I looked skeptically at Ramiro. If my history and reckoning were correct, the old man was claiming to be over two centuries old.

Ramiro sat by the fire, as wide and complacent as a huge toad, rapt with interest as Shardos continued his story.

Through the Death's Teeth Shardos's family had come, and once ashore, down to Ogrebond, where the audience had eaten his oldest brother and set afire the family tents.

West through Neraka they had traveled over the span of several years, their tented wagons heavy with bottles of cure-alls, with potions and trained animals and fireworks. It sounded like the most wonderful boyhood life to me, for you could name the city-from North Keep all the way to Zeriak by the Ice Wall-and Shardos had been there. He had stories that went with the places, too: from the Cracklin Coast, where he was burned and blinded by a cruel duke who distracted him while he juggled torches, all the way west to the Gnome Kingdoms under Mount Nevermind, where his middle brother was dismantled by an explosion in a wagon full of rockets.

More than that, he had collected the stories of the places themselves: He knew by heart seven versions of the Tale of Huma, and creation itself was different, it seemed, depending on your town or country or race. He knew the stories of Istar and the Cataclysm and more recent stories, too, such as that of the Battle at Chaktamir in which my father had fought.

Shardos claimed to know the entirety of di Caela family history, and within it, the Scorpion's tale. He knew Bayard, and somehow was familiar with the bleak and desolate childhood of my protector.

Solemnly the blind man told us that he knew the true story of Brandon Rus and the arrows, and that at some time, given greater leisure and our kindly attention, he would tell us why the young easterner let his brilliant gifts lie waste in memory and brooding.

Shardos claimed to know two thousand stories, stories that had served him well as his hands slowed in later years. "For I have found," he claimed, "that jugglery and storytelling are cousins. It is the illusion you're after-the moment when the juggler and the teller fade from the sight of those who are looking on, when all you can see is the objects rising and falling and the story completing itself on its own." In puzzlement, I looked at Ramiro, who shrugged back at me in turn. As men of action, we were used to being left in the dark by comparisons.

At any rate, Shardos had become a bit of a poor man's bard, fabling and gossiping supper from hovel to castle through a century of roads. Up until a time, that is, when seeking rest, he had chanced upon a small encampment in the Vingaard Mountains.

"There I had fancied on staying," he claimed. "To be done with the travel and to think on my stories for a while. For they all must fit together somehow, wouldn't you think? At least, that is what my host in the mountains told me before he disappeared."

In an instant, we were all alert, eyes so intent on the blind man in front of us that Birgis the dog became uneasy and growled menacingly at Ramiro.

"And the name of your host?" I asked, my voice almost a whisper.

"Why, Brother Brithelm, I heard them call him," the juggler replied.

Briefly and urgently I told him that Brithelm was my brother,

"I see," Shardos said, his tone a little more somber. "I can imagine what has brought you to the mountains, then."

"Yes, I suppose you might guess why we are here," I conceded. "Brithelm's camp is but a day's ride away, as I remember it, and we were on our way to see if he has weathered the earthquake well."

"Were on your way, you say?"

"Yes, Master Shardos," I replied guardedly. "For though I surely intend to visit my brother in the days to come, this talk of disappearance has… given me pause as to where I should venture next. That and the Plainsmen. Pale fellows. Wearing beads and skins. Most of them armed. Perhaps you've seen-I mean, noticed them."

"So that's what they look like. Their clothing rustled like buckskin and leather, but the skin color-I had no idea. They've made quite a commotion in the surrounding woods this evening."

"Who are they? What are they?" Ramiro asked. "No idea there, either. But whatever they are, it's your brother Brithelm you're after, is it not? And well you should be, for he's been kidnapped."

"Kidnapped?"

"Whisked from the world as we know it, I'd wager. That camp of an abbey is as empty as the City of Lost Names northward. Scarcely a sign that Brithelm or any of his fellows have ever been there."

"I… I can't believe that," I protested. "Who would want to kidnap Brithelm? So, Shardos. You are saying that my brother's abbey-"

"Is deserted. Yes, Galen. When the quakes arose and the seasons shifted and the elements burst their bounds, the kidnappers came out of the earth…"'

"Lead us there, Shardos," I stated before I thought, teased out of caution by bewilderment. I stared down the apprehensive look flashed at me by Ramiro and continued. "I have lost one brother too many in these mountains, and by the gods, the hills will open before I lose another."

"'Tis simple enough," Shardos observed cheerily. "Birgis and I can find him for you. He is unharmed, I am sure, though no doubt distressed by his new surroundings."

"And this brother," the Namer said, waving his hand dramatically in the direction of a fire, low beneath the Sign of the Antelope-a whitened, antlered skull propped on a tall spear, "To what have they carried him, and what awaits him there? It is dark where he is going, but there is torchlight."

He crouched before the fire, passed the strand of metal over it, and resumed the story,

Soon, thought the man on the mottled throne. Soon the stones will be brought into my presence, brought from above like a sweet black rain cascading from the hand of a god.

And why not? he mused, resting his head upon the cool moistness of a sheet of stalactites. Did not the hand of a god guide me here to begin with?

Below him, in the great cavernous hall called the Porch of Memory, white-haired Plainsmen milled about their tasks under the torchlight. Some-stout men, as a rule, their shoulders knotted-pushed wheelbarrows sagging with rubble and sediment, to a place well lit beneath the torches, where folk more dextrous and nimble-young women and smaller men-sifted through the fragments for the opals that had eluded all of them, century by century.

But soon, Firebrand thought, closing his one good eye and smiling blissfully, the rattling, chipping sounds of mining and sorting fading below him into faint sounds he imagined that he only remembered. Soon all this pushing and sifting and hoping will be… outdated. Yes, outdated when the Knight brings the stones to me from his tall castle.

Then I can tell my people that I… found the opals. That a vision told me they would be… where they would be.

For visions have spoken to me before, spoken unerringly out of the silence and the light in these very stones.

He held a silver crown in his right hand. Slowly, with a sort of mad elegance, he placed the circlet upon his head. Between the twining strands of silver, seven opals nested in an irregular, broken pattern.

The crown was still hot from his burning touch.

His eye opened wide as the chanting began beneath him, echoing off the walls of the Porch of Memory until the great room resounded with the voices of children. His eye was as deep and as black and as flickering as the opals above it, and brimming with tears as it focused on a far point and a far time. From beneath the diamond-shaped leather eye patch, tears trickled grotesquely, mixed with soot and the recollection of blood.