A Feast For The Ghouls





Preface	i
Introduction	ii

Foreword — "End Resistance"	1
End Resistance	2

Foreword — "Flight"	23
Flight	24

Foreword — "Green Eyes"	41
Green Eyes	42

Foreword — "Black Daggers"	48
Black Daggers	49

Foreword — "After the Flash and the Thunder"	55
After the Flash and the Thunder	56

Foreword — "This is Home"	72
This is Home	73

Foreword — "A Feast For The Ghouls"	87
A Feast For The Ghouls	88

Foreword — "Shards of Glass"	107
Shards of Glass	108

Foreword — "The Fart and the War of Flames"	120
The Fart and the War of Flames	121

Appendix:  Chronology of the Five Years' War	A1


Preface

Since it is not appropriate for young scholars to boast of their accomplishments, that privilege belongs to me as one of the professors who has been mentor to Raj MajaHid since he first came to our university.  While most scholars begin defining their professional interests during their university years, Raj found his direction in life much earlier.  Born to a family of lawyers in Decadurinis, by the age of six he spoke fluent Northern and Southern Trade and had begun learning High Akkadian, the language of wizards, scholars and the élite classes.  Encouraged by his family and surrounded by books and high culture, Raj read voluminously during his childhood.  His family was able to afford excellent tutors and to send him to visit relatives in Atlan and Varin, where he was fascinated by the customs and beliefs of those lands.  
By the time Raj came to university he was fluent in eleven languages in both spoken and written forms.  He was also learning High Cerelian, the language of the Döckálfs, which he has since mastered.  He was at the time seventeen and living at the end of the era during which the Döckálfs ruled the human nations, when the study of High Cerelian by a human was punishable by death.  At university Raj found the humanities and applied himself to broad studies within them.  He was thus engaged when the Five Years' War began, and when Decadurinis was invaded and his peers fled to safer lands, he stayed to complete degrees in Crassian languages and cultures.  
For Raj, field studies are the core of the humanities.  Even before the Five Years' War ended he began to plan the research which led to this work, and upon graduation he set off to seek the accounts which appear herein.  He was at the time twenty-three, and for seven years he pursued his research across nearly all of Crassia's nations.  Though in his introduction he only briefly mentions the difficulties he encountered, in his personal communications to me he spoke of the illnesses he suffered, the many hostile individuals he encountered and the endless frustrations of trying to find such necessities as quills, ink and paper in areas devastated by the War.  He was also obliged to find work as he pursued this project, since the War nearly ruined the Decadurinian economy, and no money was available for research.  
The results of his labors add significantly to our understanding of both the precise events of the Five Years' War and their effects on those involved in the conflict.  Raj takes us into the jungles of Balon, the deserts of Thalarar, the seas of Atlan and the mountains of the Little Nations as the War engulfs the individual narrators of these accounts and forever changes their lives.  He introduces us to nine extraordinary people who faced the War with fear, hope, anger and great courage and who have chosen now to enrich our lives by recounting their experiences to us.  He shows courage of his own by including accounts from a NaHrouz soldier and a Döckálf mage, members of the races which oppressed humanity for so long and caused such suffering and grief during the War.  By including their narratives he brings balance to the depictions of these peoples as seen through human eyes and reveals at least a glimpse of the desires and fears which drove those races.  For this even-handed approach, and for all the pains he has taken in gathering, editing and now presenting these accounts, Raj MajaHid deserves our deepest respect and gratitude.  

			Hastaza Khalid Anwer
			Chair, Department of Crassian Languages and Cultural Studies
			Nuur University
			Decadurinis
			20,495 S.C.


Introduction

A Feast for the Ghouls is a collection of nine first-hand accounts from survivors of the Five Years' War and my comments pertaining to them.  The accounts describe events ranging from the most famous, such as the evacuation of Blackstone's children and the fall of that city, to personal dramas and small battles of little consequence to the larger War.  They relate the experiences of narrators of many nationalities and occupations, both sexes and varying social classes and include accounts from the Döckálf and NaHrouz races, the enemies of humankind during the War.  The accounts are presented in chronological order, and a chronology of the Five Years' War is included as an appendix at the end of this work for those wishing to relate the events of individual narratives to the larger framework of the War.  
Initially I did not plan such a broad work.  During the War Dr. Anwer pointed out to me that after the hostilities ended I would have the opportunity to follow in the tradition of such great traveler-scholars as Amn-te-Kaban and Serin Ir and gather first-hand accounts from survivors.  Such a project would be of great value to future scholars, and, accordingly, I decided to undertake it for my thesis.  At the end of the War I set out to interview individuals who had been involved in the conflict and to record their narratives.  Again and again I asked, "What happened to you during the War?"  I listened to thousands of accounts ranging from terse, facts-only summaries to obvious flights of fancy.  What I had envisioned as a three-year project stretched to seven years as I encountered unreliable transportation, bandits, pirates and other difficulties.  By the end of my travels I had transcribed nearly four hundred accounts, totaling 58 scrolls, and from those I chose the narratives which appear herein.  
I have been careful to modify the accounts as little as possible, for I want to allow the narrators to speak for themselves.  Where necessary I edited for flow and comprehensibility.  The academic edition of this collection is much closer to the accounts as I heard them and is fully annotated.  I recorded accounts in Northern Trade, as that is the language of publication, but, unfortunately, Northern Trade is poor in labels for emotions and lacks specialized terms for many mechanical, magical and military operations.  In places I have been obliged to give explanations in Trade of a concept or process that a single word in another language could express.  While these substitutions may shift the meanings of some words and even entire sentences, I believe that I have managed to keep the larger meanings and intents intact.  
The current academic fashion is to write a long introduction which details each section of the work in hand.  In the case of A Feast For The Ghouls I have chosen instead to include this brief introduction to the entire work and to provide a separate foreword for each narrative.  Forewords provide information on the physical setting and culture of the nation where the account takes place, before the War and after.  Descriptions of the narrators are included, as are notes on any unusual circumstances or difficulties I encountered while collecting the narrative.  Forewords are provided, like the footnotes which appear in places, for those readers who wish more detailed information than is given in the account itself.  
For simplicity’s sake I have translated all units of measure into the system used in Sergi, as that is becoming the common reckoning.  All distances are in paces and metapaces (one thousand paces), and weights are in pebbles and stones (one hundred of the former equals the latter).  The time system is the widely-used Atlanean calendar, which divides the year into ten months of six six-day weeks with a year's-end "short week" of 5 days.  All year counts are given in the Since Creation (S.C.) calendar.  

Raj Fastaula MajaHid
Associate Professor of Modern Crassian Studies
Nuur University
Decadurinis
20,495 S.C.



Foreword — "End Resistance"

