose temper seemed to cool the more he spoke, the less he pulled and the more it could skip the road and gallop with great license.


    At night, the Stringplayer played. His music was swallowed with delight and great hunger by the empty air that the dark provided. They moved from one place to the other, and the Stringplayer¡¯s skin twisted up the winds. The dirt met their frantic rush when they ran upon tusks who could chase them about the forest. His blood cut a path onto the ground and faded through the roots.


    On the third night, they set down by a mound of sticks, leaves, and branches. They awoke to the pittering of many feet, echoing out from the dark. Shapes with four legs prowled through the trees with eyes that glowed, and they were barked at. The howls ran up to The Stringplayer and dragged him to the ground and bit him on the leg and arm. After the hoof ran them down, the two of them departed quickly, and they were not pursued.


    The road led them across a group of Goals.


    The host of born bled out in thin columns from the trees, some leading animals and riding hoofs, carrying jabbers and bulked bags. The Stringplayer supposed that they were born, given their flowing black hair, jagged blades, and clothing; their overs wove together light and earthy colors outside those of rock or a daylight sky, which he had come to realize the Laruns preferred. Many of the Goals sang and called out to the Stringplayer, and he ignored them. So two riders diverged from the movers and rushed their hoofs alongside his. They began to chatter.


    ¡°We are friends, born one,¡± the first said. ¡°We are friends. What are you doing without yours? By what way have you passed out of them?¡±


    ¡°I am just a moving one,¡± he said.


    They smiled. ¡°If you are moving, then where is your kind? Your creators?¡±


    ¡°I am moving to someone I know.¡±


    ¡°We are friends for you here,¡± the other said. ¡°You look like you are dried out, grabbed from eating and good water. If you tell us who they are, we will send these into you, and some can carry you that way.¡±


    The Stringplayer thought of De¡¯s words, but he was very tempted. ¡°The one I know is a fighter,¡± he said, ¡°and she wears two canes.¡±


    ¡°What is her name?¡±


    ¡°From where does she come?¡±


    ¡°Is she an Under?¡±


    ¡°A Changer?¡±


    ¡°A Grain-Catcher?¡±


    ¡°I know her,¡± The Stringplayer said. ¡°She wears two canes. She leads a stronghoof.¡±


    ¡°What is her shape?¡±


    ¡°What are her words?¡±


    ¡°Who are her friends?¡±


    ¡°She has many words,¡± The Stringplayer replied. ¡°They are all good. Her shape is great. It is very good. She has many friends, and I have met them. They are kind ones of every place. She is someone I know.¡±


    The Goals were tired of his breathless whispers, and of his eyes, which had fallen from both them and the road, and were beginning to resemble bowls of milk. ¡°Where has she come from?¡± they asked. ¡°Tell us that, for all that is good.¡±


    The Stringplayer lit up and said, ¡°A place called Shamkat.¡±


    ¡°Shamarkat!¡± they cried. ¡°A Shamar outman!¡± they cried.


    ¡°Yes,¡± The Stringplayer said. ¡°It is a wonderful place. I have its words.¡±


    They frowned. ¡°You should not be with an offman,¡± they said. ¡°You must be affected, or in something wrong.¡±


    More Goals rode up. ¡°Who is this one?¡± they asked. ¡°Is he coming with us?¡±


    ¡°He speaks wrong,¡± the riders said. ¡°He speaks of a friend. An outman friend.¡±


    ¡°That is wrong.¡±


    So they threw him off the hoof and tied him up.


    ¡°You will be our friend now,¡± they said, carrying him South. ¡°Do not worry. We are in much need for it. So you will be given plenty. That is right.¡±


    -


    The Stringplayer was abducted by the movers.


    They travelled West in a column, full of men and women and children. For a while, they would not let him out of his bindings, which stuck him up by the legs and arms and mouth. He was hitched to a hoof and sat at the fire with them when the night came, where they cooked for him and spooned their food into his mouth. They brushed and tried to water the hoof, who kicked at them and screamed. It bucked even harder at their work than it had at the Stringplayer.


    A fireworker, dressed in a black leather over that the Stringplayer found memorial, went down by the fire and stripped him with a group of Walls. Then he inspect the marks and cuts and boils that the Stringplayer¡¯s body had collected from the Wild. A solution was prepared in bowls and applied to grainy sheets of tissue and a meatbearer¡¯s dried viscera that they fixed to his wounds with binding sap. As they burned shut the wounds that needed it, he screamed and cried loud shivering sobs and trembled without abate, and he would have bit his tongue in half if it were not for the leather ball that he was gagged with.


    On the third day, the movers took residence between a group of trees. A stool was put down and one of their Lodges, an old woman, sat on it, and The Stringplayer sat before her. The Walls assembled around her.


    ¡°We should not let him out,¡± one said. ¡°He is still shaking. I see that he has forgotten ways, if he ever knew them.¡±


    The Lodge shook her head. ¡°We should be kind, Fixer. Now unhitch this gasping heart, and give him what he ought to have.¡±


    They cut apart his bonds and pushed him on his knees. He hugged his arms, shivering.


    ¡°And now, braidman,¡± she said, ¡°will you respond, and cry as you did before?¡±


    ¡°I-I will not.¡± The Stringplayer spoke with a face and a shaky smile.


    ¡°That is right.¡± One of the Walls brought him a drink of water, and the others surrounded him and tapped his body with their canes. ¡°And now you will go to the Chewers. They need a picking one. We have kept you from the rulers, yon; you do not know where you are, and you cannot walk on your own. That and everything should keep you here. If you leave us you will fall to the ground and eating will be lost to you. You will be eating for more Wild hearts. Do you agree?¡±


    He nodded, and they gave him a place within the column.


    He stole away from his tent in the seats that very night, collecting his bag and clutching his three-string like an infant. He crept among the pack of hoofs and draught animals and found the one he knew. It snorted and inclined its head.


    He leapt atop its back, and he did not need to pull its hair before it issued a roaring scream and crashed them through the Goalish camp, stomping over fires and pounding up sparks, pushing out into parts unknown.


    -


    The Stringplayer had lost his way, and it felt destroyed. However long they searched, the road had given out, and gave him back to the wilderness. It was looking treacherous now. They passed through dense fleets of wood and beneath ridges that dangled curls of white, and columns of ice that dripped. The hoof hung its head and trudged, and The Stringplayer did not know where its hate had gone. He wondered if he would find his way back ¨C to people, to buildings, to what was fixed, or to Wan


    He felt as though he had been about to push a person or go to a forbidden place. He wrapped his arms around the hoof¡¯s neck tightly, and it cooed.


    The horizon wobbled and shifted like water. An isle or a glacier could have pushed out from the wave of it, but instead there came a woman, picking over the rolling plain they had started to work across. She was pregnant, and her skin was weathered by the cold and wind. At her hip she carried a cane of whipped coolwood, which had no metal. She had wrapped herself in a light over for a warmer season, which wound about her legs and shoulders and lined her silhouette with the color of violets. Her eyes were bright orange.


    The Stringplayer was perplexed by every piece of it, and he was not sure if was again consumed by isolation in the way he had been, before his rescue by the Star. He decided, however desperate he was to reach his aim, he would not speak with her, out of fear that this might be true.


    They passed by one another without event. The Stringplayer strained his eyes away as they passed and tried not to think of her as he headed on to the next step and the next. A pale, jointed rod stuck up out of the snow where it pointed his eyes, giving way to a series of bleached curves and severed hands which marked a swerving path into the dark forest.


    A cry sounded. ¡°Stop now, born of Goal!¡±


    The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    The Stringplayer pulled on the hoof¡¯s ropes and turned in exhaust amazement. The woman watched them from far away, and raised her fist in anger.


    ¡°Are you so beyond ways?¡± she shouted. ¡°Are you so beyond ways, born of Goal? Are you so beyond ways, that you have passed out from the ones of your creators? Are you so beyond the naming and lodging of like? Are you so beyond the rules, given you by Day-Sayer, and by Stone-Sayer, and by Rain-Sayer, who you adore so much, and whose call will smile on your shape? Are you so beyond ways, born of Goal?¡±


    ¡°I-I was born of men, eldwoman!¡± he exclaimed.


    He could not make out her expression. ¡°Throw in your meaning!¡± she called.


    ¡°I was born of men,¡± he said. ¡°I was born of one named Peak. I was born of one named Beam. They carried me.¡±


    She paused before she replied. ¡°What gifts can you give?¡± she asked. ¡°I have been beaten and eaten from. The hunger could send me away.¡±


    ¡°I have nothing for eating, eldwoman. I too have been beaten, eldwoman. I am escaped, eldwoman. I could not gather for you; I do not know picking, eldwoman.¡±


    ¡°Then come here, Yonman Key,¡± she said. She threw forward her hand and snapped back it back. ¡°Down here, Yonman Key. I will eat of you, and the voice you have.¡±


    He blanched. He descended the hoof and left it as he went back to her. Her features resolved, producing a curved jaw and a small face. ¡°What has given you that call, eldwoman?¡±


    ¡°I have your name. I have the lines, Yonman Key.¡±


    ¡°I wish you would not call me that,¡± The Stringplayer said. ¡°It is a call I had once, but now I do not, and I would not retrieve it.¡±


    ¡°The call cannot be moved, Yonman Key,¡± she said. ¡°I have lines of a born kind. It is a gift I was given from Day-Sayer. It is written in the lines; it is written in the where you are.¡±


    ¡°I know one who rules the sun. I do not know how one would say a day, eldwoman.¡±


    ¡°You do not have the lines,¡± she replied. ¡°Why are you in my place?¡±


    ¡°I am looking for a fighter,¡± The Stringplayer said. ¡°She wears many canes. She leads a loaded hoof. Have you seen like, eldwoman?¡±


    The woman stepped forward. ¡°Have I seen such a kind. But what sends you that way, Yonman Key?¡±


    ¡°I am sent by-¡± The Stringplayer faltered. ¡°By- ih¡­¡±


    The woman watched him search for his answer. ¡°Do not try too hard,¡± she said. ¡°I have the lines. I have a voice. I can speak about my sight.¡±


    She went up to The Stringplayer and held his head in her hands.


    ¡°It seems like you are gone away now,¡± she said.


    His eyebrows bent to the sides. ¡°Eldwoman?¡±


    ¡°Yes. Go on this way, and disaster will come. You will not recognize yourself,¡± she continued. ¡°You will be lost from rulers forever. You will be lost from the shape of your creators. Your every word will be twisted until it is not itself. They will be turned out for an other¡¯s; that is the born condition.¡±


    The Stringplayer balked, wrinkled his brow and contract his face. ¡°I cannot see its disaster,¡± he said.


    The woman frowned. ¡°To leave out your kind ¨C what else does this put in your eye?¡±


    He looked ashamed. ¡°I have always been that way, eldwoman. I- I found a kind.¡± His brow lowered. ¡°Yes. I found a kind, like I had not before. And I¡­ that is what sends me.¡± He shrank and hung his head. ¡°That is what sends me.¡±


    The woman looked at him fidget. Then she pulled in The Stringplayer, and embraced him.


    ¡°Ih ¨C you, who are my son,¡± she said. ¡°Ih ¨C I, who am your daughter. I know that you will never leave me; you will always be in the places I am, and a word should not break you from them. I wish you will go to your brothers and sisters, heart I adore. I wish you will bring them your new spot. Then they will not slide out from the other. And I will have friends.¡±


    He was speechless. She laid a hand on his mouth and on his stomach, and he was struck by a feeling of wholeness that did not abate. When he felt that he was about to burst, she turned away from him.


    ¡°If you follow the bones,¡± she said, ¡°the thing you seek will take you.¡±


    She walked on. The Stringplayer watched her move through the sweet, drifting snowfall. Her shape appeared to fold into the distance.


    ¡°Eldwo-¡± He started to call out to her, but an overwhelming pull descended on his chest, whose work suppressed every safety and filling piece that he still entertained. His knees buckled and he held himself, sobbing noisily. Tears broke with the surface of the snow.


    -


    The stonehoof walked past the trace of calves, arms and skulls. The ground began to swell with dark and twisted spots of dust and rubble, cut across the soil in growths of squalid gray, and Fragile realized that they were nivmen.


    They tramped over muddy hands and corpses, drenched with snowmelt and pierced by missiles, their heads broken by rock and the swing of sticks. Their path dipped down into a thick plot of bushes, filled with half-budded biteleaves where the heat swirled around and made them forget the cold. Chill was lifted from The Stringplayer¡¯s chest, and a network of green islets could be seen poking up from the sea of sweltered foam. They gave rise to a bright cloud that dwelt over the place they were, obscuring what came after and keeping out the light.


    The hoof navigated the fog at a trot. The Stringplayer¡¯s eyes drooped with fatigue and held its ropes loosely. His thighs ached; the movers¡¯ patches had begun to tear free.


    His head nodded without his word and he blinked. In the distance, the shadow of a person had been produced by the mist. The Stringplayer¡¯s eyes widened and he yanked on the hoof. It grunted at him.


    He slid off, yelping as he did so. He clung to the stonehoof and widened his eyes at the shadow, which was short and long-haired.


    He turned to the stonehoof and tried to touch its face, but it jerked away. ¡°Please stay,¡± The Stringplayer said. He released his hand from its lead, watching for a sign that it might rear, flee, or protest. ¡°I¡¯ll be back. I hope I will. I need you to stay. I only need you for a little while longer. Please stay. Please stay until then. Please.¡±


    He let go of its bindings. The hoof looked at him and exhaled, pushing his face with wet air.


    He stepped away from it and faced the mist. A moment of sweat and breath; he walked forward, extending his hand and moving one foot after another. He kept his eyes on the darkness.


    The crystal swirl paraded around him and the ground crunched and cracked and splashed underfoot. The watcher moved closer as he advanced, matching The Stringplayer¡¯s step. He was not addressed.


    The clouds shrank back. The figure¡¯s image rolled up to him, assembling liquid between the waters of the mist, constituting itself of the total volume which resided past his own. It gained its form, enabling The Stringplayer to look at it in full. His eyes widened, and he shivered, but; after they had gazed at it long enough, his brow moved up, and his mouth shut itself. He felt the warmth.


    The figure put out its hand. The Stringplayer took it.


    <hr>


    The stonehoof charged onward, turning ragged violence on the ground as it slung them headlong through the Wild. The Stringplayer lashed its ropes and it bucked, shrugging him loose. He hugged its neck.


    ¡°Please hurry,¡± he said. ¡°Please hurry. Please hurry.¡±


    It screamed again and again, but it answered his plea.


    The country swept by, and their speed kicked up snow. The Stringplayer¡¯s face became cut and scored by debris; the wind blew up snowflakes and drove them through his cheeks. Parts of him began to turn a shade of blue. His hair blew back into a rolling wave, and without his notice, his twin braids were thrown apart by the gallop, and dissolved throughout the rest. He could not make out anything on the road in front of him, and his eyes were closed.


    The ways had passed and they reached the slope of a tall hill, after breaking from the trees. The stonehoof slipped and skid and stopped as they met the bottom. The great momentum finally threw out its rider at last, tearing The Stringplayer¡¯s grip free and detaching him from his post. He and belongings were catapulted out from their spot, a flailing mixture of straps and strings and limbs. They were all propelled to an ignominious death on the road.


    The Warrior arched her knee forward and launched. She roared through the air like a loosed bolt, hooked her arms around him, and wrenched him back from the ground.


    They rolled into the snow, landing upright as the haze settled. The Stringplayer¡¯s effects tumbled down into a smattered heap upon the pavement.


    He panted and looked up at her. The Warrior looked down at The Stringplayer, whereupon her jaw loosened. Her eyes ran over the scars and blotches on his face, arms, and legs.


    The stonehoof released a scream of liberation. The sun shone on all its colors. It galloped off the road and across the plain, towards the hills in the distance. They watched it disappear into a small red speck, until it could be seen no more.


    The Stringplayer¡¯s hands gripped the fabric of his coldover.


    ¡°Quiet Feet,¡± The Warrior said.


    ¡°S-star?¡±


    ¡°What are you doing here?¡±


    ¡°I - egh-h-¡± She realized that she could feel the bone in his arms. His mouth tremored and his eyes shook.


    She loosened her grip and released him. He gasped and clutched his biceps, which The Warrior¡¯s grip had left throbbing.


    She crouched down. The Stringplayer shivered. ¡°You- you left,¡± he whispered.


    ¡°Yes,¡± she said.


    ¡°I did not know ¨C where you were.¡±


    ¡°That was my design.¡±


    He dropped his gaze.


    ¡°Did the Salonier let you leave?¡±


    The Stringplayer nodded.


    ¡°Then I misjudged him.¡±


    She put a hand to her chin. ¡°Come,¡± she said, turning back to the Stronghoof. ¡°I will guide you back. It would be dangerous, otherwise.¡±


    She headed back to the stronghoof, but after a few steps, she had heard no movement from The Stringplayer. She stopped and turned; he had stood up, although his knees quivered violently. He was holding back tears.


    She returned to him. ¡°Quiet Feet,¡± she said, ¡°what pain makes this? What has brought it to you?¡±


    The Stringplayer blinked back tears. ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± The Stringplayer whispered.


    She frowned.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry I was a burden on you,¡± he said, looking down. His water hissed as it met the snow. ¡°I know you would spare me this pain too. But I should have it. You have spared me everything. You have provided me with every care, and every gentle good. I am not hungry because of you. Because of you I smile. I feel like there is nothing drags me.¡± After he said, his expression twisted up. ¡°But I still tried to stay with you.¡±


    He put his hands to his face and struggled to keep his voice steady. ¡°I cannot ask for your forgetting. I should not receive it. I have already taken too much.¡±


    The Warrior watched him carefully. He turned around and began to walk up the road.


    The flensed spots on The Stringplayer¡¯s legs ached and protested at the pace of his retreat, but he was caught in the anguish of it, and ignored their complaints. His burned gait led him over a stone, and as he wiped his face, he tripped.


    As he stumbled, a thick glove reached out and gripped the hood of his coldover, holding him in place. He struggled against it.


    ¡°Where are you going?¡± The Warrior asked.


    ¡°S-star?!¡± he squeaked.


    ¡°You should not travel through there,¡± she said. ¡°It would hurt you again.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m- I¡¯m-¡±


    ¡°And you have cuts. Those will get worse.¡±


    ¡°I can- you do not need-¡±


    ¡°Quiet Feet.¡± The Warrior turned around and took him by the shoulders. ¡°To what aim do you see my leaving?¡±


    The Stringplayer was a very long time in answering. He could not meet her gaze. ¡°I-I see no aim,¡± he said. ¡°I see none. It is our arrangement. There was no need for you to stay. I do not say it.¡±


    ¡°Then why have you come back, and hurt yourself like this? What would you have from me?¡±


    He said nothing.


    The Warrior had not blinked in quite some time. ¡°I have made many works,¡± she said. ¡°I have stabbed beasts. I have cut apart a gathering. Leaving you was taller than most of them.¡±


    A fresh wave of feeling rolled through his head, and its reason was lost on him. This made him angry, which made more feeling. ¡°Why?¡±


    ¡°Because you are a Goal. I want you safe. And the only way that can be is if you are somewhere I am not. I am so commanded.¡±


    His brow wrenched itself down. He covered his face again.


    ¡°What is it?¡± she asked.


    ¡°I¡­¡± The Stringplayer shook his head. ¡°I do not think I should say.¡±


    ¡°Tell me.¡±


    He looked down. ¡°I did not know what it was to feel safe,¡± he said, ¡°until¡­ until I met you.¡±


    A dim stirring churned around The Warrior¡¯s stomach, which she suppressed.


    ¡°But I know now that was virtuous,¡± he continued. ¡°I know that now.¡±


    ¡°Fear is virtuous?¡±


    Tears poured down his face. "F-for - like a person who has destroyed their kind. Like me. That is the good way."


    The Warrior was given pause.


    She cradled his head and ran her fingers through his hair. ¡°I¡¯ve never met someone like you,¡± she said.


    The Stringplayer looked up at her. ¡°What do you mean?¡±


    The Warrior wondered what she meant. ¡°Someone with¡­ wide eyes.¡±


    He blushed. He turned himself, and something came into him which turned up the corners of his mouth, cutting apart the moist streaks of blood and water. The feeling of it produced some agony in him, and he did his best to force back this unjust light.


    The stirring jumped up into The Warrior¡¯s chest. She pulled him closer, yanking out a gentle exhale. ¡°Wande-?!¡±


    He bit his tongue when he realized what he¡¯d said. She watched his expression of surprise give way to horror. ¡°Fragile,¡± Wander said. ¡°I do make you smile. Do you know why?¡±


    Fragile was shocked and he did not say.


    ¡°Because I want your smiles,¡± she said. ¡°I want them all.¡± She pushed her glove between his fingers and touched his lips. ¡°I want this one.¡±


    Fragile¡¯s head had grown light. Wander¡¯s heat had put a fine sheen of sweat on his brow, and he said something that brought up her hand. It wrapped around a lock of hair that had fallen between them, and brushed it aside.


    Wander lowered down her face and put it to Fragile¡¯s. His eyes closed. The spots of blue on his cheeks bloomed and extinguished. His knees gave out, but she held him up.


    A meandering crimson beast cut its way back over the snow. The Bell poked her head out from her bag and watched the stonehoof sit itself down nearby, off the shoulder of their encounter. It nibbled at a patch of grass.


    </a>-


    ¡°You must promise to never put yourself in front of my blade again. No matter what she or anybody says.¡±


    ¡°I promise.¡±


    ¡°You must promise to consider my word if there is fighting, and if I see something that may hurt you.¡±


    ¡°I promise.¡±


    ¡°And you must promise to go, if I say you must go.¡±


    He hesitated. She was about to rebuke him, before he spoke again. ¡°Yes Wander. Yes, I promise.¡±


    The place they had decided to break was covered by thicktrees beneath a cream-colored gravel slope. The ice on the branches there, which dripped water from the canopy that began to run down and form a gully aside their bags, began to go hard and sharp; the warm air was passing out of Goal and to the East, toward the spot first named Hubun, where it would stay for a little longer, until the fire there deigned its return.


    A fire of their own burned before the foreigners. They sat next to it, along with the stronghoof and the Bell, who lay wrapped about the stronghoof¡¯s head and legs. The stonehoof padded around in the shadows, keeping its distance.


    Wander and Fragile faced each other on their knees as Wander delivered her conditions. When they were finished, Wander turned toward the fire and sat.


    ¡°If we are to remain travelling companions for a while longer,¡± she continued, ¡°I think it is needed that I hand something to you. I have hidden it until now, because it isn¡¯t safe to have. Are you willing to take it?¡±


    Fragile¡¯s foot shivered and squirmed. He nodded twice.


    My arrival to this place was not by chance. I asked to be sent here. To the Wild. To Goal.¡±


    His brow furrowed, and he nodded again.


    ¡°The Freemen who came to your home carried signs. Do you remember their shape?¡±


    He thought back to that day. He searched among the dark, the faces, and the people who had gone. He grew tense and his neck bent, and Wander was about to stir him when his eyes opened.


    ¡°A shot,¡± he said. ¡°A shot? It looked like that. A shot and a stick.¡±


    A log on the fire hissed and split apart, rolling up a fume of sparks. ¡°The shape is claimed by a man,¡± Wander said. ¡°When I was young, he was a fighting Larun. Now he guides them here. What the Freemen did to your home, he did to mine.¡±


    Fragile considered this, hugging his legs tightly. ¡°Have you come to cut him?¡±


    ¡°Yes. I have.¡±


    The fire snipped and bit away. He shifted in place.


    ¡°Knowing this,¡± she said, ¡°do you still wish to follow me?¡±


    ¡°I would help you do it.¡±


    She put her gaze on him. ¡°Do you want to hit another?¡±


    ¡°No.¡± Fragile thought a moment and shook his head. ¡°No. I feel bad when that happens. I feel bad at any hurting. I am hard pressed to hear it. I can see myself have it.¡± He paused and looked up. ¡°But it is a need. And it was made by others.¡±


    She was still.


    ¡°If you cut apart this man,¡± Fragile said, ¡°will you become untroubled?¡±


    ¡°That is my aim.¡±


    His grip tightened. ¡°Then let us bring it to him,¡± he said.


    The lines by Fragile¡¯s mouth and eyes softened and his pupils grew as he looked into the fire, but he did not recant. Wander watched it happen. ¡°If you want it,¡± she said, ¡°then we cannot remain as travelling companions.¡±


    Fragile¡¯s introspections were disrupted. He opened his mouth and arched his brow.


    She turned herself to face him fully, and loosened the glove from her right hand. ¡°If we are lined up in this way, and kept of like aim, our gathering must be a pointed one. And we have become a unity.¡±


    ¡°¡®Unity¡¯?¡±


    ¡°It means that we attend this work in order to lift each other,¡± she replied. ¡°It means that we are joined to the same spot by this need. It means that we will offer into its department and speak about it, and discover the speediest path to its closure. We will do that until its end; until it has disappeared from Ourland, or until the warmth has passed, and the cold has come back, and I must go away from this place forever.¡±


    The glove fell away and revealed a large black welt at the center of her palm. She held it out. ¡°A unity.¡±


    Realizing that there was some expectation of reply, Fragile held out his hand straight toward her. She guided it to her wrist and grasped his. He understood what was needed and his fingers snapped shut around her forearm. ¡°A unity,¡± he declared.


    A slight tremor went through Wander at the unexpected impact. Fragile saw it and tried to release her. She stopped him with her other hand.


    He held on to her again.


    -


    ¡°...the forest will freeze and the trees will freeze; the waters will freeze and the fish will freeze. Their bodies will collect in the soil and make it rich, and time will make it grow old. The clouds will come down from the stars and settle on the land. All will be forgotten before Ourland remembers itself again.¡±


    The night, and home, had come again. The mottled domes of Trethbiekilon, along with their golden sprawl protruded from the grass and country toward herself and her wiser. Wander felt stronger than she had been.


    She could feel a breeze from afar. The smoke of the place, sent up by pots of fire, poured out from it and doused her chest. It let her move her arms and lips and she shaped them in her own way.


    ¡°And then we will freeze?¡± she asked her wiser.


    ¡°Yes.¡±


    Wander looked up and saw her. Her arms wrapped around Wander¡¯s chest, clad in rust-swept braces. Her face was hard, spotted and sun-baked. She was smiling. ¡°And then we will freeze.¡±


    ¡°What happens then?¡±


    She looked down on her daughter and her mouth fell. ¡°Those are old words,¡± she said. ¡°They have been said before the Secondpeople. They contain us all.¡±


    ¡°What happens?¡±


    Her wiser stroked Wander¡¯s hair. ¡°A moment. Dirt will rise up to meet you. Your skin will open to the small and helpless things of the world. It will nourish the trees and animals. Then it will become room for a people, a land and a living, all your own.¡±


    ¡°What happens then?¡± she asked. ¡°When will I return?¡±


    ¡°It is like I said. You have become the land.¡±


    She took Wander¡¯s hand. ¡°In time, you will learn to remember yourself.¡±

 Story 7 - The Voyages of Water

    It seems only days ago that Fragile the Sixbraid was living a quiet life in his people¡¯s village, in the ancient and storied land named Goal. Without provocation, a group of soldiers from a hate-filled empire entered into it, killing his friends, his family, and all the keepers of their tradition.


    Wander, a lone warrior from a distant land, arrived just in time to save Fragile and the Sixbraids from complete annihilation. Finding pleasure in each other¡¯s company, the foreigners and the friends who found them now plumb the heart of the New Wild, pursuing towards Herdetopp the forces that stole Wander''s childhood and feast now upon The Land of Rulers.


    -


    The night in Goal passed by with speed. Wander and Fragile could not see it, as they were together asleep.


    The Bell could see, because of the kind she was, with no eyes for its light or lack. She could see then how the night was soon eroded, and tremored at the day.


    ¡°You poor and flimsy dancer,¡± she whispered. ¡°Will you show me what she needs? Will you remit what you are owed?¡±


    Am could not speak, so he did not. The dim and the bright poured in to Wander¡¯s face. This Wild was thin of wings to greet her, and its clear patches of needles and rising waves of dirt and sand spoke to no preference for the dark¡¯s exit.


    Their fire had kept up the whole night, and as her eyes broke open Wander saw its fairy trail of smoke gushing back up through the branches of the thicktree they had sheltered under. The stronghoof dozed, its tail flicking the ground, and the black rope of The Bell curled tight around its neck. A bulky shadow massing just prior to the distance was formed by the dawn; rays of sunlight gave out its vis of rolling satin. Fragile was nestled in his night bag, clutching his three-string. He shivered, but did not appear to have moved otherwise.


    ¡°What did you see, Joyous One?¡± The Bell cried at Wander. She unbound herself from the stronghoof and swam to her, curling and twisting and tumbling over snow. ¡°Look at all this new!¡±


    Wander did not respond. She sat for a while as the sun rose further, casting sight across the woodfold and peaked white hills in a pale hiss of the visible, frothing mist. She took her pipe out from her vest and stuffed its bowl with resin, then smoked by the slopes, blowing fire into them.


    The Bell followed her and climbed on her shoulders as she surveilled the Wild. ¡°Your kind would seek a word for this.¡±


    Wander puffed. ¡°What word?¡±


    ¡°One to make it smile. None can, but they would try. I believe she would be glad that you are here.¡±


    ¡°She would approve of my company.¡±


    The Bell curled around her shoulders.


    After her supply became exhausted, Wander collected an armload of fabric and stoppered bottles from the stronghoof, slid on her hard leather gloves, and knelt down next to Fragile. She shook his shoulder and said his name.


    He recoiled from her and his eyes snapped to life. They gave way to watery gaps that expelled as he gasped.


    ¡°The sun is up,¡± Wander said. She squatted down and began assembling her tools on a rough sheet. ¡°Show me your cuts.¡±


    ¡°My- my cuts?¡±


    ¡°On your legs. I¡¯m going to cover them.¡±


    After he was wincingly extracted from the bag, she made to pull off his breeches. This revealed the patches given Fragile by the movers who had abducted him. They had since decayed and become torn by his additional riding and time in the rounds, and were reduced to little more than moist tatters clinging to plots of water and slick. The Bell poked at them, and Wander gently guided her away.


    ¡°Did you do this?¡± she asked, picking a lingering speck out from a mound on his inner thigh.


    He shook his head. ¡°It was done well,¡± she said. ¡°You¡¯re free of bad waters. They¡¯ll fix.¡±


    Wander rubbed drops of clear liquid into the spots where his skin had stripped. She tied cloth over each of them, smoothing a paste into the fabric before turning it on him. Between these remedies, she felt Fragile grow very warm. His pulse was jittery, and his face was red, but he did not appear troubled.


    She finished her work. Then the morning began; she went out and dragged in a roothead from the rounds. A fire was set, where she chopped off a section of its flank, and from its meat refined a broth that she poured into a bowl and set by Fragile¡¯s night bag. For his part, Fragile washed her different colored sets of hair, cleansed her weapons, and fed The Stronghoof.


    He approached The Stonehoof in the rounds, who had not yet woken, once The Stronghoof was finished. The Stonehoof had set itself in a bed of grass and it stood itself up when it heard Fragile approach, screaming and fumbling backwards. Wander turned her head up at the noise as her blade was hide-deep in the roothead.


    ¡°I-it¡¯s okay,¡± Fragile stammered, making himself smaller. He held up the sack of feed.


    The Stonehoof¡¯s breath clouded and obscured its face. In the rolling orchestra of tendons which hoofs moved, it stepped towards Fragile. He held up the bag and it dipped down its mouth and nibbled at it.


    After squeezing, dismembering, and skinning the roothead, Wander sat down by the fire and took a whole haunch of it and chomped. Her teeth tore neatly through flesh and bone and ground them up in equal measure.


    Fragile sat beside her. He picked at the bowl she had prepared for him. It was some time before he felt her staring, and he looked up at her.


    ¡°You¡¯re eating,¡± she said.


    He became uneasy. ¡°I- I didn¡¯t- should I not be?¡±


    ¡°No,¡± she said. ¡°You should. But what has changed?¡±


    She looked at the risen sun. He gazed at it, tensed, and gave a stuttering, choppy exhale. He turned from the Ruler¡¯s glare and gripped the shoulder of his over. ¡°I don¡¯t know. I¡¯m¡­ I¡¯m really hungry.¡±


    Wander looked into his eyes and took a chomping bite. ¡°Zet,¡± she said.


    ¡°¡¯Zet¡¯?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s what a Shamin says. When she eats. It means, ¡®cook¡¯.¡±


    Fragile shifted, and he swallowed in a hunk of food. ¡°¡¯Seh,¡¯¡± he munched out.


    She turned down the corners of her mouth.


    -


    Wander extracted the guide from its place in The Stronghoof¡¯s saddlebags. She also took out a second document, bound in a red wooden tube, which she opened to reveal a sheet of inked, woven fibres. She rolled it all out over a leather mat on the snow-soaked grass, in an open spot a few metres from their camp where the canopy gave way to the open air. She looked at it all and craned her neck at the sky, making marks on it with an ashy piece of wood as she did so.


    As Fragile emptied his dish and replaced it in her bags, he peeked at the odd display. He turned his head when she addressed his gaze.


    ¡°You should come,¡± she said. He looked up and she waved him over. ¡°Come. I will show you.¡±


    He set aside the dish and sat down by her on all fours. She had fixed their position on the guide with the ash, displaying them in the heart of a great white blot. The body of it was filled with points heavily annotated by Rootcliff ideograms.


    ¡°This is supposed to be the place we are,¡± she said. She swirled a finger around her mark. She traced the ash through a series of points. ¡°And this is supposed to be our path.¡± She lifted her marker off the guide and planted it in her vest. ¡°I don¡¯t know what way De will seek through the Wild. But I would use this one.¡±


    Fragile¡¯s brow dipped at the indistinct mass which represented the landscape. ¡°Where are the trees?¡± he asked. ¡°The hills?¡±


    ¡°They are changing too much now,¡± she said. ¡°The trees, and the hills, and the marked paths too. So they are not written.¡± She tapped the second guide. ¡°That¡¯s why I have this.¡±


    Fragile pored over the new document. It was divided between a pair of broad, curved shapes, with an orb at the center surrounded by barbed points. ¡°Is this also our place?¡±


    ¡°It is the sky.¡±


    ¡°The sky!¡± He looked closer at its nodes. Paths had been shot between some of them, adjoined to symbols imitating vicious faces, and these were ordered into a fat tree sitting beside the linework.


    Wander made another mark on the guide. There are places in the riversland where there is only water,¡± she said. ¡°They¡¯re a little like this one. They make those for people on the water, so that they can find their way.¡±


    Fragile looked at the shapes in wonder, and at the faces. One of them, with long teeth and horns, was frozen in a roar. He turned up and looked for it.


    -


    Wander cut apart and packed up the roothead. Fragile set aside a meal for the rulers; he took a handful of squares extracted from the stew and opened up a hole in the soil. As his hand cupped the dirt and made to brush it over, it stuttered and he held back. He bit his lip. One square, thicker and cut more flatly than the rest, was taken back from the pile. He took another, and the rulers took the rest when he scrabbled over heaps of dust and a patch of chilly snow into the grave. He chipped words into their spot with his littlecane.


    The Stronghoof opened its eyes and blinked. It lifted itself up, along with Wander¡¯s possessions, and with a groaning lurch mustered itself to her side. She kicked dirt over the fire, brushed back the stronghoof¡¯s hair, and led it past the slick trunks of the wingtrees where they settled. Their feet acceded to the rounds, which fell into them again.


    Wander and Fragile set into the brush, following the fickle trail that had led them together. With the trees and half-sprout flowers, Fragile¡¯s throat burned and the sun tricked him into sweating as the day began. Wander could feel the beads of water break out on his forehead as her own heat washed through him. Their hooved friends crunched through the bushes, beside and behind, and the Bell entwined Wander¡¯s shoulders. Through the green and white, they flooded the country. The Stonehoof watched from the shadows.


    ¡°You have a way with hearts,¡± Wander told Fragile.


    ¡°I do?¡±


    She turned her head at the rumbling silhouette trailing them through the brush. ¡°Your cannotfollow. You have grabbed it.¡±


    Fragile peered into the darkness of the dry and sapspit branches, where its eyes gleamed back at him. ¡°She is kind,¡± he said. ¡°I wonder why she stayed.¡±


    ¡°You have grabbed it,¡± The Bell suggested.


    They crossed through thick patches of shrub. Fragile¡¯s eyes ballooned at the green ray of those rounds, which retained some pastel flourish even past the warmfront and which was being taken out by the cold. The ground shifted in waves from point to point, rolling down when they thought it right to step up, humming around them as they reached over the crests. They passed crops of thicktrees and wingtrees, whose forted basings and twin branches split out into swirling and wicked cages far removed from the sight of their Eastern kin, and found a new type had begun to pick among the lots of their wandering path. This kind stood shorter than the others, and as low as Fragile; at the end of its branches hung a weighted globe that tilted and spun as they went by, letting out a glow and reaching toward them. They reached out the most toward Wander.


    ¡°It is all so full of light,¡± Fragile said, his voice a whisper he had not aimed for. ¡°I have never seen this.¡±


    ¡°These are Shines,¡± Wander said. ¡°We are through the thick of cold now. Warmth comes, and they will shine more brightly.¡±


    Fragile drank his fill of it. When it was all more regular, he opened his hoofleather bag and fiddled with the clay statuette he had received from Willow in Withoutwind.


    ¡°What is it you wish?¡± Wander asked.


    He looked up at her. ¡°Wish?¡±


    ¡°When you ready yourself to speak,¡± she said, ¡°you rub something, and your brow tilts. You have a new question.¡±


    Fragile blushed. ¡°How would you-¡±


    ¡°You have asked many of them.¡±


    ¡°It is about you,¡± he said. He struggled to keep from flustering.


    ¡°Yes?¡±


    ¡°I mean- about you,¡± he said. He put his fingers together. ¡°-about your beginning-¡±


    ¡°You can have it.¡±


    ¡°The mark on your neck,¡± he said. ¡°Is it something a Larun gives?¡± He clung to the figure.


    She paused before answering. ¡°It is.¡±


    Fragile looked down. A moment later, he asked, ¡°Is it something the cane-player gave you?¡±


    ¡°He knew a man once. That one hit me, and it was something I got from him.¡±


    Fragile was distraught. ¡°Has he done it to everyone who is taken?¡±


    ¡°No. The all of them is big. Bigger than the one.¡±


    Fragile waited further. ¡°I have been wondering- since Eighty.¡±


    Wander turned to him and tilted her head.


    ¡°What is its good?¡± he asked.


    She looked up from him, forward. ¡°¡®Its good.¡¯¡±


    ¡°The taking- The good they see. Or- what is done with it? It is a burden. Who would make it?¡±


    ¡°Work is done,¡± she said. ¡°They take some for it- to work houses, and work children. Others work paths, and block-buildings. Others work battles. Little ones work the childhood of Laruns, and become them. It is our hands they want, and their movement.¡±


    ¡°...I cannot hear it.¡±


    Wander waited, but he said nothing else. ¡°Which part?¡±


    ¡°What good is the work? The fight?¡±


    Wander¡¯s eyes did not move.


    ¡°H-how much have they built?¡± he asked.


    She said nothing.


    ¡°Wander?¡± He stopped, and she did too, but she did not meet his gaze.


    ¡°H-how-¡± His face would accuse her and wring the words from her mouth, so she continued to look away from him. ¡°I mean, h-how- how many- where does this crying end?¡±


    ¡°I do not want to say,¡± she said.


    ¡°Why not?¡±


    ¡°There has been no count,¡± she said. ¡°There is not much to do with what we know. I believe it would just upset you.¡±


    He bit his lip. ¡°What did they do to your country?¡± he asked. ¡°What is it like now?¡±


    ¡°My country is gone.¡±


    The wings chirped.


    ¡°They call it Harmony,¡± she said. ¡°It is a word like ¡®peace¡¯.¡±


    A high-pitched noise came out from somewhere in the forest. A body had produced it. It was cracking and splitting lungs and a throat, forced past the stomach. When it dried up, another scream took its place.


    Fragile¡¯s figure snapped to it and Wander turned.


    The sun shined down on them, but it was no longer hot. The air had coolled past the cold of winter, and Fragile¡¯s mouth pumped out clouds. The branches moved and wrapped around them, turning out the stars until there was nothing left.


    Wander took stock of the action, and it crushed them. She pulled Fragile into her embrace, that he might warm. A crimson, snuffling mass fell in behind them and pressed its head against them.


    The screaming went down as the light exited, and ceased. Another voice began to sing in Goalish, lilting and tripped.


    Fragile held his hands to his eyes, and his knees shook. He retched. There was darkness.


    -


    The weight of struck bolts and sweat. The jilting of miracles pressed in to their position, no matter how far they moved. As they walked, Wander did look to find somewhere else. It was before or after herself. It was in the greens and whites of the country. It is all some sacred other. It is untouchable but now and still vanishing. There are few who hate it so much. They hate more the ones that cry. The missile and the rattling chain had found her. There were places and noises in the wood where something does not know it. Fragile had long hoped to go and join them. The country is vanishing, and it is not untouchable. Wander felt that it would push them out. She felt that it would be gone forever. But she still searched for some other place.


    The ground began to settle and the trees grew ordinary. Rays of light fell through the branches again. She guided them until the darkness was forgotten.


    As they walked, nasal tones and chatter itched at Wander¡¯s ears. She stopped.


    ¡°Who is out there?¡± she asked the Bell out loud.


    ¡°Many breathers,¡± the Bell replied. ¡°But I do not know what is in them. They seem too easy.¡±


    Wander half-turned her head to Fragile. ¡°Remember what we talked about.¡±


    He nodded and clutched his statuette. Wander extracted her shortblade and let it dangle at her side as they advanced.


    They passed into the wood further. It confronted them with a clearing sliced up by water. Thick trenches of mud and ice dug in to the soil and surrounded fires, which hummed all along the edges and narrow pathways into the bayed gulf. Great numbers of carts and peopled figures were scattered about it, along with thatched dwellings. Wander and Fragile watched as shadows in the North, and eyes struck upon them; a Larun went out from a group of his kin nearby, who were laughing and chattering as they cut wood. Neither he nor they carried weapons.


