And that's whose prisoner we are? asked Vansen. His head was beginning to hurt from all this think-talking. Why have I never heard of them-of any of them?

"You have," said Barrick. He sounded as though he had a mouthful of something bitter. "You know them all, Captain-Sva, the Void, and Zo, her mate, the First Light. All the rattling nonsense the priests talked… and it's all real." He seemed on the verge of tears again. "All of it! The gods are real and they will destroy us all, for not believing. We can no longer pretend it isn't true."

They will not destroy us, said Gyir, and although your kind and mine may well destroy each other, it will not be the gods' doing. But he did not sound as certain as he had before, and Vansen wondered suddenly if it was- really true that the True Speech could not lie. They are all gone from the earth now, long gone. Only a few of their lesser children like this crippled demigod remain.

Vansen had to lake a breath, pained by such sacrilege from an inhuman creature the gods gone? / still do not understand you. Sua and Zo? I have heard of them, but what of Perin and the Trigon? What of the gods we know, at whose temples we worship?

They are all one family, said Gyir. One family and one blood. And long before your folk or mine had even thought to clothe ourselves, they were spilling that blood.

"It's pointless," protested Barrick, putting his hands over his ears as though he could block out the soundless words that way. "This talking- any of this! It changes nothing." His face reddened and seemed to crum¬ple. The boy was crying again, rocking in place. "I thought it was all priest's lies. Instead, I am being p-p-punished… punished for my miserable, fly¬blown, shit-stained pride!"

Vansen clambered to his feet and hurried to the prince's side. "Your Highness, it is not your fault…"

"Leave me alone!" the boy shrieked. "Do not speak to me of things you know nothing about! What could you know of a curse like mine?" He threw himself down on his stomach and banged his forehead against the stone, like a man in a terrible hurry to pray.

"Prince Barrick…! Barrick, get up…"Vansen put his arms around the boy's chest and tried to lift him, but the prince fought his way loose, and as he did so struck Vansen hard in the face.

Barrick did not even seem to notice. "No! Don't you touch me!" he groaned." I am filthy! On fire!" A froth of spittle hung at the corners of the boy's mouth and on his lower lip. "The gods have chosen me for this suffering, this curse…!"

Vansen hesitated only a moment, then drew back and slapped the prince full in the face. Barrick stumbled and fell to his knees, shocked into silence. His hand slowly came up to his cheek. He drew it away and stared at it as though expecting to see blood, although Vansen had hit him only with his open hand. "You… you struck me!"

"I apologize, Your Highness," Vansen said, "but you must calm yourself, for your own sake if nothing else. We cannot afford to bring down the guards, or start a fight with other prisoners. You may punish me for my crime as you wish if we make it home to Southmarch again. You may even have me put to death for it, if it pleases you…"

"Death?" said Barrick, and in an instant the flailing child was gone, his place taken by someone who looked like him but was eerily self-possessed. Barrick's anger, hot a moment before, had suddenly turned icy. "You're a

fool if you think you're going to get off that easily. If the impossible occurs and we return to Southmarch alive, I'm going to tell my sister how you feel about her and then order you to join her bodyguard, so you have to look at her every day and know that she is looking back at you with disgust, that she and all the other ladies of the court are marveling together at the sight of the most arrogantly foolish and pitiful idiot who ever lived."

The prince turned away from him. Gyir seemed lost in his own secret thoughts. Ferras Vansen had no choice but to sit silently, holding his stom¬ach as though he had been kicked.

A Meeting of the Guild

As a marriage gift, Silvergleam gave to Pale Daughter a box of wood,

carved with the shapes of birds, and in it she put all that she could

remember of her family and old home. When she opened the box, its music

soothed her heart. But her father Thunder could not make music to cool the

burning of his own anger. He called out to his brothers that he was

afflicted, dying, that his heart was a smoldering stone in his chest. They

came to him and he told them of the theft of his daughter, his dove.

— from One Hundred Considerations out of the Qar's Book of Regret

I DON'T LIKE IT," OPAL SAID. "No good can come of telling everyone."

"I'm afraid this once I can't agree with you." Chert looked around the front room. Evidence of the distractions of the last days were everywhere-tools uncleaned, dust on the tabletop, unwashed bowls and cups. "I am no hero, old girl. I've come to the limit of what I can do."

"No hero-is that what you say? You certainly have been acting like you thought you were one."

"Not by choice. In all seriousness, my love, you must know that."

She sniffed. "I'll put the kettle on. Did you know the flue is blocked? We'll be lucky if the smoke doesn't kill us."

Chert sighed and sank deeper in his chair. "I'll see to the flue later. One thing at a time."

He had been so tired that when the ringing began he did not at first re-alize what it was. Half in dream, he imagined it as the bells of the guildhall, that the great building was floating away on some underground river, being sucked down into the darkness below Funderling Town…

"Is that our bell?" Opal shouted. "I'm making tea!"

"Sorry, sorry!" Chert climbed onto his feet, trying to ignore the protest¬ing twinges from his knees and ankles. No, he was definitely not a hero.

/ should be settled back to carve soapstone and watch grandchildren play. But wv never had children. He thought of Flint, strange Flint. Until now, I suppose.

Cinnabar's bulky form filled the doorway. "Ho, Master Blue Quartz. I've come on my way back from quarry, as I promised."

"Come in, Magister. It is kind of you."

Opal was already waiting by the best chair with a cup of blueroot tea. "I am mortified to have visitors with the house in this state-especially you, Magister. You do us an honor."

Cinnabar waved his hand. "Vistiting the most famous citizen of Funder¬ling Town? Seems to me I'm the one being honored with an audience." He took a small sip of the tea to test it, then blew on it.

"Famous…?" Chert frowned. Cinnabar had a rough and ready sense of humor, but the way he'd said it didn't sound like a joke.

"First you find the boy himself, then when he runs away you bring him back with one of the Metamorphic Brothers holding the litter? Big folk visitors in and out? And I hear rumors even of the Rooftoppers, the little folk out of the old tales. Chert, if anyone in the town is not talking about you and Opal, they would have to be as ignorant as a blindshrew."

"Oh. Oh, dear," Opal said, although there was a strange undertone of something almost like pride in it. "Would you like some more tea, Magister?"

"No, I've still got supper waiting at home for me, Mistress Opal. It's one thing to work late, but to come home to Quicksilver House without an ap¬petite after my woman's been in the kitchen all afternoon is just asking for trou¬ble. Perhaps you could tell me what's on your minds, if I'm not rushing you?"

Chert smiled. How different this fellow was from Chert's own brother, who was also a Magister: Nodule Blue Quartz was not nearly so important as Cinnabar in Funderling Town, but you would never know it from the airs Nodule put on. But Cinnabar-you couldn't fail to like a man who was so easy in himself, so uninterested in position or rank. Chert felt a little bad for what he was about to do.