Before the Five Years' War the desert nation of Sergi was the most isolated human nation.  Its government chose not to participate in international politics and limited trade to imports of food and exports of finished metal wares.  Though its professional class was swiftly advancing knowledge in the fields of mathematics, engineering and the metal arts, it was unheard of for Sergi's scholars and researchers to present their work at international conferences.  Sergi's contributions to Crassia's culture and economy consisted of simple machines such as water screws and pumps and technical expertise in the building of roadways, aqueducts and bridges.  Its technological weaponry was seen by other peoples as interesting but not effective against magic.  The Sergian people, often called Technocrats by foreign nationals (and their nation the Technocracy), were to all appearances quiet and even meek.  
The War radically altered this perception.  Though the precise incident which precipitated the War is still unknown to scholars, by most accounts the initial fighting between humans and Döckálfs occurred in Sergi.  After that Sergi was at the heart of the War.  Her cities were struck in countless Döckálf forays, and her army was challenged by armies several times its size.  The technological weaponry and unconventional tactics of the Sergian military proved remarkably effective as it first withstood Döckálf assaults and then counterattacked.  While its allies fell to the Döckálfs, tiny Sergi (fewer than one and a half million pre-War population) extended its reach into Thalarar and Atlan to rout the Döckálf vassal forces.  Finally the Sergian military reached the Döckálf homeland of Seligar and forced an end to the conflict.  
By the time I sought entry to Sergi, six years after the War's end, its government had sealed the borders.  Internal rebuilding was the highest priority, and the Sergian government did not want foreign "interference" in that process.  I was forced to travel to the city of New Blackstone, in former Atlan, in hopes of finding Technocrats willing to relate their accounts of Sergi at war.  The new city was populated by 200,000 War refugees who desired stability and Sergian managers who wanted to bring in revenues for rebuilding their home country, and together they were striving to establish the city as the premier shipping center for northern Crassia.  I soon found work as a scribe and began seeking accounts.  Immediately I discovered that I was not alone in my efforts.  Soon after the War ended scholars and bards from all over Crassia had traveled to Sergi and New Blackstone to hear the victors' tales.  "Technocracy stories" had already been sorted into distinct categories with predictable plots and endings.  Most were variations of a few famous narratives.  I listened to more than fifty such derivatives before the following account was told to me.  
Kormin S'rtan was a former officer in Sergi's ground forces who retired to private enterprise in New Blackstone after the War.  I was introduced to him by another ex-officer who had related an account to me and suggested that his friend Kormin might be willing to tell me of his War experiences.  As it turned out, Kormin S'rtan did have an account, "...about a lot of mistakes made by a lot of people, and how I cleaned them up."  This is the account which follows.  
At the time of our interviews Kormin S'rtan was in his early thirties.  He was of average height and weight with soft brown eyes.  His face was round and also soft, and his lips were stained brown from the hashish pipe.  His black curls were cut in a short, quasi-military style.  In conversation his manner was mild, and it was often difficult to picture the very comfortable man seated in front of me as the energetic young officer he presents himself as in his account.  



End Resistance

I'll start this with my assignment to the 92nd Battle Group, six days into the War.  I was twenty years old.  It was my first duty assignment.  I'd just completed my two years of officers' finishing and had been chosen for the 92nd by the commanding officer, Steel Bar Danaat.  They flew me in a fighter jumper from Bright Point—the fort where I'd done my finishing—to Hashaktab's Rock, where our military command is located.  We were tense, the pilot and myself both.  We didn't talk during the jump.  No one at Bright Point knew exactly what was happening in Ravcanvoor, but we knew it was bad.  We knew we were probably at war.  
When we reached Ravcanvoor I saw what was happening.  I was in the co-pilot's seat and could see out through the jumper's windows.  Several districts of the city were on fire, including Fort Palactan and the Imnesh military district.  Even the Rock looked blasted.  The Döckálfs had been pounding it hard.  That was a punch in the gut.  The Rock was the seat of our military and our government.  If the Döckálfs broke it they broke us.  It was clear they knew that.  
"Hold on," the pilot said, and he dropped the jumper through the smoke into a bay that opened in the Rock.  When we grounded he said, "Wait."  The ceiling closed over us, and the bay lit up with weapons fire.  There were orange and blue pulser bursts, red rapid-pulser fire and flashes of hard white light from battlesuit-mounted flash-lanterns.  
The pilot said, "They're clearing the bay.  The Döckálfs created electromagnetic anomalies around the Rock.  Every time a bay opens some blow in.  Corpsmen are dissipating them."
When the weapons fire stopped the pilot opened the jumper's doors, and we disembarked.  The air stank of electrical discharge.  Corpsmen stood in the four corners of the bay, in their battlesuits.  A side door opened, and the Steel Bar came in.  He was big, well-built, in his early thirties; he looked like a steel bar.  His uniform was crisp, and he had the command presence.  But when we gripped hands I knew he was indecisive.  It was in his grip.  
"Iron Bar S'rtan?" he said.  Boldly.  Trying to cover the weak grip.  
"Sir.  Steel Bar Danaat?"  
"Yes.  This way.  Your orders were miscut, and you're late.  We're waiting on final supplies and you."  
"Understood, sir," I told him.  
He took me deep into the Rock.  "How are things at Bright Point these days?" he asked me.  
"Active, sir.  We were on constant alert."  Bright Point abutted the Twilight Marsh and protected six agricultural settlements from Marsh creatures—saltwater crocodiles, big cats with a taste for human meat, young dragons and the occasional freak.  
He said, "Same when I was there.  I served at Bright Point for three years, Iron Bar.  You'll find I've adopted that state of alertness.  'The enemy you detect ahead of time can be neutralized before it ever reaches you.' "  
"That's what they're still teaching, sir.  They drilled it pretty deep."  
"Good, then you'll fit right in."  
He escorted me to the 92nd's area and introduced me to Iron Bars Hajashan and Salah, the 92nd's other officers.  They were both in their mid-twenties and seemed relaxed and calm.  Hajashan was second in command of the 92nd, with a background in supply and logistics.  Salah's background was engineering.  
Hajashan gripped my hand.  Firm grip, not held too long.  He looked me over fast.  He was a hayseed from one of the agricultural districts; it showed in the way he stood and in his accent.  That didn't bother me.  My father was from one of the ag areas.  He said, "Ready to fight?"  
"Yes, I am," I said.  
Salah was slower to offer his grip and held it too long.  He also looked me over too long.  
"Good to have you in the 92nd," he said, but I didn't think he was sincere.  
"Get him to his quarters and introduce him to his men," the Steel Bar said.  "Mission briefing in two hours, my quarters."  
"Got him, sir," Hajashan said, and the Steel Bar left.  Hajashan asked Salah to prepare my men.  "You'll need to perform a weapons inspection as soon as you're equipped," Hajashan said to me.  "Chance to meet your men.  What have you been told?"  
"Nothing," I said.  
"Right.  Let's go.  I'll brief you on the way to your quarters."  
I'd never been inside Hashaktab's Rock.  The mountain is sixteen metapaces long and nine wide.  It's shot through with tunnels sheathed in metal.  It's as near to impregnable as a place can be.  Before the War it was only for senior officers and central government.  When the Döckálfs destroyed Palactan and Imnesh the senior command turned the Rock into operations headquarters.  It filled up with soldiers and equipment.  
"The 92nd's a light infantry battle group assembled for this mission," Hajashan told me.  "It's made up of three fists of thirty-five soldiers each.  Each fist is comprised of five fingers with six men and a finger leader.  Yours is first fist.  Salah's got second, and I've got third.  The Steel Bar's in charge of the overall operation.  We haven't gotten the mission orders yet, so don't ask."  
"What happened?"  All I'd heard at Bright Point were rumors.  
"Six days ago a group of Döckálf energy manipulators descended on the Rock and brought fire down on the city.  You saw."  He asked questions like most ag people, with statements.
"Yes."  
"We lost the 16th Battle Group, the 7th Battle Group, the 2nd Battlesuit Corps and the 9th Armored in the first hour.  That was how the Döckálfs announced they were here.  Since then they've been pounding the Rock with their electromagnetic storms.  So far it's holding up."
"Did they say why?"  
"No."  He stopped and tapped a door.  "Here're your quarters.  We already drew your equipment.  We'll go over it, and once you get it stowed I'll take you to your men."  
After we checked my equipment he led me to first fist.  They snapped to when I entered their troop hall; Salah had them waiting.  They were good men, healthy and strong.  They had the best armor-fabric uniforms we have, and their weapons—pulsers and sonics—were solid arms.  Most of them were several years my senior, but that wasn't a problem.  In the Sergian military the officers are in command.  Soldiers understand that from their first day in the service.  I inspected their weapons and commended them on their state of readiness.  Then I released them to their finger leaders, and we iron bars went to receive the mission.  
The Steel Bar's briefing was concise.  "First, background," he said.  "Six days ago a group of eleven Döckálf energy manipulators attacked Hashaktab's Rock.  They've given no indication of their grievance or their terms.  From their continued attacks on the Rock and Ravcanvoor, the Table assumes they mean to destroy at least those two areas."  
"They've said nothing," Hajashan asked.  
"Correct.  Until today our response to their assault has been defensive.  There are elements of the Battlesuit Corps looking for their energy manipulators, but so far they've found nothing.  Apparently the Döckálfs can conceal themselves from our equipment.  It may be a while before the Corps can find them.  
"The Table has decided to hold the defensive posture until the Döckálfs formally state their intentions.  Our mission arises from this decision.  The Döckálfs are currently moving a cold air mass over Ravcanvoor.  It'll arrive in a few days.  The city will need firewood, and we're going to provide it.  The 92nd and three other battle groups will be flown into Balon's eastern jungle.  We're going to establish a base and log until the Battlesuit Corps can find the Döckálfs.  We'll be supported by the 35th Engineers and the 84th Support Group.  Our mission has no end date."  
In the stories everyone tells today they make it sound as though we were excited to go to war.  I don't remember excitement.  Tension.  Fear.  We were resisting the Döckálfs, and we knew what the Döckálfs had done to Thalarar when those people resisted.  That happened a long time ago, but no one forgets examples like that.  Three and a half million people reduced to half a million slaves in a few years.  Crassia's wealthiest nation turned to desert inside a decade.  Every major city and town torn stone from stone.  That was likely going to be us.  
Hajashan said, "There are problems, of course, sir."  
The Steel Bar laid them out.  Balon was wilderness rich in timber and minerals.  The governments of Varin, Atlan and Decadurinis had colonies there to harvest raw materials.  There were also settlements of nonaligned political and religious malcontents.  All towns were along the coasts.  The inland areas were controlled by nomadic tribal peoples.  When the settlements tried to expand inland the tribals stopped them.  They poisoned water supplies, burned fields, destroyed towns.  Expansion stopped.  
The 92nd was going inland, where the big trees grew.  An exploration team had been through the area thirty years before us and left extensive records.  They'd had positive contact with a group of settlers who had managed to survive inland.  We would try to contact the same people.  We hoped for their cooperation, but obviously we couldn't count on it.  
That ended the briefing.  I didn't understand why the Table ordered defensive action when the Döckálfs were clearly trying to destroy us.  I thought we should counterattack immediately.  As I said, I was twenty.  Salah said he'd heard our government had been caught conspiring against the Döckálfs and was trying to placate them, but that was rumor.  The only reason I could think of for the Table refusing to declare war was fear of the Döckálfs.  

