"Go on," Hound said again. "What did you do?"

"Well, I thought that since I was there I might as well find the bedroom, which is where the window Silk had jumped through had been, and touch that windowsill and stand at the window and so on. I was tapping around with my stick, looking for the door, when I heard the sound of a tremendous blow, a blow and the sound of wood splintering. I can't begin to convey to you how frightening I found that, alone in the dark."

Hound raised his eyebrows. "Do you know, I think I may have heard it too. There was a loud bang way off in the house someplace, a long time before you came back. I thought Pig might have fallen down."

"Perhaps that was what it was, though I doubt it. My guess-and it is merely a guess, nothing more-is that Pig struck a wall, either with the sword that he uses in this darkness as I use my stick, or with his fist."

"That he struck the wall?"

"Yes. I doubt that there's furniture left in this house, or that there has been for many years. Blood would have had fine furniture, from what I've heard of him, and I feel sure it must have been carted away long ago. We pile up treasures, Hound, and believe in our folly that we are piling them up for ourselves, when in fact we are accumulating them for those who will come after us. May I confide something personal and rather disreputable concerning my own family?"

"Absolutely, if you want to."

"My oldest son was often difficult. He felt he was far wiser than Nettle and I-that we should do as he said, and be grateful that he condescended to rule and advise us."

Hound smiled. "I gave my own father some headaches, too."

"Once when he was angry at Nettle, he punched a cabinet I made so violently that he broke the door, as well as hurting his hand pretty badly. Have I clarified the sound you heard?"

Hound scratched his head. "What made Pig so angry?"

"The tapping of my stick, I assume."

"He was in Calde Silk's wife's bedroom?"

"And thought that he was about to be interrupted. It's all guesswork; but yes, I believe that's what must have happened."

"I understand now why you didn't want to send Oreb to look in on him." Hound scraped together the twigs and bark that were all that remained of their firewood and added them to the fire. "What I don't understand is what Pig was doing there."

"In an empty room in this dark, empty house? It seems to me that there's very little he could have been doing, other than what I planned to do myself-listen to the silence, touch the walls and the windowsill, and try to guess where the bed and the rest of Hyacinth's furnishings had been."

"I thought Pig hadn't ever been in this part of the whorl before. He said so, I think. So did you, Horn."

"I probably did." He stood, dusting his knees and the seat of his trousers. "We need more wood. With your permission, I'm going to try to find some."

Hound said, "You don't want to talk about this any more."

"You can put it like that if you choose to. I've nothing sensible left to say about it, and I don't like sounding foolish, though I often do. Would you like examples of my foolishness?"

Hound reached for his lantern. "Yes, I would."

"It wasn't Pig I heard, but someone else. That suite wasn't Hyacinth's but someone else's. Pig's connection wasn't with her, but with someone who had occupied her suite before she did."

"Do you believe any of that?"

"Not a word of it. When-if-Pig returns, I may ask, very diplo matically, what Mucor said to him, and why he went to the suite that Hyacinth once occupied. I may-but I may not. I advise you not to question him at all, though I can't forbid it. Are you coming with me to look for wood?"

"Yes." Hound had opened his lantern and was kneeling by the fire to light its candle. "I'll take this, too. If we go outside the wall we ought to be able to find any amount of dead wood, blown out of the trees by that wind."

It was blowing hard when they left the flickering firelight and the smell of woodsmoke, and stepped through the opening that had been Blood's door, a gale with a hint of autumn in it that swung Hound's lantern like a feather on a string.

Hound went at once to his huddled donkeys. "I'm going to bring them inside. It'll pour in a minute or two."

His companion was about to tell him to go ahead, and to remark that the coming storm was probably what the donkeys had been afraid of earlier, when Oreb swooped to a hard landing upon his shoulder, croaking, "Man come! Big man!"

"Pig? Where is he?"

"Big big! Watch out!"

"Believe me, I'll be as careful as possible. Where is he?"

"No, no!" Oreb fluttered to keep his balance in the wind.

"You don't have to come with me, but where did you see him?"

"In back. Bird show." Oreb darted forward, flapping hard into the wind's eye, no higher than his owner's knees. The faint light of the lantern faded and was gone as Hound led his donkeys into the ruined villa.

"Come bird!" Oreb called through the darkness.

"Yes! I am!"

"Good Silk!" The hoarse croak was almost lost in the roaring of the wind. "Watch out!"

His probing staff found nothing until a huge hand closed around him, its grip enveloping him from shoulder to waist.

"Would you have light?" The godling's voice mingled with distant thunder; it was as if the coming storm had spoken.

The man the godling had addressed gasped.

"I will burn this house for you, holy one, if you wish."

He found it impossible to think, almost impossible to speak. "If you tighten your grip, I'll be killed."

"I will not tighten my grip. Will you sit upon my palm, holy one? You must not fall."

"Yes," he said. "I-yes."

Something pressed his feet; his knees, which he could not have kept straight, bent. The hand that had grasped him relaxed, sliding upward and away. He groped the hard, uneven surface on which he had been seated, discovering that it fell away half a cubit to his left and right, found the great fingers (each as wide as his head) curled behind him. "Oreb?"

It had emerged as a whisper; he had intended a shout. He filled his lungs and tried again. "Oreb!"

"Bird here." Here was clearly a considerable distance.

"Oreb, come to me, please."

He was conscious of the wind, cool and violent, threatening with gusts to blow him from his precarious seat.

"Hurt bird?"

"No!" He cleared his throat. "You know I won't hurt you."

"Big man. Hurt bird?"

The deep voice rumbled out of the darkness again. "If you fall…" Lightning gleamed on the horizon. For a fraction of a second it revealed a face as large as Echidna's had been in the Sacred Window so long ago: tiny eyes, nostrils like the lairs of two beasts, and a cavernous mouth. "I cannot catch you."

"Please." He gasped for breath, fighting the feeling that the wind blew every word to nothing. "You said I could have light. If I wanted it. I have a lantern. May I light it?"

"As you say, holy one." It was a hoarse whisper, like a distant avalanche.

He had shoved his own lantern into a pocket when he had seen Hound lighting his; now he fumbled with it and with the striker, nearly dropping both.

"It is very small, holy one." There was a faint note of amusement in the terrifying rumble this time.

"That's all right," he said, with a growing sense of relief. "So am I." White sparks cascaded onto the trembling wick. It was as if there were shooting stars in his hands, like the stars at the bottom of the grave to which Silk and Hyacinth had driven Orpine's body in a dream he recalled with uncanny clarity.

Here we dig holes in the ground for our dead, he thought, to bring them nearer the Outsider; and on Blue we do the same because we did it here, though it takes them away from him.

The yellow flame of the candle rose; he shut his lantern, mesmerized by the end of the godling's thumb, the smoothly rounded face of a faceless man wearing a peaked hat that was in fact a claw.