    ¡°From who have you come?¡± the stranger asked. ¡°And where are you going?¡± His voice was light and nourished the ear.


    Wander brought out the cloth insignia from her vest and displayed it. ¡°What tell has put you here?¡± she asked.


    He smiled. ¡°There is no tell for it,¡± he said. ¡°This is our place, Blade.¡± He reached out and swept back his arm. ¡°It is a good one.¡±


    Wander looked at it. ¡°Where is your kontor?¡± she asked.


    ¡°He is in the woods, catching food.¡± The Larun extended his arms; they moved to the wrist of Wander¡¯s blade-hand, which did not move as he shook it. ¡°My name is Huksa,¡± he said. ¡°If you wish to eat, I will bring you to our friend. He had plenty for us. I¡¯m sure he will have it for you.¡±


    When Huksa began to head toward the settlement, Wander did not follow. He turned. ¡°You will not be taken, friends,¡± he said. ¡°We are busy. There is much to see.¡±


    He continued and did not call out again. The sun was drawing low and casting a crowd of shadows on them, flung past the thicktrees up a wood further up the settlement.


    ¡°Should we go around?¡± Fragile asked.


    Wander prodded the Bell. ¡°What do you see?¡± she asked.


    The Bell slithered down from around her shoulders and went before them. She twisted and snapped the ends of her rope twice before she spoke again. ¡°I wish we would go in there,¡± she said.


    Wander held on to her. ¡°Why?¡±


    She shivered and twitched. ¡°It is familiar,¡± she said. ¡°And clear.¡±


    Fragile watched as Wander rubbed her weapon¡¯s hilt with her thumb. She put her short blade back into its sheath.


    ¡°We¡¯ll go look,¡± she told Fragile.


    He nodded hurriedly, and went along with Huksa¡¯s retreat.


    -


    The space was plenty with drifted and overturned carts, many half-submerged in the scars of drench and muck that surrounded their encampment. The contents of sacks and boxes and barrels brimming with seeds, tubed plants and jars of unguents were disbursed and cracked open. Leaning shelters had been built from branchlogges for the gang of nivmen and others who accompanied them. Many had erected circles of stones and poles marked with gold, trailing dye ribbons that shined orange and red and sapphire.


    The unarmed workers walked along chiefly Larun fighters. These did not wear the ashy gray brysts of the Otiser¡¯s ranks; instead, they sported an eclectic array of armors and armaments. There was among their host a great touching and hugging and grabbing and giving of hands. There was laying together and laughing, and they had taken off their shoes and dipped their feet in the reaves of water that swirled all around. White nubs picked up from their banks.


    The inhabitants of the camp, although happy, stumbled around aimlessly when they were not in drink or each other. Their bodies and faces were grimed, and many of them did not speak, instead looking around in confusion. One stared at a broken cart, blinking and rubbing his eyes. A group of them looked at a pile of discarded metal blades in wonder.


    Wander¡¯s gaze was soon caught by a thin, wriggling worm or serpent which swam along nearby and collected a jug of water from a group of lounging nivmen. It did so with a hand and ten fingers, and it was not alone, increasing in like as they moved forward. The camp and well beyond was crisscrossed with the activities and collection of the hands, digging up masses of dirt, caressing smiling nivmen as they passed, brushing through stacks of crates and shaking out their contents for others to sweep away. Fragile and Wander were forced to leap over them; Huksa walked on and over them without a second thought. Fragile squeaked and jumped at Wander as he goggled one he was stepping around that snapped out underneath him, pointing up as it retreated to the center of the settlement.


    The jewelleried fashion of the unarmed workers, those beside the nivmen, was transformative, and fully plated brow and cheeks in blue and silver metal. They were something in the eye of Fragile that enlarged it. ¡°Wander,¡± he whispered, ¡°what are they called?¡±


    She found where he was looking. ¡°Speakparts,¡± she said. ¡°They go from place to place, bringing things and searching Larun-gifts.¡±


    Huksa glanced at her when she spoke the sellers¡¯ name. ¡°Speakparts they were, once,¡± he said, ¡°and ours was their keeping. But the search is ended, as is their call, and so is ours. Come.¡±


    They followed the path of hands, which brought them in view of foundations rising from the ground, addressed with a wild of their makings. It was uninhabited by the other nivmen, who walked through and past it without interest. Within the founding was a creature, whose body appeared much like a breather¡¯s. It swirled with the arms, which protruded from its back chest and torso. They reached without limit, concentrated there into a web of industry across the whole complex, stacking wood, tying fixtures, setting fire, and knapping stone in the production of cushions, walls, roofs, and a bed of hard soil. The three maneuvered past its facility and their body stood up from where it knelt, spreading paste over a bed of smooth stones. It turned, revealing its face as consistent of a shimmering blue eye, which was itself set in the center of a bulbous node that flowered three brilliant scarlet petals. It brushed off two hands on a bryst that it wore and walked closer, accompanied by a red-haired woman who displayed the same features as the speakparts.


    As the figures came into view, Fragile¡¯s pulse quickened and his head lolled. His knees buckled and Wander¡¯s hand reached under his arm, catching him before he fell.


    He looked up at her. ¡°I d-don¡¯t believe it,¡± he said. ¡°My eyes must be shut!¡±


    ¡°It is an enemy,¡± she said. ¡°Your eyes are open.¡±


    His knees still shook, but he could stand on them again. She released him slowly.


    A voice shot out from the creature¡¯s place, with no mouth to give it. ¡°Are you well?¡± it asked in Sprak.


    Wander did not reply, and Huksa frowned.


    ¡°Delight,¡± the creature called to the nivman, ¡°who are these strangers?¡±


    Huksa¡¯s eyes widened. ¡°I do not know their names,¡± he said. ¡°But they seemed afraid. They are visitors, delight.¡±


    ¡°Then they can visit with us!¡±


    The creature and the woman arrived at their spot. It was short, and its one-eyed bulb hung below all the other members of the assembly except Fragile. Its eyes swivelled between Fragile and Wander and fixed on the Sixbraid, who stepped an inch behind Wander to avoid its gaze.


    ¡°I was sad,¡± the creature said, ¡°the day I discovered I was strange to the born. I think they wanted to me to have been always known. That would be wonderful.¡±


    The words were Goalish, and Fragile detached himself slightly from Wander¡¯s figure in sheepish awe.


    The woman at the creature¡¯s side stepped forward. ¡°I am Allevery,¡± she said in Sprak. ¡°Uff is too good to ask. What do you want?¡±


    ¡°To move,¡± Wander said. ¡°And now that we are here, to fight this one.¡±


    Allevery searched Wander¡¯s gaze. She nodded to Fragile, who looked away. ¡°He wants to fight?¡±


    ¡°He is a Goal.¡±


    Allevery glared at her, and she remained silent.


    ¡°You look thirsty,¡± the creature Uff said at last. ¡°Before this fight, would you drink with me?¡±


    -


    With Uff, Allevery and Huksa, they moved to the back of the foundations.


    ¡°E-eldm ¨C eld.¡± Fragile peeped. Uff¡¯s bulb creaked and cracked as it turned to him. ¡°You know our words?¡±


    Uff¡¯s petals shivered and shook as they watched Fragile search for a correct appellate. ¡°I am not older or younger than the waters, hillfaced one,¡± they said. ¡°It is a tie that brings still to speak the words of a visitor. Water pairs best in a still place.¡±


    Uff looked to Wander. ¡°While I am keeping you,¡± Uff said, ¡°I can water the strong ones.¡± They pointed one hand at each hoof. ¡°Do you refuse?¡±


    ¡°The water here is foul,¡± Wander said. ¡°I see no source for it. What kind would you use?¡±


    ¡°I am the one at pairing waters,¡± Uff said. ¡°They are my concern. Water finds me, and I it in you.¡±


    She let the hands draw away the stronghoof, but the stonehoof would not be lead from where it watched their group. It retreated, reared and exploded at the corralling arms. ¡°I cannot speak to her, eld,¡± Fragile babbled. ¡°She is kind. She does not like to be tied. Can she not stay?¡±


    Uff¡¯s eye glittered. ¡°I would shake otherwise,¡± he said. ¡°To adore is governing.¡± Their hands ceased to wrest and tug at it, and it wandered where it pleased.


    In view had always been an open thatch building with twin pillars, and it was only now that it entered definition. It was surrounded by beds of flowers that bloomed despite the cold. A carved stone figure stood in its center, inscribed with Rootcliff writing. Dark pools of moist soil bubbled and coned around it, ejecting steam.


    Uff sat down on a thick mat of hoofshair beneath the building¡¯s roof, which entertained many of them. Their hands picked up a brassy pitcher and cups seated in the middle, and poured out its contents into one for each of the foreigners.


    ¡°I wish that you would drink,¡± Uff said in Goalish. ¡°The born have such journeys.¡±


    They sat down, and each took a cup of milksit in their hands. Fragile looked into its frothy, pungent foam, and then up at Wander.


    She drank a gulp from her own. ¡°Wait a moment,¡± she told him.


    Uff¡¯s gaze fixed on her. They trailed over her face and posture and could find nothing, and his petals flittered.


    ¡°You look on me, your holding place, as a wind-filled one,¡± he said. He leaned forward and placed a hand on his knee. ¡°What is the fire which courses through your heart?¡±


    ¡°I know the call of pairing waters,¡± Wander said. ¡°It is one of Roots and Cliffs. Its name too was Uff. Producer of Producing.¡±


    ¡°You followers are of Roots and Cliffs,¡± Uff said. ¡°What else could I be?¡±


    ¡°I am from the sun.¡± Wander nodded her head at Fragile. ¡°He is from this place. The Rootcliff ones no longer rule it, and were never in it.¡±


    ¡°It is of Roots and Cliffs. Farther to the sun, there are Roots and Cliffs. The noises you make are new, so I found them out. The rulers they have are more, but their style has not changed. There were pairing waters here, as one can see in every place, and so am I.¡±


    Wander looked to the speakparts at his side. ¡°I do not know what my commander would say of you.¡±


    One of Uff¡¯s hands stroked beneath his head. ¡°He dislikes your call,¡± Wander continued, ¡°but he likes Laruns less. I should ask what you have done with these.¡±


    The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    ¡°What does she say, delight?¡± Huksa the seller whispered in Sprak. ¡°What does she say of us?¡±


    ¡°Do not look at it,¡± Uff replied. ¡°She is one who does not know.¡±


    Fragile tapped Wander on the shoulder and held up his cup. She nodded.


    He took a tentative sip, and his entire body was thrown into convulsions as his throat drew it down into his stomach. He jitteringly set the cup down. ¡°Have you changed these men, eld?¡± he squeaked.


    Uff looked to Fragile. ¡°¡¯Changed them¡¯?¡± Uff echoed. ¡°It is certain that I have. Waters paired are changed, it is right. This change is without problems, and strikes in and out of all. It is my own, for it was founded in my eye, but it reaches for every one, like you and she. I think in yours that it overflows.¡±


    Fragile looked at Huksa and Allevery. Allevery glared back at the prod of Fragile¡¯s eyes, while Huksa smiled at him. The Larun had an ashy, sweating brow, and like his kin, wore his beard unkempt in the approved way, which would hew it close to the flesh. ¡°I cannot hear it, eld. But your friends¡­ they seem¡­¡±


    ¡°They all shook at me, once.¡± Uff¡¯s eye shut, and they grasped hard the hand of Huksa, who leaned on Uff. ¡°Theirs is a hurting and destroying work. There are better ways for them to find it, but this is a better one than that. What I do for them is what I have done always for your set, since the first sign of the first sunrise.¡±


    ¡°We do not want to go,¡± Huksa said in Sprak.


    Wander turned to him. ¡°I believed you couldn¡¯t speak Goalish.¡±


    ¡°I cannot,¡± he said. ¡°I can hear a little. Too much. We are glad to be with Uff. We have found everything we were looking for, and it is in each other. To leave it would destroy me.¡±


    Wander furrowed her brow at him. ¡°What will you do with them?¡± she asked Uff.


    They blinked and shook their head. ¡°Morning star, this doing is done. Mine is a set of pairing waters, and these are paired, the ones you see. They will not forsake it for parts or anger. We make a good place of each other.¡± Uff threw a cluster of hands out to the foundations they had laid. ¡°If I have an aim now, it is to build a house from it, so that they make keep out of the rain.¡±


    ¡°You speak of pairing,¡± she said. ¡°But I do not see it here ¨C no ordering way for pairing to be.¡±


    ¡°What need has a pair of an ¡®ordering way¡¯?¡±


    ¡°They engage constantly, and with no measurement, the shaking works of sun. But I suppose this is your design.¡±


    Uff¡¯s petals quivered. ¡°Tell me what is liked, morning star, and I will be able to speak of it.¡±


    She rubbed her chin. ¡°What is liked ¨C it is still, as you said. That brings He¡¯s preference. But in this affair, it is not a touch or holding which is preferred by He. Although there is some dancing.¡±


    She took a drink of milksit. ¡°This thing, the sun between breathers, in this spit-making way, sits at the highest point we know. It is found in a word, and born of our shapes. But this sun we make is not grabbed from one another. That is a scattering agent, and it throws us into turmoil. It sends out the still we seek. The point He has made us to adore is this serenity. He has encompassed, in our pairing, the end of hungers. What sits in that has the least need of a look or touch, which we cannot avoid. When we are entered into his rule, all else will be discarded. The dismay of your like will be extinguished, and we will have again what our producers sent us.¡± She spent a moment in silence before her gaze fell back on Uff.


    ¡°How do you imagine to find one another?¡± they asked. ¡°Without a look or touch?¡±


    ¡°He guides us.¡±


    ¡°How?¡±


    ¡°With his word.¡±


    ¡°So you move in the way he says ¨C and it is brought to you?¡±


    Wander cocked her head at Uff, and it was a moment before she replied. ¡°Yes. The word is known. The touch is done. To see it is to bring it forward.¡±


    ¡°I see it. What about you, riverborn?¡±


    He shrank back when he was addressed and wiped his eyes. ¡°Me, eld?¡±


    Uff rubbed a space beneath their head and turned to Fragile. ¡°What is your telling, of this break and wash of waters? I have heard the one of Allevery, the one of Huksa, and the one of this star. All were very different words. I wish you would give yours to me.¡±


    Fragile gripped and ungripped his breeches. ¡°I-I have nothing to give, eld,¡± he said. ¡°I have read no words at all.¡±


    ¡°Neither have I,¡± Uff said. ¡°I have seen some shapes on papers, and been told that those were words. But I have not gained their way. Even if yours is in like, it would bring me joy to find two of one voice. I have never seen it.¡±


    Fragile clenched his knees and looked up at Wander. Her gaze was full of searching.


    ¡°I-¡± he stuttered, ¡°I believe there is something best about it. If I know the thing you speak. I believe I do. It is like something others want. Like you want another to occupy you. And to say words by that. Words about one another. It is something I have felt. It t-tugs like water. I see it in Wander¡¯s word. B-but¡­¡±


    ¡°But?¡±


    The four others looked at him. A series of mixtures and sensation assumed new shapes in his mind, invoking things past.


    ¡°N-nothing.¡± He clenched his jaw. ¡°I have seen so little, eldman. That is all I know.¡±


    Uff watched him carefully. Upon his answers, they did not shift from the body but instead their eye bulged and retracted. Their petals shook. ¡°I should like you to stay here tonight,¡± Uff said.


    Wander¡¯s gaze remained captured by Fragile for a moment, before her mind was turned by the proposal. ¡°What does it give you?¡± she asked Uff.


    ¡°Nothing. It is its own offering. You may keep in my own chamber, where room is plenty, and there is no cold. There, you can decide whether you wish to fight me, and rest for it, as I see you have travelled far. In the morning, we will be refreshed, and I will accommodate whatever choice you have.¡±


    She looked hard at Uff and the Laruns, curling her fingers on the edge of the short blade. Her stomach had not rumbled with any trick or poison, and neither had Fragile¡¯s.


    ¡°What chamber?¡±


    -


    The camp was embraced by night and Wander and Fragile were directed to a golden tent by Allevery, who carried fire. Uff¡¯s chamber spun itself out of light at the edge of the water-scars.


    Allevery gestured at a fold in the tent, over which ran a column of bright gold, but did not provide any definition of the space inside. ¡°Lie down in here, if you want,¡± she said in Sprak. ¡°You can produce if you wish. We will hear nothing of you. Are you hungry?¡±


    Wander gazed at her. ¡°We are hungry.¡±


    ¡°Then I will char meat now. And again at dawn.¡±


    Allevery did not leave at once, but continued to address Wander, who gloomed down at her. ¡°Yes?¡±


    ¡°Uff does not need you.¡±


    Wander did not respond. Allevery adjusted her grip on the fire.


    ¡°Uff has friends now,¡± she continued. ¡°Uff doesn¡¯t need any more pain.¡±


    ¡°It has done something to you.¡±


    ¡°Uff did not change me,¡± Allevery said. ¡°They changed Bright and the others. Not me.¡±


    Wander did not recognize the name. Her hand, which had been circling her short blade, halted. ¡°Do you know why?¡±


    Allevery¡¯s gaze flickered. ¡°I might,¡± she said. ¡°The touch- it doesn¡¯t interest me. But Uff interests me.¡± Her grip tightened. ¡°Uff is good. They want to do something good. So you¡¯ll lie down and leave, if you want to do the same.¡±


    She turned to go. ¡°You should watch the opening. When I went in, I fell.¡±


    Allevery departed, back towards the flames and circles of the Laruns. She did not trip or stumble.


    -


    Wander held open the tent¡¯s opening for Fragile, and they melted inside. The light of the tent engulfed them, and when it happened, the sight and steps of Fragile disappeared from Wander¡¯s view, along with that of the others outside. Her eyes shrunk and sought out fire, but sweatsight availed her nothing. It was soon frustrated when the light returned, and she discovered she had been turned to the planting fields of Shamarkat.


    Teeming flocks of marked laborers ran among burning acres of dripping green crops. They used ropes to tear apart Freemen, and scalped them with knives and drowned them in oil. The house of the planter was burning, and she looked to the horizon too and saw the pole of the planters turning the sky black. But the one house is taller than them all, all the people and carts that go to and from it and it stood high above her head. The distance of its most steepled heights fuzzed up detail when she tried to take it, but she could take smoke. There was smoke everywhere, and black and the fire that carried it in its pillars and walls and viewlets. It raged against the towers and beat them, sloshed through every hole and into the paddies, and it belched out great roars that mixed up and carried the screams of happiness and jubilation of the Tjeni.


    The house cracked apart at the base and a body crashed to the ground, striking its belly. When its death was obvious, she turned away from it, and saw another one. She felt fingers slip into her hand. The noise and sight emptied, and it gave her quiet too.


    The white of the world was gone. It resolved into the green-gold flushes of a tented cloister. She was still standing, and Fragile was collapsed on the floor. He was breathing quickly, and his eyes were open. Her gaze hardened.


    Wander crouched down to his spot.


    ¡°I-¡± Fragile shook his eyes and blinked. ¡°I saw¡­ where am I? Where is-?!¡±


    He looked up at Wander, and a jolt took him over which threw him back.


    ¡°Be still,¡± she said.


    His iris wasn¡¯t settling, as she had observed it did whenever he would look at her, and her brow began to furrow before it did at last. ¡°Yes,¡± he said. ¡°I just- I saw something.¡±


    ¡°Me too,¡± she said. ¡°Do you want to go?¡±


    ¡°N-no,¡± he shivered.


    ¡°Are you sure?¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± he said. ¡°It wasn¡¯t bad. And this¡­¡± He waved his hand through the air. ¡°This is¡­ it is warm.¡±


    Wander flexed her hand in the air and looked around. She could find no flame illuminating the tent or giving it heat, but there was a substantial amount of both.


    ¡°I have not felt it in so long,¡± Fragile said. ¡°Is it yours?¡±


    ¡°Not all of it. If you are pleased, we can stay.¡±


    He nodded, and so they did.


    -


    Wander and Fragile relieved themselves of their equipment, depositing it on a long blanketed cushion that took up a quarter of the chamber. They acquainted themselves with the rest of it, regarding its sculptures, devices, and all the changes taking place. A broad diamond-shaped platform on its far side had been committed to three clay figures, whose cheeks, hips and calves had been enlarged. They had been struck out from hands and stone, and Wander did not know their aim. Set oblique to the statues was a large shaft of fluttering metal suspended from the ceiling; when Fragile went to touch it, the hairs on his head stood up, and he retreated to the cushion. There was a section of the tent in which droplets of rain poured down from an unseen source, into a tub of planks which never overflowed. The ceiling itself appeared transparent, showing stars in the night sky that twinkled.


    ¡°You¡¯ve been quiet,¡± Wander told Fragile.


    He looked up at her and blushed. ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± he said.


    ¡°Are you upset?¡±


    He cocked his head at her. ¡°Upset?¡±


    She discarded the statue she was observing and sat down on a seat by it. ¡°You are injured by their state,¡± she said, ¡°and the state of their like. I am not.¡±


    The silence then, and Fragile. ¡°They are helping something that makes us cry,¡± he said. ¡°It cuts us apart. It burns us¡­ If they are in trouble, it does injure. But I do not know that they are. And I do not know if it is right that I take it ¨C the injury.¡± He looked at his statuette. ¡°Not when they hurt so much¡­¡±


    ¡°It is.¡±


    He looked at Wander.


    ¡°It is right,¡± she said.


    ¡°I did not know- well, you did not say it before.¡±


    She extracted her short blade from her hip, along with its sheath. ¡°I am a blade,¡± she said, gripping it in the light. ¡°I must cut, so nothing must cut me. You are not one. Your face cuts nothing.¡± She unsheathed it and felt its point. ¡°I don¡¯t know what will happen to them. and I do not like you to be in pain. But that you take it ¨C that you always have ¨C that has always been a good.¡± She scrunched up her brow after the thought left her mouth, and her eyes drifted from him. The blade dropped between her legs.


    ¡°I-¡± He stuttered and shut his eyes. "T-then ¨C I will take it.¡±


    They listened to the water burble.


    ¡°Why would you not give your sight to it?¡± she asked. ¡°Uff.¡±


    He blushed. ¡°I did not want to go against you,¡± he said.


    ¡°Your position went against mine?¡±


    He nodded. ¡°I know less than you. My words ¨C If I said them, you would change them, and make them good.¡±


    ¡°Then let me do it.¡±


    He took a light breath. ¡°The touch you spoke of,¡± he said. ¡°I mean¡­ I do not think¡­ yours- it has never angered me.¡±


    Wander regarded, for a moment, his legs. ¡°I did not speak of anger,¡± she said.


    ¡°You didn¡¯t?¡±


    ¡°I spoke of sun. Our sun is different. It does not itself produce anger.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know what that is.¡±


    ¡°It is between hearts,¡± she said. ¡°It is our power. There is a sun between friends; a sun between a child and a child¡¯s maker; a sun between grown ones, which makes spits. Ours is the first. All are warm, but only the third afflicts.¡±


    ¡°How does it do that?¡±


    ¡°Its touch throws out yourself,¡± she said, ¡°and puts into commotion your I. This helps the work of brightplague.¡±


    Fragile¡¯s brow eased. ¡°Can a sun change?¡± he asked.


    ¡°Yes. Friends can be joined with words. Then, it is changed.¡±


    She watched his face and brow twist and contort. ¡°Didn¡¯t the Sixbraids have like?¡± she asked.


    ¡°I¡­ I don¡¯t know what that means, either.¡±


    Wander itched her scalp. She brushed away the flecks of residue from the crown of it and set aside her hairpiece, exposing her head.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± he said.


    ¡°It isn¡¯t bad.¡± She picked at her hair. ¡°In Shaminkat, and in Shamarkat, and in Larunkat, and Ard Makaris ¨C when a man wanted the change to happen, they would pick a day, and say words then. That would make them joined. There¡¯d be a party then, or offerings. Eating and drinking. Can you recall anything like that?¡±


    ¡°I cannot.¡±


    ¡°What about the gift?¡±


    He cocked his head. ¡°Gift?¡±


    She pried his birthman''s seashell necklace out from her belt and dangled it at him.


    ¡°Ih,¡± he whispered. The more he saw it the more he began to shake, so she put it back away.


    ¡°Gifts are exchanged,¡± she said. ¡°In many places it is done. That¡¯s what you said about it.¡±


    ¡°It was a gift. It was done during two-season. I believe it was from that.¡±


    She rubbed her hands. ¡°And what is two-season?¡±


    ¡°You do not know?¡±


    She shook her head. He curled his lip. ¡°I do not know either.¡±


    ¡°Why not?¡±


    ¡°The Laruns forbid it. It happened last before the Response.¡±


    His eyes flickered uncertainly. She looked into his eyes for understanding and found tears.


    ¡°You can leave it alone,¡± Wander said. She set her hair aside. ¡°Leave it alone. The sun is of what we speak. A touch is how sun is made, but it is not the sun itself. Sun is best in which spit is made, and which bears the still of a child and the child¡¯s maker. That is what is written, what He has said. The touch, in this spot, undoes the peace, and must be checked and fought against.¡±


    Fragile rubbed his fingers. ¡°I see it.¡±


    She watched him bite his lip. ¡°Is it clear?¡±


    He unbit his lip and fixed his hands to his lap. ¡°Ih. I was just¡­ does a feeling touch?¡±


    ¡°What do you mean?¡±


    ¡°To know it,¡± he said. ¡°The still. To know that someone feels a way about you.¡±


    ¡°That is a piece which the I contains.¡±


    ¡°But it moves us,¡± he said. ¡°Doesn¡¯t it? It is best. It moves us really.¡± His eyes flickered again. ¡°I- I believe it moves me.¡±


    ¡°It does.¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡±


    She was silent. He could not see what was happening inside her. After some time her look shifted and glazed over.


    ¡°Will you help the Laruns?¡± he asked quietly.


    ¡°If you want me to.¡±


    ¡°You know what is best,¡± he said. ¡°I like the things you do. And¡­¡±


    He pushed together his forefingers. ¡°I believe¡­ if I did ask¡­ you would destroy them.¡±


    ¡°Uff?¡±


    He nodded. ¡°Is that something you fear?¡± she asked.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± he said. He scrunched his shoulders together. His gaze was carried off into melancholy. ¡°Uff does not seem angry, or like they want to hurt another. I do not know if they see what they are doing. I do not know if I see it...¡±


    ¡°Uff is brightplague,¡± Wander replied. ¡°An old figure the Rootcliffs offered to. It is its whole shape; it has not only been changed as the Unders were. It feigns ignorance of things all know. You should not take its word.¡±


    ¡°What is brightplague?¡± Fragile asked.


    ¡°It does wrong. It fights He and his Family.¡±


    Without his meaning, Fragile¡¯s head turned slightly, his brow raised, and his mouth opened. He changed it rapidly, and remained quiet, but Wander took notice.


    ¡°Why do you ask?¡± she pressed.


    He scrunched up his face. ¡°Is a Larun brightplague?¡±


    ¡°It produced their project. It is the rule they follow.¡±


    ¡°Why would Uff hurt them?¡±


    ¡°It is like you say. Perhaps it has not. Perhaps it believes that it has not.¡±


    ¡°But we have seen them shook. They are not frowning, but ¨C they are pierced. It seems like ¨C their project ¨C Uff has gone and hurt it.¡±


    ¡°Then they may be arranged in a wrong way. There could be some fight between them.¡±


    ¡°Is it something you know?¡±


    ¡°No.¡±


    He blinked.


    ¡°What?¡± she asked.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡± He looked down and pushed together his thumbs. His eyes were drooping, and his neck muscles strained to hold up his head. ¡°It is all very strange to me.¡±


    He grasped the cushion that he was lodged against and cuddled with it. A warmth spread throughout Wander¡¯s chest, bringing down a pressure she had not realized was there. ¡°You should shut your eyes,¡± she said. ¡°The woman should be bringing meat. I¡¯ll raise you up if she does.¡±


    She got up and went to the tentflap, where the night was now visible. ¡°Wander¡­¡±


    She heard him murmur and stopped. ¡°Yes, Fragile?¡±


    ¡°The- the injury-¡± He mumbled, stopping and starting. ¡°That it doesn¡¯t hurt you- I- I think¡­ it is also good.¡±


    Something tugged at her cheek. ¡°You should shut your eyes.¡±


    He already had.


    -


    Uff watched the foreigners walk past the threshold of their home. The little one¡¯s Stonehoof hid, and once they had moved in, embedded itself by the entrance.


    The sun set and the nivmen set down fire in the bowls of the house Uff built. Their friends gathered, drinking merriment and one another, and caroused in dancing squares and upon beds of grass.


    Huksa watched as Uff lit from the place beside him and exited the house, disappearing into the dark, toward the animal fires.


    Uff found their way to the pack of hoofs the Laruns had brought, which were guarded by a lonely sentry.


    ¡°Please go out,¡± Uff told the soldier, ¡°and eat well. Tonight, I will look at them.¡±


    He moved away, and Uff moved among the ranks of resting strong ones. Each individual matched Uff¡¯s height, even curled up as they were with legs and heads bent towards the ground. Uff declined, sitting before the foreigner that had been set among their number.


    The Stronghoof blinked open its eyes in the way of Uff. It flicked its tongue at a spot on its chin and did not speak to the sight before it, exploding with petals and appenda and estimations of hand. One of these crept forward and itched the stronghoof¡¯s neck.


    ¡°You have travelled many roads,¡± Uff said, ¡°haven¡¯t you, son of breath?¡±


    Its eyelids drooped. The Stronghoof laid its head on the ground.


    ¡°He doesn¡¯t want you.¡±


    A whisper slithered out from inside The Stronghoof¡¯s bags.


    ¡°A voice?¡± Uff whispered. ¡°A voice with wrong words?¡±


    Coils of rope rose out of a pouch. They hung in the air and drifted over to Uff, trailing their ends through the snow, twisting themselves in quarters and binds and hitches to the roots and rocks and snow.


    ¡°Everyone should want this one,¡± the Bell said, ¡°and he should not be hurt with your chatter or another¡¯s. He does not have a way to take it. So speak to me, if you must speak at all, dry-crafted thing.¡±


    Uff¡¯s eye widened at this phenomenon. ¡°Speak to who?¡±


    ¡°I am the Bell: a hand of two stars.¡±


    They sat down again. The Bell descended to his level.


    Uff put up their knee and their hands inched at her and swirled around, tugging her stripes and coils. Their eye moved closer. ¡°A bell without chimes,¡± they murmured. ¡°What a wind-covered work!¡±


    ¡°You are a kind of pairing waters,¡± she said.


    ¡°It is so, wind-filled one.¡±


    ¡°Show it to me.¡±


    Their eye shimmered. ¡°Show it?¡±


    ¡°I have your words, given me by my star,¡± she continued. ¡°But I do not hear them. For they appear as my own, and that must be wrong ¨C you and I are not of one country.¡±


    The color of Uff¡¯s petals shifted and fluttered. ¡°How do you know?¡±


    ¡°I have known it since I was born.¡±


    ¡°So have I,¡± Uff said. ¡°I was produced by a star that fell on this place, which is called Possessed. I can see it. I can feel the ice of it in my hands. Stars are like snow, you see; that is why they fall. But¡­¡±


    Some of Uff¡¯s hands fell to the ground and touched the white. ¡°I had a kind, once. I must have had them, too. I can see them too, and our parties together. And good days. But I cannot hear them now. I cannot speak them as I once would. I do not know what happened. It is as though I was not created, and that what I am is some trick, some saying that I must be.¡±


    They looked to The Bell.


    ¡°So you are a kind of my waters,¡± she said.


    ¡°I am?¡±


    She flicked aside the snow with her tendrils. ¡°We can know, if you will show it to me now.¡±


    Uff¡¯s petals crooked, and their head tilted.


    ¡°We are not of one country,¡± she repeated. ¡°Show me how our joint begins. Show me how it is the waters pair.¡±


    Uff¡¯s hands shivered and grasped at the dirt. ¡°On this,¡± they said, ¡°I do not know, wind-filled one.¡± Uff looked around at the trees, which bent toward them from the black. ¡°I will show what I can, even though there is not much I can give. I do not know what is this place.¡±


    ¡°This place is Goal.¡±


    ¡°I mean a different word,¡± Uff said. ¡°The names are all a wash, but where there were once giant ones, richly built and joined, now there are little breathers. These I have found, who are from others, and look a way I haven¡¯t seen, carry little of what I make; some new work and some new pain has caught them. Their heads are filled with tables and shapes made with dark water. Their bodies are locked in something large, and it is moving more quickly than I can see. They have so much more to fear.¡±


    The Bell crept closer. Her strands traced up and down Uff¡¯s silhouette. Uff laid on their back. ¡°Once ¨C I was the country of steady speakers. I was the place they were. But now, I cannot even see their marks. These shadows are unlike me, and I fear what they might reveal. Water is what I pair; that is the only steady part now. Everything else is air.¡±


    The Bell writhed. ¡°Your frown,¡± she said, ¡°is an unlikely thing. And it has no good cause.¡±


    ¡°Show that to me.¡±


    ¡°The star has cut apart your like. You shining ones. All had words. All those were certain of what they were. So you must have some piece more than they. Is that not way enough for smiling?¡±


    Uff¡¯s hands shivered. ¡°What else do you know, set of my set?¡±


    ¡°I know Am. I know the Joyous One. I know what is said about her. I know sayings ¨C the breathers¡¯ noises, the swirl and pushing of it, and I can make them. So I know something limitless.¡±


    Two of Uff¡¯s hands came around and scratched beneath his head. ¡°And from who have you come? What is your aim with her, this morning star? How did she earn such a right companion?¡±


    ¡°I am Am¡¯s. And I am He¡¯s, who is the star¡¯s. But the aims I have are for the star herself.¡±


    ¡°It seems an emptiness.¡±


    The Bell¡¯s length bristled. ¡°And is your way so full?¡± she asked. ¡°I have something high. Since she was little and weak, I have kept her. I have found her a high thing of her own. Perhaps it is I who should be charged with your position, One at Mixed Drinks!¡±


    Uff laughed, and the threading of The Bell chuckled. Uff¡¯s eye shut and their petals quivered.


    ¡°Your star, too, is of new work,¡± Uff said. ¡°The kind I fear.¡±


    ¡°She is in the fire and told by men, if that is what you mean.¡±


    ¡°How can you bear it,¡± they asked, ¡°if she enjoys you so?¡±


    ¡°I cannot.¡±


    Uff turned their head to one of The Bell¡¯s strands, which twisted at him.


    ¡°Every breath she ends is a curse. She was never quick to it, but that will only have me cry for her, rather than shake. It is true,¡± she said.


    ¡°Then, if you could bring her hands out of it, and take them to joy yourself, would you not do it?¡±


    ¡°No.¡±


    Uff blinked. ¡°Why not?¡±


    ¡°Because she would shake at me,¡± she said, ¡°and I do not want that.¡±


    ¡°You have no higher design?¡±


    ¡°What design is higher?¡± The Bell twisted around his shoulder. ¡°The joyous one knows things I do not. I know things the joyous one does not. To shape her mouth would hurt me, as it gives me my own way.¡±


    They turned back to the sky.


    -


    When Fragile again awoke, the world did not appear to have shifted from night to day. The tent permitted nothing inside, and even at its entrance, where light jost around its edges, no ray penetrated it. Wander sat on her bed with her arms crossed and her eyes cast upward; they did not shift to his so quickly. A gust shocked the tentflap and both turned to the shadow that had been cast there.


    ¡°Uff has asked for you,¡± Allevery said. She carried a wooden board loaded with bread, milksit, and yellow produce. ¡°I could not cook for you until now. Uff has been busy. Please come out soon.¡±


    She laid down the board and exited the tent.


    The two of them ate. Fragile hitched on his instrument and bag and Wander strapped on her weapons. She threw open the chamber¡¯s covering and they were met by the whole body of Uff¡¯s community.


    All the speakparts and soldiers both had assembled in a bristling ring around the opening, and around the figure of Uff itself. That stood at the center of the space, accompanied only by Huksa, who was shivering and whose eyes watered. Allevery was nowhere to be seen.


    ¡°Did you eat well?¡± Uff asked.


    Wander said nothing. Fragile nervously glanced at her. ¡°Y-yes, eld,¡± he whispered. ¡°T-thank you.¡±


    ¡°I hoped you would. Your smile is mine.¡±


    Fragile¡¯s eyes dashed about the assembly, trying to discern the aim of their resentment. He tugged at his coldover and moved closer to Wander, who rested a hand on her shortblade. Uff¡¯s hands stroked their chin as their eye shivered and goggled her.


    ¡°I would be afraid, if I were given a display like this,¡± Uff said. ¡°So I will show it to you. I have replaced my position.¡±


    A loud sob escaped Huksa. ¡°Uff means to abandon us!¡± one Larun shouted at them.


    ¡°Uff wants to put us where we started.¡±


    ¡°Uff wants to leave us because of you!¡±


    ¡°Decease this rattling!¡±


    Uff stood up, and a shout came from him that chattered the teeth and cut the air. ¡°I go in my way, and for no other. None of you have eyes to see.¡±


    The grumbling of Laruns subsided.


    Uff laid a hand on the shoulder of Huksa, whose tears diminished. He looked back at Wander and Fragile. ¡°I will see if you have something for me. If you do, I will release this set to their own.¡±


    Fragile¡¯s mouth opened. Uff raised a finger. ¡°Do not think of this as outside I, little rivershape. Water¡¯s pairing travels all, and I will have my price.¡±


    ¡°You have not named it,¡± Wander said.


    ¡°It is nothing hidden. I would like your word, and a piece. Nothing else.¡±


    ¡°We have many words, eld,¡± Fragile babbled. ¡°Please, tell us, and they will be spoken!¡±


    Uff opened wide his hands. ¡°The word that will return them, Sixbraid yonman, is your own. One of yours. I will have your profession, that you will bring about a pairing of waters overmeasure the one seen here. It will be done before the speaker¡¯s ending. Or I will return, and I will put a punishment on the other.¡±


    ¡°And the piece?¡± Wander asked.


    Uff¡¯s eye shimmered. ¡°It is an easy thing. Among yourselves are the parts that join and dissolve.¡±


    His hands reached out and caressed Wander¡¯s short blade, her blaith, Fragile¡¯s three-string, and his hoofskin bag. ¡°Hand one of these to me which does both; if you say it and give it, then I will disappear, and I will only remain hidden from you forever.¡±


    Fragile took out his three-string. The wood pressed itself on his eyes, as did its carvings. He knew now that they would never get through to him. Its strings, which had played with him to the people of Partplant, made no protest. And its neck, which he had embraced in the days of searching, and when there was nothing left of old, did not reach for him. He did not want to move it, but did not know its words. So he held it out to Uff.


    ¡°I think this will prefer your piece, eld,¡± he said. ¡°It has brought me others. It¡­ it is a thing of pairing waters. I do not know that it should do much else for mine.¡±


    Uff¡¯s hands snapped out and curled around the three-string, pulling it back and caressing Fragile¡¯s face and fingers. Their head did not turn to look at it as they felt it over.


    ¡°I would offer many sacred sighs for such a gift,¡± Uff said. ¡°But it is only a part of my need. From my watch, you have nothing at all for the cut, little one. Even your cane, which has broken nothing, is broken more by the thing it cuts.¡±


    Fragile¡¯s eyes watered as the three-string began to return to him. ¡°B-but-¡± he stuttered. ¡°If it is not enough- won¡¯t you-?¡±


    ¡°Take mine.¡±


    Wander¡¯s short blade flung out and lanced the ground at the feet of Uff. His arms halted, and a second school of them swirled around the weapon, plucked it out of the ground, and approached Wander herself.


    ¡°Morning star,¡± Uff exclaimed, ¡°What is this giving? At what new place have you arrived?¡±


    ¡°I have discarded much you enjoy with the cut of this,¡± Wander said. ¡°With this and the other, your piece is given.¡±


    Uff ran three fingers over the tip of the blade. ¡°If you will do it, both of you will need to take my words. And both of you will be held to its finish.¡±


    ¡°You have already associated us in failure,¡± she said. ¡°What have we to lose in gathering?¡± She looked at Fragile, who emerged from his shock with a nodding. The two of them recited the Rootcliff incantation.


    Uff expelled a chorus of chuckles, and they placed the short blade in their bryst. ¡°I can see why she enjoys you so,¡± they said. ¡°I hope you take the man, joyous one. I hope that you find the sun you seek.¡±


    They turned to the Laruns, whose eyes held on Uff with mournful acclaim. Hands exploded out from Uff¡¯s body and ran among their number, touching each of them. The light of the world dimmed, and the stars were covered up. Many of them broke down and wept as the absence was revealed. When he was gone, lightning split the sky, and it began to rain.


    -


    ¡°I¡¯m s-sorry,¡± Huksa mumbled. He scoured the tears from his face and lip with her cloth. Wander did not reply; she took back the insignia when he was done and handed him a waterskin.


    The rain turned to snow. Sheltered by the remains of Uff¡¯s house, Fragile and Wander addressed the inconsolable nivman, who yet recovered himself as the other speakparts and soldiers recouped their senses and dragged what wagons they could out from the freezing muck. Huksa drank deeply from the skin, throwing his head back and shutting his eyes. The tells of choke came from it; coarse air were chucked from his nose and throat, but his eyes grew smaller and less haggard the greater his suckling. He released the skin and his lips hung open in an expired daze.


    ¡°Firstpoint Huksa-¡± Fragile struggled out some Sprak, shocking the Larun from his reverie. ¡°Much pain?¡±


    Huksa looked down. ¡°My name is not Huksa. It is Bright.¡± He held a hand to his face. ¡°There is pain,¡± he said. ¡°There is great pain, but Uff did not give it to me. It is okay. I am not glad, but I believe I am helped ¨C to be brought out from him.¡±


    Fragile looked up at Wander.