Two days after I joined the 92nd a cargo jumper took us to Balon.  The jumper was a big one, egg-shaped with a flat bottom.  Single pilot.  He opened the doors, saw that we got our gear stowed properly and told us to sit down, shut up and enjoy the jump.  Then he sat in the chair at the pointed end of the egg.  That's the only seat in a cargo jumper.  The rest of us sat on the floor and held onto the cargo struts.  
"Storms around the Rock," he told us.  "We're going up fast.  Hold on."  
There were sounds above the jumper—the bay opening and the Corpsmen firing to clear away any freaks that were at the entrance.  Then the jumper leapt out of the bay.  Son-of-a-bitch pilot.  Fast meant fast.  We sprawled.  Salah threw up, and the Steel Bar's face turned red.  Then the jumper hit bad air, and we listed sideways.  Men slid against the walls and tumbled over each other and cursed.  Hajashan rolled with it and grinned.  My guts turned over.  
One of the finger leaders from third fist, Ahalman, shouted, "Pilot!  How much are the Döckálfs paying you to kill us?"  
The Steel Bar said, "As you were."  
Then we were through the bad air and away.  After that the jump was smooth.  It was the longest one I'd taken, three hours.  I'd never been outside Sergi before and was tense.  I think everyone was.  The pilot made the floor transparent so we had a view.  We flew over the desert south of Ravcanvoor and then southeast over the sea between Sergi and Balon.  We officers used the jump to discuss the mission, and I didn't look down until the men started talking about jungle.  Very green down there.  Balon's essentially a long, narrow mountain range that rose volcanically out of the sea.  Then jungle grew on it.  Some of the mountains are so high they're capped with frozen water year around.  The pilot took us down for a closer look.  It was rugged.  The stone formations were sharp, and the growth was dense.  Lot of cover for tribals.  
A few minutes after we reached Balon we arrived over our target, a wide plain.  It was dense jungle with a muddy-brown lake at the eastern edge.  The pilot flew a wide circle while the Steel Bar decided where to ground.  There was an island on the east side of the lake, half a metapace from shore.  The entire island was cultivated, and there were people working the fields.  We could see the settlers' village, a circle of thatch huts surrounded by a palisade.  We estimated three hundred inhabitants.  That was about fifty more than had been there when the exploration team went through.  Clearly they'd persevered against the tribals.  
"Where do you want to ground, sir?" the pilot called back to the Steel Bar.  
"Island, sir," Hajashan suggested.  
"No, Iron Bar.  We'd damage their crops."  He called, "There should be a clearing on the east side of the lake."  The exploration team had blasted out the clearing with a fire burster.  Nothing substantial was going to grow there for decades.  
"I see it, sir.  Hold on, gentlemen."  We grabbed cargo struts when he said that.  He had to break through canopy to make room for the jumper, but the grounding was still smoother than the jump-away.  The men cheered when the pilot made the doors open, until the mosquitoes swarmed in.  That got us moving.  I deployed first fist as the security element, two hundred paces out from the lake in an arc.  Second and third fists unloaded equipment while the engineers assessed the site.  When they affirmed it as a good location the Steel Bar gave the order to encamp.  The traditional peacetime mission of the Sergian military is to build infrastructure like roads, aqueducts and fortifications.  The men of the 92nd were expert builders.  All the engineers did was supervise.  Second fist felled timber, and third set up tents and began a survey of the immediate area.  
The Steel Bar looked out at the island and said, "Iron Bar Hajashan, you've got the camp until we return.  Iron Bar S'rtan and I are going to visit the settlers."  
"Sir," Hajashan said.  
The Steel Bar and I went to the lake.  We'd brought a skiff in the jumper but didn't need it.  The settlers came to us.  As the Steel Bar and I reached the lake shore four dug-out canoes were grounding.  There were ten settlers in each.  They were a primitive group, as the exploration team had reported.  Originally they came from Decadurinis, but they were already adapting to the jungle.  They were Decadurinian height but much more muscular.  Heavier.  They were naked except for waist cloths and hide vests.  They looked healthy.  They carried spears, throwing clubs, bows and a few steel scimitars from the old country.  Nothing that could hurt us.  That looked good.  If they survived against the tribals, we'd have no problem.  
Most of them held back, but two of them walked straight to us.  That was their leader—the 'het'—and his wife.  They were the only ones of the group who walked like Decadurinians, erect and proud.  They were both well into middle age.  He wore the same as the other men and carried a steel scimitar.  She wore soft hide leggings and a suede vest.  She had bracelets of twisted grasses and plant materials.  Their most striking aspect was their eyes.  Black and secretive.  
The het said, "So.  You return."
I translated for the Steel Bar.  Their language was a corruption of Decadurinian with animal sounds added.  The exploration team had noted the variations, and I'd had the better part of two days to study their report.  Linguistics and communications is my background.  The communications training was useless in Balon.  Our long-talk equipment doesn't work that far from Ravcanvoor.  But I could translate.  
The Steel Bar said, "We need information, het of the lake people."  
"Come with us to Isn Don," the het said.  That was the name of the settlement.  It means "safe place" in Decadurinian.  
The trip across the lake was unnerving.  Four men paddled each canoe, and the rest literally stood security, pointing their weapons at the water.  
 "There are monsters in the lake," the het said.  "Big."  
"What do they look like?" the Steel Bar asked.  
"They change shapes.  Now they are crocodiles, now they are frogs as large as a man."  
"I see," the Steel Bar said.  "Iron Bar?"  
"The exploration team said the settlers are animists, sir.  Maybe there are several big animals in the lake that the settlers think of as one animal."  
"Maybe."  
As we crossed the lake the jumper left.  Some of the settlers watched it rise but immediately went back to lake watch.  I thought less of them for that.  Any fool could see how useful air power was.  They should have been more interested in the jumper.  They'd clearly regressed.  
When we reached the island the het and his wife led us to Isn Don.  The entire island was irrigated and planted with fruit trees and vegetables.  There was a big pen full of domesticated wild pigs next to the palisade.  As we walked the settlers put down their tools and followed us.  We got a good look at the settlement as we went in.  The palisade was ten paces high, each log a pace and a half thick.  It hadn't been built for show.  Either the tribals were tougher than we'd estimated, or some of the local predators were larger than the exploration team had encountered.  The het's wife pointed out yellow flowers growing on vines on the outer palisade.  
"Poison.  Any animal that crushes them gets sick.  If it swallows any it dies."  
I translated, and the Steel Bar said, "Impressive."  It certainly was.  I wondered what threat required palisade and poison flowers both.  I also wondered what they had in reserve.  
Inside the palisade were two circles of thatched huts with mud brick walls.  The outside circle of huts was built against the inside of the palisade, and the inner circle was freestanding huts.  The het and his wife led us to a central clearing about fifty paces across.  Then they sat facing us and motioned for us to join them.  Women came out of the huts with meat stew, and we ate.  The settlers formed a circle around us, and when there were about two hundred the het and his wife set down their bowls and asked questions.  They were direct and blunt:  Were we of the same people who had come thirty years earlier to explore the jungle?  Why were we back?  Why were we building a camp?  How many of us were there?  How long would we be near Isn Don?  
The Steel Bar was equally direct with his answers.  The Table's orders regarding the settlers were explicit:  They were an unrecognized political unit but considered friendly.  We were to consider them a source of information on local conditions and were authorized to pay them with tools and low-level services.  The orders pertaining to the tribals were more general, since the tribals were unknown:  ignore if possible, appease if the cost was low, take appropriate steps to end resistance if they were hostile.  Since we couldn't communicate with military command, policy on the ground would come from Steel Bar Danaat.  
