Wijzer chuckled.

"Is that the moment in my trial you recall most clearly? When the Vanished People came into the courtroom? Tell me about it, please. What you saw and heard and felt?"

"Taal I watched. Three goldcards for him I gave. This you know?"

"Yes and no. Beroep explained that you and he, with Strik and Ziek, all contributed. Taal wanted a great deal to defend me, Beroep said, because it would cost him the judges' favor; but they-you and your friends-were afraid the rebellion would never actually take place."

Wijzer nodded. "Without the rest, not it would. Without the Vanished Men, mysire."

"Perhaps you're right."

"And him." The point of his sea boot did not quite touch Babbie's broad back. "Never so much I laughed."

I confessed that I had not thought it funny at the time, though it seemed so in retrospect.

"Laugh I did and my sides hold, but out with my needler too. Why this is do you think, Mysire Horn?" He was smiling, but his clear blue eyes were serious.

"I imagine it was because you thought one of the legermen might shoot poor Babbie for chasing Judge Hamer around the room like that-it was certainly what I thought myself."

"No, mysire." Wijzer shook his head slowly. "Your daughter it was. A pretty girl she is. Not so pretty as my Cijfer, but beautiful even. Her name I forget."

"Jahlee."

"Jahlee. Yes. Too she laughs. Never laughing like hers I hear, mysire."

Oreb exclaimed, "Bad thing!" and I told him to be quiet.

"To your sons I speak. Good boys they are. Our sister, they say. Our sister. But not my eyes they meet, when this they say. Below sleeping she is?"

"When I last saw her, yes."

"My boat this is." Wijzer thumped the deck with the heel of his boot, "If no one on my boat she harms, nothing I do."

"But if she harms someone, you will be compelled to take steps. I urderstand, Captain."

He turned to go.

"Will you answer one question for me? How did Taal know to call the Vanished People? I hadn't even spoken with him. If the four of you instructed him to do it, how did you know?"

"Not we did, mysire." Wijzer studied me again. "This thing I know, you think? Wrong you are. Not I know."

"Good man!" Oreb assured me.

"I didn't think you did-say rather that I hoped you did, Captain. I hoped it, because I'd like very much to know myself."

"What I think, you I tell. To you they speak?"

I nodded. "Sometimes they do."

"To you alone they speak? This they say?"

He left without waiting for an answer, and after a moment I told Babbie to go below and watch Jahlee, permitting no one to harm or even touch her, to which Oreb muttered, "Good. Good."

Babbie himself simply rose to obey, thick black claws (which seem so blunt when he puts a paw in my lap in supplication, so terrible when he slashes my foes with them) clicking along the deck very much as they used to when the two of us were the sole occupants of my little sloop and there was nothing forward and nothing behind, nothing to port and nothing to starboard but the calm blue sky and the rolling sea.

I feel like going below myself. I will not-not for a few more minutes at least-because I know that it is as cold there as it is here, and dark, with a hundred vicious drafts in place of this bracing wind. Like the Whorl and its brave, suffering peoples, I cling to my sun as long as I can.

It was the Neighbors who had impressed Wijzer most-Wijzer who is already trying to forget the Red Sun Whorl, and who will have succeeded in convincing himself that it was only a bad dream within a month.

How many of the bad dreams I remember were not really dreams at all? Does it make any difference? We live our lives in our thoughts, or we do not live. A man imagines his wife faithful, and is happy. What difference does it make whether she is or is not, as long as he believes it? Read carefully, my sons!

Doubtless the reality (known only to herself and the gods) is that she is faithful at times and unfaithful at others, like other women.

From this we see why the gods are needed. They see what is real-or if they do not, we imagine they do. Surely the Outsider must, if it is true that Pas and the rest worship him. How do the people with whom we walk in our dreams perceive our waking? The people who speak to us there, and to whom we speak? We die to them; do our corpses remain behind until the companions of our sleep bury them weeping?

Last night I dreamed of finding this pen case in Viron-no doubt the dream was what set me writing again today. Now in reality (as I understand it) I found it between the time I left my old manteion and the time Maytera's daughter called to me from a fifth-floor window. Was it more real when I found it than when I dreamed it? How could it be, when there was no difference between the two? Was it actually where my father's shop once stood that I found it? Or is that merely a part of the dream my waking mind has not yet rejected? It seems a little too pat to be true, yet memory assures me of it now.

How tall they were, the Neighbors! Robed in dignity!

Taal's voice was a brazen trumpet: "Upon the Vanished People, upon those once lords of this whorl, I call. The good character of my client Mysire Horn let them defend!" Everyone must have thought it a mere trick of rhetoric, and certainly there was no one in the courtroom more convinced of it than I. I had spoken with them and explained my predicament, and they had promised to help me if they could; but I had imagined signs and wonders of the sort I hoped for (and to some degree received) from Mora and Fava, not this uncanny spectacle of walking legends mounting the steps to the judge's right and sitting one by one in the little witness chair to deliver their solemn testimony.

"Mysire Windcloud, my life to our law I have devoted, but never one of you in court I have seen. Why have you come?"

"How could I not?"

Hamer snapped, "Questions you may not ask, mysire," which I think very brave of him.

"Why not?"

Taal explained, "Contrary to our law it is, mysire."

"Then I will ask no more until Dorp's law is altered, though Dorp will lose by it. We have come because honor compels us."

"Because accused your friend here stands?"

"Because the people of your town do."

"Who accuses us?"

Hamer rapped on his desk. "To the case before us yourself you must confine, Mysire Taal."

A large picture crashed to the floor, and about half the onlookers sprang to their feet.

Taal asked softly, "That you did, Mysire Windcloud?"

"No."

Judge Hamer leaned toward him, pointing with the mace of office. "Speak you must, mysire! It who did?"

"You." There was something in the single flat word that frightened even the judge, and which I myself found terrifying.

Taal addressed the court. "Mysire Rechtor, what we do here dangerous it is. Question Mysire Windcloud I must, but not you need. With all honor to the court, this I suggest."

I felt the building tremble as he spoke; and Hamer nodded, his face pale.

"My client, Mysire Horn. Him how long have you known?"

"Since I gave him my cup." Windcloud's face turned toward me, and though I could not see his eyes-I have never seen the eyes of any of them-I felt his glance.

"In days and years you cannot say, mysire?"

"No."

"An honest man he is?"

"Too much so."

"You he serves?"

"Yes, he does." That surprised me, I confess; I am still thinking about it.

"A traitor to our breed he is?"

"No." There was amusement in the word, I believe.

"To this case alone address myself I must, mysire. This you understand. That this whorl to us you have given, not relevant it is. About that, not I may ask. About your knowledge of men's characters I may inquire, if Mysire Rechtor permits. A man as here `a man' we say, not you are?"