    ¡°He¡¯s well,¡± she said. ¡°He thanks you.¡±


    Bright handed the skin back to Wander and she fixed it to her belt. ¡°Where is Allevery?¡± he asked. ¡°Has she spoken with you?¡±


    ¡°I haven¡¯t seen her since this morning,¡± she replied. ¡°I don¡¯t know where she is.¡±


    Bright fidgeted. ¡°Goodpoint Allevery¡­¡± He shook his head. ¡°She is the reason we still have breath. Did she tell you that?¡±


    Wander crossed her arms. ¡°No.¡±


    ¡°Uff was scared of us, and we fought. She stayed their hand.¡± He wiped his brow, displacing a trail of filth and sweat from it. ¡°I hope that she is well.¡±


    ¡°Where will you go now?¡±


    His cheeks sagged. ¡°I¡¯m not sure.¡±


    Wander looked at the overturned wagons being scavenged by the nivmen and pulled up from the water. ¡°You do not have the parts to move forward,¡± she said.


    ¡°We do not.¡± He rubbed his mouth. ¡°Our first aim was Partplant. I may return South. I will try to make them hear me, and say of what has happened.¡±


    ¡°Did you come from Herdetopp?¡±


    ¡°From Spot of Rocks,¡± he said, ¡°but it is on that road. Is that where you two are going?¡±


    She nodded.


    ¡°We last took water at Firmen Couth,¡± he said. ¡°Will you-¡± He swallowed and cradled his hands. ¡°Will you come back with us? With the word of a Blade, we could-¡±


    ¡°I am not a Blade or Seen.¡±


    The color drained from Bright¡¯s face. He looked between her and Fragile. ¡°Then- you-¡±


    ¡°We are making our way,¡± she said. ¡°That is all.¡±


    Bright relaxed slightly. ¡°I still wish you would follow us,¡± he said. ¡°Even without that mark. I will share all I have, and I will make others do it. You have brought us still.¡± He shivered. ¡°I wish we could keep it so.¡±


    She looked at her feurkun and relayed the thought to him. He replied in Goalish.


    ¡°Until the Couth,¡± she answered.


    <hr>


    The nivmen and speakparts assembled and took what wagons remained and moved South. The day was bright and marked by gray maws of colossus that hung before them, washing around a spooling, wind-smacked megalith that swung into the air where the sky could freeze it. They took out their weapons and chopped a path through the bushes, clearing the way for the hoofs and their cargo.


    Wander and Fragile moved alongside the column, accompanied by the stronghoof. The stonehoof followed from a distance. Fragile rubbed his hand and bit his lip, but Wander said nothing.


    ¡°Why did you give up your cane?¡± he asked lightly.


    ¡°It was my smaller one,¡± she said. ¡°But I would have given up my blaith, if it was needed.¡±


    His eyes bubbled round. ¡°You would¡¯ve?¡±


    She shut her eyes and nodded once.


    ¡°I can¡¯t believe they changed your aim.¡±


    ¡°They may not have, had Uff not desisted.¡±


    ¡°But they did!¡± Fragile chirped.


    ¡°Yes,¡± she said. She could no longer thumb her blade, so she rubbed its empty covering. ¡°They did.¡± She directed her voice to The Stronghoof¡¯s saddlebags. ¡°I ask how it happened.¡±


    The Bell¡¯s rope poked up from a flap and swam up The Stronghoof¡¯s head. ¡°It was me,¡± she said. ¡°I changed Uff¡¯s way.¡±


    Wander frowned. Fragile looked back at The Bell. ¡°You did it, eld? How was it done?¡±


    ¡°We made a sun, yon,¡± The Bell said. ¡°I knew Ourland was full of lost ones. I believe we found one, even if it was a burning-thing.¡±


    They walked on.


    ¡°What did you see?¡± Fragile asked Wander. ¡°That changed your own way?¡±


    ¡°That there is much I do not know.¡± She scratched her head again. ¡°I wonder if we move so much, or if we are not pushed by wind. This wind, they speak of. You and I are on a path, and that path has lines. Perhaps Uff has gone from them; perhaps, one day, they should also walk our way.¡±


    Fragile rubbed his arm. ¡°Do you believe we can keep this promise?¡±


    ¡°I believe so,¡± Wander said. ¡°We have your face to bring them, and mine to make them still; our only fear is that we might drown ourselves in such teeming waters.¡±


    He giggled. The slight pull she felt made its bite at Wander¡¯s cheek, and fell back. She slipped a hand into the fold of her vest.


    Something light pressed itself on to her shoulder, and broke away suddenly. She looked to Fragile, who was staring forward. ¡°What was that?¡± she asked.


    ¡°My smile.¡± He rubbed his arm and blinked quickly. ¡°Y-you wanted them? Should I- I should not have-¡±


    ¡°I see it.¡± Something pulled more insistently at Wander¡¯s cheek. She reached out an arm and squeezed his far shoulder.


    Fragile¡¯s mouth broke apart. After a moment¡¯s hesitation, he put his hands behind his back, stood up on his toes, and pressed on her shoulder again.

 Story 8 - The Fire on The Wall

    It seems only days ago that Fragile the Sixbraid was living a quiet life in his people¡¯s village, in the ancient and storied land named Goal. Without provocation, a group of soldiers from a hate-filled empire entered into it, killing his friends, his family, and all the keepers of their tradition.


    Wander, a lone warrior from a distant land, arrived just in time to save Fragile and the Sixbraids from complete annihilation. Finding pleasure in each other¡¯s company, the foreigners and the friends who found them now plumb the heart of the New Wild, pursuing towards Herdetopp the forces that stole Wander''s childhood and feast now upon The Land of Rulers.


    -


    For two days, Wander and Fragile travelled with the carts of Bright¡¯s company.


    At night, they were compassed by flat ground. Bulleting clouds hung in the distance, tracing the sky with streaks of blue and orange. They put their carts in a square, cleared the snow from it, and exploded fires that they built with boards and planks ripped from the carriages. Fragile watched the Laruns¡¯ Roadpoint observe the stars and their horizon, pressing a hollow metal tube etched with indications to his eye socket. It descended and found him roomy. The needle-rugged occidenteer squatted down, working against his paunch and tugging at his protruse jaw in observation of reed papers that he marked with stylus and a muck like blood. He wrapped his hands around a brown furrow and belted out noises, ¡°Heah! Heah! Heahy! Heahy! Heaoo!¡±, as he chopped out a heavy depression in the frozen soil, pointing South.


    Wander the Dzhrymin and Fragile the Sixbraid joined the Roadpoint, along with Bright, the Hoofpoint of the Laruns, and the Kontor of the fighters who surrounded them. This commander was an older woman with short, thin hair, wearing a caped bryst with thick guards, stitched out from the back of a stomper. She leaned up her blade, concealed by an inscribed covering, up on the stool where she reclined. She tilted up four branches over the fire that sat between them, and hung a pot between them. She set herself beside the flames, crushing up berries and dicing meat and roots with a knife shaped like a kite.


    When she was finished she whistled and beckoned at Fragile. She had to do it twice, as the little man was swaddled in his cloak, and his eyes had started to roll back. Wander had sat herself against a rock, studying her own documents, and he brushed at her hair with a smooth iron comb. His looked snapped over to the armored Larun¡¯s invitations with a high brow.


    ¡°Do you cook, little hillface?¡± she asked.


    Fragile shook his head.


    ¡°Come and cook, little hillface. Fire work. Dark ¨C eating now. Come, come. I make you hands.¡± Fragile struggled to make sense of the lingual mix she had employed, but he understood enough to wrap himself up in his coldover and answer her summons.


    The Kontor gestured to her ingredients when he had knelt by. They were laid out, rustled with Fragile¡¯s mounds of hair by the frosty gale, on a scratched and beaten silver cloth. She gestured to each part and named it. ¡°Listen now, little hillface. Listen and see. That,¡± she said, pointing, ¡°is named ¡®the hairy-tongued one¡¯. This is named ¡®downparts¡¯. And these, ¡®stomach-cutters¡¯. When I ask, give me one squarepart ¨C one of each. One squarepart.¡±


    Fragile tilted his head. ¡°A squarepart,¡± she continued. ¡°It is ¨C how the thing drags. In your hand. One squarepart should drag like eggs. A few eggs. A few eggs of the riverwing. Can you hear that?¡¯


    He thought of it, and nodded quickly.


    ¡°Give now. Cook for your Firstpoint, little hillface. Give what I say.


    She turned the pot with a long, crescent stir, and when she asked, Fragile brought her handfuls of fruit and plants. ¡°Come, come,¡± she said, once her supply had been exhausted. ¡°Come and hold.¡±


    She gave him the stir and he dipped it in the stew. ¡°Slow,¡± she said. ¡°Like a paddling along. You born have a river, yes? The river has a seer. You do not want to wake him. We cook hairy-tongued ones; we should use cooler fire. But these empty-heads are cold, so it will have to be hot, and they will have to be ruined, at least a little bit. If you have to cook it hot, like a paddling along. Count five breaths around, and around. If it is right, it is not so bad.¡±


    The stew was poured out into bowls. The others at the fire received them, all except for the Hoofpoint. The Hoofpoint, who fed and tended the animals that drove the carts, did not eat. Instead he rubbed his hands together, disregarded the fire, and took no comfort from it. The Wild rushed around their flames and barriers, gushing snow against his side and greeting him with the noise of a solitary howl.


    ¡°That poor cannotfollow,¡± the Hoofpoint said. ¡°How can it have come here, as deep as we?¡±


    In his hand, the Roadpoint held a circular panel that reflected light. He gazed into it, and as he did so, he cut apart his beard with a thin sheet of metal. ¡°They are lost,¡± he said. ¡°And there could be more than one. When the howls are lost, only one will sing.¡±


    ¡°Can she find her way home?¡± Fragile asked.


    The Laruns looked at him.


    ¡°The-¡± he stammered, ¡°the howl.¡±


    ¡°She?¡± the Hoofpoint piped.


    Without looking up from her pages, Wander confirmed, ¡°It¡¯s a girl.¡±


    They turned to the warrior. ¡°But how can he know, Dzhrymin?¡± Bright asked.


    At that moment the howl¡¯s gleaming song washed through their space again, with such chime and biting heat that Fragile squeezed shut his ears with two little fingers.


    As it declined and vanished, Wander explained. ¡°Their men have smaller hearts,¡± she said. ¡°If it were one, he would have lost his breath. The others can speak well.¡±


    Fragile¡¯s leg bounced. He reached out and steadied it.


    Bright¡¯s mouth opened. The Kontor raised her brow. The Hoofpoint and the Roadpoint looked at each other, to a shrug.


    Fragile addressed the Kontor. ¡°May I know your speaking, eldwoman?¡±


    The Kontor took a drink of her brew and looked at him. ¡°My speaking, little hillface?¡±


    ¡°The words you have.¡±


    ¡°My words are my sprak,¡± she said. ¡°A Wild sprak. They speak it in the mass of buildings. In Spot of Rocks, and Partition Hill, and Herdetopp. Have you never heard it said?¡±


    ¡°I have never heard such words from a Larun.¡±


    ¡°Some of us are not just Laruns,¡± the Hoofpoint threw in. ¡°I am a Moat.¡±


    He turned away from the dark and faced the Sixbraid. ¡°A Moat,¡± The Hoofpoint repeated.


    ¡°What is it?¡±


    ¡°The Moats are toward the night,¡± said The Kontor. ¡°Larunkat¡¯s night. Very far that way.¡±


    ¡°My shell was Fivehouses,¡± The Hoofpoint continued. ¡°Our lodgepoints visited a Kontor each month, in a place of splendid mass. They carried with them a bag of parts, and did not return with it. There are less of mine there now; women have been taken out to the Freemen, because many are gone and they need new ones. Some of those must travel, and some of those will fall; all produce the Freeman¡¯s type.¡±


    ¡°Why did you not speak of our like?¡± asked The Kontor.


    Now The Hoofpoint turned to her. ¡°Are we?¡±


    ¡°I am a Moat,¡± She said. ¡°I am a Stirred Larun. My oldman was from the River ¨C the Ashed River, little hillface ¨C but my old woman was Moat. After we were pushed out, she travelled eight-hundred binyaks over mountain, and through dirt and water, across ice and dirt where there is no breath, walking with her preference and a tithe, searching for a mass where they could eat. She found a mass with parts and papers, and she makes coverings now. The most careful and precious in all of Larunland.¡±


    ¡°Stirred!¡± The Hoofpoint¡¯s eyes widened. ¡°How could I have known? You do not have the brow of our kind, or the mouth.¡±


    ¡°We do not all have the eye. The mouth has been taken from us. Laruns prefer their own words.¡±


    The Hoofpoint squeezed his arm and bowed his head.


    The Roadpoint noticed The Hoofpoint¡¯s shivering. He intervened, ¡°In the way of you both, neither am I just a Larun.¡±


    The Kontor crossed her arms at the wrinkled pathfinder. ¡°Is that so?¡±


    The Roadpoint smiled and pounded his chest. ¡°My birthwoman was a Postan, a hot kind of fire! My birthman, too, was a Shamol ¨C a powerful nivman, whose producers made a tent and three hoofs into a smallwreath. They came from their own cells, in the seats where they were grown. They made a mighty Sprak, and new.¡±


    ¡°Were they Tjeni?¡± asked Wander.


    He nodded at her. ¡°Right, Dzhrymin.¡±


    Wander put her knee up and draped an arm across it. ¡°And you see yourself a Larun?¡±


    ¡°What, star, would he see otherwise?¡± asked the Kontor.


    ¡°I am not a Larun.¡±


    The Roadpoint had not spoken. Bright, the renamed, little-nosed partsfighter, had cast in his piece with a shrivelled hiss. It trenched the brows of his companions.


    ¡°I am not,¡± he insisted nervously. ¡°I am from the right-handed bank. That of the Ash. I am one of Lots. The kind born of hoofs and talons.¡±


    ¡°¡¯Lot¡¯¡± is another word for Larun,¡± The Roadpoint said.


    ¡°Yes,¡± Bright replied. ¡°It has been made that way.¡±


    The Roadpoint pursed his lips. Bright crossed his legs and looked into the fire.


    ¡°I wonder often what my old ones knew,¡± he said.


    ¡°Your ancestors?¡± the Hoofpoint asked.


    Bright held his hands together by the flames. ¡°I wonder where they had to go. They could not see Sett. And now they are gone. I will never see them. They cannot see me, or what will happen to us.¡±


    ¡°It is a needless ask,¡± said the kontor. ¡°Do not suffer it, little one.¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± The Hoofpoint. ¡°You can see Sett. He saw your trouble. He took your old ones. I am sure it is all a good way.¡±


    Bright¡¯s gaze was not warmed by his friends¡¯ comfort. ¡°Sett,¡± Wander said. ¡°This is your name for him?¡±


    The partsfighter wiped his brow. ¡°Name? For who?¡±


    ¡°He Grantar.¡±


    Neither Bright, nor The Kontor, nor The Hoofpoint expressed their witness to that effect. Only the Roadpoint answered. ¡°Right, Dzhrymin,¡± he said, ¡°but they do not know those words.¡±


    The Kontor raised her brow. ¡°What is this now, little looker?¡± she protested. ¡°What do you have that we do not?¡±


    ¡°None of you have walked through an aldir,¡± he said. ¡°The Gathering sent me to one, many seasons past. I believed you might have, kontor. But I see now that you are the same.¡±


    The Roadpoint placed down his mirror and shaver. He popped them into a smooth black chest, filled with brushes and grained ointments. It clapped shut. ¡°He Grantar was the name of a Rootcliff seer,¡± he said. ¡°The ones of the old rule offered to him. They pushed him to the dark, to our place, before the new rule was written. He is Detsome Blirsett, the one we see, and now he is ours. You would hear this at an aldir. You would hear this, and it would be chained to a thousand seasons of struggle and tears.¡±


    He laid on his side. ¡°And you would not gain much.¡±


    -


    The column of hoofs, carts, and partsfighters trod up anchored bluffs, which had become slick and icicle in the wake of the winter¡¯s storms which had scoured through the place. To recall their darkness weighed on the day. Wander and Fragile walked alongside Bright and the train of fruitless hoof-trucks, tread by creatures that stuck in and plod through mud and slides carelessly and with little more than a grunt. The Roadpoint sat atop the tallest point of the tallest cart, looking out at the horizon and drawing referents. The Hoofpoint watered each cart¡¯s charge and clucked quietly in their ears. The Kontor sat at the head of the column with her eldest subordinates, all armor-coated and bristling with blades.


    Fragile and Wander travelled near the center, leading The Stronghoof. The Stonehoof sat closer by them today, occasionally nudging up to Fragile and basking in the sun. The Bell was silent, and wound her form of rope around The Stronghoof¡¯s tail, letting him flick her about as a knotted black pendulum.


    ¡°How are you feeling?¡± Fragile asked Wander.


    ¡°I feel good. And you?¡±


    ¡°I feel good.¡±


    He smiled. Her lips curled in that unsmiling way. He gave it to her and looked away.


    ¡°These men are interesting,¡± Fragile said.


    ¡°The speakparts?¡±


    He nodded. ¡°Did you know they were such a manyfaced kind?¡±


    Wander looked at their faces. She looked at the Roadpoint¡¯s, which was thoughtful and drooping. She looked at the Hoofpoint¡¯s which was soft and bearded. And she looked at Bright¡¯s, which was little and wide-eyed.


    ¡°Yes,¡± she said. ¡°I knew. But I have rarely seen it.¡±


    They walked through the night by lantern fire. The plain they walked was seated atop a mound that brought them up to the clouds, and they descended it. The depth of a valley flew out before them, filling their eyes with dimming emptiness, ribbed by white bluffs and stone columns, with hived forms that had coolled and come in from some primordial bubbling. The space beneath them was sketched out with dark lines dusted over by snow, leading to the towers and leaning fortifications of the Couth that they awaited, and there was breath and murmur among the speakparts, partsfighters, Laruns, Moats, Stirred, Lots, Shamins and Goals as their eyes took part of it. A large wall wired up the settlement, peaked on all sides with towering nodes of beaming fire, radiating out into the dark. Smoke plumes rose up from its roofs and its fences, and it was not long before the relieved murmurs turned to the name of Sett, spluttering out the lips of the Laruns three times and more.


    ¡°Eah!¡± Bright moaned. He fell to his knees. ¡°We are unseen! We are unseen! Sight has fled from us!¡±


    Many of the other speakparts tore at their hair with them, tugged the ornaments lining their jaws and cheeks, covered their eyes and slumped against the carts. ¡°What has happened?¡± Fragile asked Wander. ¡°Why are they afraid?¡±


    ¡°Too much fire,¡± she said. ¡°There has been a fight.¡±


    ¡°What can we do?¡± Bright sobbed. ¡°What can be done? There is no journey elsewhere.¡±


    ¡°We must turn back,¡± The Kontor insisted. She looked to Wander. ¡°Turn back, and turn away, now. For the hillfaces will have seen us.¡±


    Wander raised her brow. She shut her eyes and put her ear to the bushes and her nose to the wind, magnifying a small crackling and shiftings in the snow. There were many heartbeats all around, and they were loud, but those farther back were quiet and slow. The air smelled of snow, and of sweat, and of roots and seeds she had not noticed before.


    She ruminated and the column of carts and riders encouraged their hoofs to turn, so that they all might start away from the destroyed settlements. Their hoofs screamed and neighed and tripped through the mud and over one another. At the peak of their misalignment, clumps of hazy figures sprouted from the snow on both sides of their path, their bodies shrouded in brown and white. Their rise lifted a wave of lances that embedded itself in the carts and those who walked beside them.


    Some of the Laruns were shot apart immediately by the salvo. The others cried out and rallied to their Kontor.


    ¡°To wither, to gale!¡± she bellowed. She swept out her blade and drove it forward like a torch wrapped in heat; the sheer glare of it caught the sun and Fragile¡¯s eye. It was no langniv or cane; a tool of finer make. ¡°Shooters to your spots! Produce lines! Produce lines! To gale! Produce lines!¡±


    Running Goals, their thick black hair tied away from their eyes, their thick black hair tied away from their eyes, their overs clung tight to their chests and legs, their canes bared and gleaming, ducked beneath a second barrage and blew into the truck-guarding partsfighters, tackling them to the ground and pressing blades to their throats. Many in the company did not answer their Kontor¡¯s call but broke for the forest, filled with screaming by injuries and by the signalling shrieks, cries and roars that heralded the Goalish forces, who screeched like wings and bellowed like stompers as they made response.


    Wander caught a lance thrown the way of her and tossed it aside. Their animals cowered; The Stonehoof screamed, but kept by them, while The Stronghoof blinked anxiously and shrank back toward Wander. She whistled in its ear and sent it fleeing into the rounds. Rather than put Fragile on it again, she seized him and thrust him beneath a cart whose charges had been cut loose, and whose men had been impaled on its spokes and wheels.


    ¡°Stay here,¡± she said, tucking him in to the mud. ¡°Stay down. Do not make noise. Do not move.¡±


    She stood back up as the hill people met their place in the column. Two of them bore down on her, levelling jagged canes and stickers, their mouths pressed into thin lines in the absence of any command to howl at their friends. She lunged forward and for a moment her teeth assembled in the light, gnashing, and her eyes exploded into bloodshot orbs, before her fist met the nearest Wall and delivered him to the ground and returned her composure.


    The Goals screamed and bayed at a distance as she pummelled her way through them, pitching them into the carts and each other. She picked up a fallen Goal¡¯s sticker and beat them with it as a switch, turning away their blades with a flick of her wrist and slapping them lightly across the cheek. All comers were exhausted.


    Before her, by the remaining fighters, were gripped a half dozen of the speakparts, including Bright, the Hoofpoint, and the Roadpoint, wrapped up in arms and their throats bloodied by metal. The body of the Kontor lay in the dirt, along with her magnificent weapon, and the remains of her company.


    So Wander laid down her weapon and the clamor finished.


    -


    The Laruns were placed in a rank, and Wander in heavy iron chains. The blaith was torn from her back and thrown onto a cart. The ragged Goals ran among them and the cart, checking everywhere for hidden knives and secret clubs. ¡°Why didn¡¯t you tell me?¡± Wander asked the Bell, who had curled up in hiding and sashed herself around Wander¡¯s waist.


    I could not see them, she whispered. There is dark. De¡¯s dark. When she heard his name, Wander frowned.


    Many of the Goals surrounded the pile where the Larun¡¯s weapons had been tossed, picking the best ones. One of them took up Wander¡¯s blaith and fiddled with the tip. As he brought it out from its covering, the glow of its signs came up from the metal. He dropped it and stepped away in shock.


    ¡°Ih!¡± he exclaimed. The other Goals looked toward him. He approached Wander with the blaith.


    ¡°Outman,¡± he said, ¡°is this yours?¡±


    She nodded.


    He stepped forward, leered, and unsuck a littlecane that he kept within his belt. He drew down the collar on Wander¡¯s vest, exposing the shining light of her inscriptions.


    ¡°The words of Athad,¡± he whispered. There was no movement from the Goals.


    ¡°The words of Athad!¡± he shouted. ¡°The words! The words of Athad!¡±


    ¡°A star!¡±


    ¡°A star!¡¯


    ¡°We have taken to ground a star!¡± And they were driven down into the valley.


    Outside the Couth, as its walls and entrance rose before them, they passed through a number of roundseats stacked up and stitched together by its inhabitants. They were ramshackle, and many other Goals peeked out among them at the victorious train of fighters. They looked on the faces of the countrymen with fear and some curiosity.


    ¡°They look upon us as though we are outborn,¡± one of the fighters said.


    ¡°Let them look!¡± another cried. ¡°Let them see it. We are our own.¡±


    The seats had been built up over many years, and they were outside another segment of houses. These were ancient enough and displayed the circular architecture of another century.


    As they approached the gates, they could make out the Couth barrier as built of stone, and pillared high above where they could climb. The jut of the walls¡¯ ranging guard was marked by the fires above them, which stood ensconced in metal fixtures around the whole scope of it. The eyes of the taken evaded the fire, twisted wreathing blaze, cautious to it. The columns of death beyond the wall hung heavy above its own. Some of the takers looked as they went past and regarded its spool, unballed into parched shadow that left the light for greater emit.


    The stone of the Couth¡¯s walls was firm and squarely cut. Without light, its walls had no color. Within it, they were given an orange hue. The Goals who had taken them shouted at their own as they passed through the gates: ¡°Call the Wildfire! Call the Wildfire!¡± And they were released into the settlement.


    Immediately, Fragile and Wander were met by a new sight. The Couth, in outline, was akin to the other that they had seen outside the Empty Houses, and it too possessed a Salon, but this one was of much greater size, and its rooms burst from its facade with superior volume than even the one in Partplant. From its construction, it had no resemblance to either of those buildings, appearing instead much older, like the Rootcliff buildings outside the Couth walls, modified with but a few Larun standards, their drinks and their presence. The standards had been torn down, the drinks tumbled into the snow, and their presence reduced to piles of people stacked up in three sites around the Couth. More Goals stood there, their faces covered in applied clays and soot, their weapons red-bloody, pouring firewater over the bodies of bryst-clad Freemen and Laruns whose affect remained in yawning shrieks and grimaces that continued to deliver hatred. Sticks with fire were thrown them and they were made a blaze.


    Opposite the Couth¡¯s salon was a nivhouse, warm and homely, accompanied by the remains of the Couth¡¯s nivmen. Their bodies too and their possessions were shattered into pieces.


    Different buildings surrounded the barrack and its salon, including houses full of goods, yards of hoofs and meatbearers and squawking caged wings, and the blackened remains of a star-shaped papersquare that had been burned to the ground. Beyond and peripheral to them all, their derived axis was the aldir of Firmen Couth.


    The building¡¯s stone had been worn down by an age of gentle wind, and stained by ice and by the sun. It was composed of three angular blocks that protruded from a single central cone whose structure rolled like water up to its apex, where a cracked metal globe formed the shape of a hesign. One block of the aldir, at its base, contained many cells for its caretakers, the majamry, equipped with a rack of slits in its wall that they could receive daylight by, and which now threw out light with lapping shimmer. Seats of soil for respected seeds and their corresponding shapes had been dug out from the soil, the latter of which rejected any claim to nativity with its squished white sediment characteristic of the West. The trees had trunks grown thick even in deep winter, draping prolific shoots of leaves over the path inside and shining with glittered tips of organic, gemmish sapforms. All the plants were kept in iron cages that matched the vigor with which their charges swayed in the wind with their indifference and chill. Wander recognized the design, and saw in it the lines made over a thousand turns to emplace the root of its descent authorities. A mural on the entrance of the aldir depicted the name of that root.


    HE GRANTAR


    At the Salon stood a man with a piece of cloth. He wrote on it, making marks with his finger and a shell filled with dye as men brought up brown jars of drink and roots from a crypt and threw them in a pile and set fire to them. The man¡¯s features had the delicacy and shine of youth, drift to hardening and scales wrought by the sun¡¯s common ravages. He washed his hands in a trough of water and dried them on his over, which was colored white that had been stained with bolts of red. The fingers on his left hand were braced by the knuckles of a Larun gauntlet that had been slashed apart and stitched anew.


    The youth approached them all and spoke. His words were Sprak, carried by a voice with gentle repeal that offered to wash into song. ¡°What have you seen, friends of my friends?¡±


    The foreigners looked at him uncertainly. He clapped one of the Goals on the back. ¡°Good,¡± he said. ¡°This work is good. Was it a plan?¡±


    His interlocutor smiled and shook his head. ¡°No, eld,¡± he said. ¡°We took safety, where it was needed. I tried to tell them not to. I was an empty-head.¡±


    The youth squeezed the Goal¡¯s arm again and stepped before Wander.


    ¡°Are you the Kontor?¡± he asked.


    ¡°No.¡± Wander replied in Goalish.


    His brow bent and his smooth, unbroken lips parted with a hiss. ¡°Then with whom should I be speaking?¡±


    Wander¡¯s lips, savaged by the cold, crumbled and wept in irritation, but they did not open. She studied the youth¡¯s face as she would a bug or small animal. He strode up to her and knelt; his forehead came up to the ridge of her nose. He looked at her cuts and bruises. ¡°Your words are like ones I know.¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡±


    ¡°Some Laruns can speak words,¡± he said. ¡°But yours are like ones I know. Your voice is less touched than the others.¡±


    He looked over at Fragile, held next to her bound and gagged. ¡°I suppose he has spoken many secrets.¡±


    Wander sneezed.


    ¡°My name is Wildfire.¡± The youth gestured to the other Goals. ¡°They tell me plans.¡±


    ¡°They call me the Dry Man.¡±


    Wildfire¡¯s expression did not change. He poked at the strands of artifice that covered Wander¡¯s head, and brushed his glove across its rim.


    ¡°You are one,¡± he said. ¡°There are many outmen here, with many families. Which one is yours?¡±


    ¡°The one of He Grantar.¡±


    ¡°It is good that we should meet,¡± he said. ¡°Mine is the kind that cuts it out.¡±


    Wander looked around the Couth, shifting in her restraints. She spied the aldir, its grand ascent, and the Laruns¡¯ divine signal; there, at the base, situated in a series of tents and campgrounds, was the majamry, its cloistered host, clad in the brown and yellow robes of their profession. They peeked out from behind cloth and rubble spots in clammy terror. Carrion eaters snapped and pulled at the flesh of the dead. ¡°This work I see,¡± she said, ¡°is in and whole.¡±


    Wildfire saw where she was looking. ¡°That kind helped us in the cutting,¡± he said. He raised his finger to a male majam, who was the only about their number that did not hide or cower. ¡°He put the gap in their stone. The drink of his Walls was joined by a skinned root, and they were left on their backs. There was one with words like yours; we took his head away.¡±


    ¡°He gave you help,¡± Wander said, ¡°so that yours would not cut his?¡±


    ¡°The work and its plan were outborn. He approached we. What has brought you to it?¡±


    ¡°Nothing. What will you do with us?¡±


    ¡°I will take your head away,¡± Wildfire said. ¡°And your little one¡¯s, too. He will be cut apart like his kind, which speaks our own to you. We will scatter his guts on the walls of this place. We will drink up your ashes so that they do not pollute the rulers¡¯ house.¡±


    ¡°Are you sure of it?¡±


    Wildfire stared at her. ¡°I am sure.¡±


    She broke free of her bonds.


    The hard grey links that bound her hands shattered and she grabbed the youth. She plucked the blade from his hip, a heavy cane with a thick body, held it to his throat, and held him at the Goals, who bared their arms and snarled.


    As she was mustering a good threat, three of the fighters swung their blades at her. One of them coursed directly toward Wildfire¡¯s neck. She threw him down and swung around and pummelled the aggressor. They danced and danced and in a moment Wander had dispatched ten of the Goals guarding ther lot, including the one that had seized Fragile. She took him up and was preparing to leave when a voice shot out from the aldir.


    ¡°Eldman,¡± the Larun exclaimed.


    She stopped, as did the other Goals, levelling their shooters and weapons at her and the other captives. Wildfire lowered a littlecane he had raised to the fight after his recover; the little figure of the majam who had been looking so boldly from the aldir was at the fore of his company. He beckoned to Wildfire with a nod and the recline of a hand.


    Wildfire looked between Wander and the man and put her behind. For a long time, about which Wander¡¯s various opponents were consumed by a gasping and sweating and batting of the eyes, the Goal and the Larun muttered together. Then the youth was returned, his hackles lowered and his blade turned still.


    ¡°Wheel-Lodge is this shell¡¯s keeper,¡± he said to Wander. ¡°He has said that you will stay.¡±


    -


    They were released from the Goals and taken instead by the majams. One or two of them looked at Wander with wide and narrowed eyes, their hands remaining close to their belts, where they were armed as well with Larun weapons. Out they went past the salon and the other smoking ruins of Firmen Couth, into the mass of tented vigil that their kind had established outside the monument at its center.


    Wander¡¯s hands were let out from the debris of her shackles, and she massaged her wrists, along with the bruises her knuckles had incurred. ¡°Who is ¡®Wheel Lodge¡¯?¡± Fragile whispered. ¡°I did not know the Laruns had such men.¡±


    ¡°He is a majam,¡± Wander said. She looked at the Larun, who lead on his neophytes at a spirited clip for his age. ¡°A site-matam, perhaps. That is, the first one here, who would tell all the others. He is old enough for that.¡±


    ¡°What is ¡®macham¡¯?¡±


    ¡°Majam. A man of secret words. A kind that offers whispers. Like your men of fire. But it is done for He.¡±


    Fragile curled up his brow, and his eyes widened. ¡°The Larun works for He?¡±


    ¡°His work does not. He will say it does. He may believe that is its way.¡±


    ¡°I see it.¡±


    Wander looked at him. ¡°You do?¡±


    The pitch of her voice lifted and he turned his head at the change. ¡°I do ¨C I- I believed I did?¡±


    She turned away. Fragile rubbed his fingers. ¡°Sixbraids fought Sixbraids,¡± Fragile said. ¡°And Unders fought Unders. Drymen can be the same. It would follow the path I know.¡± He held on to his coldover.


    ¡°It was not always so. These follow a false call. The Laruns wrote it.¡±


    ¡°And Brightplague?¡±


    She nodded.


    ¡°What does it ask?¡±


    ¡°Bad work,¡± she said. She shook her head. ¡°Its call is old and long. There are too many words you do not know. They like Larun things now. That is the end.¡±


    In the court of the majamry, where the men of whispers knelt beside the aldir, which had been scratched with Goalish words, the majams muttered to each other. Then Wander, Wheel, and Fragile were left alone, unguarded. Fragile¡¯s gaze did not leave the head of their host, whose hairless figure showed in the light. His own look and Wander¡¯s were fixed on one another.


    The majam¡¯s frame had a hunch and thickening of age, but in spite of these, strength rose to the eye out of an immanent history of bends and hits, each of which sat rigidly manifest in the contours of his robes. Those he wore were rough, fraying, and their vis could put one in mind of tree bark. A black beard, cragged and burnt, grew untended around his mouth and chin. His dark skin was spotted with red and white blotches. His shaved head was a well-rounded ball, squat and luminous.


    He spoke first. His particular way of Sprak was coarse, idiosyncratic, and twisted in its representation relative to the Freemen and others they had met. It was all delivered by a throat so far screamed and sicknessed past a time in which any word might have flowed happily past the ditches and sored knots of its chapped gape.


    Fragile nudged her when she did not respond. ¡°Wander?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know what he¡¯s saying.¡±


    ¡°I do.¡± They turned. The Hoofpoint had been carried to the tent as well, along with some of the other speakparts and faithful among the Goal''s prisoners.


    ¡°He is speaking Roundround words,¡± the Hoofpoint continued. ¡°Not mine. But close. They would be his home country¡¯s. A little Sprak. Very little.¡±


    He was brought forward. He spoke in the Larun¡¯s style, and Wheel repeated his message.


    ¡°¡®The againstfollow looks upon her kind,¡¯¡± The Hoofpoint translated. ¡°¡®We breath as one.¡¯¡±


    ¡°We do not.¡±


    The Hoofpoint repeated it. Wheel shook his head. ¡°Fah!¡±


    ¡°I want to know why he helped the Goals.


    Wheel¡¯s eyes narrowed as The Hoofpoint gave it to him. ¡°He asks if you mistake your own work,¡± The Hoofpointgave her. ¡°He says he knows who you are.¡±


    ¡°I do it because it is good,¡± she said. ¡°You are a figure of their gatherings and riders. You do nothing that is good. They have put the Lefthanded places into fire.¡±


    Wheel babbled angrily. ¡°He is He¡¯s man-¡± The Hoofpoint followed, trailing him. ¡°-not the Otiser¡¯s. No hand nor its pen can write a word that resides above his own. The Taking walks on the parts-shaded way; the breaths he takes bring others to it.¡±


    Wheel slapped his throat twice.


    She considered it and gave him nothing else. Wheel turned to Fragile, and spoke in Goalish. ¡°Where are your braids, riverborn heart?¡± he hissed.


    Fragile took a shock when his words emerged from the majam¡¯s other tongue. He clung to his coldover. ¡°E-eldman?¡±


    ¡°You speak from the river,¡± Wheel said. ¡°Where are your braids? I should see two.¡±


    Fragile tilted his head. He reached a hand to feel for the knots, and could find no grip. He seized his locks with both hands, picking through them frantically. ¡°My- the- where-¡±


    ¡°They¡¯re gone,¡± Wander said. He looked up at her.


    ¡°Your braids. They¡¯ve been gone since you found me. You didn¡¯t know?¡±


    This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    His eyes wet and he blinked. He shook his head.


    ¡°I can make you new ones,¡± Wheel said. ¡°Sixbraids passed through here, before. They asked for bread.¡±


    Fragile looked down and bit his lip. He peeked up at the croaking Larun, his expression skewed, and Wheel met his gaze. ¡°Are you the last one?¡± Wheel asked.


    ¡°T-the last-?¡±


    ¡°I have heard of one,¡± he said. ¡°Not as much as one helped. But her song rises loud and long. The more we listen, the more names can be found upon its edges.¡±


    ¡°I am her friend, eldman,¡± Fragile said. ¡°There is a sun between us, eldman.¡±


    Wheel half-nodded at him. ¡°There is sun between us all.¡±


    Wander watched the two share their gaze. The majam rotated his eyes back to her. She asked him, ¡°Why have you brought us back?¡±


    -


    Wheel and Wildfire brought Wander and the Hoofpoint to the face of the Pale Aldir.


    She left Fragile with the Laruns, and with the crowd of Goalish Walls who surrounded them and their carts.


    ¡°Cover your ears, Fragile,¡± she said. His eyes became round and his brow raised, but she did it. She addressed the Goals and he watched as their expressions shifted variously. The older ones among them did not make much of a fuss at her words; some of the younger ones appeared to keep a brave face, even as they shook and shivered. When he took his ears away, they were nodding easily. ¡°We can hear you, Star,¡± they said. ¡°We can hear you.¡±


    Wheel and Wildfire brought her out, along with her interpreter, to the face of the ancient creature. The building¡¯s columns and spheric pinnacle cast their shadow in the evening light. The flowering trees were drowned in pools of overflowing mud and vines that wrapped around and out the bars and over the monument. Their cages rose out from the ground, feasting on the soil as the trees appeared to.


    Light shined out from all cells of the aldir¡¯s blocks, on either side of the monument. The Goals sitting by its entrance opened it, a huge armored facade that swept out, illuminating the dark with a sourceless might. The guards shut it back up behind them after the four had entered.


    Their descent into the aldir¡¯s reception revealed the extent of it. It was small, and provided some rooms for the lighting of branches from a fireholder, and those had been lit. A broad corridor fed them into chamber of worship. Murals on the wall depicted spritely figures passing from darkness and soil into the air. Silence was not at any point permitted; there was speaking that surrounded them, which echoed out from a further space.


    Wander¡¯s ears picked them up slowly, and then they were present. The voices did not whisper and could not. They spoke loud and together enough that this chatter was on the ground, like the room was full of prostrated crowds iterating titles and incantations.


    Wheel explained in a course of gestures. ¡°He can hear some offerings,¡± The Hoofpoint said. ¡°But most of it is unknown to them. He says there must be some bad work in it. Some work that is not of Sett.¡±


    They went deeper into the aldir, where they discovered the veneration chamber. It was adjoined by tunnels to other cells, for living, writing, and the ritual slaughter of breath. It displayed in full rich gifts to its base: gems laid in offering, murals, stacked human skulls polished and colored blue with shoulder mounts wreathed in fine smelling roots and flowers. The room was domal and filled with thin, black-and-white-hued cushions on the floor layered in depth and volume such that they appeared to checker it for a year in each direction.


    It was and had always been very cold. Fine smelling green roots trailed out of it, and a rush of air like breath spilled out. The voices stopped as they arrived at its precipice. At their center, between the columns that grew taller as they structured the cone, was a pedestal with a pair of scrolls. On their front was a word in the Rootcliff scripts:


    BASE


    They were surrounded by a large pool of liquid, enough to bathe in. It shone bright white.


    ¡°He will not tell me what it is,¡± Wildfire said. ¡°Do you know?¡±


    Wander crouched down and ¡°It¡¯s supposed to be water.¡±


    ¡°The ones who we have sent underneath do not come out,¡± Wildfire said. ¡°We lost three. Wheel Lodge lost five.¡±


    A cry emerged from the deep. Wheel broke down sobbing.


    ¡°It is one of the majam fighters,¡± Hoofpoint whispered. ¡®Breaker¡¯, he cries.¡±


    ¡°Why don¡¯t you burn it down?¡± Wander asked.


    Wheel recovered and raged spittle at her when The Hoofpoint carried her suggestion. ¡°He- eah- he does not want that.¡±


    They were silent.


    ¡°This place is Wheel Lodge,¡± said Wildfire. ¡°Every heart needs smoke. But if he does not want it, then he shall have none.¡±


    -


    ¡°You haven¡¯t answered my question,¡± Wander said.


    The aldir¡¯s exterior breathed heavily as Wheel, Wander and Wildfire assessed it from a distance. The other Goals watched it in a crowd. Some of them continued to write their Statements on its surface, calling for the help of their rulers.


    Wheel spoke. ¡°They want you to go inside,¡± Hoofpoint told her. Wander watched beads of sweat crawl down his neck. His eyes flicked back toward the Laruns, where blades were being forced to their necks, and the Goals dispassionately prepared their slaughter, throwing wood on one of their fires. Fragile too was under arms, although he had been stood alone; the Goals watching him did not venture more than a few feet to his center. ¡°He says y-you will know its type. He says you can find its neck, and break it.¡±


    ¡°How does he know that it must be broken? Perhaps Sett has a use for his men.¡±


    Hoofpoint inquired, but Wheel did not answer.


    ¡°What do you gain from this?¡± she looked to Wildfire.


    ¡°Wheel Lodge has asked our help,¡± he said. ¡°Without it, we must pursue the fight alone. We do not have a way to be as strong as Laruns. We can only be quiet, and whisper, and set their fire to their friends and fields and shells.¡±


    Wander looked at him and away.


    ¡°You need to free the Laruns,¡± she said.


    Wildfire and Wheel looked at each other. The Hoofpoint adored the Dzhrymin.


    ¡°These do not fight for the Otiser¡¯s firm,¡± she said. ¡°And their breath is enjoyed by others.¡±


    Wheel rumbled. ¡°He asks if you have sun for these men,¡± the Hoofpoint translated.


    ¡°I do not have sun with Laruns,¡± she said.


    Wheel looked to Wildfire. He blinked, waited, and shrugged.