When the het and his wife finished their questions it was our turn.  The Steel Bar wanted to know about local predators and diseases.  He wanted to know which plants were edible and which were toxic.  He wanted to know about the tribals.  The het seemed pleased to share what he knew, especially about the tribals.  It was impossible to tell what he was feeling, but other settlers began whispering and rustling.  The tribals clearly caused them concern.  
The het told us, "We fought them when we first came here.  Many times.  We thought they'd kill all of us until we found this island.  They won't cross water.  We don't know why.  They hunt at night and speak with animal sounds.  They take prisoners and torture them to death.  They live in groups of thirty to forty and keep animals as pets.  The ones around here have big cats.  They use blowguns, spears, throwing clubs, plant acids and poison spores.  They have magicians who make plant and animal magic.  My wife also makes magic, and sometimes she fights their magicians.  The tribal people will not like you coming to the jungle.  They will fight you."  
"Magicians?" the Steel Bar said to me.  
"Herbalists?" I said.  "Toxin specialists?"  
"Maybe."
The het wanted to introduce us to his people, one by one, but the Steel Bar nulled that.  The light was fading, and he wanted to get back.  The het invited us to return whenever we wanted, and the Steel Bar invited him to camp.  Ten of them took up arms and escorted us across the lake.  
Camp was well along.  Our men had clear-cut the jungle back fifty paces from shore and used the fallen logs to start our own palisade.  Inside the palisade tents were up.  Supplies had been stowed.  Outside the palisade the 84th cleared away more jungle.  The clearing was our killing field.  Anything trying to cross it to reach the camp was an easy target.  The First Engineer reported that the palisade would be up in two days and the camp completed in four.  
"You have one day for the palisade," the Steel Bar told him.  "Take as long as you need for camp, but I want the logs up by tomorrow this time.  Spike the lake shore, heavy spikes deeply set.  There are big animals in the lake.  Put in springers.  Leave two paths, clearly marked."  
That was the first taste we had of Steel Bar Danaat's tactical style:  security, security, security.  The men alternated shifts through the night and cleared out all growth to one hundred paces.  They got the palisade up and lashed the logs together.  We spiked the lake shore and buried the springers.  We placed the five field lights on the palisade.  We also mounted the 92nd's two rapid-pulsers up there, where they could rake the killing field.  Guard posts were stationary and close together so sentries could see each other.  
"Good start," the Steel Bar said.  
The next week was the hardest I'd ever worked.  We replaced the tents with wooden buildings and set up a water filtration system that fed from the lake.  We pushed the killing field out to two hundred and fifty paces and leveled an area for the cargo jumper.  We cleared a space next to the palisade for timber storage and sank logs into the ground as tracks so we could skid the timber across the killing field straight into the jumper.  
We also started logging.  Our quota was ten thousand stones' weight of wood a day, and we worked long hours to get it.  We used sonics to fell the trees and chop them into logs and blocks-and-tackle to move those.  If you've never seen one, a sonic is egg-shaped and fits in the palm.  There's a stud on top that you press to make the unit emit a cone of high-pitched sound.  The cone can be shaped for wide-angle fire or tightened to a cutting plane.  It's effective to fifteen paces.    
We set rosters the second day in camp.  There were three main duties—camp guard, logging and logging guard—and three fists.  Duties rotated daily, so each fist had two days in the jungle and one in camp.  Engineers and support staff had their own duties and didn't participate in the general roster.  We were up at daybreak and logged until endmeal.  After that there was equipment to maintain and hygiene to attend to.  
The Steel Bar issued orders for unit security.  No one went into the jungle alone.  No one pushed ahead of the group.  No one was to fire a weapon unless the target was clear.  When the day's wood was logged out the fist on logging guard was to pulp all remaining growth to mulch.  No hiding places for tribals.  Even with that level of caution there were incidents.  During our second day in camp a soldier from second fist shot a group of blossoms that he said were tracking him.  The flowers burst and shot seeds into his face and hands.  They started growing immediately.  One of the medtechs had to dig them out, nearly twenty of them, and kill the roots with acid.  If it wasn't for the armor-fabric of his uniform he would have taken hundreds of them, and the medtech would have had to kill him.  
We were used to heat but not humidity.  We rushed into the work without acclimatizing, and that cost us.  More than a dozen men suffered heat exhaustion, and two had heat stroke.  There were rashes and fungus.  We took to sponging each other down with mild acid at day's end to kill the fungus.  Some of the men had reactions to the acid.  
The exploration team had noted troublesome insects, but we hadn't imagined what jungle was like.  In Sergi there are mosquitoes and a few biting flies in the agricultural areas.  In Balon there are thousands of kinds of pest insects.  Mosquitoes were with us day and night.  We knew from the exploration team that the mosquitoes carried diseases, so we put netting over our cots.  That didn't help outside.  We sprayed bug juice around camp until the place reeked of it.  That kept the weak mosquitoes away but didn't slow the aggressive ones.  
Bug juice didn't stop the digging wasps, either.  During the fourth day in camp a soldier from third fist felt sharp pains in his neck.  By the time the medtechs came he was screaming.  The muscles in the back of his neck were jumping.  I saw that.  When the First Medtech cut his way in he found a chamber the size of a radish that wasp larvae had eaten out.  The blue-and-orange wasps were the parasites.  They landed on exposed skin and chewed a hole in the outer layer.  You usually didn't feel it happening.  Then the wasp tucked eight or ten eggs under the skin.  A couple days later they hatched, and the larvae chewed out a nest to incubate in.  After that we checked each other for eggs before we bedded down.  
There were other insects, none as ugly.  There was a small, red beetle that stank up a whole barracks if you stepped on one.  There were stinging and biting flies.  There were mantises as long as a man's forearm that seemed attracted to the camp.  When the men found that those ate other insects they tied mantises to their cot frames with little leashes.  The Steel Bar encouraged that.  
"Good for spirit for the men to have pets," he said.  I didn't care for it, personally.  There were enough insects in camp without bringing mantises in.  Besides, they excreted good-sized piles, and with forty of them in the barracks you were always stepping in it.  
The mood of the camp was manic.  We rose early and bent straight to work and didn't stop until we'd made our quota of timber for the day.  There was no complaining and no slouching.  A lot of men had had family or friends at Palactan and Imnesh.  
Three days after we grounded in Balon the cargo jumper came for the first load of timber.  The pilot brought bad news.  The Döckálfs' cold weather had arrived.  Cloud cover was so dense that the sun couldn't break through.  Night temperatures had already dropped below the freezing point of water and would worsen.  Crops around the city were dying, and the Table had ordered evacuation of livestock to outlying areas.  There were rumors that the Table would order full evacuation, but the pilot didn't believe it.  
"They won't surrender Ravcanvoor," he said.  "Not now that we've withstood the first assault.  With this timber we can hold out until the Corps does its job."  We officers agreed.  
It took most of that day to load the jumper.  We had twenty thousand stones' weight of timber to put on board.  We argued over whether to cut it into short lengths or stow it as logs, and the Steel Bar decided logs.  
"Let the rear echelon cut it up," he said.  "We've got enough to do here."  
