Harran was so shocked he found it hard to think. Did it speak? Or did I imagineit? For a moment that seemed likely, and Harran leaned back against the table,feeling weak and annoyed at his own stupidity. One of the old trained ravensfrom Siveni's temple, still somehow alive, blundering into his window-

This window? At this moment? Saying that word?

And there was the hand....

The picture of old smiling-eyed Irik, the Master-Priest, came back to him. Fairhatred, graying Irik in his white robes, leaning with Harran and several othersover a pale marble table in the students' courts, his thin brown finger tracinga line on a tattered linen roll-book. "Here's another old one," Irik was saying."The Upraising of the Lost. You would use this only on the very newly deadsomeone gone less than twenty slow breaths. It's infallible-but the ingredients,as you see, aren't something you can keep on hand." There was muted snickeringand groaning among the novices; Irik was an irrepressible punster. "The charmhas other applications. Since it can retrieve anything lost- including time,which the dead lose-you can lay restless ghosts with it; though as usual youhave to raise them first. And since it can similarly retrieve timelessness,which mortals lose, the charm's of use as a mystagogue-spell, an initiator. Butagain, the problem of getting the ingredients comes up-the mandrake, for one.Also, brave men are generally as unwilling as cowards are to give up a perfectlygood hand. The spell is mostly valuable nowadays in terms of technique; thatmiddle passage, about the bones, is a little textbook in taxidermy all byitself. If you have to lay ghosts, this next one is usually more useful...."

The white-and-gold memory turned to shadows and mud again. Harran sat and staredat the stained earthenware dish and its contents.

It would work. He would need those other ingredients. The mandrake would takesome finding, but it wasn't too dangerous. And he would need that old linenbook-roll. He was fairly sure where it was....

Harran got up and poked the fire; then poured water from a cracked clay ewerinto an iron pot and put the pot on the fire. He picked up his surgeon's knifeagain and the dish with the hand.

Tyr ran back into the house, stared at him with her big dark doe-eyes, andrealized that he was holding a dish. She immediately stood up on her hind legs,dancing and bouncing a little to keep her balance, and craned her-neck, tryingto see what was on the plate.

Harran had to laugh at her. She was a stray he'd found beaten and whimpering inan alley over by the Bazaar two years ago... when he was new to his job and hadconsiderable sympathy toward strays. Tyr had grown up pretty- a short-furred,clean-bodied, sharp-faced little bitch, brown and delicate as a deer. But shewas still thin, and that troubled him. The war on Wizardwall, and then thecoming of the Beysib, had driven prices up on beef as on everything else. Thepseudo-Stepsons swore at the three-times-weekly porridge, and bolted their meat,when it arrived, like hungry beasts-leaving precious little in the way of scrapsfor Tyr to cadge. Harran didn't dare let her out of the barracks compound,either; she would end up in someone's stewpot within an hour. So she ate half ofHarran's dinner most of the time. He didn't mind; he would have paid greaterprices yet. Unlike the old days, when he had constantly been busy administeringSiveni's love to her worshippers and so needed very little for himself, Harrannow needed all of the love he could get....

He watched her dancing, and became aware of the smell in the room-more thancould be accounted for by Shal's pissing on the table. "Tyr," he said, fakinganger, "have you been rooting in the kitchen midden again?"

She stopped dancing... then very, very slowly sat down, with her ears dejectedflat. She did not stop staring at the dish.

He gazed at her ruefully. "Oh, well," he said. "I only need the bones anyway.Just this once, you hear?"

Tyr leaped up and began bouncing again.

Harran went over to the sideboard and boned the hand in nine or ten suremotions. "All right," he said at last, holding out the first scrap of meat forTyr. "Come on, sweetheart. Sit up! Up!"

Oh, my Lady, he thought, your servant hears. Arm Yourself. Get Your spear.You'll soon be lost no more. I shall bring You back....

Preparation occupied Harran for a while thereafter. He kept it quiet. No usealerting the Stepsons to what he was planning, or giving Raik any reason to comeafter him- Raik, who spat at Harran every time he saw him now, promising to"take care of him" after Shal was better. Harran ignored him. The Piffles werekeeping busy out there, and made it easy for Harran to go about his usualroutine of stitching and splinting and cauterizing. And in between, when he grewbored, there was always Mriga.

She had been another stray, a clubfooted beggar-child found sitting half-starvedin a Downwind dungheap, mindlessly whetting a dull scrap of metal on acobblestone. Harran had taken her home on impulse, not quite sure what he woulddo with her. He discovered quite soon that he'd found himself a bargain. Thoughshe seemed to have no mind now-if she'd ever had one-she was clever with herhands. She would do any small task endlessly until stopped; even in her sleep,those restless hands would move, never stopping. You never had to show heranything more than once. She was especially good with edged things; the Stepsonsbrought their swords to her to sharpen, one and all. Tyr had come to positivelyworship her-which was saying a great deal; Tyr didn't take to everyone. If Mrigawas lame and plain-well, less chance that she would leave or be taken fromHarran; if she couldn't speak, well, a silent woman was considered a miraclewasn't that what they said?

And since Harran was not rich enough to afford whores very often, having Mrigaaround offered other advantages. He had needs, which, with a kind of numbness ofheart, he used Mriga to satisfy. In some moods he knew he was doing a darkthing, again and again; and Harran knew that the price was waiting to be paid.But he didn't need to think of that just now. Payment, and eternity, were a longway from the sordid here-and-now of Sanctuary and a man with an itch that neededscratching. Harran scratched that itch when he felt like it, and spent the restof his time working on the Stepsons, and the charm.

He would have preferred to leave the hand in a bin of toothwing beetles for somedays-the industrious little horrors would have stripped the bones dry of everyremaining dot of flesh and eaten the marrow too; but toothwing beetles and cleantemple workrooms and all the rest were forever out of his reach. Harran made dowith burying the bones in a box of quicklime for a week, then steeping it innaphtha for an afternoon to get the stink and the marrow out. Tyr yipped anddanced excitedly around Harran as he worked over the pot. "Not for you, baby,"he said absently, fishing the little fingerbones out of the kettle and puttingthem to cool on an old cracked plate. "You'd choke for sure. Go 'way."

Tyr looked up hopefully for another moment, found nothing forthcoming, and thencaught sight of a rat ambling across the stableyard, and ran out to catch it.

Finding the mandrake root was a slightly more difficult business. The best kindgrew from a felon's grave, preferably a felon who had been hanged. If there wasanything Sanctuary wasn't short on, it was felons. The major problem was thatthey were easier to identify live than dead and buried. Harran went to visit hisold comrade Grian down at the Chamel House, and inquired casually about the mostrecent hangings.