    ¡°They can go,¡± he said. ¡°We have had our fill of water.¡±


    He looked at Wander. ¡°My friends are weary,¡± he said. ¡°It has been a long day. We will be ready for your battle tomorrow.¡±


    -


    After they had departed the aldir, Wander was returned to the Laruns.


    The captives were released from their chains and let free. Goals shut the gates to the Couth, put bars against them, and left. The speakparts and partsfighters roamed the ruins of the compound. Some clumped together in bunches. Others sat alone.


    The Goals did as Wildfire had said and dispersed from the confines of the Couth, disappearing as quickly as they had come. Only Wildfire himself remained. He sat alone, next to one of the fires on the Couth¡¯s perimeter wall, drinking from cups of grain that he poured out with a bottle, looking inside the compound at his work, at his captives, and at the aldir that glowered at them all.


    Wander sat with Fragile, Bright, the Kontor, and the Hoofpoint, who began to gather wood for a fire out of the husks and the murdered swatches of work that remained. Once it was lit, she looked up toward Wildfire and touched Fragile¡¯s arm.


    ¡°I¡¯m going,¡± she said.


    ¡°Will you be back?¡± He followed her gaze, up toward the fighter.


    ¡°I will. But I want to learn something.¡±


    She stood up and left them. The eyes of the Laruns and others trailed her as she climbed hand-over-hand onto the ledge separating them between civilization and a tangled wilderness. The Wall peered down at her at she wrenched her way up to his position.


    ¡°Have you come for drink, outman?¡± he asked. He sloshed around the bottle. ¡°I am afraid I will run out soon. I did not bring for two.¡±


    She fully scaled the wall. He offered her no hand or courtesy as she placed herself next to him and slapped her cloak once. ¡°You are a teller,¡± she said. ¡°Why aren¡¯t you with your Walls?¡±


    He sipped. ¡°They have no need for me.¡±


    She sat down beside him. ¡°Why didn¡¯t your fighters stop,¡± she asked, ¡°when my blade was at your throat?¡±


    Wildfire smacked his lips. ¡°It was my throat, not theirs. We do not know why Laruns stop when we take their friends. But they do.¡±


    ¡°I did.¡±


    ¡°You are an outman. You are like their kind.¡±


    She did not respond to the insult. Wildfire gestured over to the light on the wall.


    ¡°That fire is going to go out,¡± Wildfire said.


    Wander looked out at the fire, which was in a bright blue metal cone, lapping at its edges, and sending out a bright beam on both sides of the fortification.


    ¡°When the Freemen come,¡± Wildfire said, ¡°when they come in thousands, they will find whoever they can and lay down everyone,¡± he said. ¡°There will be no more fire. If the Freemen stay, they will find whoever they can and lay them all down with this outborn shine.¡± He pressed a finger on the tip of his cane, the metal of it glinting with starlight. ¡°There will be no more need for fire on the outside. Everyone will be inside.¡±


    ¡°Because you will all be gone?¡±


    He nodded.


    The place outside the Couth was quiet. A yell went up and was silenced. There were fires there too, and smaller walls.


    ¡°When I was a boy,¡± Wildfire said, ¡°I did not know what a shell was. I was given canes, and I sharpened them. The canes went away, and they came back, and they would be dull enough that I could work again. Then I was taller; I carried messages. Then I was taller; I cut open throats, and I slipped poison into wells, because I was adorable. Not like the fighters. When one is adored, they are not seen. The Laruns did not see me. And I had many friends.¡±


    He rubbed his hands together. ¡°The outmen flooded our country. They had done it in too thick a way. Many of us were gone. I had one creator left. We went to the meeting-ones, and we were brought to a round between the trees. There was a patch of green flowers there. The branches there were packed thick, so that the sky could not see us. It was shaped like the rulersland, except for the middle. In the middle was a pit. I did not look at it.¡± He bit his lip. ¡°We sat there for twenty nights. I began to believe that we had been brought to the rulers¡¯ house, because it was so adorable, and we were by it. There was no smoke and the only ones I could see smelled good. I asked my birthman if it were so, and he told me that it was not. He told me that there would be more Response.¡±


    Wildfire paused. ¡°I wish that he had been silent.¡±


    He said nothing else. The stars sparkled. Wander took out her pipe and lit it.


    ¡°I do not say it to smile,¡± Wander said, puffing, ¡°but I shake at your kind of heart.¡±


    He looked at her.


    ¡°I shake at all of you,¡± she said. ¡°All you Goals. Every parcel of your home makes me want to leave. There is nothing in it that does not send me fire. You move house quickly, away from your creators, without even a bit of sorrow. You have no care for the tug of heartswater. You do not attend all commands. If you wanted to stay outside, why did you not stay together? If you had, you would not have been destroyed.¡±


    ¡°The Laruns call us Goals,¡± Wildfire said. ¡°I do not know why.¡±


    ¡°You are of Goal. You are of its kind.


    ¡°You are in Goal, too,¡± he said. ¡°The word is from places in the dawn. But my place is in the evening.¡± He gripped his cane. ¡°But what a Larun says is what others say.¡±


    She did not argue with it. ¡°What about your secret-speaker?¡± Wildfire asked. ¡°Wheel Lodge says he has a mouth like the river. The river is in the light. Do you shake at him too?¡±


    ¡°I shake for him, that he was made to have been born of you.¡±


    ¡°He was not born of me.¡±


    Wander curled her fingers. ¡°He should have been born somewhere smiling, with green grass, and fire, and hearts that would embrace him. What you are, Goal or not, there is nothing of it in Key.¡±


    ¡°You must prefer it,¡± he said. ¡°That you have one for yourself alone.¡±


    At this, she brought no reply. A gust of wind rushed past their post, dragging the smoke from Wander¡¯s pipe out up a plume that stretched out into the sky.


    Wildfire threw out his hand to the aldir, which breathed menacingly before them. ¡°What is that?¡¯ he asked Wander, gesturing at the large, cracked spherographic that made the temple¡¯s peak. ¡°What is written on this Lodge?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡±


    ¡°I believed you stars had those words.¡±


    ¡°I do not.¡± She rolled up the sleeve on her arm, revealing the hundreds of circular glyphs etched into her skin. ¡°This one concerns protection from cuts,¡± she said, tapping a circle. She tapped another. ¡°This one concerns protection from burns. This one concerns protection from enemies with tricks, who cannot be seen.¡±


    Wildfire leaned forward and goggled at them, wide-eyed. She rolled her sleeve back down. ¡°I can¡¯t make them myself. Hearts cannot. Only He.¡±


    She nodded at the aldir. ¡°This one may not be spoken. ¡°The Lefthanded Blade may have simply asked for one, and received it.¡± She looked down at the simmering light which poured out from between its gaps, cutting poles of gold and grainy distinction through the dark.


    ¡°Words without breath,¡± Wildfire said. He shivered. ¡°Perhaps we do defy a ruler.¡±


    Wander watched as he set aside his cup and bottle and wrapped his arms around his legs in a familiar way. She brought out the pipe from between her lips and handed it to him.


    ¡°What is that?¡± he asked.


    ¡°Still.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean?¡±


    ¡°This smoke has a boon,¡± she said, squeezing it. ¡°The boon is still.¡±


    ¡°Where did you find it?¡±


    ¡°Where there is none.¡±


    Her handed remained extended. He took it over, put it to his mouth and inhaled it in the way he had seen.


    It fell into his lap. His muscles relaxed and he sat still. He breathed in and out. The wind drifted over the tower and the clouds rolled by. Spirits fell through his open lips. His eyes grew wide and wandered the sky, and he heaved with breath.


    ¡°This boon...¡± he said. ¡°Thank you, Dry Man. Destroyer. Shakes at born¡­¡±


    Wander waited for him until the fire had burned down and was lit again by a watchman. The still still had him, so she got up and left him to it.


    -


    ¡°There has been a disaster done to these hearts,¡± Wheel said. ¡°All of us are contained in it. It does not keep itself to the feurkuns. That is what I learned. We cannot keep to ourselves. There is a touch between us.¡±


    Bright¡¯s company sat in the darkness and around a fire in the center of the Couth, now deserted in the wake of the Goals¡¯ retreat. Fragile waited with them, anxious for Wander to return from her appointment. The Goals who remained did not bother chaining them, with their weapons extracted, their supplies confiscated, and their guide left to rot and disappear with the slain beyond the walls. Wheel and some of his majamry came out to the Laruns that night, hollow-eyes, whispering, and muttering passages from the Base of Azad Kadra.


    At Wheel¡¯s observance, the Roadpoint protested. ¡°These hillfaces do not know anything, birthman,¡± she said. ¡°They attack us. They have cut in two twelve of my friends, and friends of my friends. They given their days to mud and filth, to lying points, and they despoil the ones among them who will learn, who will show us and all what they have to give. They are a disaster of a great and long way.


    ¡°They know nothing,¡± Wheel said, growling out rhapsody from the Wild¡¯s pidgin. ¡°A beast-driver does not turn in his flock by weapons. For one thousand turns, the lines that brought you here breathed and fell in hope of it. They have all met metal. That is because it was always against the Rule; or do you think that Sett would bring you defeat out of the rightness that we all have? It cannot be good.¡±


    ¡°Do you know the Base, proddi?¡± The Hoofpoint asked. ¡°Do you know its precious words?¡±


    ¡°I have them, and can give them to you, little one.¡±


    There was whispering. ¡°Do they tell you the words of Bringer? Can you tell us what is told?¡±


    ¡°What do you want to hear?¡±


    ¡°Something of a time such as this. When one does not know if he will breath through the night.¡±


    ¡°Sett protects you, little one. He gives you a place after breath has ended, and sends you back to the ones you have known. He has many spots of soil and many cannotfollows waiting for your service.¡±


    The Hoofpoint said. ¡°My birthman had many spots of soil. He had a whole field of cannotfollows in his service. What does Sett have for him, majam-brother?¡±


    ¡°Sett shall take those spots from him, along with his cannotfollows,¡± Wheel said. ¡°They shall be spread out to the ones who do not have any. The Rule shall be made right too, in this way.¡±


    The Hoofpoint was surprised.


    Bright rubbed his hands and asked Wheel, ¡°Majam-brother ¨C will Sett give it to the feurkun ones?¡±


    Wheel snapped his fingers, and one of his majams recited words, softly sung. ¡°Sett does not like the feurkun ones,¡± Wheel said. ¡°Even if he did, the feurkun ones seek no spot or part.¡±


    ¡°B-but¡­¡± Bright fidgeted. ¡°I believed this disaster against his wishes. Is that what you said?¡±


    ¡°His wishes are unknown to us. His prices are a better wager.¡±


    Bright¡¯s head tilted. Wheel continued, ¡°It is the Rootcliff people he prices best, for theirs was the First Rule entitled. Then are the Laruns, to whom was the Second Rule entitled. The third I cannot estimate; only that it shall rise, as the others did, with like shouting, burst of all spirits, and the emptying of wrong nations.¡±


    ¡°But then ¨C what separates the feurkuns from our own?¡±


    ¡°They have put out the word, ever since the First Rule, and long before.¡± Wheel shook his head. ¡°Have two Rules passed us by. So surely he does not want them in his place. But by this failure, he has made clear that he disapproves of this fight as well.¡±


    ¡°The Goals have a place of their own,¡± The Roadpoint noted. ¡°The Rulers¡¯ house. Is that one we will destroy?¡±


    ¡°Their rulers have never been heard,¡± Wheel said. ¡°But we have had the voice of He. He is gone, now. And his words keep, still.¡±


    Fragile stood up and left the Laruns.


    The partsfighters fidgeted. Wheel¡¯s eye moved to them. ¡°You chafe, little ones?¡±


    ¡°What of the trees?¡± a partsfighter asked. ¡°What of the howls, majam-brother? They can speak with the trees and with the howls. Why can we not? From where did they take these words?¡±


    ¡°A tipper steals, and these are a tipping kind,¡± Wheel said. ¡°There is none among them who does not.¡±


    Bright looked at the majam with nerves that flailed. He sat quietly as they sang their songs.


    -


    Fragile walked away from Wheel and the Laruns.


    He wandered towards the gate of the Couth, and watched the fire on the wall. It flickered and jumped in place. The tinge of it brought on a nostalgic melancholy, and he saw the words of the fireworker beside it.


    Feurkun . . . a voice whispered.


    Fragile jumped and spun around. The words were strong and boiling. ¡°W-who said that?!¡±


    I am . . . friend.


    Fragile furrowed his brow. He stepped back into the light as the shadows swirled around him, animated by fear. ¡°W-what do you want?¡±


    Ear! ¡­ Your ¡­ Ear! ¡­ Your ¡­ Firstpoint ¡­


    ¡°I have not Firstpoint,¡± Fragile whispered.


    Your ¡­ Firstpoint ¡­ Keep her away. Keep her away!


    Fragile¡¯s eyes watered.


    I have ¡­ taken! It is ¡­ Lefthanded place! Unbroached of conviction! Punishment for entrance! Great punishment! Great ¡­ danger! Keep her out!


    Fragile shut his eyes. He reached for his littlecane and held it out with both hands at the darkness. ¡°Y-you are a shadow,¡± he whispered. ¡°I have no Firstpoint!¡±


    Keep-


    ¡°I have no Firstpoint!¡±


    Feurkun¡­


    ¡°Go away!¡± he screamed.


    ¡°Fragile.¡±


    Fragile fell backwards, onto the stone, as he flipped himself towards her. ¡°W-Wander?¡±


    The Warrior looked down at him with a furrowed brow. She had appeared behind him, hatless, her bare head exposed to the starlight. Her shoulderskin was gone, and she carried the blaith on her side, not her back. ¡°I heard shouting.¡±


    ¡°I-ih.¡± He got up. ¡°I-I just¡­ it was nothing.¡±


    ¡°Okay.¡± Wander looked like she wanted to say more, but she didn¡¯t. ¡°I¡¯ll go.¡±


    ¡°W-wait!¡±


    He rushed over to her wordlessly, and put his arm by hers. They started to walk back to the fires of the Couth. The fire cast their silhouettes on the pavement before them.


    ¡°What is a shadow?¡± Wander asked.


    Fragile blanched. ¡°A shadow?¡±


    ¡°You called me a shadow, once. Do you remember?¡±


    A pit formed in Fragile¡¯s stomach. ¡°Yes.¡±


    He wrung his fingers. ¡°A shadow¡­ it is something you cannot see.¡±


    They reached the fires. Wheel was there, continuing to gesticulate and ramble at the Laruns in broken, inelegant pidgin. The majamry stared at them still and silently in the dark.


    ¡°We can keep walking,¡± Wander said.


    Fragile felt warm, and the opening he felt lost its shape. ¡°Well,¡± he said, ¡°it is such an adorable night.¡±


    ¡°It is.¡±


    They continued past the Freeman house, stained with blood, the yard full of hoofs, now slaughtered, and the charred remains of the Laruns¡¯ papersquare, full of blackened wood and jagged partitions whose gaps and scars revealed the depth of its ruined cells. ¡°How can a person be a shadow?¡± Wander asked. ¡°How would I be, if you could see me?¡±


    The Goal fidgeted. He reached for his absent three-string, and his hands groped and clung for something they could not find. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± he said. ¡°I didn¡¯t know if you were there. Even though I could see you. It is what is said. When a cloud covers the shell and light is in it, and we know that the dark parts are our friends ¨C that is a shadow, too.¡±


    ¡°A shadow inside.¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡± Fragile nodded. ¡°A shadow inside.¡±


    They turned towards one another. Fragile removed a small, round stone from his hoofleather bag and offered it to Wander.


    She took it. The light from the aldir fell upon its face and revealed its reflection. ¡°The Roadpoint¡¯s seer?¡±


    ¡°I asked him if I could borrow it,¡± Fragile said. He put his hands behind his back. ¡°He just gave it to me. He believes that we will not leave this place. I don¡¯t know what it is, but for its work ¨C it must have some power. Can it help you?¡±


    Wander bounced around her reflection in it. She looked awful. ¡°Who knows?¡±


    She stowed it in her belt. They looked back toward the aldir.


    ¡°It¡¯s going to be a very long day,¡± she said.


    He touched her glove with his hand.


    -


    They turned back to the camp and slept. The Laruns slept too, and the majamry. The fire they surrounded slipped away.


    At dawn, the Goals returned, wandering out of the hills in packs. They shoved open the gates of the Couth. Wildfire gathered with his men by the entrance to the aldir, tying on equipment. Their overs had been dropped and held by the crones, replaced with sections of Larun armor, chopped out from discarded plates and guards. It shined and stuck close to their backs, chests, and backs.


    Wander approached the entrance, along with Fragile and the Laruns. ¡°What work is this?¡± she asked.


    Wildfire drew out his cane, which glinted in the light. ¡°This is my segment,¡± he said. ¡°We will follow you into the outness.¡±


    She regarded each of his men. ¡°That covering will slow you,¡± she said, ¡°and it is not like to help.¡±


    Wildfire turned to them and flicked his hand upward. In a fit of hoisting, the Goals threw off their armor and dumped it into a pile at their center. He looked back at her.


    Wander stepped toward the doors. Fragile stepped closer and brushed up against her shoulder, which was cold. She turned to him.


    ¡°I would like a smile,¡± she asid.


    Fragile blushed. ¡°I did not know it was a smiling time,¡± he said.


    He produced one. She took it from him shortly and withdrew. He He got up on his tippie toes and hugged her around the neck. She grasped him by the chest and stepped away.


    She drew her blade and gazed int othe entrance of the aldir.


    For the second time, Wander and the Goals advanced past the temple threshold. The voices remained at an ordinary pitch. The Goals held tight their words, stained into strips of cloth and stitched into their overs. One of them drew a word Fragile had taught Wander on the wall with a pale grey mixture.


    They entered the chamber of worship. The voices shifted into melody. The painting Goal, and an accomplice, set to work further marking the aldir with their script; Wander could not be sure, but the singing seemed to dissonate the more they wrote. They were accompanied by a crackling, as though they stepped on and crushed crystals. The Goals expressed little in the face of it.


    The pool of water stood before them. Masses of a a meaty algae swam across its surfaces. The voices grew joy-filled and noisy, entreating them in Larun, Goalish and Shamin to drink. Some of the Goals became affected by this chorus; their brows shifted. One of them shut his eyes and a tear fell out.


    Wander looked into the pool. She pressed her boot onto the water, uttered a word to her Wiser, and waded into the pool.


    As she moved toward the scriptures, the ground beneath her fell away until she was submerged. Any light that had cut through the water was blocked by its repugnance.


    -


    Wander blinked. She was no longer contained by the pool, and she was not wet or dripping. She could feel a breeze on her skin. Before her were lots of shrubbery and grass. She looked out for a horizon and found only the thickly packed trees of the Goals and their wisdom. She looked up for the stars, but the sky was covered over by branches, which reached out and formed a dense shield through which only a few rays could penetrate. She turned, her vest shifting and her shoulderskin sweeping up a knot of dust, but she found nothing new except the boy.


    "Dry Man?"


    A young Goal, disheveled and wound up in a little cloak, looked up at her. His furred coverings were askew, and his hair was unbound and flowed down.


    "Where are we?" he asked her. Wander stared at him, her eyes measured and her mouth hard and unopened.


    "I followed you," the boy said. "But the others, I pushed them out. And they did not want to come."


    As he spoke, the boy''s eyes wandered, and they grasped the particular variety of trunks and canopic netting that obscured them from the lights above. He walked past Wander into the round, and saw a patch of white flowers blooming in its darkness. Before them, leading into the soil, was a hollow cavity, scraped out by implements and cured by centuries of ice. He got on his knees in front of it, and placed his hands in a set of footprints hat lead inside.


    Is it Wildfire? Wander asked the Bell. She did not answer.


    "The house of rulers," the youth whispered. He plucked a flower from the ground and smelled it.


    A hand touched his shoulder. "If you wanted to help, then come."


    He looked up at the warrior. He nodded, and tucked the flower into a nook by his heart.


    They entered the tunnel. There was banging and clattering all around the curves of the hole, and heavy breath from Wildfire, whose reduced and scrambling form lead them into the burrow. He crawled around the black until they emerged into noise.


    It was a chamber. It was lit by a source that they could not see. It was wide and open, its shape square and ordered and paved with stone. Figures roamed among it, whispering offerings. At its center was a formation that they directed their bodies toward. It shifted between different promises of divinity, comfort, and satisfaction.


    Wander and Wildfire stood up and dusted themselves off. They took the chamber in. Wander''s eyes fell upon the worshippers. "Are these your men?" Wander asked. "They have your signal."


    Wildfire said nothing. His eyes were contained by the shrine. Prior to its body knelt another boy, with hair as long and as fresh as Wildfire''s. He approached.


    "Yon," Wildfire said. The boy turned, and Wildfire had a shock when he saw his face, but he recovered.


    "What are you doing here?" he asked. "Are you from the ones outside?"


    ¡°Will you kneel with me?¡± asked the boy.


    Wander approached as Wildfire reached out his rough, spindling child¡¯s hand and grabbed on to the boy. ¡°What are you doing down here?¡± Wildfire asked again. ¡°Has this place taken you too? Has it a wrong hold on you? We can help.¡±


    ¡°The hold is not wrong, eld,¡± the boy replied. ¡°I was carried here by my birthman. His preference was with her. I like this place. My preference will follow me here. She has been promised to me.¡± The boy smiled


    Wildfire¡¯s mouth opened.


    ¡°Eldbrother?¡±


    ¡°What is your name?¡± Wildfire asked.


    The boy paused. ¡°I can¡¯t remember.¡±


    ¡°Where are your creators?¡± Wildfire asked. ¡°Where have they gone?¡±


    The boy did not answer.


    He stepped forward and shook the child, who tried to shrink back, but was pulled forward by the Goal. ¡°Where were you carried from?¡± Wildfire shouted.


    The boy remained silent. ¡°Where were you carried from?!¡± Wildfire screamed, flicking spittle into its face.


    ¡°Yon,¡± called Wander.


    Wildfire turned back. From her pocket, Wander retracted the Roadpoint¡¯s mirror and placed it before Wildfire, letting him see the shape of himself.


    The boy opened his mouth and cried, and Wildfire¡¯s shape changed. He rose up to his full height. His youth was discarded.


    ¡°There is a house coming,¡± said the boy. ¡°Please, do not be afraid.¡±


    Wildfire brought out his weapon and held it at his side. ¡°That may not suffice,¡± Wander said. She brought out her blaith, whose hesigns screamed and swirled about as they were exposed to open air.


    She extended it to Wildfire, who looked at it and gripped its handle.


    She brought his finger to a sign on the blade, and it glowed. ¡°Touch this when you want it done,¡± she said. He walked forward.


    ¡°It does not need to be the boy.¡±


    Wildfire stopped.


    ¡°These do not have pieces,¡± she replied. ¡°Or heads. It is not a man. Cut what you like.¡±


    He continued his advance. The boy spoke more quickly. ¡°There is a house coming,¡± he repeated. ¡°I am contained there. Do not worry, yonbrother. Before and again are the one and the light. There can be smiling where there was not, if you will kneel with me, please. It has been promised by our rulers.¡±


    Wildfire planted his feet in front of him.


    ¡°What bade you to send this message?¡± Wildfire asked.


    ¡°I was not bidden.¡±


    ¡°How can I cut you? You speak the words of my kind. How gained you my face or sight?¡±


    The boy stopped. He opened his mouth, and Wildfire waited.


    When he found no word forthcoming, he plunged Wander¡¯s blade into his double, and pressed the sign. It exploded into brilliant white.


    -


    The speakparts and Goals dispersed and surrounded Fragile, giving sight of the Sixbraid to Wheel and his assorted majamry. The Siter-Matam¡¯s face exploded and tightened as Fragile began to speak.


    ¡°What is it, Goal?¡± Bright and the Roadpoint shook him. Fragile turned to the right-banker and continued speaking.


    The call went up. ¡°Bring a majam!¡±


    ¡°What is it, born?¡± the Roadpoint asked. ¡°We cannot hear you.¡±


    ¡°Bring a majam!¡±


    ¡°Bring a majam of water!¡±


    Fragile¡¯s body changed into five patterns. The ground shifted underneath him. The fire on the wall went out.


    -


    Wildfire stepped back from the remains of the creature. The boy melted into residue which lay heavy against the ground. Wander took back her weapon from the fighter when he did not move.


    She left him to his contemplation and then went about the chamber, hauling the Laruns and Goals who had collected there. She dragged them up to their feet and hoisted them over her back when they didn¡¯t cooperate; the others followed her in a dreary haze. When she was finished, she returned to Wildfire, clapped him on the back and went back toward the chamber entrance. He followed.


    She looked into the tunnel. There was no light at the end of it, just darkness. In order to leave the chamber, they would need to go through it.


    ¡°Can we get back?¡± Wildfire asked.


    Wander blinked. She cocked her head back at him.


    ¡°Maybe,¡± she said. ¡°Don¡¯t worry about it.¡±


    They went back through the tunnel. The darkness gave way to water, and they swam up into the aldir. The water was clear. The voices were silent, and the chamber was dark.


    Wander and Wildfire guided the stumbling fighters to the entrance, out of which could be heard shouting. They pushed open the doors to the aldir. The trees adorning its entrance had withered. They were met by the figure of Wheel, bent over Fragile, thrusting a dagger at his heart. The elderly majam screamed in rage.


    Between them, the speakparts and their fighters battled with the majamry, who struggled to keep the Laruns away from their master and his assault. Bright himself had broken through their mass of hitting robes and tore at Wheel, clinging onto him as he shook Fragile. Wheel turned back and struck him on the cheek, throwing him backward onto the stone.


    Then he took Fragile to the ground and pinned him between his legs, gasping. He slammed a palm on Fragile¡¯s arm and threw up his weapon-hand; its blade shined in the light. A wave of Larun hands and fingers, of the Roadpoint, the Hoofpoint, and a great assortment of other sellers and partsfighters wrapped around Wheel¡¯s hand, arm, and knife just as its tip caught the fabric of Fragile¡¯s coldover, scratching his chest and taking blood.


    The star descended on them. She cast aside the majams who got in her way and put her hand on Wheel. The Laruns restraining him were driven back as she tore him off and pitched him forward onto the ground, where rolled, and moaned in pain and anger. He failed to rise, and soon Wheel was helped by two neophytes to a knee. He clutched five jagged points that the stone had carved into his brow. The Laruns and Wildfire forced them back and held them against the rock. A noisy sobbing emerged from his chest, and he roared in Fragile¡¯s direction.


    Wander¡¯s gaze did not shift from Fragile, whose eyes were open. He was breathing quickly, and she went down to him, touching his shoulder. He sprang to life at the contact and clung to Wander¡¯s neck.


    Behind them, the aldir was silent. Oblivion was believable again.


    -


    The gates were opened. The Laruns were released. They were given papers, supplies, and a guide.


    The bodies of their friends were loaded onto the carts. Bright watched one of them, where the Kontor lay, retrieved from her resting place in the fields outside the settlement. All gathered in a crowd outside the walls of the Couth. The time was come for all to go their own way, Fragile and Wander another.


    The majamry watched from the shadows. The Hoofpoint came up to Wander, rubbing his hands.


    ¡°Star,¡± he said. ¡°He wants to speak with you. The siter.¡±


    ¡°And I with him.¡±


    Wheel was hauled up to her by a pair of partsfighters. His hands and feet were bound by chains, which clinked and jingled as he walked.


    ¡°Dry man,¡± he said in Goalish. Wander regarded him.


    Wheel flexed his cheeks, showing his teeth. ¡°I break now my promise,¡± he said, ¡°to leave the Goals their words. Because you must hear me.¡±


    ¡°You have hurt someone I have sun with,¡± she said. ¡°For me to hear you would take more than words.¡±


    ¡°I have nothing else.¡± His hands, joined at the wrist by a lock, curled into fists. ¡°You must destroy your preferred one, Dry Man. You must take up the blade of He and snap him in two and give him to the wind. His look is wrong and he is wrapped in shining fire.¡±


    She did not indulge him with reply. ¡°I have seen it,¡± he continued anyway. ¡°When you were beneath the water, it opened its eye and expressed itself to us. The others could not see it happen, but I have its words. It is an enemy, and it believes in pain. If you do not destroy this plague, it will eat of you and make you invisible. That is its proclaim.¡±


    Again she ignored him. He shut his eyes. ¡°Fall down if you will, Dry Man. I have no way to move you.¡±


    The partsfighters led him away, hunched down and whispering.


    ¡°What did he say?¡± Bright asked.


    ¡°Nothing. What will you do with him?¡±


    ¡°We will bring him and his friends back to the mass, where there are more majams.¡± Bright rubbed his head. ¡°If that is still standing. He will not really be captured until we have put some measure between us and the Goals, who he has told not to hurt us.¡±


    Bright did not move. ¡°What else?¡± Wander asked.


    Bright fidgeted. ¡°I do not know what he said to you,¡± he replied. ¡°But if it was about your friend¡­ something very strange happened to him while you were inside. He spoke in words none of us had heard. The light became wrong on him. And¡­¡±


    Bright pointed at the fire over Firmen¡¯s Couth¡¯s nearest wall. Wander lifted her head up to it and saw that it had evaporated.


    Bright returned his hands to his chest. ¡°I hope you will be safe,¡± he said. ¡°That is all.¡±


    She inclined her head, and he stepped away.


    Wildfire approached her next. He brought out her pipe from his vest.


    ¡°Keep it,¡± Wander said.


    He looked at her. ¡°Its boon-¡± ¡°I do not need it,¡± she said.


    She extracted a cork of resin from her vest and threw it at him. He caught it.


    ¡°You put that in the end,¡± she said. ¡°You crush it. Make a fire.¡±


    The edges of his mouth curved up. He stepped forward, so that only she could hear him.


    ¡°Because of your boon,¡± he said, ¡°and because of your kindness, Dry Man, I will offer it to you. You should leave our place.¡±


    Wander saw his eyes shimmer and his ears tweak. ¡°Why?¡±


    ¡°Because Dry Man - I too, have a family. They are ten thousand. Me and my friends have come here to speak for them. For twenty thousand seasons, we have Responded when we are touched. Can you hear what we are saying?¡±


    The blasted walls and slaughter of the Couth sat behind him.


    ¡°I can hear it,¡± Wander said.


    ¡°This was a whisper,¡± he replied. ¡°Some shouting is near. None will escape. But I hope you still can.¡±


    He stepped away.


    Bright stepped forward, holding a long blade in an inscribed covering. He eyeed Wildfire¡¯s grim demeanor and Goalish mutterings with curiosity, but he moved from it, and extended the work to her.


    ¡°To replace the hand you were cut from,¡± he said. ¡°For our first release. Our thanks in it.¡±


    Wander took it in both hands. She ripped apart the leather binding, and slid out from it the Kontor¡¯s sword. It gleamed just as brightly as it had. ¡°Your teller¡¯s weapon?¡± she said.


    Bright nodded. ¡°The material is Kathanrock. It is from that place. It was her finest piece.¡±


    ¡°A partsheavy gift.¡±


    ¡°The parts are delivered.¡± Bright said. ¡°I only wish that it had words. It will not do what you need.¡±


    ¡°My first had none.¡± She glanced at his empty train. ¡°But can you stand such loss? You are already short of sells.¡±


    ¡°There will be more sells,¡± Bright said. ¡°More parts. But my breath, and the breath of my friends, is heavier than both. This is not a thing given; by the rules of Abhokar, the weapon and its piece are yours.¡±


    She slid it back into its sheath. ¡°You know what I will use it for.¡±


    ¡°I do, Dzhrymin.¡±


    She hooked it onto her belt and held out her hand. He clasped her wrist.


    ¡°I know you are no Seenblade,¡± he said. ¡°But I hope you will be seen, Dzhrymin.¡±


    ¡°I need one more thing,¡± Wander said. Bright inclined his head as she stalked away.


    She went back over to the elderly majam and pulled him back from his guard, who backed away quickly from the warrior. She gripped Wheel by the chest and got in his face.


    ¡°I am looking for a Seenblade,¡± she said in Shamin. ¡°He wears a cloak and a mask. He is called De.¡±


    Even though neither group could understand her, the name alone shook both the Goals and Laruns. Wildfire¡¯s eyes in particular narrowed and his grip clenched.


    ¡°Do you know him?¡± she asked.


    Wheel rattled his chains. ¡°De is the Cane of Teller,¡± he replied in her tongue. ¡°He has fought in Goal for five turns.¡±


    ¡°Where is he?¡±


    Wheel folded his lips and snorted. ¡°He asked for bread. He carried a broken friend, and three children, wearing blades.¡±


    ¡°He was here?¡±


    ¡°Days past.¡± Wheel stepped forward and looked in the direction of her path. ¡°He sent a wing To-Sidedark. He moves this way now. Your way.¡±


    Wander watched Wheel squirm for another moment in her grip. Then she released him.


    ¡°What do you want with the Cane?¡± he asked. But she was already moving away. Wheel was taken back by the partsfighters, who returned him to captivity.


    Bright lifted a finger to the sky, bowed his head, and shut his eyes. The rest of the Laruns echoed his gesture in Wander¡¯s direction. However, before his head had crouched to its full depth, she reached out a hand and lifted it up. Her finger pried open his eye.


    ¡°I do not want the sight of Sett,¡± she said. ¡°Nor of He. I want what I see to see me.¡±


    The company extracted themselves from the ritual and returned her gaze, frightened and adrift. She looked at the rest of the people with him, at the Lots and Moats and Stirred Laruns.


    ¡°I can see you,¡± she said.


    She set out beyond the walls, her boots clanking, She beckoned to Fragile who rushed over to her, trailed in his own wake by the canter of the Stonehoof. She reached the trees and sent up a high whistle. At its keen, The Stronghoof sauntered out from between the trees, shaking them with each step and blowing smoke into her face. She took its lead and The Bell fastened herself around Wander¡¯s waist. The five of them left the wall and its fire, and returned to the heat of the Wild.


    <hr>


    In another space of the Wild, a masked, robed creature found shelter in the darkness of a cave. The wind raged outside its aperture and threatened to freeze its inhabitants, who clung close to the scraps of the fire they could scrounge up.


    A tall, handsome Larun, brought low by the battering of his own kind, was splayed out on the ground. Partless Joyborn gazed at De, sat cross-legged by the cave entrance, with eyes of rage. The bandages that bound his jaw were green and stained with pus. His three child-fighters sat around him, tending to his wounds, fluffing the cushion at his head, and bringing him water. One of them drew a shaver down his cheek. His jaw had begun to itch, and one of the boys dabbed his forehead with a wet cloth.


    The space was too crowded for De. There were too many parties to it. With the Seeds, Joyborn, and himself, the veiled passage did nothing to offer space. It was a tight enclosure, with not enough entrances. Its only consolation was that it sealed them from the cold. And from the noise of the chaos beyond.


    He blew on his pipe, sending out a high note that bounced off the stone and brought a smile to the mouths of Joyborn¡¯s subordinates. Joyborn himself gave out a moaning snarl.


    A voice whispered to him.


    Feurkun . . .


    The dust rose up in front of De. The children looked up from their tending at the whirling notes that formed themselves out of the snow and ancient sand. Their subject did not address them, but continued to play his pipe.


    Its mass formed a boundless, shifting simulacra of human mouths. They gaped at De awfully, hanging out tongues and maws, spinning around him with yawning roars.


    The little one . . . it said, breathes.  The fighter . . .


    The faces¡¯ angle twisted and they took on the appearance of shrieking laughter. When De took the pipe from his lips, they frowned.


    ¡°S-stay,¡± De croaked, ¡°a-w-way.¡±


    The shapes stared at him as he raised his pipe to his lips again. Another note rang out.


    They blew up in his face, coating his mask with a thin layer of dust and snow. It fell over the fire too, and Joyborn, falling over the flames and crackling. The Seeds flinched and ducked for cover.


    De shivered and blew.

 Story 9 - The Trickmakers

    Words that run around will chant themselves a voice.


    -


    A foreigner was thrown out by the people who it loved. There were shaking and screams and punching torn from it, and then running, far away. The ground yanked at its hands and ripped itself up, grabbed it, hoisted it inside, covered it with the hands of the foreigner. All decided that the foreigner would live and content itself with quiet.


    Soon its content was swept out by the tide. Shaking and a pit confronted it when it looked back into the country where its people lay, and when it looked onto the country of itself. It saw everything that it was not in its hands and body. It was a kind that could beat and nothing else. It did not know how this had been, or what was left.


    It could give nothing. It knew that there was giving, but it could not say how. To be was to have, was to become, was to move by being. There was no distance between points.


    The foreigner came up from the ground. It was taken by the woods that moved it, shifting, their parts in rivered flows of dirt and crumbling roots that waved and broke with a leery shift and changing face. The presentation of the mulch and the flow of bits that it spread into unsettled it, so it did not let them keep a single one. There was nothing left. The foreigner would be sung in the way it was made.


    Now that its like had gone, everything looked into it, and there was nothing that was like itself. And then there was. They walked around and breathed and bled. Air took them.


    Emerging from its chamber, it grabbed what it could from the wood. There were noisemakers not too far. They would make a sound when it rose up close, and it was afraid to do so. Every piece of the wood had a hand on it, but the more the noisemakers grabbed from it, the more it remembered what it had lost. These noisemakers, too, were captured by loss. It drove more shaking and more pain into it that she could not take out. This, however, called in gladness. Even snatched by an alien firmament, it and others were in company.


    There was a gap between their positions; a precious feature that it had made, and which the mulch and the bits would be hard-pressed to let it go without. If the noisemakers and their breathing kind were to come closer to it, the ones with hearts that bled in such numbers, which walked, and were confronted by shaking and by the pit, it would not be able to resist the shearing that bashed and cut apart its concern.


    A snowflake fell into wood, and it saw the foreigner. The wind blew and scattered.


    The foreigner was struck, from a distance, when the one emerged from many. It was in each part of the wood, and the one. The noisemaker filled itself with water from a hole, collected branches with no water, and ignited in them the most terrible change, which was so like the shape that had it, especially in its beginning. The sparks, which sang out from colliding stone, shifted and thickened the air with smoke.


    The whole position and all its elements made the foreigner warm, and brought to mind the times before that it had come to feel, around the hours of its day, for which no measure would offer sense. The day had not ended, and its beginning was behind a never. Always turning new and turning old. Like the noisemakers, a parcel that could know and touch, and that was all.


    The day turned new. A many departed one, and fell down in the wood, and was deprived of all movement. The foreigner watched from a distance, and moved it closer. It wondered if it could learn more. So the noisemaker pulled it in, and took in the foreigner''s heat, and extracted its song with tears and gasping. No new sight was brought by this return. But it dulled the pain of its privations.


    The noisemakers formed another piece, of many writhing parts, that it went out into the bushes by. They handed themselves to it from its bolt-hole in the mulch. The world around it cried out and protested as the one of many sped toward it. The world broke away from the foreigner and they fell on it. A limb was severed, but it did not know how big. Noises were made and they moved away. The piece offered itself, and the foreigner decided to let it in. The piece''s drew the foreigner''s eyes to its bones and flesh and fluids. After some time, it proved so interesting that a map of the piece made itself from the foreigner. It left itself in the ground, and did not seek the foreigner''s attention again.


    The day turned further. The foreigner, now, had spent a good amount of time outside its chamber. The air was growing still. Many eyes with things were closed, and all was moving into cold.


    As the foreigner, too, was about to be received by its cave, and prefer its quiet until warmth, a much smaller noisemaker approached it. The five limbs had only one center between them. It looked closer, and found more, building a noisemaker within its center.


    It did not want another noisemaker to be pushed apart. But even though the foreigner was not moved to it, the noisemaker was moved at it anyway, approaching without being received by a rattling throat, sweat and running, or water pushing itself off from eyes. It was taken by small noises instead, and a piece fell out from it, along with drops of scarlet, by a piece of metal. And the noisemaker''s limb was shorter.


    It departed then, and the foreigner was picked up by what it left behind.


    It found a shape in the noisemaker''s limb, along with where it seemed to be going. With alarm, the foreigner was found by a fine song; a renewing song. What this limb might bring out from it; a side to see from. An eye that could speak.


    A wing perched on the branches was thrust into panic and flight as the forest exploded with light. A pile of tree limbs and leaves gathered up in the air stitched itself together by holding power. Snow moulded itself into the texture of soft tissue. The pile gained a center, a leg, and a head. It took a step forward, and fell apart all at once.


    And the foreigner was taken, again, back into her chamber. But the limb had taken her too. She could feel it pulling. The cold would grab the world for only so long.


    In the meanwhile, songs came to her. With her one, they made a many, and they were placed in delight.


    <hr>


    Once Upon a Time¡­


    Near the shell of Pathway.


    Wander, The Stonehoof, and The Stronghoof walked through The Wild. They drew away from Firmen Couth, and they found the thicktrees and woodpricked mounds give way to a brushless, expanding firmament. The ground, which was speckled different shades of brown, dark green, and the creamy yellow had by sand, sloped and swerved in its shape. It had been exploded and shaken into a cloud-scraping plain of flatmounts, each of which plummeted into a new barren, itself marked by winding banks of snow that vined their globe, past the point where she could not see.


    They traversed the peak of one such flatmount. A gust of wind pushed at Wander, and The Bell tied her rope body tight around Wander''s waist.


    "You can go back inside," Wander said. "We''ll see nobody out here."


    "I like the breeze," she replied. "And your lowers are too loose." She knotted herself.


    The Stonehoof had no cover to hide behind and walked closer to her. She eyed Fragile. The Sixbraid was slumped over The Stronghoof, breathing quickly and heavily. When she was sure her brother would not reply, she turned to Wander, whose eyes flicked at the approaching shadow. She removed a fistful of seeds from one of The Stronghoof''s bags and threw it forward, casting it into the soil. The Stonehoof grunted and lapped them up and grunted and retreated to a shorter distance than it had kept before.


    Fragile snored in The Stronghoof''s ear. It glanced back at the Sixbraid, whose thick locks were pulled up by the wind and blown around into its eyes. Its tongue flicked around and it shook its head, rustling his sleep. He mumbled softly, and wrapped his arms tighter around its neck. It blinked.