Loading the timber was like working a puzzle.  Sometimes the engineers had to have the men pull out a group of logs and try again.  After we'd loaded the jumper several times we got good at it, but the first loads were frustrating.  When the jumper left it rose slowly and didn't go much higher than the treetops.  The pilot told us later it had taken him six hours to return to Ravcanvoor.  
The tribals probed us as soon as the cargo jumper left.  That was at dusk.  Second fist was logging, and third fist was on guard at the edge of the killing field.  They were supposed to be alert, but I think they were watching the jumper leave.  First fist was on camp guard, so I was on the palisade when the shooting started.  One moment the jumper was disappearing over the mountains.  The next moment arrows and spears were falling onto the killing field.  
We weren't ready for an attack.  The men in second and third fists shouted and fired wild.  Dust and leaves and chips of wood flew everywhere.  Trees crashed down.  Some men charged toward the trees while others fell back.  Finger leaders rallied their troops but didn't have them do anything.  Hajashan ordered a retreat, but with all the sonics pinging no one heard him.  
I ordered the rapid-pulsers fired, and my men activated them.  I think that ended the attack.  There's a long pause after you activate rapid-pulsers, before they're ready to fire.  During that interval they make a high-pitched keening that's uncomfortable to us and must have been very unpleasant for the tribals.  They screeched and shot arrows at the palisade, none of which reached us.  Third and second fists finally pulled back with their casualties.  
  The Steel Bar came out of his hut, shouting, "Fire!  Fire!"  So we fired the rapid-pulsers into the trees for a full minute.  Red pulses covered the killing field like a net.  The pulses set fires in the trees, but those didn't last.  Foliage was too wet.  Then the Steel Bar called cease-fire.  Our first encounter with the tribals lasted two minutes.  
We'd talked about our response to tribal attacks, of course.  We'd agreed that after an attack we'd mount an immediate counterattack to show our strength.  But the Steel Bar nulled that.  
"No one goes out in the dark," he said.  "We don't need the risks."  
I almost argued his decision, but I didn't have the balls.  He was fifteen years my senior and my commanding officer.  But I thought that if the tribals saw they could attack us with impunity they'd harass us just to disrupt operations.  We had to hurt them, and we couldn't do that from two hundred paces away.  
There were five wounded and two dead.  One had been hit in the hand with a poisoned dart.  The other had his throat torn by a big cat.  He was a bloody mess.  Other men carried him to the medtechs.  His blood dripped all over.  I had two men clean it up so it wouldn't attract animals.  Steel Bar Danaat was furious and called second and third fists into the mess to debrief them.  I stayed on the palisade with my men and listened to him shout until he was hoarse.  
My father told me you learn more about a man in one minute of anger than in a year of friendship.  What I heard when Steel Bar Danaat was angry was questions.  Who had been where?  What had happened?  How had the tribals approached seventy men without being detected?  Questions, not orders.  He didn't want to knock them back, he wanted better security.  He'd completely adopted the Bright Point motto.  
He said, "Third fist, these casualties fall squarely on you.  You were supposed to be on guard.  You thought logging was tough?  You're going to be on logging guard every day.  You'd better learn to keep your eyes and ears open.  Hajashan, you'll be right there with them.  These tribals use stone-tipped weapons.  They have bows and arrows and spears.  Toys!  Now get out there and do your jobs.  I don't want any more dead soldiers."  
Damned right he didn't.  Ours was a low-risk mission.  Dead soldiers would reflect poorly on his command.  We were three days in camp and had two dead and five wounded.  Those were the sorts of statistics that were noticed.  
The men came out of the debriefing angry.  Especially third fist.  They cursed under their breath and threw angry looks at Salah and Hajashan.  Finger Leader Ahalman said to Hajashan, "Sir, why are we letting the tribals get away with this?  Why aren't we riding them?"  
"Steel Bar nulled that, Finger Leader.  You heard."  
"We should hit them now, sir.  Right now."  
"At ease, Finger Leader.  If we had done our jobs this never would have happened."  
I saw Ahalman's face from my position on top the palisade.  He was from one of the deep desert settlements.  Thin-faced and intense.  For two heartbeats I thought he'd assault Hajashan, but then he said, "We'll be watching from now on, sir.  Always."  
"We'd better, Finger Leader."  
Ahalman saluted Hajashan and took his men to their quarters.  Hajashan watched him go, and then he looked up at me on the palisade.  I glanced at the jungle, and he nodded.  We should have hit the tribals.  We should have ridden them hard.  
The morning after the tribals attacked the het and his wife came to camp to ask what had happened.  The Steel Bar was curt.  We'd lost two soldiers and hadn't inflicted a single confirmed kill.  He didn't want to talk about it.  
"My wife has magic," the het said.  "She can find out for you how many tribals in this group.  She can find out for you where they are camped."  
"Thank you," the Steel Bar said, "but I know the size of their group:  not large enough to overrun the camp, but large enough to inflict casualties.  They've got big cats, as you told us.  Thank you for coming, but we have timber to cut.  We'll come to your island if we need help."  I softened the translation, but the Steel Bar's tone was clear.  
"I see," the het said.  
I disagreed with the Steel Bar's handling of that, too.  The settlers knew the tribals.  We should have worked with them.  
"My wife will search anyway," the het said.  "We will come to tell you what she learns."  
"Thank you," I said.  
His wife didn't say anything.  I think the Steel Bar had already lost her sympathies.  
Steel Bar Danaat drove third fist hard.  Every day for a week he had Hajashan in his quarters, criticizing his handling of his men and questioning his tactics.  Hajashan passed it down.  Logging became aggressive.  Third fist swept into the tree line right after dawn and blasted away the undergrowth and shot into the canopy.  Once they'd secured an area fifty paces deep the fist on logging duty moved in and felled timber.  Then they hauled out the logs, and the engineers skidded them across the killing field to the palisade.  Once an area was logged out third fist advanced again.  The most dangerous times were the sweeps, since the tribals could ambush then.  But with third fist going in firing the tribals were risking heavy casualties.  
Instead they changed tactics.  Two days after their attack a man from third fell into a pit full of spikes the tribals had defecated on.  None of the spikes penetrated his uniform, but he broke a leg and an arm.  The same afternoon another man stepped on a cord and released a log deadfall that crushed his skull.  When the cargo jumper came we put the dead on it and sent them back with the timber.  Injured men stayed with us to heal.  The Steel Bar requested our first replacements.  
The traps and the threat of tribal attack sharpened third fist.  They began to vary their movements to keep the tribals guessing.  At times they went into the tree line firing, and at other times they went in ten or fifteen paces before they fired.  They used pulsers and sonics both.  We didn't know if they ever hit any tribals or their cats.  We never found bodies.  Finger Leader Ahalman and his men became third's lead finger.  They were first into the jungle in the morning and last out at night.  They found more traps than any other finger.  They had fewer injuries.  At the end of the day, when other men talked about people back in Sergi, they talked about the tribals.  About what they'd seen.  About how to fight them.  They were fanatical.  
We still had men injured and killed.  The tribals employed all sorts of traps:  deadfalls, bent branches with stakes tied to them, pits, snares, foot manglers.  We had kneecaps shattered, throats crushed, arms and legs broken.  On average a soldier died every fifteen days, and one was injured every twelve.  We got used to seeing maimed limbs.  
Replacements came.  The Steel Bar put them in third fist, since third had the most dead.  When there were openings in other fists he rotated men from third into those.  Rotating was the only way out of third.  That or dying.  Once Hajashan asked the Steel Bar to consider the welfare of his men, and the Steel Bar told him, "Iron Bar, your men got people killed.  They stay on the line until I'm convinced they're sharp."  He only rotated them to camp guard every sixth day, to rest.  
