…

It begins with a shrill human cry—

One of the sycophants, a devoted Rothen-follower, points behind the star-beings, toward the raised bier where their two dead comrades lie—

Silky cloths had been draped across the two who were slain in the explosion. But now we see those coverings are pulled back, exposing the late Rothen and the late sky-human —

Do we now perceive Bloor the Portraitist, poised with his recording device, attempting to photograph the faces of the dead!

Bloor ignores growls of anger rising from those-who-follow-the-Rothen-as-patrons. Calmly, he-slides out one exposed plate and inserts another. He appears entranced, focused on his art, even as attention turns his way from Rann, then an outraged Ro-kenn, who screams in terse Galactic Six—

Bloor glimpses the swooping robot and has time to perform one last act of professionalism. With his fragile body, the portraitist shields his precious camera and dies.

Have patience, you lesser rings that lie farthest from the senses. You must wait to caress these memories with our inner breath. For those who squat higher up our tapered cone, events come as a flurry of muddled images.

Behold — the livid anger of the star-gods, apoplectic with affronted rage!

Observe — the futile cries of Lester, Vubben, and Phwhoon-dau, beseeching restraint!

Witness — Bloor’s crumpled ruin, a smoldering heap!

Note — how the crowd backs away from the violence, even as other dark-clad figures rush inward from the forest rim!

Quail — from the roaring robots, charging up to strike, ready to slay at command!

Above all, stare — at the scene right before us, the one Bloor was photographing when he died…

An image to preserve as long as this tower of rings stands.

Two beings lie side by side.

One, a human female, seems composed in death, her newly washed face serene, apparently at peace.

The other figure had seemed equally tranquil when we saw it last, before dawn. Ro-poPs visage was like an idealized human, impressive in height and breadth of brow, in strong cheekbones and the set of her womanlike chin, which in life had sustained a winning smile.

That is not what we see now!

Rather, a quivering thing, suffering its own death tremors, creeps off of Ro-pol’s face… taking much of that face with it! The very same brow and cheek and chin we had been pondering — these make up the body of the creature, which must have ridden the Rothen as a rewq rides one of the Six, nestled so smoothly in place that no join or seam was visible before.

Does this explain the dissonance? The clashing colors conveyed by our veteran rewq? When some parts of Ro-kenn’s face relayed tart emotions, others always seemed cool, unperturbed, and friendly.

It crawls aside, and onlookers gasp at what remains — a sharply narrower face, chinless and spiny, with cranial edges totally unlike a human being’s.

Gone is the mirage of heavenly comeliness in Earth-ling terms. Oh, the basic shape remains humanoid, but in a tapered, predatory caricature of our youngest sept.

“Hr-rm … I have seen this face before,” croons Phwhoon-dau, stroking his white beard. “In my readings at Biblos. An obscure race, with a reputation for—”

Rann whips the coverings back over the corpses, while Ro-kenn shrilly interrupts, “This is the final outrage!”

Our rewq now clearly show Ro-kenn as two beings, one a living mask. Gone is the patient amusement, the pretense at giving in to blackmail. Until now, we had nothing to blackmail with.

Until now.

The Rothen points to Rann, commanding — “Break radio silence and recall Kunn, now!”

“The prey will be warned,” Rann objects, clearly shaken. “And the hunters. Dare we risk—”

“We’ll take that chance. Obey now! Recall Kunn, then clear all of these away.”

Ro-kenn motions at the crowd, the sycophants, and all six sages.

“No one leaves to speak of this.”

The robots start to rise, crackling with dire strength. A moan of dread escapes the crowd.

Then — as is sometimes said in Earthling tales — All Hell Breaks Loose.

He strums the dulcimer slowly, plucking one low note at a time, feeling nervous over what he plans to attempt, yet also pleased by how much he is remembering.

About urs, for instance. Ever since first regaining consciousness aboard the little riverboat, he had tried to pin down why he felt so friendly toward the four-footed beings, despite their prickly, short-tempered natures. Back at the desert oasis, before the bloody ambush, he had listened to the ballad recited by the traitor Ulgor, without understanding more than a few click-phrases, here and there. Yet the rhythmic chant had seemed strangely familiar, tugging at associations within his battered brain.

Then, all at once, he recalled where he heard the tale before. In a bar, on faraway—

—on faraway—

Names are still hard to come by. But now at least he has an image, rescued from imprisoned memory. A scene in a tavern catering to low-class sapient races like his own, frequented by star travelers sharing certain tastes in food, music, and entertainment. Often, songs were accepted as currency in such places. You could buy rounds of drinks with a good one, and he seldom had to pay cash, so desired were the tunes warbled by his talented crewmates.

…crewmates…

Now he confronts another barrier. The tallest, harshest wall across his mind. He tries once more but fails to come up with a melody to break it down.

Back to the bar, then. With that recollection had come things he once knew about urs. Especially a trick he used to pull on urrish companions when they dozed off, after a hard evening’s revelry. Sometimes he would take a peanut, aim carefully, and—

The Stranger’s train of thought breaks as he realizes he is being watched. UrKachu glares at him, clearly irritated by the increasing loudness of the thrumming dulcimer. He quickly mollifies the leader of the urrish ambushers by plucking at the string more softly. Still, he does not quite stop. At a lower, quieter level, the rhythm is mildly hypnotic, just as he intended it to be.

The other raiders — both urs and men — lie down or snooze through the broiling middle of the day. So does Sara, along with Prity and the other captives. The Stranger knows he should rest, too, but he feels too keyed up.

He misses Pzora, though it does seem strange to long for the healing touch of a Jophur—

No, that is the wrong word. Pzora is not one of those fearsome, cruel beings, but a traeki — something quite different. As he grows a little better at names, he is going to have to remember that.

Anyway, he has work to do. In the time remaining, he must learn to use the rewq that Sara bought for him — a strange creature whose filmy body covers his eyes, causing soft colors to waft around every urs and human, turning the shabby tent into a pavilion of revealing hues. He finds unnerving the way the rewq quivers over his flesh, using a sucker to feed from veins near the gaping wound in his head. Yet he cannot turn down a chance to explore yet another kind of communication. Sometimes the confusing colors coalesce to remind him of the last time he communed with Pzora, back at the oasis. There had been a moment of strange clarity when their cojoined rewqs seemed to help convey exactly what he wanted.

Pzora’s answering gift lies inside the hole in his head — the one place the raiders would never think to search.