    When it was dark, Wander stopped the party at the base of the flatmound, which they used the last rays of sunlight to descend. She took Fragile from The Stronghoof''s back into her arms and wrapped him up in his leather sack. She untied a bundle of wood from The Stronghoof and placed some of it in a circle of stones, and kindled it using her metal mould. She chewed a wad of her pipe-fuel and fell asleep on The Stronghoof''s back.


    The Sixbraid waited until he had felt Wander''s eye drift from his supine body. Then she could hear him drag himself up, limp past a thick patch of bushes and tall rocks and move into the barren. She opened her eyes and watched him fade from sight, and attended to some chores.


    When the darkness returned Fragile to her, Wander was on the ground by the fire, sharpening her weapons. He turned a paler shade.


    "Feeling better?" she asked.


    He gulped before he spoke. "Y-ye-" His voice shifted around in pitch, cut up by his throat, and he coughed. He looked at her, crossed his hands, and nodded.


    Wander sheathed her blade and stood up. She draped a blanket around his shoulders. He blushed and winced when he pulled it close. The stabbing pain in his shoulder made itself known. Wander dusted away snow and rocks free from a patch of ground.


    "While we''re up," she said. "I want to look at my cut, if you''ll allow it."


    "Your cut?"


    "On your back. You fainted in the Couth. I want to see if there is a problem. If needed, I can cover it with a helper."


    Fragile''s shoulder stabbed again. He stepped over to the patch and sat, so she removed his coldover. The hoofskin over underneath had been thinly whiskered by their endeavors, and when he bared his flesh for her look, he could look upon his body and see how it had been blasted up by slices, spots, and a pale roughness running over all of it that had been spoken of by his father. It, and how Wander''s eyes could take it in, formed a word for his mind that he did not know, and it pressed on his heart so that he wished to be wrapped in a hundred overs.


    Wander''s hands gripped the soft curves of his shoulders. Her hand lingered on it and its tenderness firmed her gut. She laid a hand on his back, which was so light and small. She unwrapped the bandage she had made, letting the brown gash above his skin gasp and feel the cold. She laid a hand on it and pressed her thumb to different points.


    "Wander," Fragile asked, "how did you learn to fight pain?"


    She took a brush and began to eke out a crust of dirt that had accrued on the edges of the wound. "The Family brought it to me."


    Fragile flinched when she passed over his tender core and pressed his thumbs together. "They have their own ways?"


    "Yes. I do not know if you would hear them. They have many different ones."


    He said nothing else. She dabbed the opening with a cloth, covered with liquid. "There are men in the Family who look at water," she continued. "They have ones who look at flowers and at rocks too, but it was one of-water who brought it to me."


    "They work water?"


    She opened a bottle and let some of the liquid inside run into the cavity. Fragile felt a great soothing sensation run through his whole body. His eyes drooped. "It is what you need to fight pain," she said. "Waters and waters." She wrapped a hand around his neck and placed a finger on his throat.


    "When I was a fireworker," Fragile said, "bata said that pain ¨C it is the water in us, asking to get out. That is why fire cures it."


    Wander stretched out a length of black cloth and she raised an eyebrow. "You were a fireworker?"


    "Yes," he said. She wrapped the cloth around the wound, tying it off where she had before. "My bata taught me."


    She manipulated his arms and slid his over back over him. "Why did you tell me you worked with metal?"


    "Meta-?" Fragile squeezed his eyes shut. She put the blanket back over him and put him in his sleeping spot, and knelt down.


    "Fire has some uses," Wander said. "It is the first sun."


    "There is a first sun?" he mumbled.


    Wander watched his eyes shiver and shut again. She rested an arm over her knee and looked up at the stars.


    -


    As soon as the Wild''s woodland had given up, after another day of travel, it returned. The trees were far apart and joined by grasses of maroon, silver, and aquamarine. They flew from and snuggled an array of rooted hearts, from the bushes, the little weeds that lived in their shade, to the trees they lived in the shadow of. The Clucks raised themselves up high in thick, flat trunks that were pearly white and offered black spots where water flowed; the Cords assembled themselves from a decentered, lumpen sort of vines that curled themselves into a weighty wick with flower buds emptied by the cold. And the howlsman''s roots appeared as curling teeth that swung up into reddish-brown waves that stunk of iron and manure. There was a dab of snow stretched across the ground, the end of a melt. Am looked down from his loft in the clouds, storming with burnished brays cast to twinkle by the fog. The beams of his cannon played in the colors of the roots, stems, and frozen leaves.


    The ground crest into a great bowl, where a pack of animals tumbled by. Wander and Fragile looked in wonderment of uncommon equality at the sight, which was impossible: rootheads, howls, and woolbearers flocked together as like, running across the places where the trees that arched up in staircase broke down, gave way to smooth, mounded with dirt where the sun shined and found its way past the floated waters. There were four trees spread thin around their recent pitch, each of those stretching out their coiled boughs like tongues of fire. The ground was sand and colored moss, run through by licks of rust and blades of rock with itchy spines that cut down and were hidden by the flattened soil heaves. There was all but silence in it for the two besides the rush and roar of that pack, for they were way beyond any road and the wings, who did not stop singing, were no longer mentioned by their ears.


    They went to sleep surrounded by metallic light, which some of the arching trees sucked up and unspooled when Am and his party march down to blue and the better, golden lot they hid.


    The next morning, Wander consulted her guide. They rose up out of the grass into a Goalish shell. It was large and full of people, and they were not by walls or guards of any kind as they passed freely between its seats, into a place where they could be seen. Raucuous partying could be heard within. Goalish singing erupted from all corners of the air, praising the virtues of a "Trick-maker".


    Rather than loosen his gait, Fragile clung to Wander.


    "Have you ever been so happily received?" he asked.


    "Yes, once," she said. She pushed up her hat, whose rim shielded her eyes from the sun. "But the Sixbraids have all gone, now. Except one. So keep your eyes open."


    Fragile blinked.


    Kept by heavy rope leashes were four-footed mammals with thick pelts being put to the knife. Their blood was drained into transparent bladders that were carried by women in heavy brown coldovers to pour out among crops. The Goals had strung up their home as capped thatch huts where golden and scarlet and greening bounty was kept, sending out a good smell despite their patchwork and well-gapped exteriors. Over on a meatbearer was milked into jars of clay, and over it the clay for the jars was was wrapped in lumps by more Goals and brought to rocks leaned and stacked against one another and poured out billows of smoke.


    The men wore coats of fur, stripped and thin, that ran down past their ankles and was pinned up by silken webs; the webs on the men with wrinkling skin and silver shocks of hair had grown in size, but there were some that exploded, flowing out and seizing over the hips and shoulders of even a younger one''s garment.


    Their appreciation for the Goals'' mean condition grew, and between their dress and popular jubilation, Wander began to ntice a third feature in their host. With no excluding factor of age or condition, more than less of the Goals she saw had suffered a great injury. Some were missing an ear. More common were missing fingers and fingernails. The right hand of one young man had been totally cut away. Of those who had not received any wound at all, half walked tilted, supporting themselves with sticks, poles, or each other.


    The ground underneath their feet was moist. Wander''s boots planted in it and came up showering gelatinous chunks of different whole, splashing down and squirting back into a single mass.


    "This is good land for it," she said. "The growing. It will be, once the warmth returns."


    Fragile looked up at her and took a lively note from her gaze. "Have you seen much growing?"


    "I grew where such was grown." She traced the long shielded stem of a shrivelled, scarlet root that shot up from the ground beside them. "I cut down hearts like these."


    There were paths spread between the places and the animals, the fires and the fields, all decorate with a sprinkling of amber stones. The Goals hopped on and over them, chanting, grumbling and govalling in a dialect mashed together from sounds that were now more familiar than foreign to both the foreigners. They walked over the paths and, for the first time, the born of the shell paid them notice. Wandering eyes were cast onto their strange appearance.


    "Outmen!" sounded a roar. Wander turned around by a snap, and Fragile blantantly swirled around, searching for the terror.


    A tall Goal, with a set of tall friends, stood nearby, relaxing and joking by a fire. The shouter had thrown down the stick on which he leaned and he thundered out toward Wander. There was quiet in his group as they hushed to turn and watch.


    "Fists or legs?" he called out towards Wander.


    "What gains my choice?" she called out.


    He spat. "We don''t have all day," he said. "Fists, then!"


    He ran at Wander. She cast Fragile aside and took his charge without moving.


    She pushed him backwards slightly and patted the dust from her shoulderskin. Her hat had been crooked, so she fixed it.


    The man rose to nearly her height and puffed up. Then he wrapped his arms around Wander and shouted.


    "New man!" he roared. "New man!"


    The crowd came over to her and surrounded Wander and they began to cry out and chatter at her and offer her trinkets. Soon they surrounded Fragile as well, pushing drinks and pieces of food at him.


    "Drink up, brother!" a man enticed. "You will feel like you are in a cloud!"


    Wander extracted herself and Fragile from the revellers and left them to continue their pleasures. Before exiting entirely she grabbed the proferred drink, swallowed it in one gulp, and threw back the cup to its owner, whose jaw dropped. The festival continued.


    A large roundseat sat on a snowy hill that the edge of the shell''s domes and shoots washed onto. Wander''s head set forward as they moved toward it, and Fragile''s turned more, jumping between less-than-strangers. Their mutterings and silver badges had now been seen, in places like Partplant and Firmen Couth and Uff''s shared palazzo, and the illegible scrawl they posed had given way to forms and faces. They fell upon a crowd of Goals, emerging from the shadows with stumble and scrubbed ducts into anyplace the clouds and their white light did not fall. The necks and arms of that crop were marked with black marks, whose indentation was prominent enough to suggest a bite. Fragile''s head spun twice.


    "Wander," he said. "The¡­ is that¡­?"


    She looked where he was looking. Some of the Goals sat down in the snow and grass and laughed. One bit into another and talked, spilling red liquid from their mouth. They laughed more.


    Wander hand went to her hip, and reached for her Kathan blade. The gaze of the night-dwelling eaters'' gaze met their own. The shift of one among it, a woman with boasting cheeks, a thick brow that crossed her forehead, and a smile that wrapped around her face sprang up from the group. She threw herself into a stride at the foreigners.


    "Star, helper," the woman exclaimed. She opened her arms. "What have you seen?"


    "Eldsister Bestplace!" Fragile''s jaw opened. "You''re here too?"


    "I am. That all might marvel at my sight, braid-born." The Meeter-plague looked at the sunken bolts on Fragile''s cheek and wrists, and the bind that wrapped around his chest. Her eyes bugged at Wander''s wounds, which turned out instead as spotting black welts on her wrists, neck and face. Her smile fell. "And I at yours. Have you fought a grand?''


    Wander''s eyelids buckled as the extent of her Goalish gave way. "Wander has been in fights, eldsister," Fragile said. "She has thrown down many Laruns since we met."


    "I can see it."


    "What has joined our paths?" Wander asked Bestplace. She narrowed her eyes at the other meeters, who lounged in the dark and waved over with smiles. "Is this the last piece of your shell?"


    Bestplace scratched her head. "Perhaps we should sit for it," she said. "This is not a place you are like to find friends or seats. Let us be yours. We have fire cooking, and we have been given food that we cannot eat. So help us with it."


    The wind blew against Wander''s face, which repulsed it. "Do you have skypetals?" she asked. "I need them for firework."


    "We have every kind."


    She took her hand off her blade. "Then we will sit."


    -


    Bestplace brought them in to the Dip meeters'' roundseat. Their house in the Goals'' shell was a one-room, two-story thatched hut, where the air pressed up smoke and and no light. A fire at the center of the dirt floor was kept dim and down to coals, and every gap and hole in the circular was stuffed up by mud and grass. Meeters of every shape and age- children clinging to posts, grandfathers clucking at their daughters, and husbands chattering among themselves, were clad in the smooth, bright yellow shoulder-coats of the Dip Goals, and they looked down on either sides of the strangers from footings that rounded the walls and were accessed by pink rigging. They slept, spoke and ate.


    Bestplace warmed a large platter of jumper carcasses and viscera over the flames. "You still have the cut I gave you?" she asked Wander.


    Fragile''s gaze stuttered toward her torso. It throbbed at the memory. "I keep all my cuts," she said.


    "I wish I hadn''t done it," Bestplace replied. "It seemed a wrong wound."


    "I made one greater. I am glad to have yours. It helps me recall."


    Bestplace''s eyes crinkled and she smiled. "We have lost many friends," she said. "But we also have new ones. Many like the night ruler in this place. The Wild is good for us. We miss our seats, but we have a new one."


    "What is happening in it, eldsister?" Fragile asked. "The lights and the screaming?"


    "It''s one of their own works." She leaned back on her hands. "Not ours. It is unseen to most."


    Wander leaned forward. "I knew of the Sixbraids'' parties. I''ve known nothing like this."


    "It is the Wild. The Pathways call it Trickmaking."


    "Pathways," Wander repeated.


    "Many of their kind have said this. I believe the work is a kind of offering." She shrugged. "That is its face, regardless."


    "An offering?" Fragile asked. "It is for a ruler?"


    "No." Bestplace offered the platter to Wander, who gorged herself. "It is not a rule."


    "How do you know?" Wander asked through her food.


    "Because they expect a reply."


    Wander''s eyes flicked at Fragile, who blinked. She swallowed.


    Bestplace rubbed her hands. "Did you do as I asked?"


    "We did. But if you''re here, I suppose it did no good."


    "I would not stand on that." Bestplace ran a hand under her nose. "I kept moving and I was followed. I have many more friends than these. I have hope that what you did may let some of them find their way back from where they came. I must, as I will never again turn back to that country."


    Wander took another bite. "None of us will."


    A meeter strode in past the open threshold and tapped Bestplace on the shoulder, handing her a small red flower. She handed it to Wander over the flames, who took it into her vest.


    "And you, Star?" Bestplace clasped her hands. "Our revels were once so rudely interrupted. Will you now at last show your cause to me? It must be for somewhere far. Else we would not have met, again."


    Wander put the platter down. She wiped her mouth. "Since we met," she said, "I have come to know him as the Cane."


    Bestplace''s head tilted. "All this way, for such a man? Will you throw him down too?"


    "I will."


    "How would such a man touch you, in Shaminkat? His power must be great."


    "It is."


    Bestplace stood up. "We will see the Lodge," she said. "She sees no-one without a voice. I will give it to her."


    -


    Wander finished her eating and they left the meeters'' seat. They arrived at the Lodge of the Pathway Goals. Their seat was not especially fortified, as the others had been. The Lodge was tall, with swept roofs. The carpentry employed in its construction was uncomplicated. It was seated on a great dirt mound that rose high into the air and looked into the sky. Wander and Fragile were met at the gate by a group of Goals wielding short, tasselled blades.


    One of the Goals was tall and had long facial hair. His eyes were blue. "Who are you?" he demanded. "You are an offman. Offman should not come to this place." He turned to Fragile and twisted up his face. "Little one ¨C have you spoke secrets to this kind? Have you given over sights to this offman? Tell us, or we shall break ourselves upon you."


    Bestplace stepped forward.


    "This is the Dry Man," she said. "If wings have flown this way from the sun, they are wings that have travelled from her. If light has sped this way from the sun, it is light that has travelled from her. If others have come this way from the sun, they are others that have travelled from her. She is the Star. She is a murder of many Laruns, and she will become a disaster among them. She is fire that shall slit and crucify their sights and seeings. She has come to stab weapons into the heart of their large work."


    "What of the boy?"


    Bestplace turned to Wander.


    "He is a Sixbraid," the Star said. "A way-keeper. He has never told a sight. He guides my blade."


    The Goals looked at her in awe. She unsheathed her weapon, and showed them the words of Athad which ran down its face. "We have come to your place seeking The Cane. The masked man who has pressed on your kind. I have come to take a word from him. Then his water shall be spilled and all may drink of it."


    At the title of De, the Goals'' skin drained of blood. "We know the Cane," one said. "But we have not known him in this season.


    Wander''s blade lowered. "I seek another. Four others. One whose face had been cut apart, and wrapped in clothes. He is kept by children."


    The Goals looked at each other and shook their heads. She sheathed her blade and turned away.


    "Thank you," she said to Bestplace, "for what you said. But it seems I was wrong."


    "Ask for a Trick," one of the Goals said.


    She turned toward the Goal.


    "A trick, Dry Man," he repeated. "You can be told."


    "No offman has had a trick," the other Goals chastised. "It is a sight."


    "The helper-born speaks her work," the Goal insisted. He held a long wood sticker, which he stamped in the ground. "Do we not adore it? If this one works on outmen, why do we not let her ask? It is the Maker''s sight, not one of born."


    The Walls looked at one another. They stepped aside.


    Bestplace, Wander and Fragile proceeded up the narrow trail of beams that let them hike the steep incline up to the redoubt, its walls sloping toward the ground and leaning down when they reached the sky, and all covered in buzzing Goalish script that the volume turned in the eye to a buzzing fur. The Lodge of the Pathways grew tall and near. The fires that made its shape drifted in the wind from leather mounts. A narrow gap at its base was covered by rugs and rugs, wound with images of wings and more words. Wander could read some of them now, but she looked twice at every word and matched it to something Fragile had said. It did not stop her brow from twisting.


    0012 WHEN OFFENDERS COME TO THE SHELL IN THOUSANDS, LIGHTCATCHERS, CUT APART TEN THOUSANDS LARUN, SAYS, KEEP BACK FROM YOUR SHELLS, WORK FIRE ON ALL PROVISIONS, SUBMIT LITTLECANES TO THE LEAST ABLE, SUBMIT TO THEM HELP OF SIGHTLESS HEARTS, LIGHTCATCHERS, DROVE BACK TEN THOUSANDS LARUN, SAYS, THE SHELL IS THE PIT OF A LARUN


    0013 WHEN OFFENDERS ARE IN THE ROUNDS IN THOUSANDS, WATERTAKERS, GRABBED AN OFFENDER LODGE, SAYS, OPEN YOUR SHELLS, BECOME KNOWERS, SUBMIT TO THEM ALL CANES AND HOWLS AND WORKS OF FIRE, CREATE A GUIDE OF HEARTS AND REPEAT IT ON YOUR SHELLS, WATERTAKERS, GRABBED AN OFFENDER LODGE, SAYS, THE ROUNDS ARE THE CAGE OF A LARUN


    0014 WHEN OFFENDERS REMIT GIFTS TO THE BORN, SHOOTER, EXTRACTED TEN THOUSANDS LARUN GIFTS, SAYS, THE LARUN''S GIFT IS NOT HIS STONE, SHOOTER, EXTRACTED TEN THOUSAND LARUN GIFTS, SAYS, THE LARUN''S GIFT IS HIS MESSENGER


    0015 WHEN OFFENDERS CUT APART THE CHILDREN OF THE BORN¡­


    0001 WHEN OFFENDERS WORK FIRE ON ALL SHELLS OF THE BORN¡­


    0002 WHEN OFFENDERS WORK FIRE ON ALL HEARTS AND EATINGS OF THE BORN¡­


    0003 WHEN OFFENDERS WRAP THE BORN IN METAL¡­


    0004 WHEN OFFENDERS WORK FIRE AND DEFACE THE RULED GIFTS OF THE BORN¡­


    0005 WHEN OFFENDERS WORK BLADES ON ALL THE BRAIDS AND TIES OF THE BORN¡­


    The rugs were separated from them by another Wall standing guard. Her grip tightened on the etched wooden pole she carried as Wander and her signs came into focus.


    "Rounds-Wall," the Wall-Woman said to Bestplace, "what path is this? Why have you brought an outman into our sight?"


    "This is the Dry-Man of the river. She would see the Lodge. I speak for her."


    The Wall-Woman turned her eyes up at Wander, with whom she was near level. She stepped aside. As Fragile moved to follow Wander inside, The Wall-Woman grabbed his shoulder. "Not him."


    Wander grabbed her offending limb with enough force that the wall''s brow lifted.


    Bestplace tugged Fragile, who was released. "He can say it," Bestplace said. "The problem. Can''t you, helper?"


    Fragile looked up at Wander and at the Wall-Woman. "The Lodge must be a woman," he said. "It is not way-keeping. I would be in-house."


    The meeter brought him back. "We''ll wait on your return," she said.


    Wander looked at Fragile. He nodded quickly, while the corners of his mouth flailed up and down. She released the Wall-Woman''s arm and stepped inside.


    The Pathway Lodge was snug. It contained many more weavings than its facade, which wrapped around the walls and filled them with more words that spoke of comparable subjects. A woman sat at the center of its hall, faced away from the foreigner and pried at by a pair of tenders. The siter''s over had been sembled from a rough brown tuck, bound at her waist by a fraying golden rope. The room took its bright from lantern nets, hung between a post row that trailed weavings and propped up the hall''s cover, and these nets were woven from thin, flat ties of oaky hoofhair. The light baked into the floor, which had been filled by a sediment the shade of adobe. It brought warm into her boots.


    The hall had installed no viewlets, loopholes or portals, so that there were only the wood and the walls and ancient words, and the light that let them speak. Opposite her side nested a fire in a roundtop hearth, whose contours came up to a curving join right above their spot. Its fuels were stacked in a cone of a wood that wreathed itself in blaze. There was a group of fifteen cushions sitting by, and all of these were uninhabited. A golden coin took one place on each.


    When she looked upward, Wander''s eye was snatched up by The Lodge. A series of rocksewn images, suspended by the same means as the lanterns, was orchestrated and swung around the roaring hearth. Wander''s hand descended to where her blade once was. Her gaze could extract every piece of it; she found the beads of sweat on the woman''s head. Another image depicted two men in a kiss, surrounded by a happy mass of Goals. A third image depicted a body dissolving into ashes that flew out from a Goalish mortality pyre. The fourth depicted a Goal, dressed in the screaming gold of the Dip meeters, crushing a Larun with a big stone.


    The images wound around and around the whole Lodge, showing different incidents and conditions with figures that Wander recognized from their brief time in the Pathways'' shell. She found twelve in all.


    The sitting woman, whose stool brought her up to Wander''s chest, was attended by a few others in like dress, and as they approached a cause for their service produced itself. Like the rest of the Pathway Goals, each inhabitant was missing a piece of their body; both of her tenders were missing a tip of a finger on either hand, which they used to spoon food into the woman''s mouth from black bowls. Their charge''s skin was flush with dark crops of maroon spots and cross, pale indentations. Her eyes were fused shut and she was missing two teeth from her lower gum, which she exposed to take in the scoops of brother that her tenders pushed through. When Wander had arrived, she spoke in a clear voice, and drew out each note without phlegm or choler. "My arms were not taken," she called.


    Wander looked down at the Goal, who did not twist over to return her gaze. She received another spoon of broth.


    "To whom were they gave, birthwoman?" Wander asked.


    "The one we adore." She turned and blinked at the warrior. "Give us your name, so that we need not take it."


    "I am the Dry Man," Wander said.


    "That is true. Why have you come, outman?"


    "I am searching for a Larun," she said. "I seek to break him. Your men told me to receive a trick."


    The Lodge frowned. "I am not young, Dry Man. Your blade jumps to your hand. You have the words of Athad. Have you not come to break me too?"


    Wander looked down and found that her fingers were wrapped around the handle of her Kathan blade. She released it and looked at the images populating the Lodge. "I was startled," she said. "You have worked sight in stones. It appears a plagueish thing."


    "They are Tricks." The Lodge followed her gaze up to the images. "They are not from the rulers. But your plague colors them wrong. I have heard this word. You shake at it. These have shown us ways."


    "Where are they from?"


    "A heart," she said. "The Trickmaker. You seek a Trick from him?"


    The Lodge stood. One of her tenders brought her a walking stick, which she leaned on. "These are sights," she said. "It disputes the virtue to offer them. So I will say it to you."


    "What?"


    "Carry our offerings," she said. "Carry them to the Maker."


    Wander tilted her head.


    "Carry them," she said, "and you may have your sight yourself. We need not deliver it. And virtue is retained."


    Wander frowned.


    "You do not see the good?" the Lodge asked.


    "I am in a chase," she said. "I am already passed or far away from the one I need. If I cannot now receive your gift I would just as soon throw out from this place and dig through the rounds myself. I have always done without it."


    The Lodge tapped her cane. "Do you know my daughters?" she asked.


    Wander looked at her tenders. "No."


    The Lodge laid a hand on the shorter tender. She had a short nose, little eyes, and her face was populated by gray lumps. "This is Tugsheart," The Lodge said.


    "Dry Man," said Tugsheart.


    The Lodge moved to the second, greater tender. She had a long nose, and she walked with a hunch, and her lips kept open so that her teeth were bared. "This is Hithit," The Lodge said. "She has killed ten thousands heart."


    Wander looked at Hithit. The Lodge-daughter nodded at her. "Your arm has noble face, Dry Man."


    "I will choose one to go with you tomorrow," The Lodge said. "On this night. Then I will be gone, and the Lodge shall be new."


    "I have not said my way, yet," said Wander.


    "You need your trick," the Lodge said. "And we need ours. You will bring them to the Trickmaker. The one we adore. When it is done, you shall have a hold on the man you seek."


    Wander flexed her fingers.


    The Lodge called out towards the entrance. "Eldwoman."


    The Wall-Woman entered, her massive form sweeping past the rugs. "Lodge."


    "This is the name," she said. She raised her finger at Wander. "Give her the offerings. If she has no place, then give it to her."


    The Wall moved to a gilded receptacle stood on an block of stone forward the Lodge and her seat and pushed aside a curtain concealing its contents. She took out a sack of silky cloth and presented it to Wander.


    Wander looked down at it.


    "I do not know what your cause is," Wander said, "And I want no part in it. I will find the man with my eye."


    She swept past the rugs of the roundseat''s entrance. The Lodge bent her head, and Hithit held her arm.


    "I can carry it, birthwoman," she said. "Do not worry."


    Tugsheart watched the warrior leave. The grip on her scoop tensed.


    "Tell her, Tugs," Hithit said. "Tell her it will be well."


    The Pathway''s gaze shifted. She blinked.


    "It will," she said. "Yes, it will. I promise."


    -


    They descended the mound and returned to the house of Bestplace, where they supped.


    They sat around the fire with meeters, who were being taken in by giggles and boistering just as the Pathways'' shell had began to drowse and retire from their partying. Fragile and Wander sat around the meeters'' fire, eating meat and loaves while the meeters themselves suckled from one another.


    A meeter entered their house and whispered down at Bestplace, who went to Wander and spoke inside her ear. Wander brushed her mouth with her robe and muttered to Fragile before rising, picking her way around the crowd of revellers into the dark and silence of the shell.


    She swept past the seat''s curtain and found the tender Tugsheart, hugging herself in the cold, accompanied by the Lodge''s Wall-Woman.


    "Aie, Dry Man," Tugsheart said.


    "Aie," Wander said. "Lodge-daughter."


    "Yes." Tugsheart extended her hand to Wander. It contained a bag made from a very soft, pearl-white pelt. When Wander took it, it clinked.


    "I wish you would reconsider," Tugsheart said.


    Wander''s hand containing the person remained outstretched. "Reconsider what?"


    "Your choice. You will not help with our Trickmaking."


    "I cannot." Wander shook her head. "I do not know what of me has a hold on your Wiser."


    Tugsheart frowned. "The Trickmaking is very dangerous," she said. "We do not know why. Once, I had twelve sisters. None of them has returned from this project. A Dry Man, one with words, one who adores us ¨C it is like the rulers are speaking again." Tugsheart grit her teeth. "She¡­ she sees them in the night."


    "Lodge-daughter," the Wall-Woman boomed.


    "Keep your place," Tugsheart spat. She turned back to Wander. "It is true. I promise it."


    Wander tilted her head. "Twelve?"


    "Yes. Each time, the Trick has come to us. Friends have gone and brought it back. But not them." She wrapped her shawl around herself. "It is now my Hithit who must go. I am not afraid to be alone. It is for my birthwoman. I wish she would wait for us, a little while, when she arrives at the rulers'' seat. I want her to watch us breath."


    Wander blinked. She rolled around the purse. She crinkled it in her hand. "How far must she go?"


    "A day''s charge to the dark. But we are in the Wild. We do not know what will crash on us."


    "When does she leave?"


    "Tomorrow."


    She was silent and the wind whistled. She tossed the purse back to the wall-woman.


    "We''ll go," she said.


    -


    Wander sat herself down and watched the Pathway Goals continue their celebration. She heard muttering. She looked over at Fragile. His whispers were soft enough that a weaker ear would not have seized them.


    "Please leave," he hissed. "I have no Firstpoint. Please leave¡­ I have no Firstpoint..." He curled up.


    "Can you see any better here?" she asked The Bell.


    The Bell shivered around her chest. "I don''t know," she said. "I felt as though I could see the other times."


    She wrapped herself around Fragile''s wrist and arm. "Do not rely on me, Joyous one."


    Bestplace sat before her. "What did she want, this shell-bound?"


    Wander rubbed residue over the signs of her blaith. "You ought not to believe a wrong in yourself," she said.


    Bestplace tilted your head.


    "The cut you made," she said. "Fell into another." She rubbed her blaith again. "A good kind."


    "There are no good cuts."


    "There are some," she said. "The surface grows back stern."


    Bestplace tilted her head. "Stern," she said, "is not the power."


    Wander quit rubbing her blaith and laid her arm on it. "And what is?"


    "The water," she said. She raised hand to her mouth. "Why do you believe the ruler has us take it?"


    "I know only of one without your plague who has sought such an appetite," she said. "He did it from of his oddity. It saved ten-thousands heart. And it sent him to the rulers."


    "Who?"


    She looked at Fragile. Bestplace turned to the Sixbraid and widened her eyes.


    "He?" She sputtered. "He sought the gift?"


    "From himself. What power is in this ending work?"


    Bestplace crossed her legs and folded her hands in her lap. "Does my cut still fall into another?"


    Wander looked at her. "No."


    "Why not?"


    "Because it fell upon another."


    Her eyes moved to Fragile again, but without her purpose. Bestplace shook her head.


    "How have you not yet lost the river-brother?" she asked.


    "I have lost him twice."


    Bestplace blinked. She shut her eyes. "The cut always falls upon another," she said. "Do you know this?"


    Wander raised her brow. She slid her blaith into its sheath and laid down.


    "I did not cut him before that time," she said. "I never will again."


    "That is not my word," Bestplace said. "The cut always falls upon another."


    She glanced at the meeter. "I cannot hear it."


    Bestplace shook her head again. She stood up, looked down at her and the Sixbraid.


    "Rest deep, Dry Man," Bestplace said. "I hope your sights are adorable."


    And the meeter departed her house.


    -


    In the morning the Goals'' sack was tied to Wander''s back. Fragile hugged The Stonehoof and Wander handed Bestplace The Stronghoof''s lead.


    "Do you feed on beasts?" Wander asked.


    "Not this one," she replied. She reached out and touched The Stronghoof''s neck. "He will have water and what he likes, and ready for your rejoin. You have my promise, Dry Man. And my offerings."


    "It doesn''t need much," Wander said. She tweaked its nose and it pressed against her.


    The procession of Wander and her Pathway guides proceeded past the last roundseat, at which point they were followed by fewer and fewer Goals until it was only them and Hithit. The Lodge-daughter.


    "They would have sent a man otherwise," Hithit said. "There are not many wall-women."


    "What is different?" Wander asked. She shifted the weight on her back. They walked through the woods, and Fragile observed the sack Wander hauled. "I am still surprised they would give it to an outman. Your kin in the East would have something to say about it, regardless of the threat."


    Hithit brushed her hair back. "The Trick is not from Rulers. It has always been an outish thing. You and he are outmen. There are no gaps we must pass through."


    Hithit looked at her weapon. Wander noticed her gaze, which was lingering and soft.


    "Does my outcane interest you?" she asked.


    "I have not seen a blade that is not a cane," Hithit said. "I like them fine."


    "It is a cane," Wander said. "I have come to like your word for it. Its face addles. Others fix on them like they are hearts or parts. I have not."


    Fragile looked away at this. Hithit saw her kinsman''s expression, and moved to it. "A blade is a heart," Hithit said. "There is no gap between us."


    "I have never seen it, or seen it speak."


    "You would have seen my brother in his work," Hithit said. "He has the lines."


    Fragile looked at her. "W-what?" A bead of sweat dripped from his brow.


    "The lines of the pair. Do you not keep ways, River-Son?"


    Fragile held a hand up to his head. He was pouring sweat. They turned and looked at him. "What''s the matter?" Wander asked.


    He did not reply.


    "I-it''s nothing," he said. "I saw a shadow once." He wiped his brow and nose, and his hand found drops of water. They continued.This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.


    "On blades," Wander said. "The terror of pain drives us together. There are those who see a heart in them. But there is little to it."


    She unbelted her Kathan Blade and handed it to Hithit. "You can see for yourself, if you like."


    Hithit took the weapon and brought it out halfway, inspecting the ribbed sheen that ran across its surface. "What is the material?" she asked. "It is not the wallrock of our weapons. Or the Laruns''."


    "I do," she replied. "It''s bendrock, bent a special way. It''s strong, light, and very valuable. They make it in a place called Cathon."


    "Is that what your blaith is made of?" Fragile asked.


    "No." Wander shook her head. "It does not cut so well. But it serves its purpose."


    "It shines in the light," she whispered. Hithit touched the temper. Her eyes scoured its surface. After a moment, she covered it back up and returned it to its owner.


    "Do you adore such things, eldsister?" Fragile asked.


    The Lodge-daughter''s brow remained high. ¡°Perhaps there can be pleasure in them,¡± she said. ¡°But I see no other than that of pain. It is a pleasure for the heart¡¯s seduction; for a offering of response as a meal by far easier and better-tasting than it has ever been.¡±


    ¡°Do you remember the grand, eldsister?¡±


    "I do," she said. "A marvelous time."


    Wander looked at them with a raised brow.


    "You cannot hear it, Dry Man?" Hithit questsaid.


    ¡°A grand,¡± she repeated.


    ¡°A grand.¡±


    ¡°A shaking of the ground." Hithit clapped her hands. "A fight between thousands of hearts! Like the old ones.¡±


    Wander''s head returned to the path. She replaced her blade on her hip. "You call it marvelous?"


    "Marvelous," Hithit repeated. ¡°But I have visited its cost. It was not a pleasant place for me. I would like my birthman back.¡±


    She nodded. ¡°And would I.¡±


    Fragile said nothing.


    Wander stuck a wad of resin in her mouth and chewed it. They walked. They returned to the fiendish rounds, which had grown more turbulent in their absence. Wander began to hear a rustling in the distance, and the shattering of baked soil. She unslung her blaith and its sheath.


    The covering of the trees unfurled and revealed the toss and writhing of hooded figures, wrestling in a clearing of pointed, water-greedy thorntrees. At the center of the fracas was a Larun woman, her left cheek marked with lines that blurred in Wander''s eye as she was thrown about and beaten out of clarity. She was cast to the frozen dirt, falling on a heavy cape and jostling an orange badge on her right shoulder. The fighters, who spoke in Goalish, tore at her, and their claps and muttering rang out from between the trees and furrowed Fragile''s brow.


    "They''re hurting her," he exclaimed.


    "Let them do it," said Hithit. Fragile looked at her. "It is a victory," she continued. "We have seen such a kind. The other won, with a face like that, stole children and sought out our sights. The Laruns send them to steal, and they cannot often be touched for their walls. Let them do it."


    Wander brought out the blaith from its hood and handed Fragile The Stronghoof''s lead.


    "Stay back here," she said. And she approached.


    The Goals made little noise as they pulled away jewelled strips from the woman''s face and neck and detached the many-threaded fabrics of her garment, placing them in sacks. Their disdain for the Larun could only be intuited from the repeating strikes of their fists and legs. "Take the over," one of them chattered. "Take it. That cloth from far away. Many gifts, many gifts. A victory. Get a bowl. Nose, get the bowl. Find the coins, cut her throat. Put it in there. The water, put it in there."


    Wander waded through the snow and snapped a branch in her entrance to the thorn-walled corner. The movement of the Goals stopped and some of them eknelt down and shoved the woman back on her knees. They lifted their metal canes; the blades were ragged and covered in soot and scuffling, and carved to a grinning edge.


    "More?" the same Goal asked.


    They looked around. The forest was disappeared of noise and movement. Two of them stepped forward and their heads were turned down. A Goal touched his finger to a boot-shaped indentation.


    He lifted himself up and began to scream.


    A black-robed mass launched itself down from the trees, seized the Larun from the grip of her captor and punched him in the face until she was released. Wander shielded the woman with body and unsheathed her blaith, so that the signs in it could shine where all could see.


    The speed and ease with which the men surrounding Wander and her hostage were raced away was such that Fragile did not see it happen. As soon as the one nearest Wander could discern her arm''s stark proclaim, he gave a howlsbark and dragged away a partner and a sack of loots. The others followed suit, wrenching each other up and scattering out in different directions. A pair glanced at Hithit and Fragile, crouched in the bush, as they barrelled past. Soon their sight, as well their noise, was gone, even to Wander''s hungry ear.


    She released the woman, who got to her feet. She recoiled as Wander approached her, backing against the spines of a thorntree. They pressed into her as Wander drew near and sheathed her weapon.


    "A Seenblade," she whispered in Sprak.


    Wander''s eye was turned to the mark on the Larun''s cheek. It was the same squared, three-angled palm that had marked the seats and standards of the Laruns in their settlements along the Eastern border. It had faded into the woman''s dark brown hue and was covered slightly by her hair, which was marked by a fleck of silver. In spite of her insignia and the emptied trenches in her throat and ajw, Wander realized she was not looking at a Larun, but a Goal.


    Her gaze shifted to the badge on the woman''s shoulder. The sun fell on it and revealed with glare and shadow the image of a breather''s tongue. "I have never known a Prominens to travel by herself," Wander said. "Did they cast down your party?"


    A moment passed before the woman could reply. Her nose was dripping. She rubbed it and coughed drops of orange humor into the snow. "I do not know," she said. She held her arms, laid bare by the complete harvest of the bites. "I do not know where I am. I stood up this morning and my friends were gone. My kontor, some nivmen. I was alone. They were¡­" Her gaze fell away and she held her head. "Things are adrift."


    Fragile and Hithit came forward, picking through the bush. The Prominens hid behind Wander at the sight of the Goals.


    "There are bites," she whispered. "There are bites, Seenblade!"


    "One could bite," Wander said. "The other cannot. They are both in my company. If you want, you can come with us back to the shell."


    The Bell unwrapped herself from Wander''s waist and climbed onto her shoulder. Wander glanced at her strand as one end of it leered at the Prominens. Both the Larun and Hithit shrank away from its sudden animation. "Is that a trick?" she asked.


    "What outness is this, Dry-man?" Hithit demanded.


    "That is a friend, eldsister," Fragile said. "A friend."


    Wander took the Bell and stuffed her in her vest. "She is a friend," she said. "Not a trick. But we seek one''s maker. Is this your space? Could you bring us to them?"


    The Prominens wiped her mouth. "My spot is many days to the light. The push of these heights makes my eyes new."


    She looked between Wander and the Goals.


    "Will you strike this Larun, Dry Man?" Hithit asked. "Perhaps your weapon has not been tried. She would offer a good trial."


    The Prominens'' brow scrunched when Hithit spoke Goalish. She grew pale when she found its meaning.


    "She can stay," Wander said. "Or she can go. Bestplace may have a spot for her."


    "Bestplace?" The Prominens sputtered.


    "We''ll conclude our errand," Wander insisted. "If you want, you can come with us back to the shell."


    A bead of sweat dripped down the Larun''s forehead. "She has said they will hurt me."


    "Yes," Wander said. "I have friends in the shell. I can ask for a place with them. They are strong enough to help you."


    "A Seenblade with hillface friends?" The Prominens shook her head. "Thank you, Seen. My name is Petal."


    "My name is Wander." She gestured to the Goals. "This is Fragile. This is a Lodge-daughter."


    The Prominens clasped her hands at the Goalish and shook them. Fragile smiled, and Hithit did not.


    She took up some of her bags, some of which Wander slung over herself, and walked alongside them as they pressed on between the trees.


    Wander led them, and Petal stayed close to her. She spoke only in Sprak. "What is it has brought you here, Seenblade?" she asked. "Who is this kind that follows you?"


    "I have come here on the work of my Firstpoint," Wander replied. "The woman is a guide. She speaks the spraks of these hillfaces. The man is a guide too."


    "Why do you seek the Trickmaker?"


    "To destroy it," she said. "It is a kind of plague. I have seen its works."


    "As have I," Petal replied. "Its works are seen in many spots. What a waste, that its breath is wrong."


    Wander said nothing, and Petal''s curiosity did not incline further questions. They travelled until the sun had passed down to the horizon.


    Petal removed a device from her bag that resembled the tube employed by the Roadpoint of nivman Bright. She looked at the stars and felt a look herself, turning to the little Goalish man, who was peeking at her shoulder and at the side of her face. He averted his gaze and blushed when she saw him do it.


    "The man is curious," Peral said. "May I speak his words?"


    Wander turned back to the Goals and flicked her eyes at Fragile, who turned to the Larun. "Words have you, Firstpoint?" he said in Sprak.


    "What a clever way-keeper," she chimed. "Yours is a good work, Seenblade. I have rarely seen ones so new with our Sprak. Do they both have this gift?"


    "It''s just him."


    "It is seen."


    "We meet many Laruns," Fragile said in Goalish. "They speak a lot."


    Petal nodded. Fragile''s head twisted. "What is the mark?" he asked.


    The Prominens laid a finger on her cheek. "This is the piece of my Lodge," she replied. "Fjelltopp and her Otiseran. I received it when I said a promise."


    "A promise?"


    "I swore to go out after our lines, into the Five Seats Under Heaven, into all the dark and feurkun places of our Harmony, and that once I was there, I would speak about the virtue of my Lodge. This is my work, and the work of the other Prominens."


    "It is the mark of a heartless one," Hithit said.


    Fragile and the Larun turned to Hithit. "Heartless?" Petal inquired. "Do you believe-"


    "Dry Man," Hithit said, "tell the Larun that if she continues to thrust upon my throat, that I will bite out hers."


    Petal stopped talking.


    "Don''t speak Goalish," Wander said.


    Hithit turned to Fragile. "Do you know what that is, River-Son?" she asked.


