Fwi-Song was brought out of the forest on his litter not long before noon, as the fishing canoe was returning.

"Gift of the seas and air! Tribute of the great Circlesea's vast wealth! See what a wondrous day awaits you now!" Fwi-Song had himself brought up to Horza, and was put down to one side of the fire. He smiled at the Changer. "All the night you have had time to think of what the day now holds; for all the darkness you have been able to look into the fruits of the Vacuum. You have seen the spaces between the stars, seen how much there is of nothing, how little there is of anything. Now you can appreciate what an honour lies in store for you; how lucky you are to be my sign, my offering!" Fwi-Song clapped his hands with delight, and his enormous body shook up and down. The chubby hands went to his mouth as he spoke, and the folds of flesh over his eyes lifted momentarily to reveal the whites within. "Ho-hoo! What fun we all shall have!" The prophet made a sign, and his litter carriers took him down to the sea to be washed and anointed.

Horza watched the Eaters prepare their food; they gutted the fish, throwing away the meat and keeping the offal and skins, heads and spikes. They removed the shells from the animals inside and threw the animals away. They ground up the shells with the weeds and some brightly coloured sea slugs. Horza watched all this happen in front of him, and saw just how run-down the Eaters really were; the scabs and sores, the deficiency diseases and general weakness. The colds and coughs, peeling skin and partly deformed limbs all spoke of a very gradually fatal diet. The dead meat and animals from the sea were returned to the waves via great blood-soaked baskets. Horza watched as closely as his gag and the distance would allow, but none of the Eaters seemed to take a surreptitious bite of the raw meat as they threw it from the baskets into the waves.

Fwi-Song, being dried on the sand just up the beach from the line of breakers, watched the food being thrown into the sea and nodded with approval, speaking quiet words of encouragement to his flock. Then he clapped his hands, and the litter was slowly carried along the beach to the fire and the Changer.

"Offertory thing! Benefaction! Prepare yourself!" Fwi-Song warbled, settling down in his litter with little movements which sent ripples all over the great folds and sweeps of his massive body. Horza started to breathe harder, felt his heart pound. He swallowed, and strained again at the rope holding his hands. Mr First and the two women were digging at the sand for the thin robes in their buried sacks.

All the Eaters gathered round the fire, facing Horza. Their eyes looked black or vaguely interested, nothing more. There was a listlessness about their actions and expressions which Horza found even more depressing than outright hatred or sadistic glee would have been.

The Eaters began to chant and sing. Mr First and the two women were twisting the dull lengths of cloth around their bodies. Mr First looked at Horza and grinned.

"Oh happy moment in the ending days!" Fwi-Song said, raising his voice and hands, his choked tones ringing out towards the centre of the island. The smells of the Eaters" foul cooking drifted past the Changer again. "Let this one's unmaking and making be a symbol for us!" Fwi-Song continued, letting his arms drop back in enormous rolls of white flesh. The golden-brown surfaces gleamed in the sunlight as the prophet clasped his fat fingers together. "Let his pain be our delight, as our unmaking shall be our joining; let his flaying and consummation be our satisfaction and delectation!" Fwi-Song raised his head and spoke loudly in the language the others understood. Their chanting altered and grew louder. Mr First and the two women approached Horza.

Horza felt Mr First take the gag from his mouth. The pale-skinned man spoke to the two women, who went to the bubbling vats of stinking liquid. Horza's head was feeling very light; there was a taste he knew too well at the back of his throat, as though some of the acid from his wrists had somehow found its way to his tongue. He strained again at his bonds behind him, feeling the muscles shake. The chanting went on; the women were ladling the foul broth into bowls. His empty stomach was churning already.

There are two main ways to escape bonds apart from those open to non-Changers [the Academy's lecture notes said]: by acid-sweat pulse on a sustained level where the binding material is susceptible to such an attack, and by malleable preferential tapering of the limb-point involved.

Horza tried to coax a little more strength from his tired muscles.

Excessive acid-sweating can damage not only the adjacent skin surfaces, but also the body as a whole through dangerously altered chemical imbalances. Over-much tapering poses the risk of the muscles being so wasted and the bone so weakened that their subsequent use may be severely restricted in the short- and long-term escape attempt.

Mr First was approaching with the wooden blocks he would fit into Horza's mouth. A couple of the larger Eaters had stood up near the front of the crowd and advanced slightly, ready to assist Mr First. Fwi-Song was reaching behind his back. The women started forward from the bubbling vats.

"Open wide, stranger," Mr First said, holding out the two wooden blocks. "Or do we use a crowbar?" Mr First smiled.

Horza's arms strained. His upper arm moved. Mr First saw the movement and halted momentarily. One of Horza's hands jerked free. It shot round in an instant, nails ready to rake Mr First's face. The pale-skinned man drew back, not quickly enough.

Horza's nails caught Mr First's robe and tunic as they flapped out from his dodging body. Already straining as far out from the stake as he could, Horza felt his clawed hand rip through the two layers of material without connecting with the flesh underneath. Mr First staggered back, bumping into one of the women carrying the bowls of stinking gruel, knocking it from her hands. One of the wooden wedges sailed from Mr First's hand and landed in the fire. Horza's arm completed its swing just as the two Eaters in the front of the crowd came forward quickly and caught the Changer by the head and arm.

"Sacrilege!" Fwi-Song screamed. Mr First looked at the woman he had bumped into, at the fire, at the prophet, then back with a furious look at the Changer. He lifted one arm to look at the tears in his robe and tunic. "The gift-filth desecrates our vestments!" Fwi-Song shouted. The two Eaters held Horza, pinning his arm back where it had been and his head to the stake. Mr First started towards Horza, taking the gun out from under his tunic and holding it by the barrel, like a club. "Mr First!" Fwi-Song snapped, stopping the pale-skinned man in his tracks. "Shtand gack! Hold gat am out; ee'll show gish naught goy how we geel wish hish short!"

Horza's free arm was straightened out in front of him. One of the Eaters holding him put his leg round the back of the post, bracing himself there and trapping Horza's other hand where it was. Fwi-Song had a set of gleaming steel teeth in his mouth, the holed ones. He glared at the Changer while Mr First stepped back, still holding the projectile pistol. The prophet nodded to another two Eaters in the crowd; they took Horza's hand and prised the fingers apart, tying that wrist to a pole. Horza felt his whole body shake. He cut off all feeling in that hand.

"Naughty, naughty gisht "rom the shee!" Fwi-Song said. He leant forward, buried Horza's index finger in his mouth, closed the stripper teeth over them, cutting into the flesh, and then pulled quickly back.

The prophet chewed and swallowed, watching the Changer's face as he did so, and frowning. "Not gery tashty, genegiction "rom the oceansh currentsh!" The prophet licked his lips. «An» not shore enush "or you, eisher, sho it wood sheen? Letch shee "ot elsh nee can…" Fwi-Song was frowning again. Horza looked past the Eaters holding him to the hand stretched out over the pole, one finger stripped bare, the bones limp, blood dripping from the thin tip.