For some reason the locals found all of this terrifically funny. It didn’t seem to matter that they had never seen a noor before. They guffawed, pointing and laughing uproariously at the glavers’ distress, clapping as if Dwer had put on a show for their benefit. He turned around, grinning as he reslung the bow. Anything to keep their regard riveted this way.

Abruptly, the crowd fell silent as a shadow fell across Dwer. A low, eerily familiar whine raised shivers up his spine. Shading his eyes against the sun, he looked up toward a hovering black shape, all jutting angles and hanging tendrils, like a certain demon that still haunted his dreams — the fire-spitting monster that had finished off the old mulc-spider of the mountains. Despite a pen-umbral glare surrounding it like a fierce halo, he made out the same octagonal symmetry. Only this one wore a rounded silhouette, perched on one jutting shoulder.

“So. You made it all the way here, after all,” the silhouette commented. “Not bad for a Slopie. You’re no fluff-baby, I guess — though the trip seems to’ve wore you down to a rag man. I seen you look better, Dwer.”

“Thanks, Rety,” he said, edging aside so the sun would not blind him. He also wanted to get closer to the forest. “You, on the other hand, never looked so good. Been taking it easy?”

She answered with a curt chuckle that sounded husky, as if she hadn’t laughed a lot lately. “I turned down the offer your sages made — to have me hike all the way back here afoot, guiding a bunch o’ geeps. Why walk, I figured, when I can ride?”

Now he could make her out clearly. Except for the old scar, she seemed quite made over, as they said in certain parts of Tarek Town. Yet the same sullen wariness lay in her eyes.

It was also his first chance to have a good look at an alien machine. Eight even rectangles made up its sides, black without highlights, as if sunshine had trouble glancing off it. Below, a pair of tendril-arms dangled menacingly on either side of a globe that was studded with glass facets and metal tubes. Danel had warned him to watch out for that globe. On top, where Rety sat in a lashed-on saddle, the robot’s surface looked flat, except for a spire rising from the center. An “antenna,” Danel had identified it.

Dwer nodded toward the hovering machine.

“Seems you’ve been making new friends, Rety.”

The girl laughed again — a sharp bark. “Friends who’ll take me places you never saw.”

He shrugged. “I’m not talking about star-gods, Rety. I mean the friend giving you a ride, right now. Last time I saw one of these things, it was trying to kill us both—”

She cut in. “A lot’s changed since, Dwer.”

“—and oh, yeah, it was burning the hell out of that bird thing you cared so much about. Ah, well. I guess sometimes it just pays better to join those who—”

“Shut up!”

The robot reacted to its rider’s anger by bobbing toward him. Retreating, he noted movement by the spherical cluster of lenses and tubes under the machine’s blocky torso, turning fluidly to track him. On a hunch, Ozawa had called it a weapons pod, and Dwer’s every clawing instinct confirmed the guess.

A crowd gathered beyond Rety, most of the human tribe, watching this confrontation between a ragged stranger and one of their own who had harnessed a flying devil. It must seem a pretty uneven matchup.

Some things are exactly as they seem.

Dwer caught a flash of movement toward the prison-pen. Jenin, making her move.

“Well?” Rety demanded, glaring down at him.

“Well what?”

“You sent for me, idiot! Did you hike halfway round the world just to try and make me feel guilty? Why didn’t you stay away, once you saw what’s going on here?”

“I could ask you the same question, Rety. What are you doing? Showing off for the folks? Getting some payback? Did the star-gods have some special reason to need a guide to this armpit of Jijo?”

Complex emotions crossed her face. What finally won was curt laughter.

“—armpit? Heh. That just about tells it all.” She chuckled again, then leaned closer. “As for what Kunn is lookin’ for, I can’t tell ya. It’s a secret.”

Rety was a lousy bluffer. You don’t have the slightest idea, Dwer pondered, and it galls you.

“So, where’s that pack of Slopies you were gonna lead out here?” she demanded.

“In hiding. I came ahead to make sure it’s safe.”

“Why shouldn’t it be? Nothin’ dangerous here, except maybe my nasty ol’ cousins… an’ a bunch of smelly hinneys—”

When she said that, a piping whistle, like faint, piccolo laughter, vented from a padded pouch at her waist.

“And killers from outer space?” Dwer added. “Planning to wipe out every thinking being on the planet?”

Rety frowned. “That’s a damn lie! They ain’t gonna do it. They promised.”

“And what if I showed you proof?”

Her eyes darted nervously. “More lies. They just wouldn’t do nothing like that!”

“Like they wouldn’t shoot a poor, unsuspecting bird-thing, I suppose. Or attack those urs without warning.”

Rety turned red as Dwer hurried on.

“Come along. I’ll show you what I’m talking about.”

Before she could refuse, he turned to walk back toward the forest. “I left it over there, behind that stump.”

The girl grumbled but followed on her robot steed. Dwer worried that the machine might be more sophisticated than Ozawa guessed. The reference works the sage had studied were three hundred years out of date and sparse on details. What if the robot both understood speech and could tell he was lying? What if it could read his thoughts!

The tree stump was thicker than most. The sooners must have worked hard with their primitive tools to hack it down, when they made this clearing. Dwer bent to pick up two things he had stashed on the far side. One, a slender tube, he slid up his tunic sleeve. The other was a leather-bound book.

“What is it?” Rety demanded, nudging the robot to drop closer. Atop the machine’s flat upper surface there protruded short tentacle-things with glossy ends. Three swiveled toward Dwer, while the fourth watched for danger from the rear. So far, Danel Ozawa had been right about the robot’s mechanical organs. If these were “eyes,” then that narrow spindle jutting up from the robot’s center—

“Show me!” Rety demanded, dropping closer still, peering at the small volume, containing about a hundred paper pages, a treasure from Danel’s Legacy.

“Oh, it’s a book,” she muttered with contempt. “You think you can prove anything with this? The Rothen-kin have pictures that move, an’ talk, an’ tell you anythin’ you want to know!”

Exactly, Dwer thought. They can create images to show exactly what you want to see.

But he answered with a friendly nod. “Oh, sorry, Rety. I forgot, you can’t read. Well, open it up, and you’ll find this book has pictures, too. I’ll explain them, if you like.”

This part had been Danel’s idea. Back at Gathering, the lesser sage had seen Rety flip through dozens of picture books in apparent fascination — when she felt no one was watching. Dwer was trying to mix insult with encouragement, shame with curiosity, so the girl would have no choice but to look at this one.

Wearing an unhappy grimace, Rety reached down further and accepted the book. She sat up and riffled the paper leaves, clearly puzzled. “I don’t get it. What page should I look at?”

The robot’s hover-fields brushed Dwer’s leg, making all the hairs stand on end. His mouth felt dry, and his heart pounded. He fought a wave of anticipation-weakness by pure force of will.

“Oh, didn’t I open it to the right picture? Here, let me show it to you.”

As Rety turned toward him, the robot dropped lower. Dwer raised his arms, reaching toward the book, but staggered when he bumped the robot’s side.