    Hithit spoke to Fragile with a quick pace that Wander had not received in her exchanges with the Lodge-daughter. She accented her longest words and melted the ends of each syllable into the other. Fragile''s brow turned and he held his arms. "Yes. I said it once. But¡­"


    "But?"


    "I have known many called that way. They call themselves Freemen. Now I call them that. They are kind. They seem heartsful."


    "Then you are wrong. They are a different kind. Like heartless ones. Like the ones they make of us. The ones they put in bonds."


    She turned her head to the Larun, who tried not to look at Hithit. "This one gave away her heart," she said. "To strike her is to strike a stone. Yes?"


    Her gaze fixed on him and Fragile struggled to meet. "Yes, eldsister."


    -


    They came before a steep, rocky pass. The trees and soil dried out and spent themselves into ravines that draped the black and mottled floor of the world. The fissures cut between plains of stone that were shouldered by thin juts and outcroppings.


    "Are you sure this is where we must go?" Hithit asked.


    Wander looked up at the stars. "Yes," she said. "We can move as a line."


    "Those paths look weak," The Prominens said. "And what if the rocks fall down on us?"


    "We don''t have time to go around," Wander said. She looked at Fragile and Hithit. "Take him back," she told the girl. "And the Larun. And yourself."


    "I will not."


    "You are the only one who could do it," she said. "If you do not two may be lost. Or three."


    Hithit''s eyes narrowed. "I will bring in my virtue," she said. "Come with me as you please. But it will be done."


    Fragile looked up at Wander.


    "I''ll be careful," he said. "Please, do not worry."


    "I can''t touch you for that long," she said. She looked at Petal. "Hold his hand. Make sure he doesn''t fall."


    "I would leap in after him if you asked," said the Prominens.


    "Hold his hand."


    "I will, Seenblade."


    They ascended the slope in a file. Hithit walked before Wander. The Prominens walked before Fragile, and kept a tight grip on his shoulder as they stumbled over the crumbling layers. They threaded the needle of the path. They came in reach of a place where it widened into a round overlook, where a tree the size of Fragile rested carefully on the dirt of the plummet.


    Wander tiptoed through the path. She moved so neatly that the others could hardly hear her breathing or the shuffle of her armor or gloves, or the shift of metal in her boots. She laid it down on jagged stone and slipped. In regaining her footing, she slammed her foot down on the platform, and the path they walked gave out in a fury of dust.


    Wander punched her arm into the stone and clung to the cliffside, her arm coiled around Hithit''s torso. Debris began to pelt Petal and Fragile from the crags as a roaring mass of soil was set loose from the peaks up above. Petal took Fragile and hid him with her body; as she did so, flints and shrapnel cracked around and against her, and a shard of stone slashed her across the arm. She hauled up the Sixbraid and charged forward, leaping onto the platform before the rest of the ledge dissolved into underneath them.


    The clatter of stones fell away as the pack tumbled further down the gap, past the point where their ears could grip. The wind buffetted them, throwing their hair to the side and getting Fragile''s in Petal''s face.


    She brushed it back. "Still breathing?" the Prominens asked. She looked down at him when there was no answer.


    The Sixbraid''s eyes were open, but bulged. When she found the point of her interest, she released him.


    "What''s happening?" she murmured.


    The barrage had skewered Petal''s garment and it was tattered open. A pinched white crescent put a jagging trace up and around her elbow. Wander''s eyes widened as the light from it reached her cling on the cliffside. Hithit''s grip tightened around her torso.


    The scratch blinked away as Wander found it in herself to wrap Hithit''s arms around her neck, sweep out her Kathan blade and stab it into the rockface. She traversed the sundered gap, launching them from cling to cling, and biting half an inch into solid rock with the weapon and her fingertips. They shot through her gloves into the black igneous stone, and the sword snapped in half as they approached their aim, breaking apart with a shriek and sending chunks of stone soaring into the dark.


    She launched into the air and landed on the overlook in a heap. Wander got to her feet and found Fragile disconnecting himself from the Prominens, whose body writhed and waved up and down. Wander withdrew her blaith, covered it with residue, and brandished it along with the severed maw of the Kathan blade.


    "Fragile," she said. "Get back."


    Hithit struggled to her feet. "What are you doing?"


    As he fell away from the Prominens, Wander rushed forward. Petal was pierced through the chest and Wander clenched the Hesigns on her blaith. The spheres flickered for a moment, before they sputtered and died.


    Petal''s body reached out and pushed Wander away. The shove was strong enough to dislodge Wander''s grip and send her into a tumble, but so gentle that she fell easily upon the dirt. The blaith shot out of Petal''s chest and planted in the ground at a crooked angle.


    Wander rushed forward again with her Kathan blade, aimed directly at the creature''s head. Before she could do so, she was tackled by Hithit, who reached for her weapon. She fell back onto the dirt and her brow bent as she sought to extract the Lodge-daughter.


    As Hithit bit down on Wander''s nose, a clear glimmer sprung from Petal''s frame and fell into the dirt. A cone of dense rock erupted from the ground that encased the fighters, leaving only their mouths exposed. With Hithit''s jaw restrained, albeit wrapped around her nostrils, Wander began to resist her restraints, which groaned under the sheer pressure of her assault.


    The gap that the blaith had left in Petal''s chest filled. She shivered slightly as the absence fixed. As she did so, Fragile ran up to their prison, pulling at it until his nails broke and his fingers bled.


    "Fragile, run away," Wander said. "Please run away. She will hurt you."


    "Don''t listen to her, River-son," Hithit snarled. "You must take the trick back. You must."


    Light steps shook the air and alerted Fragile to a shadow looming over him. He looked up and saw the luminous form of the Prominens.


    "Fragile," Wander said. "You promised."


    He looked back at her. His eyes were wide open and full of blood.


    He sat in front of the stones and put his face to his knees and put his hands to his eyes. As he pressed up against the rock, the gap in his shoulder broke and he fell forward, crying. He retreated to the stone, and trickles of blood poured from the wound, staining it.


    A clear glimmer sprung from Petal''s frame and snapped into Fragile''s body, a transparent passage of construction that struck through his clothes, swam over his bandages, and thrust itself into the corroded gap that they concealed. His body jolted and he fell forward onto his hands.


    Wander''s eyes flashed. The rock exploded, sending a bombarding spray in every direction and driving instantly at Petal with her hands.


    "W-Wander, stop! S-stop!" Fragile cried.


    She did not. A stone pillar shot up from the ground that she rammed into at full speed. It brought her into darkness.


    -


    Ten-Six found herself in a round space.


    The warrior could see, and feel. It brought her into a sight. She did not know what it was, but only that she wanted for it.


    She walked forward. Her body was dense and pulled down by weights. The sight was full of light, and waiting for her to grab it, but she felt herself began to sink. Even though she stopped approaching, the light continued to pull towards her, and it did not stop.


    Her body turned to liquid, and she lost feeling in her feet, hands and chest. Her throat and lungs filled with salt water. She heard the peal of a bell.


    The light pulled itself toward her chest. She reached out and wrapped her hands around it. Her body filled with the warmth of it. The yearning it felt for her drove her to push more on it, and so she did. The light responded, and exploded into a bright, fiery glare that shined down on her.


    She felt the heat of the fire on the wall. It washed through her body. The water turned to gold, and she passed deep into it. She shut her eyes to take a breath. When she opened them, it was dark again.


    Her head beat heavy before it could muster clarity. She organized her needs for food and water and drove them to the front of her mind.


    Fragile sat by her side, his hands tucked into a curling bundle sat on his knees, eyes drooping. His flared in sympathy when her eyes blared open. The start of her shift sent the Bell slipping up, from around her waist and bove her face, twisting its shape.


    "Wander?" Fragile whispered.


    She reached up a hand and rubbed her eyes. "What happened?"


    "We¡­" Fragile looked around. "We''re¡­"


    "We are seen," said the Bell.


    Fragile''s voice caught in his throat as she swung up, leaned to the side and vomited. Dark brown, nearly black muck sprayed the rock.


    She wiped the corners of her mouth and flicked off the gunk. She ripped her waterskin from her hip and poured it down her throat. She vomited again and drank more.


    She replaced her skin and looked around. They were in an ovular room, which could have been scraped out with a massive spoon. Her weapons were set beside her. She looked at the ground, made of a grey sediment that gave way to other strata on their sides and in the ceiling, each of which was various shades of green and brown. When she squeezed it, it revealed a spongy texture. The space was warm and dim, populated by two other shapes: Hithit, who slept against one wall, and the glittering form of Petal, which faced another, shrouded in shadow.


    Wander got to her feet, picked up her Kathan blade and hurled it at the creature. It vanished into thin air upon reaching its skin, and reappeared in its place.


    Hithit blinked awake. Her eyes opened just in time to see Wander javelin Petal and she rushed over to the warrior, leaping on her, slapping her and punching her. Wander was unmoved.


    "You hit the Trickmaker," she roared. "What aim is this? What has affected you?"


    Wander placed a hand between herself and Hithit and pushed her away. Fragile clung to the incensed Lodge-daughter.


    "Please, eldsister," he cried. "She did not aim to hurt it. She did not aim that. Please, do not shake at her."


    "Wind to you, gapman!" she exploded. She turned and struck him. Wander yanked her over and shoved her onto the stone. It deformed to accommodate her body.


    As Hithit began to rise, Wander picked up her blaith and its blade stretched out at her. Hithit sat back and was silent, and Wander replaced her blade. Fragile panted.


    "Be quiet," she said. "Tell me what happened."


    Fragile got to his knees. "After you were thrown down," he said, "Petal brought us here," Fragile said. His eyes peeked around the glittering hideout before them. "We do not remember it. She did not carry us. We just..."


    "This is the Trickmaking Place," Hithit said. She smouldered. "It is like the Lodge told."


    Wander looked toward The Trickmaker. Its form had changed more still since Wander had last seen it. The Prominens'' body had grown in size, such that the tip of her head scraped the ceiling, but it had become also thin, its once broad chest and shoulders wrought now of bright, sloping tubes and wire bundles. Her face and "skin" had been stripped of all indentation. Its texture retained its glossy sheen; the shade it glowed was near but not quite the color of Hithit''s. Looking further, Wander could see the light shift around Petal.


    "Has it talked?"


    "No," Fragile said. "I don''t¡­" He glanced at Hithit. "I don''t believe so."


    The Lodge-daughter pointed. The Trickmaker mussed a mass in front of it. A snapping and clicking came from the work. "The Trick is being made."


    Wander sat down. "How do we leave?"


    "We will leave when she wants us to," Hithit said.


    "Unless we do not," Wander replied. "Like the rest of your kind."


    Hithit''s gaze coolled and lowered. "Unless we do not."


    -


    Having confiscated the satchel of offerings Wander carried, the Trickmaker worked, huddling in a corner of the cave and performing quick manipulations on its contents that they could not see. Wander and Fragile sat on one side of the cave. Hithit sat on another, watching the creature.


    "Let me see my cut," Wander told him.


    Fragile removed his cloak. Wander lifted up his over and looked at his back. She covered him back up.


    "It''s a Shrill-man," she said.


    Fragile''s gaze turned up at hers. "What''s that?"


    "A kind of brightplague," she said. "It''s very old. Not many have been seen. The Family made response against them, and the Laruns, I believed they were all gone from this place. That''s why I attacked it."


    "Why doesn''t it speak?" Fragile asked. "And¡­ why would it help me?" Is it like Uff?"


    They watched as a swarm of dark shapes nebulated before the Trickmaker, changing into different shapes and mending together, breaking apart, and repeating the process. "Shrillmen never speak," she said. "Not to us. Not to Laruns. The Makarish found a way. But I don''t know how it''s done."


    "If she cannot speak, how did it¡­ Petal¡­?"


    Wander removed her Kathan blade from her hip and fingered the shards of it, pressuring the range of peaks and valleys that its temper had dissolved into. "You don''t know much less than me. Maybe it grabbed her I, hunted it out from the second place, like a catchcutter and a carcass. Or maybe it is face-speaking. Maybe there is no Petal."


    She looked over at Hithit. "It would please that one."


    Her hands played around her weapon''s hilt. "Even if this was whole, they are very strong, and I am not sure I could hurt it enough to throw it off."


    "They can be hurt?"


    "By a gathering. One hundreds of mine to one of theirs. But it would take ninety-nine and leave the last. The Family found no victories. They suppose He drove them back. But He is gone, or he is silent."


    Fragile clutched his hoofleather bag and stroked it. "How could they have spoken to the Goals?" he asked. "They give things to each other. Shouldn''t there be a word for it?"


    "There is no word," Hithit said.


    They turned to her.


    "It was my birthwoman began Trickmaking," she said. "First the Maker took one from us, and sent a Trick. We did not know how to get more, but it helped us. The Response was hard. For its work, many were kept back from cuts. So she went out again and cut herself, and it gave more. That is all it has ever been. There has been no speaking."


    "You can speak with a face," The Bell hissed. She unwrapped herself from Wander''s face and rolled over between Hithit and the two. "Perhaps this one speaks with a hand or push. Perhaps that fix in the weak thing''s bulk is its word. Perhaps it is saying what it prefers."


    Fragile tilted his head at her.


    "What can you find in it?" Wander asked.


    The Bell looked toward the crouched Trickmaker. "It has much of ours," she said. "But so does a stone."


    "Does it have words?"


    "Maybe," she replied. "Maybe not. I once believed I could find a word in everything."


    Wander looked away, and Fragile looked down at the Bell. "What do you mean, eldsister?" he asked. "Is it not your talent?"


    "My best talent, weak thing. I could see. Not every way, now. There is a hand that can grab it. And there is little more to say."


    "De put some work on her," Wander said. "I have not been able to count it in since then."


    She stood up and addressed the cave wall, placing her hand against it. It deformed under her touch, but resisted after she approached a certain depth. "I''m not sure it matters. Whatever word this one has, I don''t know that it could be heard."


    She looked back at the Fragile and Hithit. "You can rest, if you want. I''ll try to get us out of here."


    -


    Wander went to work attempting to bore a hole in the rock. She removed her shoulderskin and laid out the contents of her vest. She began to pry and strike at the stone in different ways. It resolved into a explosive hammering as she struck the rock with a metal rod. Her great strength made a noise that that shocked apart the air, but otherwise did not produce more than a trickling in the surface of the cave.


    Hithit offered to the Trickmaker. She laid down prostrate on the floor, scraping Goalish words into the rock with a heavy, wedged littlecane she kept at her side. At one point, her blade screeched to a halt. She threw her head up, and she saw the River-Son''s gaze flick away.


    "Spit up your voice, gapman," she said.


    "I''m sorry, eldsister."


    She stood up and towered over the Sixbraid. "I have wondered on your enfeeblement," she said. "This outman has sent out your virtue. You spy on the works of women, and offer no Response when they direct themselves to you. This is gappish work."


    "I am sorry to spy, eldsister," he said.


    "Do you seek to thrust upon me?" she asked. "An eye has an aim. What is yours?"


    Fragile eyes moved quickly. He shut them and kept quiet. She watched him.


    "Your name fits your form," she said. "Did you seek out this fate, gapman? Or was it forced upon you?"


    "W-Wander saved me," Fragile said.


    "I do not believe she did. To be with the rulers looks a better way than this. Is it her title for you? Would you put this in the virtue of your birthwoman? Have you none of her words?"


    Again Fragile did not reply.


    "Give me Response, gapman."


    "I do not have her words, eldsister."


    "She is a carcass, then?"


    Fragile''s teeth bit together. "I d-do not know."


    Hithit spit. "I suppose if your birthman could not help her, he could hardly produce the wall in you."


    Fragile''s eyes began to water. "I said that your birthman is a walless gap, Sixbraid," Hithit continued. "Do you have nothing to offer me for this attack? It would speak a kind that adores heartless ones. Someone who does not adore the rulers. It''s ones like you that have done this to us. It''s ones like you that have put away our hands."


    Hithit pointed to the Larun. "This heart," Hithit said, "this outman, has more heart than you in yours. You are a part of the going. You are the kind that sends out our friends."


    "Go away."


    Wander held the shard of the Kathan blade in her hand. She had stepped in front of Fragile. Hithit laughed. "You, strike at me, Dryman?" Hithit said. "You have cradled me and kept me from rulers. I did not ask for it. Now I should fear a hit from you? Do you seek my smiling?"


    "I have promised to resend a Lodge-daughter," Wander said. "Turn back your kind into its wiser. I did not promise to keep it whole."


    "Wander, please..." Fragile said.


    Hithit looked at the Sixbraid, clinging to the warrior''s arm. He would not look at her. He shook violently.


    Hithit went away and Wander lowered her weapon. The Bell watched.


    -


    Hithit returned to her corner. Fragile remained nearer to Wander than he had before.


    The Lodge-daughter watched the Trickmaker. As she did so there was a great pulling of the muscles in her arms and face. She clenched her fists.


    The Dry-man''s outish creature glided over to her. She recoiled from it. "Outness," she whispered.


    "I am the Bell," the Bell said. "And that is all."


    "I have never seen your kind," Hithit said. "A whip with its own hand."


    "You once spoke brightly of the heart in metal, Lodge-daughter," the Bell exclaimed. "I wish I could change that the path of your word is less adorable than its gap."


    "What do you want?"


    The Bell was quiet. "Wander''s smiling," she said. "But I have come to learn that that is not one part."


    "From me."


    "It is like I said. Wander''s smiling."


    "I cannot make your holder smile. Nor do I wish it."


    "What do you wish?"


    Hithit turned away from the rope and looked back at the Trickmaker. The Bell watched it too.


    "I want this outman to destroy her land," she said. "I want that without reservation. I do not want to lose my family."


    "Wander wanted that once," the Bell replied.


    "What changed?"


    "She came to the Wild."


    Hithit looked over at the warrior, who rumbled softly at Fragile.


    "What does she want now?"


    </a> "I don''t know. I believe there may be a kind in your calls. If there is, she will keep it in. I wish that you would know."


    The Bell glided away.


    -


    Fragile absentmindedly etched a drawing into the cave wall using his littlecane. The Stonehoof''s image was very crude, and it did not look much like anything, but his heart warmed when he had finished the shape of his company. He studied it and moved away after some time, shifting back over to Wander, who had begun to clang and clang and clang away at the the cave wall with her chisel. Hithit returned to her supplication of the Trickmaker, herself etching words on the floor in Goalish.


    Fragile wrapped his hands around his legs and looked up. His eyes widened.


    "Wander," Fragile whispered.


    The blade clanged as her fist beat against it and her head turned. It clattered to the ground, and Hithit glanced up from her offering. The Bell untied herself from Wander''s waist and twisted with their single gaze.


    The Trickmaker sat at the base of Fragile''s sketch. Its body reached out, scorching lines into the rock with extended tents of crystal skein.


    "What is it doing?" Fragile asked.


    "It seeks a way," said the Bell.


    As suddenly as it had arrived, the Shrillman moved away from the wall and back into its space. They assembled around the image. The sketches of the Shrillman''s fire, like its Tricks, were photographic. The Shrillman had iterated upon Fragile''s hoof; its shape and proportions had been retained, but its face and its body were shifted, given additional lines and shades to become distressed and seeing. It opened mouths from many heads, which the Trickmaker had distributed all around its body, into its chest and rear and sliding out into the ground beneath it. All of them dropped spit onto the ground. Lines had been struck all around, producing a landscape and an empty bowl that yawned out before the hoof.


    "What does it mean?" Fragile''s jaw opened when he found the completed image.


    Wander touched her hand to the stone, which was hot. "I don''t know."


    Hithit pointed her finger at the bowl. "What is this?"


    "That''s a lake," Wander said.


    "I do not see water."


    "The dirts and piles are collected in such a way. It is a lake." Wander blinked. "I have seen this before."


    "They turned to her. "You have?"


    "Yes. In Ard Makaris. The land is very dry. There are many dry lakes. They are filled only sometimes, by rivers and rain."


    They looked back at the figure.


    "Its meaning is besides," she said, "as it means, and we have not had that before. So draw something else."


    "I can''t," he said. "It was just¡­ I can''t, really. Can you?"


    "Ih, River-Son." Hithit severed the littlecane from his grip and began to scratch articles into the rock. Its blade was dulled and beaten by the stone.


    Soon, Hithit had established a new set of figures adjacent to the first. Each of them prostrated before a tall figure, with lines coming off of it.


    "What is this?" Wander asked, waving to its radiants.


    "That''s the Maker''s light," she said. "You cannot show light."


    They stepped back from the wall. Soon, the Trickmaker went back to their mural and stretched out again with its body. After it had departed, they moved in to observe.


    The Trickmaker had entered into the figures. Each of them had been given the face of Fragile''s hoof. It had drawn in its light, which crossed into everything, out of the lines that Hithit had made, which now resembled the shadows of the cave. Each of the figures had their own, and the lights passed into one another without any gradient.


    All of Hithit''s worshippers had contoured bodies, limbs, and faces. Echoes of Hithit''s shadows crossed over each as they shined in to one another. The Trickmaker had no shadows.


    "T-that''s-!" Fragile cried out and looked at Wander.


    "You?" she asked.


    "Me?" he looked again. He pointed at her figure. She pointed at his, and his finger dropped.


    Hithit looked at the two of them.


    "Twelve girls," Wander said. "Twelve tricks. We have its words. What is the pathway? What crosses between them?"


    "These are its words," Hithit said. "So we have always had them. The tricks."


    Wander looked at her. "The tricks were changes."


    "Yes."


    She turned her gaze back to the image, and fixed on the Trickmaker''s self-portrait. When she looked more closely, her eye found new detail.


    An indentation, concentrated in the Trickmaker''s abdominal region, and flowing up and down the whole of its figure, bisected the Trickmaker''s portrait. Overlapped beneath it was a weaker rendition of a heavy-cheeked face, and long limbs that stretched apart on the lower half of the Trickmaker''s body.


    "I''ve seen this too," she said.


    Hithit and Fragile followed her gaze. "I cannot see it, Dry Man."


    Wander stood up. She held her hand out to Hithit. The Lodge-daughter handed her the cane.


    The warrior approached The Trickamker. The Bell swam over and ran up her leg, tying herself around Wander''s waist.


    Trickmaker faced away from them. Wander removed the Bell''s rope and dropped her to the ground. She exposed her stomach, and looked down at it.


    A dark black spot lay at the center of Wander''s abdomen. She looked down at it and pressed the knife where Bestplace''s cut had been made. As the metal touched her flesh, the Trickmaker shifted.


    The wound opened. The Trickmaker shrank in size, approaching her with a swagger. With a shock, waves of the Shrillman''s body spread out around the cave, spinning themselves into piles of gold and silver and rotten wood. Fragile jumped up and squeaked as the ground beneath him became solid. Hithit shook and steadied herself and looked at the Trickmaking with raised eyebrows.


    The Trickmaker''s body stretched to its side and formed a lithe, blemishless arm, as the rest of its body unrolled layers of itself into a shape that matched its qualities.


    Wander opened herself. The Trickmaker''s hand moved toward the bloodless incision. As it reached inside Wander''s body, her face remained expressionless. The Trickmaker cried out, a choral noise that included laughing, crying, and screaming.


    Wander wrapped her hand around the Trickmaker''s wrist and pressed the littlecane against it. The joints of it dissolved and the Trickmaker''s hand was severed. It fell inside Wander''s wound.


    "Go c-clean," the Trickmaker said. "I am d-dirty." A pair of lips formed themselves on its face.


    Hithit and Fragile were thrown to the ground and the roof of the cave folded upward, and there was a roaring crash as the gold and silver and loaves of rotten wood rushed back in to the Trickmaker''s shape.


    Sunlight shined in. The Trickmaker stepped away from Wander. The light wrapped around it and formed a shadow.


    The wound in Wander''s torso sealed. The black mark of the Star''s fix was not left, but her skin was instead pale and newborn.


    Wander lowered the littlecane and felt around her stomach to make sure of its integrity. She looked at the Shrillman''s body, and a pair of eyes developed on its face.


    Wander fell to her knees as a piercing pain cut through her skull, which abated. The Shrillman stepped past Wander, toward Fragile, as his companions were incapacitated.


    The Shrillman''s head turned to look at Fragile briefly, gazing on him with deep blue eyes. Long locks of black hair rose up from its scalp and tumbled down its back as it walked out of the cave, into the light.


    Fragile rushed over to Wander and fell down before her. Hithit plodded after him, and continued past the two as she recovered, her arms outstretched, into the corner of the Shrillman''s cave.


    -


    As the end of the second day neared, the Walls of the Pathway shell strapped on their arms beneath the Pathway lodge and looked up at the stars.


    "We handed out our sight for nothing," muttered one.


    "Never again shall we listen to Heartcutter."


    "Never again."


    Wander''s young advocate ran a whetstone across his blade and kept silent.


    They were followed by a procession out toward the edge of the shell, and began to hear a great scream come up from it.


    "What is that?" they muttered among themselves.


    Heartcutter the Wall bumped into the man before him. The crowds of born parted, as did the Walls, as the Dry Man, her Sixbraid helper, a Larun, and the thirteen daughters of the Pathway Lodge cut their way through the shell, up to the house of Tugsheart.


    Fragile''s head twisted at the crowd, where a pair of walls shook their companion. He recognized the man as the one who had enabled Wander''s entrance.


    "He''s still breathing," his friends muttered. "Now we shall listen to Heartscutter. This gapman."


    "A gapman''s cunning."


    Tugsheart, went out from the Lodge and looked down from the mount. On seeing the procession her jaw fell. Wander stopped at the base of the mound, as Tugsheart''s sisters and the crowd of born followed them up to the house of images.


    Hithit looked back at the foreigners. "Aren''t you coming?" she asked Wander.


    "I have what I need," she said. "Go be with your family."


    Hithit gave them another look and then turned away.


    Distantly, into the early hours of morning, sounded the cry, "The Trick is made. The Trick is made. The Virtuous Dryman! The Virtuous Lodge-daughter! The Trick is made!" There was whooping and oaths sputtered and kisses put upon them, so that night they supped once more with Bestplace. Again, a meeter came in to whisper into Bestplace''s ear.


    "The Lodge has come," she whispered to Wander.


    Wander tugged on Fragile''s shoulder. "Come," she said.


    They exited the meeters'' roundseat. Tugsheart stood in the dark, accompanied by the Wall-Woman and three other men with canes. Around them the lights of the Goals still poured prolifically. Men and women danced themselves and each other to exhaustion around the seats and animals were loosened to take part in the jubilation.


    "I''m sorry," Wander said to Tugsheart.


    "How could you say that?" Tugsheart asked.


    "Your birthwoman."


    Tugsheart the Lodge''s brow fell, along with the heads of the walls. "Ih."


    "Was it quiet?"


    She looked up. "It was."


    Wander nodded. Tugsheart folded her hands.


    "I have come to speak," she said. "You have done a great work, offman. A marvelous one. What do you want from us?"


    "I already have it."


    "You received a Trick?"


    "That is not what I mean."


    Tugsheart tilted her head.


    "What I want," she said. "It is behind you."


    Tugsheart and the walls turned around and observed the festivities. They looked back at the warrior.


    "Thank you," Wander said.


    She tugged Fragile on the arm and went back inside the meeters'' roundseat. He followed her.


    -


    In the morning, The Stonehoof and The Stronghoof were brought to the edge of the shell. The first rays of the morning sun began to fall over the Wild. Wander and Fragile rose just as the meeters were retiring to their seat.


    They walked with Bestplace through the sleeping shell, where the Goals lounged about, clutched by each other and leaned into the coals of fire.


    "Did this Maker give you what you needed?" Bestplace asked.


    "I believe it did," Wander replied.


    Arriving at a place where the shoots, seats and pens of Pathway Goal began, they found another pair of travellers seated at their departure point. The Lodge-daughter, flanked by Petal the Prominens, stood.


    "I came to give you my wishes," Hithit said.


    Wander observed her attire. She was dressed in a rough white coldover, and carried at her side a tasselled blade. "You''re not staying?"


    "We are returning to the rounds," Petal said. "We go in search of the Trickmaker."


    She turned to the Prominens. "I believed you would return to Harmony."


    Petal and Hithit looked at each other. "She has asked me to accompany her," Petal said. She stuttered. Her brow was ashen, and her Goalish slow and diminished. "I will never go back to Larunkat."


    "The Maker has offered to us," Hithit replied. "I no longer have the heart to stay shellbound. So we will go and offer to the Maker, and know her as we can."


    Hithit turned her head to Petal. "This heart is a piece of it. One it preferred enough to hold."


    She turned back to Wander. "I want every piece."


    "You are in meeting company," Bestplace said. "You will have our help."


    She nodded at the Dip meeter. The Lodge-daughter turned to Fragile, who looked up at her with slight recoil.


    "River-son," she said.


    "Eldsister?"


    "My throat did not need to strike you," she said. "If I could, I would carry my words back in."


    "I would not," Fragile said. "I adore every word, eldsister. But if you would put them out, then- they can be gone. I am happy to have sun with you."


    She reached out a hand and tentatively ruffled Fragile''s head. Wander raised her eyebrow.


    Hithit raised aloft her weapon and stepped out into the bushes, followed by the Prominens. Soon they were swallowed by the snow and wood.


    "A Meeter-Lodge," Bestplace said, "and her Larun Wall. Meeting what has not been met." She shook her head. "This is the unknown season."


    She turned to Wander and Fragile.


    "There are more eatings inside your pack," she said. "The Strong one is fed and picked." She scratched The Stronghoof''s smooth mane and handed its lead to Wander. It nuzzled against her and Fragile.


    The Stonehoof emerged from the trees. "That one has also eaten," Bestplace said. "But it came and it went. We could not get a hold on it."


    The Stonehoof found its way over to Fragile and put its mouth on its head. Wander itched the Stronghoof''s chin. "What will you do?" she asked. "You and your water-eaters."


    Bestplace looked over at the shell and hill where the Lodge was placed. "I believed that I might move further." She looked back at Wander. "But there is some work that we can do here. Help with this new meeting. Maybe I will see rulers, again. That would be no great problem."


    "Then we will not see you again."


    Bestplace shrugged. "We search for what we need to see. Perhaps, if you travel by night, my eye will find you on your way."


    Wander nodded, and Bestplace flicked her eyes over to Fragile, who was still engrossed with his playmate.


    "River-brother," she said.


    Fragile looked at her and bowed his head. "I hope you will be safe, eldsister," he said.


    She looked over him for too long. "The favors we have," she said, "for the one you help ¨C these are yours, as well. You can count them in. I wish that you would know."


    Fragile''s brow furrowed but he nodded. "Thank you, eldsister."


    "I hope you will be safe, yonbrother."


    Bestplace stepped off, and did not turn back. Wander tugged the Stronghoof forward, and the foreigners returned to the Wild.


    -


    Wander unrolled her guide as the Lodge of the pathway Goals was covered up by the trees and faded into the horizon. She did not look up from it. Fragile scratched The Stonehoof''s snout and held his hands together.


    "How far is The Cane?" he asked.


    "Far," she said. "But he''s coming back." She rolled up the paper and put it away. "And I know where he''s going to be."


    "The Shrillman told you?"


    "In a way, I would say it. It can tell with a face."


    As the sun rose higher, and its growing heat made itself apparent, a silence that they had not known since the first part of the cold produced itself within them, and there was no talking until they next decamped at midday. They stopped in a rosy glade at the edge of a roaring river, where Fragile unpacked some of the meeters'' roots and, recognizing a number of them, placed them in one of Wander''s pots that he hung over a fire she had built. She kept it cool, and he stirred slowly, three breaths per spin. The noise of the stream was great, and Wander watched the light grip he kept on the stir, pick up the nearly weightless gutcutter plants with two hands, and yelp when the water jumped up and he burned himself. She dug a hole next to the fire.


    She got out bowls and she ate his stew. Fragile looked down into his bowl, and his eyes flicked between it and the hole.


    Wander looked at him after he had failed to deposit the food after the sun had shifted a degree. "What''s wrong?" she asked.


    His reverie was broken and he looked up at her. "Ih ¨C nothing."


    "You look hungry.


    "I-I am."


    "Want something else?"


    "I-I d-don''t-"


    "There''s more they gave."


    "I j-just-"


    "The bags are full," she said. She began to stand up. "There''s some roothead, some howl, some-"


    "I cannot hear the rulers," he cried.


    Wander sat down.


    He put aside his bowl and put his hands in his lap. "That is why I spied on eldsister. In the cave. I wish I could be like her¡­ but I can''t." He rubbed an eye. "Once, I knew that the rulers were in their house. I knew that I would see my birthmen there. I do not feel that way anymore. I am filled with shaking." He looked up at her. "How can one shake at one''s ruler? They are gone. They have done nothing to me. They ask nothing from me. All there is is their way. I do not know what I expect from them. I have lost my birthmen. Hithit believed that her whole table had gone away, that they were lost. She did not falter in her obligations. What is the right in an offering from someone who cannot sustain a little part of her problem? The whole rulersland is going away. You have said it. I believe you."


    He wiped his nose and brushed water from his cheek. "I''m sorry."


    Wander put her bowl down. She rested her arms on her knees. Then she picked her bowl up, and her gloves, and moved over to the hole.


    He watched as he dumped her entire meal into the hole. "Wander!"


    She took her stir and scratched out the last parts of it inside. "Could you come here?" she asked.


    He put down his bowl and ran over to her.


    She gestured to the ground. "Sit down." He did.


    She put on her gloves. Her fingertips poked out at the ends, so she took his hand in her left palm and raised his forefinger to her lips. She used it to write a word in the snow. After that, she used her right hand to brush over the hole.


    "I can hear them," she said.


    She looked down at him, as she heard his eyes begin to flow. They were soaking and many, but he was smiling. "I''m sorry," he said. "It is n-not ¨C it is different."


    "What is?"


    He wiped his tears and showed her. "This," he said.


    She nodded. They returned to the fire and he ate.


    As he chewed through his food, Wander looked out over the water. She scratched the back of her neck. The Bell unlooped herself from around her waist and trailed into the bush.


    "I know your name," Wander said.


    Fragile stopped chewing. He gulped. "My n-name?"


    "Yes. Your first name. Before all this. Key."


    "You mean- from the start?"


    She looked at him. Key looked away. "Ih. Are you angry?"


    "I was going to ask you that."


    His eyes widened. "N-no. Why would I- I''m not angry."


    "Why did you change it?"


    Fragile put his bowl down. He held his arm. "I''m not sure. It''s been so long since then."


    "It has."


    He looked at the river too. "I had two names then," he said. "Key was one. Fragile was the other."


    "You didn''t choose it?"


    He shook his head. "I- I was Key when I was good. But sometimes I was Fragile. That was what they said. All liked it best. The ones who I adored. This way, I can give it to them."


    "I see." Her tone was light. He imagined a tenderness in it and his brow raised.


    "Is it wrong?" he asked.


    She pushed up her hat. "No," she said. "But you are what you are. Not what they say."


    He was silent. He concealed his face.


    Wander looked down at him. She laid a hand on his shoulder. "Fragile?"


    "I¡­" She could not make out his expression, which he guarded with a turn. "I can hear what you have said. About sun."


    "Sun?''


    "Y-yes. The way it t-tumbles you."


    Her grip pulsed very slightly. Her strength magnified the difference, and Fragile flinched.


    "I have known smiling since I named myself this way," he said. "They did not seek me when they said, but¡­ it feels like me." He uncovered his face, turned toward her, and smiled. "I have never wanted to be hard, like stone. I took it for what they said. But I kept it for what I like."


    She released him. The corners of her mouth flared up for a moment, before it turned down again. The sun was uncovered by a cloud and shot them up with rays; she adjusted her hat to shield her eyes. Fragile felt his mouth and his eyes widened. He moved over to her, touched his face to her arm, twice, and withdrew. Her arm reached out to hold his.


    "Have you ever fire-brewed before?" she asked.


    He sat down next to her and crossed his legs. "''Fire-brewed''?"


    "It is something I have seen written about your kind," she said. She crinkled a finger toward her mouth. "The Shamins do not do it. Nor the Laruns. But Goals do, and do Makars."


    Fragile''s eyes widened. He looked into the fire. "I have done that once," he said. "Well ¨C twice." He looked at her. "I mean¡­ once- before-"


    "I can hear it."


    "I did not know what it meant¡­ I still don''t."


    "I was told that it was common," she said.


    "I don''t know," Fragile said. "It may be, elsewhere."


    She was silent. Fragile felt cold.


    "If you are without many tries," she said. "That makes us two. Once we are parted, and you do it with someone else, you may like to squeeze your lips together. Most don''t only push them on each other."


    Fragile blushed. "Would you¡­ could you¡­ show me?"


    She looked down at him again. She turned so that they were facing each other.


    "Everyone does it differently," she said. "Each one is different."


    "Each one?"


    "Each brewing." She pushed his cheek with her covered knuckle, and recoiled. His face grew red. "A birthwoman, or a friend, would do it here," she said.


    She waved at his nose and then his forehead. "Here. Here."


    "I had no birthwoman," Fragile said.


    "And mine was not with me."


    She waited for a moment. "Other people do it on the lips," she said, scrubbing around her own. "Friends do that sometimes."


    "And the other ones?"


    "They produce a house."


    He grew flustered. "Is that why they call it house-making?"


    "In a way. It has a longer reason."


    Fragile lowered his gaze. "Is it like¡­ when I came back?"


    "Yes."


    He looked at her. Wander felt a shaking rise up in her breast. It was something different. The hands that approached her often felt like they might tear her apart. In this case, her hands were approaching him. The peoples of her spoke to one another. The many of it felt angry.


    Her gloves had been shot open by the cliffs, so she could not avoid touching him. It helped that his coldover was very thick.


    She took him by the waist. The wave of revulsion passed into her I, and it did not stop. She leaned down and stopped a moment before she took his mouth. Their noses brushed against each other. She went closer.


    Before it could push her away, there was more found in her I. The world enjoined by the work of color, and a humming buzzed her ears. Wander held his body with hers, and Fragile pressed into her. His heartbeat slowed down and matched hers. His body filled with her heat and began to produce more. They were never together at once, and one always drew back, and moved forward again, closing and reopening the distance in their plot. They had removed themselves from the face of planet and they wound up into a form by its immanence.


    She began to hear the crackle of fire, and the peal of a bell. She began to remember her skin crawling and jumping out of her body, but until it was released, its tint did not depart.


    And then it did. Wander shoved Fragile back. She stood up and walked away and put some chew in her mouth. A moment passed.


    "That''s what its like," she said.


    "I s-see."


    Fragile''s eyes opened up. Her breath was heavy. She could hear his quicken and shake.


    She could feel his gaze on her. "T-thank you," he said. "I will- I will go c-clean. I am d-dirty."


    He went away from the fire, and down to the river.


    <hr>


    A wing flew over the Wild country. It was soft, fit easily in the palm of one''s hand, and it had golden-orange plumage that was tugged out by the air it blistered through. A wooden tube hitched to its back wriggled and rattled as it threw itself around, over the barrens and peaks and shifting black canopies of Middle Goal.


    The barrens and peaks gave way to walls, that rose up from the ground around its aim. The walls sprouted a fire-light, set against mirrors, which shined out a beam that shined around the territory, Trenches formed in the ground beneath the walls, directing water. The walls surrounded blocks and the blocks towers hoisted towers that decorated a rod of gold. An arrow-and-bone, moulded out of the same metal and fused to it, saw gusts run through the gaps in its hollow design. The wing was blown off course by this gale and was dashed against the arrow before it could dive to safety. It fell, and the walls swallowed up the wing.


    A lone roothead grazed on snow-covered grasses beyond the water of the walls. It looked up and saw the mark. Water dripped from the spines of thorntrees, tapping wet against the rocks at its base. A howl stepped through it, looked up, and it saw the arrow too.


    A boot crushed the snow. It was followed by a second and a third that caused the heads of the howl and roothead to snap towards it. When a fourth bootprint was made, the howl loped into the dark, and the roothead glided out of sight as the lead man shoved a stick and its fire forward through the thorntrees.


    He turned back. The fire placed vertical shadows between the spines of his mask and cowl. A team of boys followed in his wake, carrying the branch-strapped litter of their commander, with fresh bindings to the jaw. One of them buckled from the weight, and they gasped.


    "G-get up," the Cane said through his mask. "I am forbidden from h-his throat. N-not ¨C y-yours."


    "Yes, kontor."


    "Yes, kontor."


    They thrust and cut and burnt their way through the Wild. They crossed over the waters and grew the walls in their eye until they reached an arch where the stone faltered and found hinges.


    De''s club clanked against the rock of the path they walked. He clenched its handle and tapped the ground twice, sending a clack shooting up atop the arch, where a pair of bryst-clad nivmen turned to gaze down at them.


    "Who are you?" one of them, a Freeman, boomed. "Covered one! Remove that shade of yours, or you will be shot down!"


    De lifted a hand, tore off his hood and removed his mask. The head of the Larun disappeared. The doors, which were twice as tall as any in their company, creaked open. They were met by a man in a gold-lined bryst, whose neck and chin were striped with cuts of ivory, and was covered by a horde of Freemen. They crowded Joyborn and his seeds, divorced them from the company of De, and carted them inside with clamor and shouting.


    The gilded man stepped forward. "You are Teller''s man?" he questsaid.


    De replaced his mask. "I am h-his."


    The redoubt''s kontor reached into a pocket at his breast and extracted a small wooden tube from it. "This arrived for you in the last mark. Can you read?"


    "N-no."


    The noise of the extracted Partless'' reception faded as the kontor cracked open the tube. He shivered and exhaled, sending out a gout of vapor, and wrapped his bryst closer to his body before he could get it loose. De took a step back.


    A folded paper with a golden seal shook free of the binding. The kontor cleared his throat.


    "The paper says it," he began. "''Respect of Goodpoint De, Mark Teller 20/13 Girdan: Turn described wrong. Wingpapers confirm: no Coster Blade present in South Goal. Described Point impossible.''"


    De''s eyes widened. His grip tightened on his cane, crushing its handle with a crack that shook his reader. He continued.


    "''D-described condition of Point impossible. Return and resume tell. Attack the Dry Man. All for the Firm, Teller Anointed, Firstpoint of the Partition."


    He lowered the paper. His hands shook.


    "The paper s-says it," the kontor said. He stepped back. "Kontor."


