The Pukawatchi were small and clever. They could find the crevices where the metals and the precious stones lay and prize them out. They had the patience to mine them and the patience to work them. They made hammers and other tools strong enough to flatten the iron, the copper, the gold. Striking them over and over again, they made beautiful objects and impressive weapons.

They lived in their great, dark realm for untold eons until massive upheavals occurred below the ground and all around them people went to war. The Pukawatchi were forced to the surface. Terrified of the sun, they became night dwellers, hiding from all other peoples and keeping their own council. Sometimes they were forced to steal food from villages they found. At other times the villages left food for them, and they in turn repaired pots and the like.

So the Pukawatchi wandered until they came to a place far from the lands of other men. Here they built their first great city. Now they were no longer brothers with their fellows. Now all were at war. Yet the Pukawatchi brought their skills with them when they fled, and they still had knowledge of the earth and what was to be found there. After a while they built a great city deep into the rock face of the land they had reached. The city was fashioned like the dark tunnels and chambers they had known below the ground. Now it was above the ground, but inside it was as it had always been. And the people were safe and the people prospered, living in their cool, dark cities. At last, against all sane instinct, against the very will of the spirits, they began to work with fire.

Soon the giants heard that the Pukawatchi had survived and could be traded with. The Pukawatchi learned the secret of fire and began to deal again with everyone except the spirits, who remained mindlessly at war. The war spread to men. The Pukawatchi made weapons for all peoples and grew rich as a result. The men were exhausted by war. The Pukawatchi cities had prospered and proliferated until the whole of the south and west became their empire.

The Pukawatchi grew rich with all things men valued. They had extended their rule further and further across the surface- the Realm of Light, as they called it. They conquered other tribes and made them subject to the Pukawatchi, and in the conquering they won great treasures, among them the famous Four Treasures of the Pukawatchi.

Each treasure had been won by a different hero, then lost in a series of complicated epics, then won again. All these stories were told to us in such a way that we absorbed them as we sat smoking and sweating in the lodge, our ordinary human senses completely lost to us.

The Four Treasures of the Pukawatchi were the Shield of Flight, the Lance of Invulnerability, the Perpetual Peace Pipe which never required filling, and the Flute of Reason, which, if the right three notes were played upon it, could restore a mortally wounded creature to life.

These treasures they kept in their city, deep within the complex of caves, in chambers they had hewn and elaborately decorated from the living rock.

Pukawatchi cities could be defended easily against attack by abandoning the lower levels and defending the upper. No other tribe had ever defeated the Pukawatchi, who had gloried in their treasures, celebrating them each year with the stories of how they came to be won by the heroes of the tribe in deeds of extraordinary warfare.

Ipkaptam began to draw in the air. He painted pictures there for us to see. He showed us the perpetually filled redstone pipe, which had belonged to the green people who lived along the lakes in stilt huts and who refused to pay the Pukawatchi a tribute of fish. So the Pukawatchi hero Nagtani went against the green people and destroyed their villages and took their pipe as a trophy. The green people were driven from the land.

Next the Kakatanawa, far in the north, asked the Pukawatchi to fashion a great lance of magical iron which the Kakatanawa had cut from the mother metal. This was the first great treasure of the Pukawatchi, for they had made it themselves. The Kakatanawa sent the magic metal to be made into a lance, but they refused to pay the higher price the Pukawatchi asked. The blade was more valuable, so the Pukawatchi kept it.

He showed us a vision of the lance, its shaft carved and decorated, its black blade running with scarlet letters. I was shocked. It was my sword, but turned into a spear! Then he showed us the Flute of Reason, and it seemed to me that Klosterheim responded with surprised recognition. I, too, experienced a flash of memory. And then Two Tongues showed us the Shield of Flight, the shield which allowed its owner to travel through the air. It was identical to the one I carried. I knew that the stolen artifact was only a few hundred yards from us at most, in the safekeeping of Asolingas.

Ipkaptam continued. "All these were our treasures and our history. Then White Crow came, and he was smiling. White Crow came, and he told us he was our friend. White Crow promised to teach us all his secrets and because he did not seem a Kakatanawa and therefore not our enemy, we accepted him. His medicine was brought to us, and he was our good luck. Because he was not of our people, he could not take a wife among us, but he had many friends in the great men of our tribe, and their daughters admired him. Our people welcomed him, for he said he came only to learn our wisdom. We understood that he followed his dream-journey, and we wished him well.

"And White Crow went away. We said: It is true. White Crow desires nothing from

us. He is a good man. He is a noble man. He is a man who follows his way. He

runs his own path. And we said that some great man was lucky indeed to have such

a son.

"Then the next year and the year after that, White Crow returned. And still he was a model guest. He helped with the hunting, and he lived among us. What was difficult for us to do was easy for him. His strength and his height and his cleverness were such that we were glad of his company.

"Then the fourth spring White Crow came again and was welcome among us and shared our food and lived in our city and told tales of all the places he had visited. But this time he asked to see our sacred treasures, the Black Lance of Manawata, the only spear which can kill spirits; the Shield of the Alkonka, the only defense against the spirits; the Cherooki Pipe, the great redstone pipe which brings peace wherever it is smoked, even with the spirits. And the Flute of Ayanawatta, which, if the right notes are blown on it, will confer on the owner the power to change his ordained spirit path, even from death to life. It will heal the sick and bring harmony where there is strife.

"And White Crow tricked us and stole our treasures and took them away with him. An evil spirit seized him. He journeyed to the great wilderness, where there are no trees. There, at the foot of the mountains, White Crow called a great gathering of the Winds. He planned to make the Winds his friends. So he called to the South Wind. And the South Wind came. He called to the West Wind. And the West Wind came to his calling. And to each spirit of the wind he gave a gift to take back to their people. Even before we knew he had stolen them, he had given the Perpetual Pipe to the People of the South; the Shield of Flight he gave to the People of the West. He himself took the Flute of Reason to the People of the East. And each of them gave him a gift in return.

"Now he has set violent events in motion. There are prophecies, omens, portents. It is the end or the beginning for the Pukawatchi. So much is confused. But there is hope that we can recover our treasures. To the Kakatanawa themselves in the north, White Crow planned to carry the Black Lance. They are his most powerful friends, and his folk have always been allies of their folk, since the beginning of things. His people also made their great obscene pact with the Phoorn and so began the rule of ten thousand years. But if White Crow fails to take the Black Lance back to the Kakatanawa, then all our destinies can be changed. Thus we do everything we can to stop him and his allies. Already they stand on the final part of the path to the city of the Kakatanawa ..."