We iron bars started talking about the Steel Bar's command style.  None of us had seen a commanding officer so focused on security.  Bright Point encourages that kind of thinking, but he was years out of Bright Point.  We knew he was career, eighteen years' service.  His father had been in the 14th Ground, attached to engineers.  Doing what, we didn't know.  The Steel Bar had served his first three years at Bright Point and the next four at Feldspar, another Twilight Marsh fort.  The rest had been at Fort Palactan, but we didn't know what he'd been doing there.  The 92nd had been assembled quickly, and there hadn't been time to ask around.  
"We have to divert him toward the tribals and away from camp defense," I said once.  
"Defense is fine with me," Salah said.  "We don't need to go out there.  He's right."  
"The man's obsessed with security," Hajashan said.  "He's not going to change because of a few casualties and some sniping from his junior officers.  It's best to stay quiet and not set him against us.  When he's feeling more aggressive we can suggest another raid."  
So we waited, and the 92nd cut timber.  The pilot brought more bad news.  When we'd been in Balon two months he told us people had been found frozen in Ravcanvoor.  The Table refused to evacuate the city.  They weren't going to give even an appearance of Döckálf victory.  Consensus was behind them.  The civilians had realized that the Döckálfs weren't going to destroy us easily and didn't want to surrender Ravcanvoor.  The Steel Bar asked for news about the other logging missions, but the pilot said he wasn't working with them and had no news.  That meant anything he heard was unofficial, and he wasn't risking proceedings by repeating it.  The Steel Bar had to worry about his casualties without comparison with the other battle groups.  
During our third month in camp a man was eaten in the lake.  He was from second fist, which had camp guard that day.  Apparently he decided that since he hadn't seen any animals in the water there weren't any.  He and two buddies went to the lake, and he'd gone in first.  The other two men said he'd waded in and swam about forty paces before his body was lifted a full pace out of the water.  There was a lot of blood.  They both saw something in the water but couldn't agree what.  One man said it reminded him of a frog and the other said a snake.  It took the corpse with it.  The Steel Bar rotated the other two men into third fist.  
"They weren't getting enough excitement in second," he told Salah.  "They'll have some now."  
We threw six electrical bursters into the lake behind camp and got a patch of blood as large as a fighter jumper.  The animal never surfaced.  No one else went swimming.  
After that the routine was stable.  We sent back timber and the dead and assimilated the replacements.  We checked each other for parasites and endured acid-baths.  Rats moved into camp, and the men killed them as a pastime.  I ordered the mantises put out of first fists' barracks, but the Steel Bar nulled the order and had a mantis put in my room.  I tied it under the cot, where I didn't have to see it or step in its excrement.  At night the damned thing crawled around and scraped the bottom of the cot with its front legs.  I'd have killed it, but the Steel Bar would have had another brought.  
During that time I heard men from third fist talking about Hajashan and a finger leader who'd stumbled into a spiked log trap.  They'd been investigating a sound when one of them tripped a cord that released a spiked log deadfall.  The log hung up on branches for a moment, and Hajashan gripped the finger leader's arm and pulled him out of the way.  The finger leader had been so shaken he'd had to pull security while Hajashan finished investigating the sound.  Later the finger leader told his men how calm Hajashan had been during the incident.  I didn't know if that story was true, but it told me what Hajashan's men thought of him.  
Four months into the War the pilot came in looking exhausted and frightened.  "They've destroyed the Twilight Marsh forts," he said.  
"Which ones?" the Steel Bar said.  There were five.  
"All of them.  And Torsyth."  That was the largest city in northern Sergi.  "The Döckálfs pounded them for three days.  There's nothing left."  
That news punched the wind out of me.  The Twilight Marsh forts were our training centers.  More than seven thousand people were stationed in them.  They held a third of our heavy equipment.  It wouldn't matter how long the Rock held, if the Döckálfs destroyed everything else.  
Salah hiccuped and flashed ugly red.  His wife had been at Feldspar.  The Steel Bar didn't look any better.  His parents had lived in Torsyth.  Hajashan nodded and rolled with it.  So far as I knew he didn't have family in those areas.  Neither did I.  
"The Table has declared war on Seligar," the pilot said.  "They've killed the Döckálf liaison in Ravcanvoor and had the Air Corps destroy the Döckálf outpost at Ospey."  
The Steel Bar said, "I see.  Thank you for the news."  He could hardly talk.  
That evening we passed word to the finger leaders about the Twilight Marsh forts and Torsyth.  They were stunned.  Before then we could tell ourselves it wasn't war.  The Döckálfs might have been testing us to see how we'd react.  They might have been doing any number of things.  Now their intentions were clear.  
That news was a heavy blow to the 92nd's spirit, but we didn't have a chance to falter.  Two days later the tribals began using poison.  A soldier from my fist was cutting up a tree they'd smeared with a transparent contact poison and got it on his hands.  The medtechs tried antitoxins that didn't work.  They sedated him, but his internal organs ruptured, and he bled to death.  After that we had to strip the bark off with sonics before we could cut up the logs.  
The Steel Bar was finally angry enough to propose a night mission against the tribals, to catch them when they were setting traps and spreading poisons.  We iron bars supported him.  The 92nd had had fourteen men dead and nearly thirty maimed.  We needed to knock the tribals back.  
It's difficult to describe what that was like, planning our first combat mission.  None of us had ever participated in a raid.  We went over the equipment until we knew every piece of gear in camp and argued for an hour over whose fist would lead the assault element.  We talked about the terrain, the weather and the tribals' tactics and probable strength.  We debated asking the jumper pilot for a ride to look for the tribals' camp.  We were up all night.
The next day the jumper flew in erratically and set down hard.  Its hull was gouged with gashes as long as a man's hand and as deep as the first knuckle.  They looked like claw marks, but that couldn't have been.  Nothing can damage hull metal except sustained fire by other jumpers or battlesuits.  Even the Döckálfs couldn't damage that metal significantly.  But something had mauled the jumper.  
"Bad storm leaving the Rock," the pilot said.  "The jumper was hit."  He didn't say by what.
"How would you like some easy flying?" the Steel Bar asked him.  
We flew two circles around the lake but didn't see a tribal camp.  There were no rock outcroppings where they might base and no visible settlements.  The pilot grounded, and the 92nd loaded his jumper.  He had more bad news.  
"The Table has effected rationing.  Our food has been cut thirty percent.  Civilians are cut to half."  That didn't surprise us.  After Torsyth was destroyed we'd expected shortages.  
"The Table still won't evacuate Ravcanvoor, but people are running.  When I left the Rock this morning they were on the roads."  
"Many?" the Steel Bar asked.  
"No, sir.  But any seems like too many, doesn't it?"  
I agreed with him.  The Döckálfs would hit us harder when they saw civilians running.  Those people should have been rounded up and dragged back.  
While the 92nd loaded the jumper we officers prepared our attack against the tribals.  The Steel Bar chose my fist as the strike element.  We'd taken the lightest casualties and had the best spirit.  First finger was outfitted with body armor, helmets, gauntlets and heavy sonics.  The finger leader, Mohaja, carried three electrical bursters.  He grinned when I handed them to him.  His men were hard-eyed and ready.  They wanted to give some of what the 92nd had been taking.  