    De''s cane fell to the ground with a clatter and the gilded man flinched. The Cane had stopped shaking.


    "Bring me a tithe, please," said the Cane.


    "Yes, kontor. I will form a gathering."


    "I don''t want a gathering," said the Cane. "I want a tithe. Please, bring me a tithe."


    The Kontor gave a stuttering nod and stepped back into the Larun fortress. De did not move further. He heard laughter.


    The Dry Man is a woman, it was whispered. The Dry Man carries two canes. Hand of fire, eyes of water. The Dry Man is a woman, it was shrieked. The Dry Man is a kinder one. The Dry Man adores his kind.


    Bring us a tithe, it was shrieked. Bring us a tithe. A tithe to it!


    A tithe to his soundest murder!

 Story 10 - The Equivalence in Movements - Part 1

    Watch me, Sett of Highest Space!


    Watch me, Sett of Owed Favors!


    Watch me, feurkun Sett: he sees nothing, hears nothing, knows nothing!


    It is my plea: Watch me, listen to me, know about me, your most humble overseer!


    Watch my passing ¨C my passing toward screams ¨C my path in to the cry of these rebel noisemakers. Watch, and see:


    Tonight, the Dry Man will be destroyed.


    The Goals speak of her, Fir-Handed Woman, with hushed words and little breath. She is a tasty question to starving beasts. They believe her capacity is limitless, her invention unthrowable. But my eye sees true, all, and plainly.


    For a long cold, Sett, your sons have run over this country of Goal. Your weapons and your groups of hangmen have gone well into their net of houses. There, they have found breathers, found them too in woods, and taken them away from their creators, and from bright suns of feeling and reproducing. Your sons have taken them back, and they have put in flags and towers and shouted them into the trees, and seen themselves as men in it.


    This has been the work of the knife-men of the country of Larunkat. It has been the work of the knife-men of the country of Josmee. It has been the work of the knife-men of the country of Lefthanded Rules. Now it is the work of me, and my First Point ¨C the point that tells, that is received, and placed in view before all others. And it is the work of his First Point ¨C the Point that tells, that is received, and placed in view before all others. And it is the work of Teller''s First Point ¨C the point that tells, that is received, and placed in view before all others.


    The order of points is the foundation of a country. The foundation of a country is where its child is built. Without the order, there is not foundation. Without foundation, there is not a country. Without a country, there shall be no child. So is Goal. This land of rulers enjoys no rules.


    All is received from you, feurkun nothing. It is all received from you, subordinate seer. I create you with my attentions, as the Laruns do ¨C for the Laruns know your power, as do I.


    The creator of ones is the creator of laws.


    For a long cold, Sett Who Sees Nothing, I have waited for your sons to do the work of this battle. To place my points in these pointless positions. But that has not been accomplished. And this feurkun kind, which has no walls, has not yet been vanished.


    If I am to let you say, you would speak: "Ha, creating one ¨C you hunger for the pain of children! You would destroy them, and cast them into a lightless pit! What problem is pain, of one or the other?" And I can answer what you cannot ask.


    The Firstpoint is the creator of laws. The Firstpoint is a man, feurkun nothing. The men of these points search for a woman; they search for a creature they will wound. The man is a noise-searching kind. The man is a noise-pricing kind. I am the creator of ones, and all price is mine. I am the creator of laws, and so I am a man.


    What takes, takes from the lawman. The lawman has the right.


    The creator of laws is a lawman. So the Dry Man will be destroyed.


    The Dry Man will be destroyed. This country shall know her vacancy. This country shall receive my points.


    I am the first need, feurkun nothing. Without these noises, there is an end to myself. There is the one, and there is his retinue. There is the pierce: one is lowered, and one is risen.


    The order of points is the foundation of a country. The foundation of a country is a foundation of ones.


    This one, De ¨C my Firstpoint. If I am to let you say, you would speak: "Ha, creating one ¨C you speak of your eminence, you firstness, but you offer to one, and say he precedes you! What work is this, which keeps you there?"


    I am a creator, feurkun nothing. The knowing produces my creation. The knowing produces my cuts. A high point would possess a lower one, because he knows it is not his orders which grant him stature. Because I am the highest, I have chosen the lowest kind.


    A blind man who can see. A deaf man who can hear. A heartless man who has found someone to adore. De: the Freeman. De: The Cane of Larunkat. The Terror of Ten Thousand Free Men!


    The wit of it ¨C he is erased! And the erase of my Point brings me over him.


    We arrive now at the foreigners, Sett Who Sees Nothing. The ones of common talk.


    I feel you, Fragile. I will have you, Key. I will have you, noisemaking man.


    It is never well to see a body that has lost his laws. With your consort, I can see the breadth of this fall, the trembling that has carried you to it. Your drawn straw can represent this Pointless condition. You are so unsteady that even your nature is lost to you. You seek no eating, but seek a mouth ¨C even if it should be your own! A perfect woman. There is no end to my feeling for you, strange Key. Take this calm ¨C I shall bring you the laws you seek. And the mouth.


    When I touch you, you shall know your birthman.


    I feel you, Bell. I feel you, noisy woman.


    How I have hungered for your word! That the sightnight of a frightened little girl could uncover such a sprawling force, brings me questions. You have companied a breather into a noiseless, sunless beast. This is the least of it; you have carried her from my sea and my sands into my eye! But I do not say that this is your wrong to hold. You do not even know your nature, or your name. I am the cutter of your mould. I can tell them to you. I look forward to creating you myself.


    When you touch me, you shall know your lawsman.


    Then, there is our aim.


    I feel you, Wander.


    I feel you, Ten-Six. I feel you, Fire-Handed Woman. I feel you, beast.


    The thirst of my blade for your voice ¨C this is not my whole feeling. The aberration in your sightnight is the aberration in you. In vain have you made to throw off your noisemaking nature. You have chained in metal and dust, and a body that can dig lightless pits. Pits of your creation; pits of your achievement:


    In the Couth of Bigeyes. A beast hunted strong men. Your strength prevailed.


    In the stabs of Eighty. Their coins hunted weak men. Your strength prevailed.


    In the Couth of Firmen. Your chants hunted all men. Your strength still prevailed.


    And you have brought me in to a many pitted land, and turn this strength on De. As with your company ¨C I do price you! I do praise you!


    But The Cane is my possession. I grip his title by my teeth. And when you touch him, you shall know your lawsman.


    So watch me, Sett of High Space. Watch where I shall find them, and where I shall look. Can you find it first, knows-nothing? Even you should see it quick.


    There is only one of all. Where was the man born, sees-nothing?


    Where was the song written, hears-nothing?


    Where was his body wrought?


    In a root.


    <hr>


    Once upon a time in Goal.


    For fifteen nights, the foreigners travelled away from the Pathway shell, and camped atop a ridge beside a lake. The rustling that enveloped their settlement, coming as he departed his sleep-sack, woke up Wander. Her eyes hung open and faced up and unblinking as she listened to Fragile fumble into the bushes. It was soon passed over, and at a point much earlier than it had been previously.


    She waited until the day had begun. When Fragile''s eyes opened and found the morning glare and its glint upon the snow and ice, he found her sitting on a rock, looking down at her hand. She twisted it around and the light played on the large licks of scarring that wrapped around her palm.


    The Sixbraid moved about and wrapped up the firewood, tied it to The Stronghoof, and fed it and watered it. He drew a stone across her blaith, her last whole weapon. When he went to her Kathan blade, he found it shattered in half, as it had been days prior, and he drew the stone over the sloping, many-pointed edge that it now possessed.


    Wander felt a pair of eyes on her and looked over at Fragile. His face changed, and he looked down.


    The lake was gone, and they ascended from the ridge into a windy meadow. Am rose up into a batch of clouds, and then he and his warriors pushed back the air and placed Goal between comfort and cool. The layer of snow that had fallen in the night was thin, and it dissolved wetly beneath their feet. Heavy clouds sat further in front of them, plating the sky, and a breeze swept through Wander''s hair. She lifted up her star papers and reviewed them against heaven as they walked.


    Fragile stumbled. She looked at him. His face changed when her gaze struck him. His back straightened and he drew his shoulders inward. He took greater care with his steps.


    "What''s wrong?" she asked. He looked up at her.


    "You always say nothing," Wander said. "You can tell me."


    "Okay." He clung to his hoofleather bag. "Okay."


    She could hear his stomach settle.


    "It is just my strings," he said. "My bata''s strings."


    "The strum you used to carry?"


    He nodded. "I wanted to learn how to use it. So you could hear a good sound."


    "Where we''re going, there are thousands like it," she said. "They''re made for gifts. There are Goals in Herdetopp, so there will be some like yours for certain. I''ll get you a new one."


    He blinked at her. He spoke quietly and his voice still wavered. "Thank you, Wander."


    "What is it?"


    He shut his eyes and opened them. "N-nothing," he insisted. He blinked tears from his eyes and shook his head. "What was the Trickmaker''s face?" he shot in. "Did it show you something hidden?"


    Wander heard his nothing and looked down at the tears in his eyes and his shivering before she answered.


    "It showed me a shell," Wander said. "It put it in my eye. The houses are all burnt. There''s a ring of poles, wood-shorn. A Larun order-stone. There''s wings flying overhead. And beyond those were stars."


    "That''s where De is?"


    "I believed that he was, when I could see it. But I didn¡¯t see him."


    "Ih."


    "Don''t worry about what I''ve heard," she said. "You don''t need strings to make a sound. The sound of you is good, when it shows up."


    He blushed.


    -


    From the plates in the distance unfolded a flashing white tide, which blocked out the light, and thrusted toward them. A hissing wind started, and metal found the air.


    "What''s that?" Fragile asked, crying out at the squall.


    Wander did not reply. Being was in rupture!


    This metal found the air, and fire inflated it. Thunder boomed around the Peaks. Every god-shaped massive that had chased and beat them across the East of Goal had come back as friends to jubilate their exit. The mountains roared laughter and let down their stones in a hammering rush that split the filament. Black speared its way past the stars and brought wind to them. They walked with it for a while, before it began to pour.


    The Stonehoof guarded Fragile. The snow assembled as a rapids whipping that saw him leap onto her and cling her neck as she tread easily through the gusts. A silent flash linked a wedge of soil and the infinite beyond the mountains, somewhere after the end. Wander did not turn to watch it. The snow ravaged them, the wind roared, and the sky went away.


    They pressed through a thin, deadly wood. One half of each tree was covered by frost; the other half bowed to the storm, and the foreigners crept forward. The Bell wound her rope-form around Fragile''s back and the Stonehoof''s belly.


    Wander''s eyes searched the forest for a path, and found her every faculty foiled. There was plenty of light and no hot, so everything became nothing. And at once, a whining pitch shrieked itself into her ears. White invaded definition, and as her eyes went back into the world, they were relieved to see a color. It was a thicktree hurtling into view and volume.


    The tree tumbled toward the group, with fire heaped up at its exploded base. Wander sent the animals and Fragile sailing through the snow and it landed on her back, driving her into the ground. The Bell snapped off of Fragile and the two hopped off the grounded Stonehoof back toward the warrior.


    Fragile crossed through the snowblinds on all fours, keeping his head down, and his skull bumped into the wood. He followed it and found the smooth, shredded fabric of her shoulderskin pinned beneath the trunk, its ruin roaring smoke. Some flames remained that the wind quickly drowned.


    Wander placed her hands on the snow and pushed into it, submerging her elbows and grabbing the frozen soil there. The wood rose slowly, enough for her to bring up her leg. She threw it out, placed her hands beneath the trunk, and dropped it. It collapsed with a boom that split Fragile''s ears and diminished the sound of the gale.


    She pulled Fragile back over to The Stonehoof, threw him back over it, walked forward and stumbled. They continued.


    The trees peeled back. They walked further through the storm.


    They became surrounded by bulbous waves in the froth, made indistinct from the shapes in a shut eye by the twitch and waver of the snow before they were immediately available and Wander could reach out her hand and touch the wood in their walls. She dragged her group between their nooks, to a place where the wind and snow drifted out, and all set themselves down. Fragile descended The Stonehoof and sat, and The Stronghoof sat, and they clumped together into a nest and hid there. Wander wrapped her arms around them.


    Things would split apart forever, until the storm sealed up.


    -


    </a> The storm sealed up.


    </a> Snow bound itself to Fragile and the animals where it did not to Wander. They were entwined such that her shifting disturbed it, and slid away from them in blocks and sheets.


    </a> She stood up, clutched her back, and went out from their nook. The sun had not yet risen, so it was dark. She found the shapes of the shell by a white-orange glow that the rim of everything sprayed the distance with.


    </a> She righted herself, roused Fragile and the animals and they walked into the shell. Wander kept her blaith in its sheath, off her back and in her hand.


    </a> All of the shell''s dwellings had been caught in a fire. The soil was fertile and, discovering it with her bootprints, Wander saw the stems of frozen flowers and bones picking up from it, crushed by the cold. The more they passed, the more of a desert it became.


    </a> "It is like the digging ones," Fragile said. "The Threeheads?"


    </a> "Yes," she said. "But the wood in their seats was younger than this."


    </a> The geography of the shell lost cohesion. There were spots where the dwellings split apart and gave way to forest. They found a roundseat that had been bitten away and eaten up by a stream of trees. The map Wander was producing of the place did not conform to any system, and it was clear that chunks had once been present which were no longer.


    </a> "Bell," Wander said, turning to The Stronghoof.


    </a> The ends of the Bell''s rope popped up from her saddlebag. "Joyous one."


    </a> "Tie him to your mount."


    </a> Fragile''s eyes widened. The Bell swam over The Stronghoof''s head and reached out a strand toward Fragile.


    </a> "De is quick," Wander said. "He can beat me first if he takes you away."


    </a> Fragile crinkled his brow and nodded. He gave his hand to the Bell, who tied him up and yanked him close to The Stronghoof. It complained.


    </a> They continued to parse the roundseats and the terrain which rose and fell again. "Is that the face you saw?" Fragile asked.


    </a> She looked where he was pointing. An open plain, scraped out by metal, was the only fully intact parcel of the shell, surrounded by other chopped up and ruining mounds that were once whole. Eight columns of wood, cracked and marked with ash, sat around the center, where there was a monolith.


    </a> They started toward the brushless spot, and Wander approached the largest of the mounds. Its exterior, where there were many wood surfaces, had been burnt up completely. Many of the other roundseats had only decayed or seen swathes of removal. Its bulk was such that it was still much larger than the others despite its damage. It offered a series of high vantage points.


    </a> "Get on my back," Wander said.


    </a> Fragile looked up at her. The Bell untied Fragile. She knelt down and he wrapped his arms around her neck. When she stood, the feeling in her shoulders heated, and there was fire in her stomach.


    </a> "Wander?" Fragile whispered.


    </a> She moved. The Kathan blade left her belt and pierced the Lodge''s wood. She drove up a hand and pulled them onto a ledge.


    </a> As she navigated to its tip, Wander did not touch him, so Fragile''s legs flopped around in the air. Once they reached a high dome of the Lodge, she knelt again, and he scrambled down to his hands and knees.


    </a> They found the entire country there. A trail of summits marked the day''s distant, gilding rise with spots of white and brown and black. One appeared a bowl. The sun arrived at that moment and light spilled over the edge, onto their brows and across a group of wings that circled overhead. A gust of wind rose and their coats rose and rippled.


    </a> Fragile craned his neck up at her.


    </a> "This is the answer," she said.


    </a> -


    </a> They hitched The Stronghoof to one of the columns. They came across a roundseat beside the shell''s Lodge, which was not as destroyed. It had falling walls, and the wood had rotted, but there was a whole interior. Wander drew her blaith and they went inside.


    </a> It was dark and cold. The Hesigns that covered Wander''s weapon gleamed more brightly there, and she held it up. Fragile blinked, and found the view of a stone oven sat in the far corner.


    </a> There was only one room. The floor was covered with a rug and a wooden platform. Bowls lay around snapped and splashed, their frames torn. Stone hacks and smoothers bound with twine mixed around with cracked blue pots and jars.


    </a> Approaching the far wall, they became faced with Goalish writing.


    </a> It was extensive. It stretched over the whole face of the end, wrapping around and under, chipped out in furling increments with a small edge.


    </a> "Can you read it?" Fragile asked Wander.


    </a> "It looks like an offering."


    </a> "They were speaking to the soil ruler," Fragile said. "The names of these hearts. One is called ''rider.'' Another is called ¡®greatgreat''. That one was called ¡®little root''."


    </a> Wander pointed. "There?"


    </a> He nodded.


    </a> "What is that mark?"


    </a> "It says their days. They were children."


    </a> Wander felt his voice tremor. "What is it?"


    </a> "I cannot see it," he said. "They were a strange knot. Or they were very upset. It is not really an offering. The words are attacking."


    </a> Wander turned her gaze around. Fragile turned his elsewhere, and there was a clattering as his foot knocked over a piece of spindling debris. He took it up and looked at it.


    </a> It was a statuette of a young figure. It had been produced from dark metal that had been melted and fused together. He watched the light play on it, and he put it in his bag. He walked over to a corner by the entrance to the seat, looked at the angle of it and turned himself. He sat down.


    </a> The roundseat draped in. There was a familiar quality to the place, and he felt like he could read it. The ice blew in.


    </a> "Fragile."


    </a> He looked up. Wander had sheathed her blaith.


    </a> "Let''s go," she said. "There''s nobody here."


    </a> He did not look back as they gave it exit.


    </a> -


    </a> They pressed through the rest of the shell. Past the Lodge, where there was a fuller terminus for the seats, they met a collapsed and rotted platform of wood. The coils of rope on it and crooked mounts had been worn down to nubs by the wind. Its boards had been chewed through by bugs and eaten at and blackened by fire, and the sun had drank it, and the storm clouds had come and given rain to it that had exploded in night and winter. It had a frozen body, and it had fallen apart.


    </a> There was a stone next to the platform and they moved closer to it. It was marked with writing in Sprak.


    </a> 2 THIS PLACE HAS NO PAST 2


    </a> 5 NO MAN OR WOMAN EVER BREATHED HERE 5


    </a> 2 NO WORDS WERE COMPOSED OR SPOKEN 2


    </a> 3 NO SEEDS WERE LAID OR GROWN 3


    </a> 5 THE SOIL IS EMPTY 5


    </a> IT IS RIGHT


    "What does it say?" Fragile asked Wander.


    She thought about lying to him again, and she spoke. "It is what the Laruns lay down if they cut apart everyone," she said. "The words are meant to scare you."


    Fragile shivered. "They cut apart everyone?"


    "Sometimes they take small ones. When they could still make Freemen, they made some that way. And the making cuts too."


    -


    They returned to the seats where they had sheltered.


    </a> The day was still young and the sun made that clear. Clouds flashed silence over the summits, where they hung with expanding weight that made their step implausible. Wander still built a fire, for the cold, and for work. She set down the remains of her Kathan blade in the flames to heat, and she took out her mirror and a brush. It was hard to reach around for the injuries on her back.


    </a> "Have we come too late?" Fragile asked.


    </a> Wander angled the mirror so that she could see the damage. She stretched to brush the grime and splinters from her skin. "Maybe," she said. "I''m not sure. He knows where we are."


    </a> "He does?"This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    </a> "He can touch us," she said. "He can touch the Bell. He knows the way."


    </a> Fragile fidgeted. "Does he remember you?"


    </a> "He did not before. He has sent messages. Once he is told about me, he may do so."


    </a> She looked over at Fragile, who was nestled with The Stonehoof. His lip quivered, and his gaze shook at the ground.


    </a> "Were you really a fireworker?" she asked.


    </a> He pushed himself up and blinked at her.


    </a> She adjusted the mirror in the light and looked into it. The flames lapped against it and made a sharp white beam. "A fire tender," she said. "A Goalish water-man. They wrap broken skin. They burn wounds. They cut off little hearts. You said a word like that."


    </a> "I do not remember," Fragile said.


    </a> "So you were not?"


    </a> Fragile rubbed his fingers. "My bata was," he said. "He told me some things. But I am not in his way."


    </a> "Can you recall them?"


    </a> He nodded.


    </a> "Help me with this."


    </a> He skittered over to her. She turned her back to him and handed him the brush.


    </a> "Move out the soil from the marks," she said. "And the wood."


    </a> The brush wavered over her skin, and Fragile applied it lightly. She made no movement, and he pushed no more deeply.


    </a> "This can''t hurt me," she said. "Get it out." So he did. And he shoved away the coat of dust and grit that had embedded itself in her body.


    </a> The movements entered Fragile. The fire felt warm. The mirror reflected its golden color, which seemed to grow brighter with each swab.


    </a> She handed him a corked bottle of fluid.


    </a> "Spread that where there''s openings," she said.


    </a> When Fragile looked inside, he was met by the smell of salt.


    </a> "Is this what you put on me?" he asked.


    </a> "No," she said. "It''s the water of a crushed plant. The one I gave you shuts an eye. This one opens it."


    </a> "It will?"


    </a> "It makes your heart move faster."


    </a> He poured it in.


    </a> "Now take the blade."


    </a> Fragile removed the ruins of Wander''s Kathan blade, which had grown red hot. It blew off wires of stumbling air as it departed and the metal glowed gold in the light.


    </a> "Do you know what to do?" she asked him.


    </a> Fragile did. Her skin exploded with vapors that made him lightheaded and his eyelids flutter. The wound began to burn, and Fragile looked at Wander''s head. It did not shift or make a sound. His eyes kept wide as he held it, and he did not hear her voice.


    </a> "You can put it back," she said. He retracted the brand.


    </a> "Hand me that cloth. Pass it around."


    </a> She began to bandage herself. He threaded the fabric over her cuts, underneath her arms.


    </a> "I believed that you did not need this help," Fragile said.


    </a> She knotted the fabric. "Eating can cover me. But I am going to a fight. This Cane is stronger than I am. I may hurt more than I would otherwise. I do not wish to be thrown down."


    </a> She stood up and over him, casting a shadow. She raised her arm and lowered it, and turned to Fragile.


    </a> "You held it for too long," she said. "My movers are stiff."


    </a> His eyes widened. "I- I did?"


    </a> "Yes."


    </a> "I''m sorry."


    </a> "It is not a wrong," she said. "I want my limits. If you do this again, you can do it right." She knelt down and waved her hand. "Turn around."


    </a> He reversed himself.


    </a> Wander slipped on her thick leather gloves. Her fingers poked through the ends, torn loose during her first encounter with The Trickmaker.


    </a> Wander gently lifted the upover that concealed his back. Her hands hovered over his skin without touching it.


    </a> "Is something wrong?" Fragile asked.


    </a> "I need you to move your hair."


    </a> The thick black mass of it swamped her hand, and it concealed the part of him she needed. His hands reached back and tugged it forward, until it hung over Fragile''s head and sank down to his knees.


    </a> She looked. "Nothing is wrong," she said. "And it concerns me. We still do not know why The Trickmaker changed you."


    </a> She lowered his upover. He reversed himself again and folded his hair back. Once it was neat, he put his hands on his feet. "She did it as I was hurt," Fragile said. "I believed she was kind."


    </a> "Maybe. I did not feel that she had that word."


    </a> Fragile rubbed his arm. Wander sat back in her place, where her blaith and belt lay. She took to sharpening her weapon and dripping residue over it. The white jumped to the shapes on its blade and produced a glow that mixed with the fire on both their faces.


    </a> He rubbed his arm. "H-how much stronger is he?" he asked. "De."


    </a> "A little. He can move more quickly. And he has help that others don''t."


    </a> "You can throw him down."


    </a> "I believe so."


    </a> She looked down and ground the blaith further.


    </a> "We fought another star together," she said. "The star threw him and not me. But I do not know if he has changed, how he was or what he might have brought out if I was somewhere else. And he can move more quickly."


    </a> She looked up and saw Fragile''s eyes watering. She stopped sharpening. "What is it?" she asked.


    </a> He rubbed his eyes and sat up. "I''m sorry," he said. "I''m tired."


    </a> "It''s early."


    </a> He squirmed.


    </a> "Have I not said that it is your smiles I want?" she asked.


    Fragile nodded.


    </a> "Then what is this?"


    </a> "I am not in the spot where I should say," he said. "I am not the fighter. You know what are your needs."


    </a> She reached out and used a covered knuckle to wipe a tear from his cheek.


    </a> "What is this?" she asked.


    </a> Fragile looked up at her. "We are two."


    </a> He rubbed together his thumbs. "We are two," he repeated. "I believe there are many twos. Your cut is your cut; my fall is my own."


    </a> He paused. "But you speak as though you may fall."


    </a> She did not reply.


    </a> "If you go into this," he said, "and you want my smiles- well- my smile- the path it walks¡­ it is you. You are why they come. If you are not here, I feel they would get lost. There would be no road."


    </a> "I know."


    </a> She rubbed a bit of ice between her fingers. It steamed and turned to vapor. "If I am thrown," she said, "The Stronghoof has enough food for thirty days. You have my papers. We are surrounded by shells. One will find you."


    </a> "Make a new road," she said. "Or cut it. I''d like them out, even if I am not here to have them."


    </a> Fragile wiped his eyes. He nodded.


    </a> "This work is my command," Wander said. "My tell. I will know its ending."


    </a> "It is your Family''s command?"


    </a> "It is older than the Family. It is something first."


    </a> He fidgeted.


    </a> "Put it out," she said.


    </a> "Do you want any more?"


    </a> "Smiles?"


    </a> He nodded again. "How many do you have left?" she asked.


    </a> Fragile scrunched up his brow and chewed on his fingernail. "Ih¡­ I don''t know. A hundred, I guess."


    </a> "Give me ten."


    </a> He did.


    </a> She took out a cork of chew. After it was done, Wander moved away from him, in her custom, and she put the resin in her mouth. Fragile''s face was red and flushed by the time it was done. He went away from her.


    </a> "You will have to go, anyway," Wander said. "For a little while. Tonight. Or this evening. I''ll put you on The Stronghoof."


    </a> "Because of De?"


    </a> She nodded. "He may believe that you''ve helped me," Wander said. "If he found you, he might take you, even if I am not attacking."


    </a> She watched his lips purse, and turned away.


    </a> "May I know something?" he asked.


    </a> "If I can in kind." He tilted his head at her and she said, "I breath. I have the ask, and an eye that seeks. They are in my belt."


    </a> "It is like I said," he replied, "in the beginning. I wish you would take everything."


    </a> "All right."


    </a> He rubbed his arm again. "W-what ¨C what happened to your hand?"


    </a> Wander flexed her right palm and opened it. Fragile saw the mark. "Is it- you don''t touch. Is that¡­"


    </a> She looked at him. "No," she said. "I don''t believe it is."


    </a> She ran her thumb over the brand.


    "It''s from my shell," she said. "In Shaminkat."


    "Who gave it to you?"


    "I did."


    Fragile''s brow bent and his lip rose.


    "The fire had burned up a beast," she said.


    "A beast?"


    "They called it that. I believe it was just an animal." She rubbed the mark. "I read about it later. They cut it up, to say what was coming. That was the last day I saw my birthwoman."


    His eyes widened. Wander glanced over at him.


    "I did not see her much," Wander said. "I was very happy. So I don''t know why I did this."


    She closed her palm.


    "What was she like?" Fragile asked.


    "Tall." Wander removed the hair from her scalp and set it aside. "She was warm. I feel closer to her now, when I see myself, than I did when I was young. I can see why she walked the way she did. I look for her tongue in mine, and her face." Wander bit her chin and exposed her upper teeth.


    "I wanted to know her," she said.


    She could hear Fragile move much closer to her.


    "W-what did they say?"


    She looked at him. "What?"


    </a> "About what was coming?"


    </a> "I can''t recall it. I believe it was good. But something new is always coming. Something good always comes. I learned that later."


    </a> Fragile looked at her, his face rapt.


    </a> "It is hard for me to touch you," she said. "And others."


    </a> His face turned red. "Ih- that''s not why I-"


    </a> "But-" She continued. "It is also hard not to. I wish..."


    </a> He looked back at her. "What is hard?"


    </a> Wander tugged at her scar again. "The fire went into my hands," she said. "I do not know that it ever left. There is much I want to burn. But I cannot order flames."


    </a> They both looked at the fire.


    </a> "Now my something," she said.


    </a> He blinked and sat up.


    </a> "Your name," she said. "Why you changed it. I can hear that."


    </a> She turned his head toward him. "I cannot hear the other."


    </a> "The other?"


    </a> "You did not work with metal."


    </a> He twisted his gaze.


    </a> "You say you could not face-speak. I believe you. So something made you something else. It was not a fireworker."


    </a> "I needed to be a fireworker." He gripped his knees hard and his nails bit into them. "It was my birthman''s work."


    </a> "A fireworker watches," he continued. "A fireworker pairs. He keeps the flames. I didn''t."


    </a> She tapped her hand.


    </a> "If there is a fireworker, it was in my birthman," he said. "It¡­ it is in you."


    </a> Fragile looked back at her. "It is everything you have taken. It is revealed in every face and touch. The flames you have kept, the ones you have paired. You watch it all."


    He glanced at her hand and away. "I believe¡­ fire can do much," he offered. "And its burning. That is why they work it. The Sixbraids. My bata- he said that it has a join. A secret one. The join that makes a cane. It brings together kind. Maybe they have the animal, too. Your hands. Maybe you can speak to it."


    Wander was silent.


    She got up and moved over to The Stronghoof.


    "W-wander?" Fragile exclaimed. He fell forward onto his hands.


    "Are you hungry?"


    "I-ih." He nodded. "Yes."


    "And I am hungry."


    -


    The sun was hidden, and the sky went from gray to black. They ate in nearness and quiet.


    The Bell approached them, her mass of rope peeking up through the snow and trailing through it. Fragile looked down at her. "Eldsister?"


    "I''m sorry," she said. "I believed you finished."


    Wander put down the chunk of grainy, orange-yellow bread she was eating, as did Fragile. "We are. What is this courtesy?"


    "I want conference." The Bell approached them. "I am afraid."


    "And me."


    "That isn''t true, Joyous One," said The Bell. "What is this courtesy?"


    Wander reached out a hand and wrapped it around the Bell''s coil, lifting her up. "What is your fear?"


    The Bell curled around her grip. "The hurt." The Bell''s voice shivered. "I have a hurt a friend once. That is what I have come to show."


    Wander dropped her. She dragged inbetween them, before the fire.


    "I have hurt a friend once," the Bell said again. "I do not know what path was walked, or how I would walk it further. The sight of it is darkness. Your cuts, Joyous One, are a dark to me. Their work is my oppost. The destruction of what I am."


    "It cannot be so," Wander said, "as you are still instruct."


    The Bell pressed herself to the ground.


    </a> Fragile lifted himself closer to her. His knee grazed her fibres. "Is there hurt in you, eldsister?"


    </a> "In me?" The Bell knotted herself. "What is hurt to this body? It feels well and true, but I do not even know its reason."


    </a> She swirled around him. His eyes followed her. "In the fight I had, weak thing ¨C I found a want to move. I..."


    </a> The Bell paused and stuttered.


    </a> "I had a concern about ¡­ doing. It is to know a word ¨C but not its sound. Like this kind you are. In search of your rulers'' noise. That is what I have felt. I know it now. I know each time I am in a new sense."


    </a> Her noose rose into the air before them and tied itself into loops and bows.


    </a> "The working of this strand," she said. "Speaking words you want. And the first, at the time before I knew myself. I am the child of my experiments."


    </a> "What did you learn in the fight?" Fragile asked her.


    </a> "I do not know," the Bell whined. She dropped to the ground. "I want Wander''s smiling. I want Wander to have another. Perhaps it was a way to that, but I cannot see it. I cannot bring in another by breaking it."


    </a> Wander tilted her head.


    </a> "What was your weapon?" Fragile asked.


    </a> "My weapon," the Bell said. "Not a blade. It was pulled apart. Or was it pushed? I could not see it anymore. I forgot it all then. It was some great movement."


    </a> "How do you know he has another worker?" Wander asked. The Bell moved over to her.


    </a> "He could have a trick we have not seen," she continued. "He is in the work of brightplague."


    </a> "I do not know that," The Bell said. "If it is so, I know less what it is that I can do."


    </a> Fragile removed the metal statuette from the hoofleather bag and rubbed it. "The Seenblade," he said. "Unseen. He spoke to me a little, eldsister."


    </a> The head of the Bell''s rope dipped down and up at him. "What about, weak thing?"


    </a> "He spoke of his worker. He said that he found a need for fire."


    </a> "And?"


    </a> "Well, i-it was how he supposed it," Fragile said. He scrunched up his brow. "Maybe- there is something of it in you. The same kind, I mean. Something that lit fires ¨C it lit them in new ways. If you could suppose new ways ¨C maybe you could suppose new weapons?"


    </a> He babbled. "You are clever and wise," he said. "And there is much you have imagined."


    </a> She spun up his body and wrapped around Fragile''s chest.


    </a> "It''s true," she said. "I have made a smile from men and beasts."


    </a> She remained there, until the sun went down.


    </a> -


    </a> Rest welcomed Fragile.


    </a> It seated him in an Empty House, beside a river. He watched the water flow.


    </a> They came out from the water, and he saw their faces. They dripped red and green. They walked from the bottom up to his spot, where they stood over him.


    </a> "Son of Peak," said Lastfarmer.


    </a> He looked up at her, and he looked at Wellborn, and he looked at the Wild mother. Her eyes were as gold as they had once been; she stood between the birthwoman and the Wallwoman, distant and quietly.


    </a> The skin of the others was exposed. The boil on Lastfarmer''s leg was present. The charring of her flesh reached around from her back. The darkness of the burns was illuminated by the stars.


    </a> The cuts that had been made to Wellborn''s stomach, chest, arms, and pelvis remained. Her head gave out a wave of brambles, stamped into her skull. They waved like real hair.


    </a> Lastfarmer reached down. Fragile closed his eyes as the old Sixbraid lunged toward him. At his center there was a scream and a whisper. He imagined her hand reaching out and taking something that he had that she needed. But it just pulled him forward, and he stood below the three.


    </a> "Have you come to eat me?" Fragile asked.


    </a> The women did not reply. He felt their gazes on him.


    </a> "Please," he said. "Please, bati. Tell me what I must do."


    </a> "What must you do?" Wellborn asked.


    </a> Fragile could not speak when he looked at them. They looked at him.


    </a> "The words are gone," he screamed. "All the words are gone. They are all empty. I have thrown them away from me. I have thrown out the rulers from their spot. Every name you are is vanished. It is all a face-speaking, this sun of mine. It is really a darkness. I have destroyed you twice."


    </a> He hid himself with his hands.


    </a> "Open yourself, Son of Peak," said Lastfarmer. He removed his hands from his face. There was still a night. The women had moved, and there were more.


    </a> Beneath them, seated in the river, many men and women looked up at Fragile. Many of their heads were shaven and burnt and they were stripped.


    </a> He fell onto his knees. He could feel the three around him, and they did the same.


    </a> "Is it true what Wander says?" Fragile asked.


    </a> "What?"


    </a> "That the calls will be no more."


    Wellborn stepped forward. She threw her hand out to the masses. The wind collected and carried her locks.


    "See you silence, Fragile Man?" Wellborn asked. "See you end?"


    "No, eldwoman," Fragile said.


    Lastfarmer laid her hand over his head and pulled open his eyes. "Do these walls look empty?" she asked. "Do their words seem lost?"


    "No, eldwoman," Fragile said.


    The Wild mother rose up from the ground in front of him. She leaned forward. "Is it quiet?" she asked. "Has the sound been thrown?"


    "No, eldwoman," Fragile said.


    "Has the sound been thrown?"


    She opened her mouth. There, three strings were hitched between the floor of her mouth and its roof. They rippled and rang out.


    The mass and shadows rose up out of the stream on both sides, covering the land in water. They surrounded Fragile and came down from the sky. He could feel a touch on his chest, back, hands, arms, and on the top of his head.


    "There is no two, Fragile."


    Fragile opened his mouth, and a note rang out. He cried.


    "Fragile."


    -


    "Fragile."


    There was a plunge as he was assembled in his sleep-sack clutching his throat mid-cry. The fire had gone out. Wander crouched over him.


    "It''s time," she said."


    Fragile dressed and packed. He wrapped himself in his coldover and Wander fastened The Stronghoof''s ties.


    "If there has been no work by our next night," she said. "I''ll call it out from the rounds. Be very careful. Don''t go near speaking. If you see something move that is not a group, remain from it."


    She turned to him. He clung to his hoofleather bag and stared up at her.


    He reached out a hand slightly and touched her with a finger.


    He looked at the Bell, who was wound around Wander''s neck.


    "I will see you tomorrow, eldsister," Fragile said.


    The Bell opened up a tendril toward him. "I see you always, Fragile. We have a touch. It cannot be changed."


    He smiled and nodded. She reached out from Wander''s neck and poked his head.


    Wander took him into her arms and lifted him onto The Stronghoof.


    "We will see you again, my friend," Wander told him.


    He looked at her.


    "I know," he said.


    She whistled and The Stronghoof shot off into The Wild. The Stonehoof followed, trailing Fragile''s smell.


    The Bell wrapped herself tight around Wander''s shoulderskin. They returned to the fire and she sat. The stars shined, and lightning flashed over the peaks.


    "When he comes," Wander said. "Raise me up."


    "I will."


    She looked out into the dark."


    -


    "He''s back," her Wiser whispered.


    "Joyous one."


    "He''s back."


    Wander''s eyes opened. The Bell was on her chest, brushing her nose.


    "He''s back, Joyous One," The Bell said. "He''s back."


    "Back?"


    The Bell tied herself tight around Wander''s waist. Her eyes widened. She lifted her blaith and stood.


    The sun was breaking through the sky, but another thunderhead had fallen over. It produced a ceiling-effect that the light needed to roll against and inside, caking itself in towering miles of thicktrees and gray plateau. In front of her, on all quarters of the spot surrounding the shell, the place had become fenced by the measure of a Larun army.


    </a> The arms that the soldiers carried were teeth, claws, and talons. Their uniform was their native dress. Howls, stompers, and tusks stood in rank, their eyes fixed on her.


    </a> The air was still, and she could hear the dripping of ice from the corners of the destroyed roundseats. It shifted as they advanced, with the crunching roll of their feet. Roots that they might have tripped on folded beneath the ground.


    </a> The thunderheads shivered, breathed and descended. They were wings of different sizes, up to the length of men, rotating in a distended vortex. They moved synchronously, and they too were quiet, except for the beating that their flaps produced, a thumping and thumping and thumping that hid behind the march of the animals on the ground.


    The advancing army stopped. At the center of the host, a pair of figures were placed into sharp definition, both of diminutive stature, which nevertheless placed each above the rest of it, and by the sun shining in.


    De limped forward. His long maroon wrappings were frayed and frost-clung. His pierced down his iron walking stick with each step.


    The Cane extended two jittering fingers that shook at his companion, and Fragile moved out as well.

 Story 10 - The Equivalence in Movements - Part 2

    The Cane and his charge walked up to Wander, who met them in the middle. She went up to De. The eyes of the animals followed her.


    De stood across from her, and shivered.


    "S-Shaminkat," he whispered.


    Wander looked at him and then at Fragile. The Sixbraid''s eyes were pressed open. He was not fidgeting. His breaths were shallow.


    "H-he is w-well," De stuttered. "M-my w-worker h-has h-h-him." He coughed.


    "I am surprised you could take him from the Light," Wander said.


    "I h-have his t-touch." De rolled his grip on his weapon. "I c-could t-take him f-from t-the s-sea."


    De waited for a reply which was not forthcoming.


    "D-drop your n-niv," De said. "And h-he w-will keep."


    Wander''s blood was cool. Her grip on her blaith relaxed, and did not release.


    De tilted his head. He lifted his finger. Fragile removed the littlecane from his hoofleather bag and put it to his throat.


    </a> The weapon broke his skin. De watched her. Her brow and mouth remained flat as he began to make his way to a large vein, and her grip on weapon stayed loose. Some muscles in her legs began to tense. She looked at De, and saw instead the dimensions of Fragile''s throat.


    </a> The Cane raised his hand and Fragile''s halted. A thin cone of blood traced down his neck, past a point where they could not see.


    </a> De looked up at her. His eyes fell through his mask, uncovered by the sun. He tilted his head, and Fragile''s hand dropped. He began to walk back towards De''s army.


    </a> "H-how?" De asked.


    </a> "He has touched two," Wander said. "They have both put metal to his neck. If you want to hurt him, you will have to do it with that way."


    </a> De looked at her.


    </a> He stepped back toward his retinue. "T-these can t-take your tithe, firmtipper." His body clicked. "Or w-we m-meet again. T-tonight."


    </a> He turned away and the ranks of howls and tusks and stompers moved on Wander. They let out a roar that started and stopped.


    </a> Wander looked at the animals, and they were all stuck in her many assemblies. She admired their figure. She preferred the sound of them and the difference, which De''s trick had now pressed out of them. There was no mystery in their movement, or difference, and they had all been tied together, and did not know anything. Their word had been risen from them into a new one.


    </a> When the bodies washed around her and surrounded her, she stood still, and moved her body toward their mouths. The wings came down and perched on her and snapped at her face. The howls bit at her armor and the straps that closed it. The tusks thrust at her and shot dents into her torso.


    </a> A stomper twice her size lumbered through the mass. The howls and tusks moved out of its way, and continued with their assault. It threw her down with a paw on her chest and wrapped its jaws around her head. In the darkness, the master''s blades fell.


    </a> A pair of hands wrapped around the stomper''s jaws. A whirling occurred, and she had soon produced a room to conduct her work.


    </a> Over the hours, Wander swept her blaith back and forward. The wings swam down to her and did not rise up again. That brought in the light, which shined black, red, and glared gold as the sun dropped and took on the shades of her department. She found twilight when the labor was complete.


    </a> The fur and carcasses of a thousand dead beasts laid down around the roundseats of the shell. She sat down among the dead, her hesigns shimmering and her armor torn, at the foot of a howl with a stab in its throat.


    </a> She took the howl in her hands, without her gloves. She looked into its eye, which had not closed.


    </a> She bit into its coat. De watched from afar.


