He walked slowly back to the lodge as the sun crept down the sky. The sun would set to the west, behind the mountains. He knew that once the peaks had devoured the orb, night would sweep in like a curtain falling. Yet he did not hurry. He hoarded the food inside him and the magic it nourished. He felt full and almost sleepy. He decided that when he reached the lodge, he would nap, then rise, cook all the meat and fish, and feast again.

The boy was already there. He had more fish with him, not strung on a stick, but an armful of them. They weren’t gleaming, speckled trout such as he’d left that morning. These fish—five big ones—were so heavy that his back bent back and his stomach jutted with the strain of holding them. They were not as pretty as trout. Their skins were tattered, their blunt noses buffeted. Teeth showed in their long snouts. “They come each year,” he told me. “Waves of them, coming up the river, fighting their way against the water. And then they get tired, and they go in the shallows. They are very easy to catch there. Many of them die and rot on the banks of the river. Gulls and eagles come to get them. These ones had come far upstream, into the shade of the forest. I got them easily. There were many more. Shall I bring more tomorrow?”

“I think we shall both go tomorrow,” Soldier’s Boy told him happily. It was all coming back to him, along with Lisana’s anticipation and keen pleasure in this season. The season of the fish runs was a time of plentiful food for everyone. There would be fish to bake in the fire, fish for soup, and lots of fish to smoke in strips for winter food. Fish to dry and grind into fish meal that could be stored in pots and would last until spring. He felt a surge of the purest, childlike contentment in the world, a feeling that had eluded me so long that I almost didn’t recognize it.

“Tonight, we feast!” he told the boy. “And tomorrow, we fish, and we feast again!”

“This is a very good time,” the boy replied. He stuck out his little belly. “I shall grow fat as a waddling bear.”

Soldier’s Boy ran a critical eye over the child. He was thin right now, unacceptably thin for the feeder of a Great One. “Yes, you shall! I want you to eat well, and oil your hair and skin with the fat from our catches. I want you to show everyone at the Trading Place that we are prosperous and cherished by the magic.”

Likari grinned. “I think I can manage that.”

“Good!” Soldier’s Boy’s enthusiasm was genuine. “Build up the fire and prepare the coals for cooking. Tonight, we feast!”

While the boy did that, he planned to rest. But as he turned to enter the lodge, an unexpected guest arrived. He came down through the tree cover in a clattering of black and white feathers. The croaker bird landed heavily on the ground and waddled toward them, both cautious and curious.

The boy paid no attention to the scavenger bird, merely giving the creature a glance, and then went back to loading up his arms with firewood. Such birds were common visitors to any camp or village. They preferred dead meat, and the longer it had been dead, the more they relished it. But they would eat almost anything that humans did not. For one to arrive at the lodge, attracted by the smell of the rabbits or fish, was scarcely surprising.

But Soldier’s Boy stared at it with a mixture of resentment and hostility. When the bird’s gaze met his, I felt a shiver go through him. Something more than a carrion bird looked at him out of those eyes. “Go away,” Soldier’s Boy said in a low voice. “You have no call upon me. I owe you nothing.”

Can a bird smile? This one bobbed his head, reminding me of a man convulsed with laughter. He opened his beak wide. Perhaps he just tasted the air, but perhaps he mocked Soldier’s Boy. The bright red interior of his mouth flashed like a beacon.

“Nothing, Nevare? You owe me a death. Or a life. However you prefer to see it.” He lifted a clawed foot and swiped at his beak. “Which do you think is the better offering to a god you have offended? A death? Or a life?”

Orandula’s voice, deep and rich with an undercurrent of mockery, rang clear inside my head. I heard it. I knew that Soldier’s Boy heard it, too. This, at least, was a dread we shared. Fear drove his defiance more than courage.

“I don’t serve you. You are not my god. And I owe you nothing.”

The bird hopped closer, just two hops, in that effortless way of moving that only birds can do. He cocked his head and regarded me closely. “An amusing concept, that. The idea that men can choose which gods have power over them. Do you think that if you choose not to believe in me, I have no power over you? Do you think you can choose to have debts or not to have them?”

Soldier’s Boy strode suddenly forward. He picked up one of Likari’s fish and held it out to the bird. “Here. This is dead, and it’s much bigger than the bird that was freed from your sacrifice. Take it and be gone.” He flung it disdainfully at the god-bird’s feet. The croaker bird fluffed his feathers and hopped back from the dead thing. Soldier’s Boy stood, his body stiff with fear and anger. The bird looked at the dead fish. Hop, hop. Turned his head to point an eye down at it. Then darted his beak down to rip a shred of it free.

“Fresh. But still good. I’ll take it. But you know, it does not discharge your debt. This is not a death or a life. It’s only a fish. And you have not yet answered my question.” He stabbed his beak down again, tore off another scrap of flesh and, with a quick jerk-toss of his head, caught it in his mouth and swallowed it. “Which would you rather owe me, little Great Man? A life or a death?”

“I owe you nothing!” Soldier’s Boy repeated angrily. “I took nothing from you.”

“You were there. The bird was released from me.”

“That wasn’t me!” Soldier’s Boy exploded. I do not think he was even aware of how Likari was regarding him. At the edge of Soldier’s Boy’s field of vision, the boy crouched in the door and regarded him with wide eyes as the Great Man continued his debate with a carrion bird. The boy stepped back inside the door, as if frightened.

The bird didn’t even seem to be looking at Soldier’s Boy as he bent his head and busily tore another strip of flesh from the fish. He’d bared the gut sack. He plunged his beak in and probed busily before coming up with a dark string of gut. He snapped it up with relish. “Not you, eh? Then who, Great Man? Who freed the sacrifice?”

“Nevare did it! Nevare Burvelle.”

The bird opened his beak, and squawked a wild laughter from his wide red mouth. His wings stuck out to the side and he bounced as he squawked. Perhaps, to someone else, it would have sounded only like a croaker bird croaking. When he finally finished, he stabbed and tore another piece of fish free. Then he looked at Soldier’s Boy with one bright eye and asked, “Aren’t you Nevare Burvelle?”

“No.”

The bird cocked his head the other way.

“Nevare. Speak up for yourself. Don’t you owe me a sacrifice, to replace the one you took?”

Miraculously and suddenly, the body and the voice were mine. Shock tingled all through my skin. I swallowed and drew a deep, freeing breath.

“Answer me, Nevare,” the bird-god commanded.

“I serve the good god. Not you. And I didn’t mean to have anything to do with you. All I did was free a bird,” I said. My heart soared. Despite the threat to me, I had the body again. I clenched and unclenched my hands, marveling that I could.

“Serve who you like,” the bird replied callously. “It does nothing about the debt you owe me. Do you really think that serving one god will protect you from the demands of another? Do you honestly believe that we derive our powers because you believe in us? What sort of an impotent god would that be? ‘Believe in me so I can be a god!’ Is that what gods should say to men? How about, ‘Believe it or not, I can control your world’?” He turned his head and looked at me out of the other eye.