I wasn't going with them.  I was on the palisade.  The operation on the ground belonged to Finger Leader Mohaja.  He was to lead his element across the killing field and along the tree line until they heard or saw tribal activity.  At that point he was to throw an electrical burster into the trees.  Back on the palisade third fist would take that as the signal to turn on the field lights.  The assault element would fire on any tribals they saw.  They would pursue no farther than twenty paces into the trees and then only if they saw a rout.  Otherwise they'd strike from the tree line.  They'd withdraw at Mohaja's discretion or when any of his men were injured or killed.  One finger from second fist would follow them to provide fire support in case the tribals counterattacked.  That was it.  We wanted a simple, clean mission.  We almost got it.  
The mission started as soon as the jumper left and the last light was gone.  Finger Leader Mohaja's element slipped out the gate and crawled across the killing field with the support element fifty paces behind them.  I went up on the palisade with the other officers.  After the assault element had gone a hundred paces we couldn't see them and were forced to wait for their signal.
That didn't come for almost an hour.  The Steel Bar paced back and forth until he realized the men were watching him.  "Where are they?" he said.  "What's taking so long?"  
But they weren't having a problem.  They were just being careful.  They'd "moved with extraordinary caution and quiet and got to the tree line without incident."  That's what Finger Leader Mohaja stated in the debriefing.  At the tree line they'd heard movement and sounds like whispering.  They'd heard branches being bent and other sounds of traps being made.  Finger Leader Mohaja activated a burster and threw it toward the sounds.  The burster destroyed an area thirty paces in diameter.  As soon as the burster discharged his men started firing.  At the same time third fist activated the field lights and fired at the tree line with the rapid-pulsers.  The killing field was completely lit by the flashes.  Another burster discharged fifty paces north of the first.  Mohaja had distributed his bursters in case he was killed.  
Half a minute into the raid events were clear and in our favor.  Men said later they'd seen tribals when the bursters discharged.  They were able to target silhouettes and saw bodies fall.  Weapons fire from the palisade was well above them.  Several men said that big cats moved onto the killing field, but they drove them back.  We didn't see that from the palisade.  No cat tracks were found.  
Then something happened.  There was confusion at the tree line, and Mohaja's element was attacked.  From the palisade we couldn't see who attacked or how, but we saw the pulser flashes from Mohaja's men waver.  Mohaja fired his retreat pulse, and his men pulled back.  The support element provided covering fire.  Then the third burster discharged on the killing field.  It wasn't thrown far enough, or it hit a tree and bounced back.  The discharge killed two of Mohaja's men.  
The two elements retreated to camp, and the Steel Bar met them at the gate.  They were overwrought and babbling.  Two men were dead.  Three more, including Mohaja, had been injured by thrown clubs.  Rank Second Class Lamis was missing.  One man wouldn't put his sonic away until Mohaja directly ordered him to.  The Steel Bar ordered the medtechs to attend to the injured during the debriefing.  Salah stayed on the palisade to watch for counterattack, and Hajashan and I joined the Steel Bar in the mess hall.  
The debriefing was raw.  We'd had never debriefed overwrought men who'd been in the thick of fighting.  We didn't know what to ask, and they didn't know how to answer.  
"Sir, there were bundji in the trees," one man told me.  Those are spirits that mothers in Ravcanvoor make up to keep children from wandering into the desert.  
"There are no bundji," I said.  "What was it you saw?"  
"Bundji, sir," he said.  "They leapt from tree to tree.  At least thirty paces, sir."  
"Soldier, nothing can jump thirty paces, not even Twilight Marsh freaks," the Steel Bar said.  "Describe what you saw."  
"There were cats, sir," Mohaja said.  "Twenty or more.  Yellow eyes, sir.  In the lights."  
"They counterattacked, sir," another soldier from first fist said.  "Right away."  
"No, it was after the second burster," a man from second fist said.  "I know I hit one.  I downed at least one, sir.  We should go back for the bodies right now."  
"At ease, soldier," the Steel Bar said.  He wouldn't hear of going back.  "I want to know how that man misthrew his burster.  What happened out there?"  
"Yellow eyes, sir," Mohaja said.  "In the lights.  More than I could count."  
That was how the entire debriefing went.  One man would say something happened, and another would contradict him.  Some saw cats and others bundji.  Some didn't see anything.  
The Steel Bar finally said, "Finger Leader Mohaja, I want you to understand that my patience has ended.  These are very basic questions I am asking.  As stands your after-action report is nonsense.  I still don't know what happened or why you retreated when you did.  If I discover that you are withholding information vital to the security of this mission, I will have you shot.  Do you understand?"  
That stopped everyone.  Even Hajashan blinked.  I'd never heard of a commanding officer threatening to have a man executed for being overwrought.  But the Steel Bar was livid.  His hands were shaking.  He wanted clarity, and he was hearing confusion.  It was spooking him.  
Mohaja snapped to attention and said, "Clear, sir.  The events were very confused.  Our perceptions were strange, sir."  
"That happens, Finger Leader.  That's why we have debriefings.  What did you perceive?"  
"Sir, I—and I believe I speak for all of us in the attack element, sir—saw the plants at the edge of the jungle move.  Particularly the vines and creepers.  Sir, the plants began to move in a very rapid fashion toward us.  We fired on them, but there were a great number.  I judged them sufficient to overwhelm our force.  I ordered the retreat."  
That became their official reason for retreating:  in the middle of a successful assault on the tribals the jungle plants moved to attack the assault element.  Rank Second Class Lamis had been injured in the leg by a thrown club, and several vines had wrapped around him and dragged him into the jungle.  Then Rank Second Class Hussein had misthrown the third burster and killed himself and another man, and Mohaja ordered the retreat.  
When the Steel Bar finished his debriefing he dismissed the men and ordered the medtechs to examine them.  "The tribals used hallucinogenic drugs on them," he said.  "We know they use plant matter as weapons.  During the resulting confusion they threw lassoes and snared Rank Second Class Lamis.  The men thought the ropes were moving plants.  Further suggestions?"  
There were none.  I didn't know what had happened, but I knew the plants hadn't attacked.  The exploration team had been in the lake area for half a month.  They'd have mentioned mobile plants.  To my knowledge, no Balon exploration team had found anything like that.  
The medtechs found chemicals in the ranks' blood but didn't know if they were hallucinogenic.  The Steel Bar closed the incident and reported Rank Second Class Lamis missing in action.  
At mid-night the tribals began to pound bass drums, deep and ominous.  The Steel Bar ordered a double watch in expectation of a counterattack.  Most of the men stayed dressed and alert.  
But the tribals didn't counterattack.  They sounded their drums all night and silenced them as the sun rose.  When first light shone on the killing field sentries reported an object at the tree line.  The Steel Bar used his field glasses and then sent third fist to recover Lamis' body.  The tribals had put up a pole and lashed his remains to it.  They'd tortured him to death.  Most of his skin was missing.  The corpse was covered with vermin and blood.  The men brought it back on a field stretcher, and the medtechs cleaned it and wrapped it for shipment back to Ravcanvoor.  
The Steel Bar ordered the unit to resume logging.  He wanted to keep the men focused on our mission.  Third fist swept the jungle for tribal remains before they cleared the logging area.  They found blood but no bodies.  They found the residue of the two men who'd been killed by the misthrown burster and buried them in the killing field.  There wasn't enough to send home.  
About an hour after the 92nd started logging the het and his wife and their guards came to ask what had happened and to offer advice the Steel Bar didn't want to hear.  
"This is a very big group of jungle people," the het said.  "My wife says there were sixty-one.  Now fifty-three.  She says there were eleven cats.  Now seven.  The jungle people are very angry.  They will use their magic to drive you away."  