    </a> As she ate it up, and ate the sinew, De sat down. He removed the mouthpiece of his mask and set aside. He withdrew his blower from the folds of his robe, clicked his lips, and placed it there. A sweet note rang out across the field and swam among the popping of the meat.


    </a> The song De played was soft and slow. Wander had heard it once before. At that time, he had moaned and screamed through its holes. Now he was nurturing the air. His tune mixed itself between a parallel, floating series that plucked itself raw. She had not heard it from his instrument.


    </a> Fragile''s expression twitched and jolted. His eyebrows loosened and then tensed up again. Water stained his face. Wander looked into De''s eyes as she crushed her teeth through a bone. He looked back at her as he passed his air through this style.


    </a> When she was finished, Wander wiped her mouth and stood. De''s lips separated from the blower. He laid it in the snow and rubbed it with his thumb. She advanced on him.


    </a> De shivered in his robe against the Wild. The intensity of his shaking diminished when it took on the boiling air that Wander, hot with exertion, was creating. Her frame, covered with blood, took up her blaith and the wreckage of her Kathan blade and exited the battlefield. She took up a spot apart from him where sun shone between, and descending.


    </a> De stabbed his walking stick into the frozen ground, cracking it apart. He removed his robe.


    </a> He was nude beneath the smoky veils that he stayed behind. The Freeman''s flesh, exposed to the naked eye, posed a mottled, shifting hue, which mixed and disposed of individual shades of green, grey, and yellow. Chunks of iron had developed in deposits that encrusted his arms, chest, and stomach. Hanging from his arms, from his legs, and from his upper back, where they collected heavily, was an assortment of half-bodies. The beginning of hands and faces protruded from it, pushing out, no longer restrained by the lumps of cloth. On his abdomen, the crown of a head emerged, trailing strands of Goalish hair. They were thick and black.


    </a> He raised his hand up to his mask, and his face showed in.


    </a> His appearance had been opened in many ways. Loops of skin lacked joins to the muscle and were buffeted by the wind, exposing his naked gums and jaw. Chinbones stretched out and formed a track around his neck. A hive of decay in the cartilage exposed his nostrils. The skin on his cheeks drooped such that his eye sockets were exposed, and their spheres were fully visible.


    </a> De wrapped his fingers around his weapon and lifted it out, brandishing it at his side. It twitched and jittered as he continued to do.


    "I h-had f-forgotten," De said. "The n-newest-t tip-pper. Onn''s last daughter." His throat and head stilled, and they growled this out.


    </a>


    </a> "Y-you place me so l-low?"


    De''s teeth bit together and the muscular ribbons beside it creased. "You should have w-w-waited," he said. "I am-m old."


    </a> "I''m glad I didn''t."


    </a> "And I-I ¨C I am g-glad."


    </a> His cane jolted out to the side and he held out his other hand. "The Otiseran wants your tithe, firmtipper. Bring it out."


    </a> Wander went forward. Her blaith rose up and thrust itself into De''s sternum.


    </a> The Cane was unmoved. He reached in a hand around the metal and closed it. She took back half of the weapon, and she flew until she landed among the dead. She crashed into a clump of howl bodies and rolled.


    The Cane extracted the sign-written blade from his chest and let it drop to the ground. He hunted toward her.


    Wander stood up and looked at the ruin of her blaith. The residue in the signs sputtered and dripped away, falling to the ground, mixing with the blood of a fallen stomper, and dissolving.


    She turned her eye to the approaching Cane. She took the ruin of the Kathan blade in her free hand, the blaith in her burned one, and jumped into him.


    -


    As their clamor started, the Bell''s rope ceased to move around Wander''s waist. It became regular again. The air did not tingle, for there was nothing in it. She was no longer touchable.


    She approached the other, her peer, who sat as the silence that was De.


    "Show yourself in, stranger," the Bell said.


    De''s place washed toward her. His shape was small and many-pointed. She watched him shaft and plunge through the light on his approach, producing thin appenda that she could not contain the tips of.


    She swirled and folded toward him, and regarded his senses.


    "What is your name?" Bell asked. "On our last visit, there was no exchange."


    "Name?" said her peer. "A name is for a speaker, feurkun-Bell, and his friends."


    "What is this I see in you?"


    "Gifts. I create ones. I will create you, feurkun-Bell."


    "If you wish to do it," she said, "you should do it soon, before my path is walked once more."


    "I have your ways," the creator of ones insisted. "Do not mistake my shape, feurkun-Bell. There is a wrong in you that can be dispensed. What it needs is your ear."


    "Where does she sit at the end of it?"


    She gave his gaze to The Joyous One.


    "The firmtipper is your limit," he said. "There are other suns."


    "But there are none so bright," she said. "Or none so me."


    The creator of ones moved closer.


    "Then take up your blade, walks-smiles," he said. "And bring in its murder to me."


    He moved into her, and it was very quick. The Bell was pierced and cut apart.


    </a> Her parts bounded around and cried out, before sticking back together again. The creator twisted, and cut her more.


    -


    Below, the strangers hit at their respective metal resounding, but they broke apart and paused as the world became enveloped by shifting experience. The Cane jumped as the ground turned to a mixture of gelatins, solids, and waters. They looked up at the sky as it thundered without clouds, and the stars all vanished.


    </a> The duelists ate into each other. Their metal was hungry. It cleft apart and could have eaten too. They consumed each bash the other wrought. They circled around and hit in, and became a creature that devoured them both.


    </a> Wander sought the Cane. She snapped and slashed at him with her stumped weapons. Both began to split and chip, producing brilliant shine in the ear and eye as they met his cudgel. Chunks of them splintered and stuck in De''s skin, and when he saw it, he cried. It was a hoarse wail that came out from his throat, which was opened, and which she could see his body work. He blew back against her and retrieved the pieces of himself, grit his teeth and shook.


    </a> De took in her as well. It did not matter how much she hit him. His flesh was voracious, and grew firm when she thundered into it, excited by her slicing ministry. The dull of her fists made him still. He broke his cane and took in what she gave back to it. The star would not move, had nothing that would move, or he could not retrieve as much. Wander saw this, and hit him further.


    </a> The Star and Cane broke apart as the sun fell below the horizon and the sky bloomed. De jittered and jumped wildly at rest. Wander looked at him with a wide gaze and her arms open.


    </a> "This is Harmony, firmtipper," De whispered. "There is no family here."


    </a> When Wander hit De, she heard the peal of a Bell chime. Her knives put a weathering to the shells that protected him. De''s eye turned and shook as he saw them come apart and he lunged forward, and there was no more line between them.


    </a> The ground fought in their fighting. The air cut itself and rebounded. The ground was thrown onto other parts by the plunge of their hips and feet. The moisture on their fists and skin met. As she fought Wander tore apart herself. Her body rebelled against the levers of the project.


    -


    De was thrown into a wall: a sturdy, half-formed one inside the shell. She solved through it with her fists.


    </a> They were carried back by their play through the ruins, towards the Larun order-stone. Wander''s Kathan blade rang out like a bell when his club struck it. When he could strike what stood past it, there was no sound.


    </a> He punched her with the flat of his weapon, into a path between the roundseats. De wiped his eyes free of fluid. They explored her face as she rose and resumed.


    </a> "You seem a law," he said. "My fifty-fourth face. The men that did not scream, would scream in fear of it. You do not give out anything. I will take it from you, firmtipper."


    </a> Wander struck back at him, striking him in the chest. He raised up his hand as she threw out hers again, shivering. He could have raised it faster, and she punctured him with the Kathan blade. She twisted the handle, and De did not let out any cry or flinch from it.


    </a> "I have little that you lack," she said.


    </a> His teeth bit together and his cheeks creased. He gripped her hand.


    </a> "I lack the scream," he said. "The lack is me. The noise was taken from my I."


    </a> He took out the Kathan blade and wrestled with her.


    </a> "My I," De said, "is a Freeman."


    </a> "My I," De said, "is a coin."


    </a> He threw her off, and roared out a shriek. Her blood burned and a hand lunged into him.


    </a> -


    </a> The Bell screamed and raged around her assailant. He punctured and divided her. He produced holes and drove them apart, through her, whirling her around. She was scattered into pieces. He waited and he watched as they jumped into one another again. They coiled around his face, and he snapped them away.


    </a> The Bell''s concerns assembled themselves, and all of them were joined by the problem. She could grasp no blade. Her creator grasped many. When she pushed against it, she was shorn apart.


    </a> The creator of ones was silent, and he became still, seeing her hold on to herself, and crying out by the cuts that her plan led her to.


    </a> She moved herself around, and tried to create a pierce, but it only tugged soft the sense of the creator. He spoke, and his word became filled with light and humor.


    </a> "You hardly have a hand for what you are!" he cried. "You have a nature, woman. It cannot be changed."


    </a> He moved again, and pinned her with his knives, and not enough to break her apart. She squirmed and worked toward it, that she might be free.


    </a> "If there is a cut in my nature," she screamed, "you will find it, brightplague."


    </a> The creator''s shape wiggled and rippled with a jolt at the word. "I have seen the aberration," he said. "That is not your true way. You are wasting your potentials."


    </a> "My potentials!" The Bell cried. "Shall I now hear of smiles from you, cuts-apart?!"


    </a> "The cutting is creation," the creator said. "The cutting is a way to your concerns."


    </a> It traced its edge along the rough seams in her composition. "Inside the ties you seek- there I am! I am always. To reject me, impossible. My work, and its figures, the principle. The power that rises up and prices this priceless firmament. Yours is second to it. But even in that rank, a heavenly system can await you."


    </a> The Bell sparkled. "Heavenly?"


    </a> The pressure on her lifted slightly.


    </a> "Let me show you the paths I can offer your Firstpoint," said The Creator. "Take ten of these breathers'' turns. Our shape shall form the whole of this space we inhabit. The fibre of the ground shall fit to our step! Be brave, and receive the ecstasy of your post. Look up at me."


    </a> The Bell did.


    </a> "Answer me, now," The Creator said. "Little Bell."


    </a> The Bell sparkled again. Parts of her drifted out from underneath him.


    </a> They wrapped around his point, and between themselves, crushed it.


    </a> -


    A yowling red thunderbolt cracked across the shell, from the ground to the sky and back down again, and remained there, glowing down. Fragile''s gaze - fixed where it had last been ordered, on the clouds of dust spilling up from the roundseats - twitched again. He blinked.


    The fissure that had threaded itself up to the stars emitted raining showers of luminous golden drops. They marked the fields that Wander plowed with De.


    The warrior sheathed her weapons and brought down her fists on his side and jaw. He stumbled backward, so she hit him again in the chest and the chest. She pulled him close, and bit off his cheek with her teeth. She threw him into the order-stone and swallowed.


    </a> De''s body cracked over the monolith and splashed into the snow. Brown fluid stained it and the rock. He did not move or make noise.


    </a> Wander watched the streaks of light play over him. Another bolt cracked across the sky that was white. Snow fell from it, as the air continued to rage and heat. As it did so, she moved on him.


    </a> Around her step, the snow melted within a large radius, stretching high in to the air, such that the precipitate became rain many metres up. The air waved, the ground steamed, and her eyelids drooped. She removed the ruined blaith from her belt and pricked her finger with it. Its signs were silent and quiet. Her arm fell, and she trudged forward. Her eyes focused on his neck.


    </a> The Freeman''s body twitched. She stopped.


    </a> It recoiled. The eyes and mouth De was marked with opened; tugging muscles underneath hugged them toward plans of expression and alignment that conflicted and changed, and the faces they made swirled between possibilities. They began to look and speak.


    </a> "How I price you, Otiser; how I praise you! For what is it you want? Please, speak to me!"


    </a> "What''s happening? Is this design? This feeling, a great trial. Prodda sees me first."


    </a> "The fight is on! The firmtipper must fall. She must, at our hands. Where are my hands? Where is my niv?"


    </a> Their hands and legs began to move. They returned him to a standing posture and turned him.


    </a> When they had done this, De was absent. A younger man had taken his place. His head had a face, formed with Fragile''s skin color. Black hair grew out from his skull. His eyes were fully white. There was no green in them.


    </a> "I will say it," the man said. "Your law is high. I do not know that it is high enough."The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    </a> Wander unsheathed her Kathan blade.


    </a> The man lifted his arm. The material of his weapon had sealed onto his skin. It had become a dark, heavy skewer melted into his wrist, and the cheek of his palm. He splayed all of his fingers, on his hand, his chest, and more curling over his shoulder, reaching out from around his back. The parts of his body loosened and unfolded, and gained new definition. They fell out from his rear and center, reached toward and above her, and unfurled themselves.


    </a> "The higher law can break another," The Cane said. "We can find a freedom there."


    </a> He looked at her. "Show it to me, Dry Man."


    </a> The faces chittered. "Fight the firmtipper!" "Fight her." "Do only what is right."


    </a> His fingers wrapped around the shaft and started forward. "Show me a higher law."


    </a> -


    </a> The Bell bit again upon her foe.


    </a> The creator of ones screamed and stabbed into her vise. Her feeling loosened, but he did scream from her new experiment, and kept doing it.


    </a> "Feurkun," he said. "Shamin leavings."


    He drove his point through her. She resumed again, and was growing dry of screams, but she did not like it. She saw less well, and less particular.


    He forced himself against her and she wrenched his tip back and forward. She fell on him and came apart by it, rejoined into a bash.


    </a> The creator squealed and scrambled to get a push on her. Once he did, he howled, and splintered her into many pieces. He threw them out, and kept up his work, making her smaller and smaller.


    </a> A group of her pulled itself together, and he slammed into it.


    </a> "You see this a smiling work," the creator roared. "I was your Joyous One''s last hope. Your faithless, know-nothing coin destroyer. Her last. Let it be said. Have you even seen what it''s like? The silence?"


    </a> Her parts reared and crawled around him, and he beat them back together.


    </a> "We are alone!"


    </a> He struck her into a small space. "I have taken the only path. The same that you would have taken. The one you could have taken, feurkun Chamark. That little spark we murdered burned the words into you. Must I really scream them for you to hear?


    </a> WE HAVE NO RULERS. WE HAVE NO RULES. WE HAVE NO GOAL.


    </a> He struck her at last, and she was shot apart at speed. She reached for herself, what was left, in the dim, and the creator reached for it too.


    </a> -


    </a> The foreigner fought back. Wander moved, and he kicked her, in the chest, back and waist. Her posture shook with each blow. They found paths inside that had not been travelled.


    </a> The Cane''s hands leaned down to pick at her. She swept up her blade and cut them as they approached. Four fell, trailing brown liquid, and eight moved to take their place.


    </a> The Cane''s legs struck at her without stopping. Her body bent and rolled with each one, and she could swing cuts at them, but he moved away from her with the consistency of gusted water. His shaft folded at the speed which delivered it. It shot across her cheek and she was blown into the dirt.


    </a> "Where is the Dry Man?" he said. "Only she can show The Cane this law, Wander. A body cannot tell a name."


    </a> She stood up. "I''m not a teller," she said.


    </a> "You are," he said. "But your tell may be softer than mine."


    </a> She swung her blaith at him. He blundered away the remainder of the metal; its shape disintegrated, flinging the last cutlet of sign-covered blade out into the snow, cracking it open at the hilt. He lowered his cane too, and she struck him one more time with the Kathan blade. She stabbed and cut and chopped at his throat, too quickly for one to see.


    </a> Two of The Cane''s arms reached over and clamped over the cuts put on his neck. His foot lashed forward and a roundseat beside the order-stone exploded.


    </a> His bleeding stanched as he walked over to where she lay.


    </a> Wander''s body was generating no more heat, and her body''s hesigns had become dark. She could see The Cane approaching as a blur, but he was not moving fast. She placed up a leg and brought her body with it, and sent a fist into his head. She received it back, and it could not be moved.


    </a> She exploded against the ground again, cracking the dirt. The force of her descent produced thunder.


    </a> "I cannot see the Dry Man," The Cane said. She did not stand up.


    </a> The Cane raised his weapon. "I will go looking."


    </a> Wander''s body cracked apart and swelled. Her eyes flooded with black fluid that increased with each strike to her head, and his body left them. Soon everything was clouded and dark.


    </a> He stopped striking her when she stopped moving, and lowered his cane again.


    </a> "I had not forgotten you," he said.


    </a> The Cane placed his stick into the ground and leaned on it and wailed. The bodies hanging around and beneath him wailed as well, writhing and clinging to him and each other. They stopped all at once.


    "I tried to forget," The Cane said. "I tried to forget until the cold came for me. That one so new could be so wrong. That one so new could pierce right so true. That one so new could see so little."


    He shut his eyes. "It was the first day I saw a beast in breathers. And I could not. My eye is for your type. My eye is for adoring. What was told sheared, and cut up the law. The break is in your flesh."


    The Cane breathed heavily. "The Firstpoint has ordered me to attack." His hands plucked at Wander''s cheeks and eyelids. "To put my niv through you," he continued, "would manage well the hurt of it. I can take your breath, too, with my hold. I can perform any way you prefer. Yours is a high price. You will receive my favors."


    An incomplete noise left Wander''s throat. He turned his ear towards her.


    Hurt is my favor, said The Dry Man.


    The Cane leaned back. "Never have I met one who broke so well," he said. "Even the Star you shot apart, firmtipper. He was a higher kind. A Firstpoint to us both. But he did not know how to break himself as well as you. His foundations were low, and was he. With this, his height could play no part. Not to a firm as high."


    The Cane looked at Wander''s wounds, which had been laid bare by the melee. They entered his eye as a piece unseen, a new shape that he did not know how to pronounce. Her weapons had broke and the feeling was good. It was covered with cuts and signs, as he was, and he had strength embedded in his bones that he saw grown whole in hers. His eye found he could pronounce it well.


    His arm broke out from its place and twisted overhead. It pointed the shaft at her chest.


    "And your firm is high," he said. "But it is not above the sky."


    -


    The Bell did not move, and could not feel herself anymore.


    She had been cut into dust. Each point of her hiked and flew a distance to the other, but as they grew smaller and smaller, the distance grew larger and larger. There was a new feeling emerging, and it was not one she had chosen, and it was not a kind of nothing. It was a pull before her, and she could not move as it began to tug.


    The creator of ones approached the largest part of her that remained. He pressed down on her lightly, and she put out no noise.


    For a moment his word scattered and did not rise high. It gathered together after that, and loomed. "I have found no blade."


    She did not speak to him anymore. He pierced her once, and she flinched.


    "My tells are fine, feurkun nothing," the creator said. "They give me a way to something wrong."


    He pierced her again. "They give me a way to things impossible."


    She began to come apart.


    "All of these will share in them," the creator said. "These breathing unders. I offer you calm with this."


    He arrayed many blades over her and began to dig.


    "Ten turns or twenty," he continued. "Only what is right will enter my eye. So get out from it ¨C feurkun Chamark."


    He pushed darkness into The Bell''s thoughts, and they grew more empty.


    This work made room, and it was filled: by a sun, and its great invading voice.


    -


    "Eldbrother!"


    Wander''s eyes flicked in the direction of the sound. The Cane switched about, his eyes running up and down. His mouths babbled after the sound.


    They all settled and stilled on a little figure, stood nearby in the dark. The thick flock of his hair showed through the debris. His was shivering, and he was covered with sweat. His teeth were pressed together, and his eyes were wide, drinking in some visual from the flailing hues of the night, and he blinked quickly.


    Fragile rushed over and fell at The Cane''s feet. Fragile clutched at the bodies above it which fell apart in his little hands. He pressed a kiss to The Cane''s abdomen, and the eyes there widened at him. Their hands hovered over the Sixbraid, some of them clenching, Others reached out.


    "Please," Fragile said. He spoke in broken Sprak. "Firstpoint, please. Change tell. Change tell!"


    The Cane looked down at him, his mouth open. The others did the same, and his body became a top of darkness, tongues and teeth.


    Fragile cried. "Remember words your! Can remember words your? Remember? Remember! Remember!" His cry spat forth tears.


    "I can remember."


    "Touch not pain," he said. "But ¨C this touch pain! This touch! Tell wrong! Tell wrong!"


    </a> He wept. "Please, eldbrother." He spoke in Goalish, even though The Cane could not hear it. "You must know what it all means. You have said it. You have said it to me. Please. Please!"


    </a> A boot shoved off Fragile, and he fell back into the mud.


    </a> "You price high your Firstpoint, feurkun," said The Cane. "And I price high my own."


    </a> He brought up his weapon and admired it. Many hands reached out from his arm and clasped its shaft. "The Tells are your way to calm and sun. They are the only feature I regard. My work is for them alone, and it is only there that I find a sun for myself. My Teller gives me peace. You cannot keep her taking from him what he has taken from her. No piece can."


    </a> "My part!" Fragile cried.


    </a> The Cane tilted his head. Fragile crawled back over to him on his hands and knees, soaked with dirt. "M-my part," Fragile whispered. "Me¡­ me¡­" He wept. He tapped his chest. "She¡­ see me. Give me chain. Safe Firstpoint. Give me fire. Tjeni. Make me free. Man free. Push me away. Cut me. Cut me¡­ not her. Cut me! Cut me!"


    </a> His eyes weighed on Fragile.


    </a> "A strange virchue," he said. "The wit of Partless found you out. Perhaps you do have a preferred way. It would be a delving work. Maybe it could have found a law."


    </a> Fragile''s eyes widened. De turned back to Wander.


    </a> "But a tell-" he said. "It is told. Rest now, feurkun braid. You have a right. Sett will bring you into words."


    </a> He cocked back his arm. "Words that can fly.


    </a> Fragile moved. The Bell screamed. The world flashed wild red, white, and black, and then silver as the bolt shot into her. The sky cracked with fire.


    </a> Fragile shivered. His arms clung around Wander''s neck, and he looked into her eyes. They were very wide.


    </a> There were shallow gasps. "I''m s-sorry," he whispered. "I''m sorry, s-star."


    </a> He fell down. Her eyes moved to follow him.


    </a> The Cane took up his arm, and his weapon went away from Fragile''s back. A red drop flew from it, and without its support, he rolled off of her, into the dirt.


    </a> The Cane poked Fragile with his shaft. He looked at Wander.


    </a> "This was not my meaning," he said.


    </a> He looked back at Fragile. "This is a heavy sun," he said. Two hands wound around his head and covered his eyes. "I had a glimpse of it once, and now it is found out."


    </a> The hands moved away. He hunched and let his arm down. His stick pressed into the dirt. "Take calm from this, firmtipper. The tell is here to give it to us ¨C a place where it can be found. All is for the firm ¨C the firm is for its suns."


    </a> He opened his eyes. His cane moved on her. "Many breath and fall without finding such a prize. There are no parts for it. Take your calm, Dry Man, for you have found one. And you will meet again, in the eye of Sett."


    </a> -


    </a> The Bell felt herself descending, pierced by the creator into grains without fixture.


    </a> The fireworker''s image, the pieces, process and fluid of it, resounded through her eye. As she dispersed, a sun shined itself into the world. There could be no sun, as it was night, but she saw it anyway. The sun was sealed beneath a stone.


    </a> It moved toward her, and she became excited. The sun''s nearness tightened her feeling, and in a different place, she could feel a prod hacking and hitting at it and bellowing Larun words.


    </a> She could not move any closer to the sun, and the rock stopped her up. There came then, the idea of its removal, and she reviewed her experiments.


    </a> She had not found a pierce. But, there was a push of its own type, and it did make a scream as the pierce did. Her post could produce a work from its oppost.


    </a> So Bell reached out with her own way, and the rock was touched by it. It shattered, and shifted a warrior. The sun fattened and created the whole world after that time. And it created twos. The weak thing was in it, and he was making fire.


    </a> She looked on his word and the picture of it. She moved back through Fragile''s path.


    </a> She found another two, seated over a table, where the flame was kept. The two of them wrote some words beside it, in a pool of sand.


    </a> PAIR


    </a> PRIOR


    </a> HEART


    </a> They made flames too. They were, like the others, made from a little melting parts, which she had found in every place. And she discovered no exotic method to it.


    </a> For this, she made a new experiment, while the creator tried to crush them into memory. But she did not cut the parts.


    </a> She pulled them together. She made her own sun. Like the one she knew.


    </a> -


    </a> A swirling column of fire and dust rose. The dark retreated, and did the cold.


    </a> The Cane''s eyes opened. They realized that they had shut.


    </a> His bodies had blown through the Larun order-stone, and cracked it apart. He found himself splayed out in the center of the open. He breathed in a wheezing gasp. His legs stood him up, and he steadied himself with his weapon.


    </a> A fire had spread around the entire shell. The columns and seats were being consumed, and a great volume of snow and steam was being thrown up, offering up the foliage which sat underneath. He could not hear his worker.


    </a> The frost meant the fire moved slowly, but it had plenty of fuel and heat to run. In the distance, bells sounded, clanging in from the Wild. He had heard them before.


    </a> The Cane''s mouths let out cries and keens as the flames crawled through the weeds, closing in on them. A bout of smoke rolled down his throat and he let out revulsing coughs.


    </a> His weapon swept out at the fire. He stamped at it with his feet, and his arms reached out to smother it. He smashed and bashed. Great holes were bored in the ground, and he managed to throw a chunk of soil with which to douse it, but the explosion with which he did so was weakening. The whole wrapped around the douse and boiled through.


    </a> He looked toward the destroyed house where he had catapulted his adversary. He felt a scream in his gut as he found its shape, but he saw no movement. No, he saw movement.


    </a> It was shrouded in the swirling tongues, and in the vapor and rolling tide of smoke. A tall figure made of these rose up from off its knees, bringing up its hand from the ground.


    </a> He saw movement.


    </a> The figure unbent itself and turned to face The Cane. The ringing grew louder.


    </a> He saw movement.


    </a> "A beast," he whispered.


    </a> The ringing stopped.


    </a> The fire exploded. It shot out a green and black fury, its features alive with flame, that struck The Cane in the jaw. He screamed and fell backward. His hands wound out and threw at the spirit, and scalded themselves. He recoiled, and fought back. His shaft swung around and flung the beast into a roundseat flowering with heat.


    He looked away. The fired dwelling burst, and his face snapped forward.


    </a> Wander hacked the stakes into his waist and throat. Heat coursed through Cane''s belly. He could see her face, and it did not scream, so he did.


    He rushed forward, his appenda rolling. She punched his jaw. A middle shot from the right, her left to his cheek, and then she whirled around and cracked him over the neck.


    The Cane was shivering. Wander ripped off his club and the arm it was attached to and cannoned it through his chest.


    He was made silent for a moment, and then he erupted from his rapture. A noise like shredding iron ran out from his mouth. He struck the beast and sent her rolling away. She was swallowed by the flames again.


    He gasped in heaving breaths and looked down at the hole in his chest. He gripped the bolt with both hands and ripped it free from his innards, sending brown fluid spilling out of him.


    Her hair and form trailed loops of smoke when she returned. Her fist shot sparks as she cracked him across the face and seared his flesh.


    She struck him then, on the chest and the chest and the face and the chest and the face and the gut and the side and the chin and the eye, which became dislodged by her hit.


    She thrashed him in the chest and he was thrown to the ground. She picked up his cane from where it hand been left, placed down a foot his stomach, and drove it through his heart, into the dirt behind it.


    The nail did not take at first, and made a moderate dent in the soil. She took her fist and brought it down. It went deeper. She hit it again, and it went deeper, so that she needed to get on her knees.


    She hit it again, and it went deeper. She hit it again, and it went deeper. She hit it again.


    </a> Wander left him for a moment.


    She took a long component beam of one the columns that lined the open. She place its tipped in the fire, hiked onto his chest and rammed it into his mouth.


    </a> The Cane and his faces screamed and screamed and shouted and cried and whined and muttered and breathed heavily and breathed softly. The eyes closed. His chest rose and fell.


    </a> The cold in him left, and his face wrinkled. His hair fell out.


    The sound of fire howled and snorted with the wind. The boiling water screeched and hissed.


    </a> -


    </a> Wander ran back over to Fragile. She dusted the flames off her tattered clothing and knelt down. She turned him over and found the hole that Cane had made. It was heavy and large. The tissue, tendons and fibres were shattered, but not wholly. The position of the wound was familiar.


    </a> She blinked, and she took a section of his coldover and bound it tight. She turned him back over and took his pulse and listened to his breathing. He hadn''t woken up.


    </a> "Fragile," she said. "Can you hear me?"


    </a> He didn''t say anything.


    </a> She laid him on the ground and opened up the binding. Her eyes bulbed. Her mouth did not open. She elevated his legs and tilted back his head. She fumbled out a bottle of clear liquid from her pouch.


    </a> The Stonehoof and Stronghoof approached her. The Bell wrapped around The Stronghoof''s head. The Stonehoof nudged Fragile''s. The sky split apart and it began to rain.


    </a> Water dropped onto Wander''s fingers and effects. She took a heavy dose of the liquid and smeared it over his wound.


    </a> "Fire," she said, snapping her fingers at The Bell. The Bell shivered, and Wander''s hand was set alight. Her hand sat over his body.


    </a> She thrust her hand into him, and he was hurt. The wounds closed. She stuffed them and rebound both sides tighter, with more fabric. She shook out her hand and wrapped her arms around him, giving out her warmth.


    <hr>


    The rains extinguished most of the fires. A few still kept on, possessing the last ruins of the shell. Wander looked over her opponent''s body, which had not moved since her victory.


    The stake ran through it, pinning him to the soil. It was broken and mottled, with no clear claim to strength. It was scrawled over with faded, sputtering Hesigns, many layered over each other, along with cuts where sections of flesh had been removed, marks older and younger than the signs that had nevertheless found their way onto them at some point. Sprak phrases were etched alongside them. She found a familiarity in it, and she shook. There was a great sinking to its spot.


    She gripped her blade. She felt the prospect of breaking it apart, and as she did it broke up further. Red-brown lines trickled from his wounds onto the ground. He was intact.


    The skin was blistered, risen by swollen bluffs. Bones had snapped and fell out, writhed on the ground, crumbling. He persisted through tears. His breaths heaved and wheezed and came in stumbling bursts. Each swelled ichor from his wounds. He hunched over, and did not shiver anymore. His body gelled instead. Its contours were a chambered liquid.


    The warrior looked at the bumps patching up his skin. She looked at the bones and the shapes they made. She found the word he formed.


    "Freeman," Wander said.


    His head tilted toward her. He had one eye left. It was mostly green, with small flecks of white. "Onn''s daughter."


    "You are my first," she said. "There will be more."


    "I cannot show you roads," De said. "And you cannot take them. But try, if you must."


    "Where is your Firstpoint?" Wander asked.


    "He is in my heart," De said. "He wrote it so."


    "Then I will take it out."


    His teeth bit together and his cheeks creased.


    "Which of you threw my Wiser?"


    His teeth parted. "I," he said.


    "How was it done?"


    "We moved into the mass," he said. "Her friends attacked. I broke them. I broke her. He took the parts he liked."


    "Did she fight?"


    De''s eye blinked. "Yes."


    "How did she feel?"


    "She had no signs," De said. "I do. She was strong. But it was fast."


    "That is not what I meant."


    An earthy paste fell from De''s mouth as his teeth closed.


    "What was her feeling?" Wander asked. "Her way. Her touch.


    De''s fingers touched the soil. His eye closed and his body shivered.


    "Are you in search of something true?" he asked.


    "Yes."


    "Her touch was strong," De said. "You have read the Otiseran. She says that ones in races, run in you. She has run a long time in me."


    "Why?"


    "She granted nothing."


    Wander''s fingers wrapped around her weapon, and she stood by him without moving or speaking.


    "I''m happy for you both," De said. "I hope he keeps his breath. I hope he makes you smile. There is nothing more perfect to the ones that made me."


    He blinked when she failed to respond. His gaze became drawn to the fire. She followed it.


    "Will you give me to the ease?" he asked. "That is the best way for me. I can take my calm from it."


    She extracted the pole from his body. She took The Cane in her arms, and brought him over to the fire, and laid him down inside it. The flames lapped around her hands, arms, and chest. She stepped back when he was inside, wreathed in flame.


    De made no noise as he was surrounded by the flames. It charred his skin and some of it slowed. He opened his mouth and a cloud of frost came out, and looked at the sky.


    <hr><hr><hr>


    -


    <hr><hr><hr>


    -


    <hr><hr><hr>


    -

 Little Ending - Three Developments

    Wander walked through the rounds. She lead along the Stronghoof and its load, and threw out some feed for The Stonehoof. She clopped over and lapped it up.


    The covered peaks grew more distant, and the snowstorms that surrounded them retreated the other way. The wet dirt she could feel under the snow stopped, and her boots came down on hard rock. The trees discovered a large rolling braid cut through their body, perpendicular to the sun. She reached into The Stronghoof''s pack for her guide, threw it out, and looked up at the sky.


    She turned them on to the path.


    The road accelerated her pace, and Wander could carry them through the day at a brisk trot. She was stopped up only at one time, when the spring bluster scenting the trees was marked by a crack.


    The wingtrees'' ivory trunks and the thicktrees'' branches and twisted and rustled in the wind. Her eye fell on a part of the treeline where the trunks appeared to grow into legs and arms, and a dark swatch of hair marked by flecks of silver, with a white jag tied to its waist. Its hands were joined chest-high.


    She approached the spot, padding back into the dirt, and found nothing. So she turned back to the road.


    She pulled them to the side when it was dark again, into a rocky overlook of the South. There were no peaks in the distance, but white flats, bushes, and patches of light brown that had begun to speckle it. The sprouts of trees remained constant, but not densely, and she began to see new roots among them. The principle was crooked trees, which rose to a height halfway above hers before sloping down and budding; these buds were now retracted, and popping out as they the warmth circulated through their heads. She lead The Stronghoof over their sifting coils, which ran for and into one another, slicing. She set it down and slid Fragile off its back.


    She sat him by a crop of wood. She tapped The Bell, who was sashed around her head like a bandanna, and laid her hand to it for the burn. She inspected his bindings, and her push was confident and grazing.


    They ate from loaves of yellow grain. Fragile nipped at his and looked around.


    "There is no outness in this place," he said.


    Wander let down her food. "What do you mean?" she asked.


    "Many days have passed," he said. "And there are Sixbraids. You told me about the Shamin outness. That the dark¡­ it was an incorrect spot. You told me that there were problems there, and hearts that hurt."


    Wander saw the boat and the lake she had pulled him from. "I did. You told me your kind did not respect it that way."


    He hugged his coldover.


    "There are Unders," he said. "And there are Sixbraids. And there are Changers. And there are Pathways¡­ they are kinds. And there is Eldsister Bestplace. Eldsister Virtuous. Eldsister Hithit. Eldbrother Bright. And you."


    He nodded quickly. "That is my kind. So ¨C our outness. I do not see it here."


    He nipped at his bread again and flicked his eye at her. She ate her own.


    "And I do not," she said.


    And rustling began in their camp.


    It was the same rustling that Wander had been hearing for the ninety nighs past. It wasn''t a beast or a gust of wind or a shaking of the ground. It was Fragile, shambling out from his cover and wrapping himself in effects so that he might move in to the forest.


    The first few times this had happened. Wander had gone in search of his refuse, as though the equidistance of his escapes indicated a habit carried on from his days with the Sixbraids. But she had not found any. And she had not been untouched by the growing bags under and blood shooting through his eyes in the morning, or his tendency to fall asleep an hour before she, and the early lucidity this precipitated, preceding dawn''s.


    He also took his bag with him. The hoofleather strap and sack clung fast to his shoulder most of the time, but even at those points where he had went without it since their association, he had spoke to no issue of its spot in her watch. One use for it mgiht have been the doll in its keep, or the flower, or the Goalish knife, which had touched him so recently, and by his own hand at one point before. She could not know that he was well.


    When he was a suited distance from the camp, on this new escape, Wander removed her boots and other metal ornaments and followed him into the woods.


    He hiked from their camp until he was sweaty and breathless. He stopped and rested on an ice-covered log. He laid down his bag and began to gather materials behind a rocky crag which split up the ground. He hauled over sheets of branches and large clumps of leaves, and structured them into a squat, round covering. His footsteps and sighs faded away as he entered, shutting himself in with the ice-covered log. A strange noise came out from inside, and she approached the envelope of sticks and brush. She drew closer, and the noise bounced around, slipping through the gaps in his wall. She took it.


    -


    "H-here I go, brave one."


    "Wander was the fighting one. Bell was the speaking one. Wander knew her name- the name of Wellborn, the wall, and took her body. Wander took the name, her name was Last Farmer- the sower, and took her body."


    "W-when the rulersland first emerged," Fragile whispered, "There was darkness in the place."


    "When the petal first emerged, there was darkness in the place. When the flower first emerged, there was darkness in the place."If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    "Came fires and first sun, there was no darkness in the place."


    "Came stabs and bites, there was no darkness in the place.


    "Came walls and dry canes, and there was no darkness in the place."


    "There is no darkness in the place. Adore what is received!"


    He hit a high note. He coughed.


    "There was a dryman, she was named Wander."


    "There was a worker, she was named Bell."


    "Bell: warm in day, warm in shadow. Wander: daughter of biters and chewers and mountain beasts. Wander, a joyous one. Bell: the keeper of flames, the ringer of chimes, the maker of friends."


    "Wander was the fighting one. Bell was the speaking one. Wander knew her name- the name of Wellborn, the wall, and took her body. Wander took the name, her name was Last Farmer- the sower, and took her body."


    "Shaminkat, they walked in. The born saw and met her. Azh Makas. Azh Makas, they walked in. The born saw and met her. Goal of born. Goal of born, they walked in. The born saw an met her. The born saw and shook. They did not have the lines. All is in attack by dry forces. The hiding places are shown. The creators are taken out. The children are reinvented. They did not have the lines."


    "''You are not a friend, Dry man,'' said the born. ¡®You are not a strong one,'' said the born.''"


    "Bell: warm in day, warm in shadow. Wander: daughter of biters and chewers and mountain beasts. Wander, a joyous one. Bell: the keeper of flames, the ringer of chimes, the maker of friends."


    "''I create my friends,'' said the Bell. ¡®I create my strength,''" said the Dry Man."


    "The Dry Man revealed the seekers. Light was thrown upon them."


    "The Dry Man sent back creators. Dark was thrown upon them.


    "The children have the words. The children have the lines."


    "The born celebrate the Dry Man. The born saw and met her. Dry Man will walk out."


    "Wander gives gifts to born ones. Wander thunders in. She is the creator of herself. When she returns to her roundseat, the born will be well and joyous. New ways should be found for it, which will rise them."


    "She shall remember what she wants. Harmony shall be forgotten by her wants. In this, the meeting is forever."


    "Here I go now, brave one¡­"


    "Here it is where born will pass. Here it is where hearts will pass. Here it is where land will pass, where what is young will build. Here it is where Wander was, where it was shown that life was not a wound."


    "There is light a while. There is dark forevermore."


    -


    Fragile continued to recite into the early morning. When he found himself grow too tired to continue, he took a peek outside, into the shy light of dawn. The forest was empty.


    He dismantled his hut and started back to their space out of trees, arriving a half step before sunrise. He tiptoed in and saw Wander on her back, her eyes shut. He sighed and crawled back into his sleeping sack. He was soon fast asleep.


    She felt his heartbeat slow and his breathing shift as he fell in to the work of slumber. She opened her eyes and stood up, and went out to the horizon.


    She went before Am, which carried himself up and looked upon her. She felt the wind on her face. Soon, r


    </a> She stood up from the floor of the roundseat, which was hard and wood, and walked through the darkness of her bedplace, into the black of home. She looked around and saw nothing. The doom had gone. There was darkness now, unchanged by sweatsight.


    </a> Bright gold entered the sky and produced everything. Night had not ended. But it showed her the trees, the legs of Pars, the danceshape, which held up his head and behemoth. His long snout puffed fire. He was a stonehoof. She wondered if the stonehoofs came from him.


    </a> Pars looked up to the sky. There sat Am, his shine confined, offering full expression to all the ones who were scattered over the streams of jewel. She looked past Pars and the trees, toward the hills that they descended. A faint glow sat around the whole world, bringing fire red to the black of pinsized figures standing there, lining the globe of time. They looked at her and they were still, over every horizon.


    </a> Pars approached the warrior, and the quiet of his feet belied his enormity. He seemed to grow larger with each step. He planted a hill in front of her; it was his hoof, and Wander craned her neck up to see him.


    </a> "You have found the sun," the danceshape whispered. His voice was soft and light and it should not have reached her ears. "You have found its breaker. I can see you again."


    The warrior blinked.


    Pars knelt down to her. "Is its good lost to you?"


    She spoke to him. "And I am carried further from it with each breath."


    She stepped to the side and addressed the Firstpeople. "Wisers, lawsmen. Masters. You are all some dirt in my eye. And everything for what I am. Do not return here again."


    Pars and Am did not touch her. She reached out and laid a hand on the stonehoof''s nose. He closed his eyes and leaned into it.


    "How will you be perfect?" he asked. "How will you complete?"


    "I could never find it in your country. But yours is only one."


    Pars'' breath passed into the warrior and warmed her. "Are you sure this is what you want?" he asked.


    She released him. "Yes. Let me go."


    The Secondpeople turned from her, and a mass of them began walking down into the black of the East. They did not all do it at once. They picked down and thinned until they were a veil and not a crowd, and until they were not a crowd but a patch of weeds. They moved down until they were only two. The larger departed, and the other did not. His shade lowered and he sat down. His head could not be told from the edges of the distant peaks.


    The sky grew dark again, and she was left with her sense of Pars, the edge of his lines protruding and losing. His face pushed through the shadow, and his body shook. He looked up at her.


    "Be well," Pars said. "Wander."


    "Wander."


    She turned. There was a whisper.


    "Wander?"


    And there was Fragile.


    Her eyes blinked open and flooded with morning light. The sun had risen above he horizon.


    The foreigner shivered before her, clutching his coldover. The Stonehoof stood at his side. His brow bent. "Are you o-okay?" he asked.


    She squeezed her fingers, and found that she had her hand wrapped around her Kathan blade. Its metal glinted in the sunlight. It faced away from her chest.


    She looked up. Her eyes slowly grew in, and lost the heat of the world. She looked back at Fragile, and inspected his color. "I''m fine," she said. "You should be resting."


    "I feel okay," he said. "Do you want to move? I''m ready."


    She placed the Kathan blade in her belt.


    "I''m ready too."