The Steel Bar grabbed the het's arm and pulled him toward the hut where the medtechs were examining Lamis' body.  Some of his people raised their weapons, but the het said, "No," and they lowered them again.  The Steel Bar threw open the door, and they went inside.  The breeze blew the door shut.  The het's wife glared at me.  
"They tortured a man to death," I said to her, but it was clear she didn't care.  
After a few minutes the door opened, and they came out.  The het's eyes were lowered, and he was saying, "This is what they did to our people also.  But his was a kind death.  They will do much worse in the future."  
The Steel Bar wasn't hearing.  "Iron Bar, talk to these people," he said to me.  "Find out what they know.  I want to know where she got those numbers.  Talk to them."  
I invited the settlers to the mess hall, and we ate.  I did, anyway.  They took a few polite bites of our food and said they weren't hungry.  I sympathized.  The rations were making me sick by then.  The het answered my questions.  He said his wife used magic to spy on the tribals.  That was how she counted them.  The group that was harassing us had a powerful magician with them.  It was wisest for us to leave before he used his strongest magic against us.
"They will turn the plants and animals against you.  They will not stop fighting until you are dead or you leave." 
I thanked him for his advice and saw them to their canoe.  If he was colluding with the tribals he was an excellent actor.  He seemed genuinely concerned for our safety.  I had one of my men bring his wife a dried injita fruit that had come with the latest food shipment.  She thanked me and took it but didn't meet my eyes.  
Later that day the Steel Bar called an officer's meeting to talk about the settlers.  
" 'Magic' is nonsense," he said.  "But where did she get those numbers?"  
Hajashan said, "Maybe she's assisting the tribals behind his back.  She doesn't like us."  
"She doesn't dislike us enough to do that," I said.  "When the Steel Bar and I talked with them they were bitter about their experiences with the tribals."  
"Maybe they think we're worse," Salah said.  
The Steel Bar held up his hands in the 'hypothetical situation' sign.  "The settlers are the tribals.  During the day they live on their island, and at night they harass us."  
"Maybe," Hajashan said.  "But why?  We don't intrude on them, they don't need the timber we're harvesting, and clearly we're here for the short term.  Why risk losing people?"  
The Steel Bar thought that over and said, "I want them watched.  I want to know if they ever go into the jungle.  I want to know if they're having problems with the tribals.  Next time the jumper comes I'm going to request heavy weapons.  A sphere launcher if I can get one."  
"Spheres would start significant fires, sir," Hajashan said.  "That'll impede our logging."  
"It'll also damned well impede the tribals," he said.  "Once they're knocked back or cleared out our mission can continue at full pace."  
"Maybe we can bring in someone from the Battlesuit Corps," Salah said.  "A heavy assault team."  He'd said that before.  Heavy assault battlesuits were his constant answer to the tribals.  
"The Corps is scouring Ravcanvoor for Döckálfs," the Steel Bar said.  "Command won't send them here.  I'll request the sphere launcher.  Don't forget to post men on the lake shore to watch the settlers."  That ended the meeting.  
After we'd left the Steel Bar's quarters Salah said, "He's scared."  
I said, "The debriefing shook him.  He doesn't like confusion."  
"He won't get the sphere launcher," Hajashan said.  "Not for a logging mission."  
"We should send more men with bursters," Salah said.  "That worked.  More bursters next time.  Saturate the tree line.  They'll fall back."  
"Maybe," Hajashan said.  "But he won't consider another assault mission now.  We have to wait."  That was Hajashan's strength and the thing I disliked most about him, his damned patience.  
That evening I overheard another incident between him and Finger Leader Ahalman.  They were by the lake, examining animal tracks that a sentry had noticed.  I was coming out of a latrine not far from them when Ahalman said, "My men want to lead the next assault, sir."  
"I'll take that into account, Finger Leader," Hajashan said.  
"No, sir, don't take that into account.  Get us out there in the jungle."  
Hajashan barked out, "At ease!" and Ahalman snapped to and said, "Sir!"  That was the only time I heard Hajashan snap.  He should have brought proceedings, but I think he didn't want to damage third fist's spirit by bringing proceedings against his most motivated finger leader.  And I think he thought he could keep Ahalman under control.  The man respected him, and he knew it.  
The next day we knew our assault on the tribals had hurt them, because there were no traps.  Third fist went in as usual, Ahalman's element in the lead.  No sign of the tribals.  Same the next day.  And the day after that.  At first the Steel Bar reacted with increased security.  He thought they might be preparing for a counterattack.  He doubled the palisade guard and had the field lights activated at half the usual intervals.  Nothing.  A week passed.  Then two.  Nothing.  The Steel Bar brought us back to normal security.  Two more weeks passed without traps.  When the Steel Bar's request for a sphere launcher was denied he didn't resubmit it.  
I'd thought the tension with the tribals had been bad, but the tedium after they pulled back was worse.  There'd been a pleasure in finding their traps and destroying them.  Watching for their ambushes kept us sharp.  Once they pulled back there was only logging.  We became more efficient at it, which should have made our days shorter, but every day we logged farther from camp and had to skid the logs farther.  The hours evened out.  
At night there was nowhere to go and nothing to do.  Maintenance could be done in an hour.  There was no one new to talk to because no one was being replaced.  There were no women and no alcohol, not even good, strong coffee or smoking tobacco.  All we had were card games and board games—latt and vanga, mostly—night after night.  
Everything became routine.  We cut timber, stripped logs, loaded the jumper.  We endured acid baths and searched each other for wasp eggs.  Even the news from home became monotonous.  The Döckálfs pounded the Rock, the Corps couldn't find them, no one offered our government support.  Our mission still had no end date.  There were fights in second fist, bored men getting petty.  Snipping holes in each other's insect netting.  Dropping salt in each other's water.  That sort of thing.  Salah wasn't strong enough to keep them under control.  Some of them grumbled about there being women at Isn Don.  The Steel Bar didn't like that and put out the word they were syphilitic.  I don't think the men believed it, but the threat held them back.  There's no cure for syph.  The Steel Bar also reminded the men of the lake animals, in case anyone decided to visit the island.  I don't think anyone tried.  
The discipline problems in second fist would have become serious, but about that time Atlan entered the War.  The pilot literally ran from the jumper to tell us.  
"Some of the human energy manipulators in Blackstone attacked the Döckálfs there.  Poisoned them, rumor says.  Twenty of them."  
"Twenty?" Salah said.  "How did they kill twenty Döckálfs at once?"  
"Doesn't matter how many," the Steel Bar said.  "Even if it was only one, the Döckálfs have to retaliate.  What was their response?"  
"They burnt Blackstone Library and most of the academies.  They sank the merchant fleet.  There are rumors that Luricania will go to Atlan's aid."  
We laughed.  Luricania, at war?  Had to be rumor.  But our laughter was almost hysterical.  For half a year Sergi had held fast while the Döckálfs destroyed our settlements and pounded the Rock.  For more than half a year the 92nd had been in Balon fighting tribals we couldn't see.  Now Atlan was in it, and Luricania might come in.  We weren't alone any more.  
"Don't celebrate yet," the pilot said.  "The Table is evacuating Ravcanvoor.  Over a thousand people have died from the cold.  People are moving to Lisham, Asaptat, Kavnar.  Evacuation is to be completed in two weeks.  The Table has cut your rations by another twenty percent.  You don't want to know what it's like for the civilians."  
"Will the Table recall us?" the Steel Bar asked.  "Have you heard?"  
"No, sir, I haven't.  But the 55th got notice two days ago that their firewood-gathering mission is over.  Now they're logging timber for constructing new towns outside Ravcanvoor.  I suspect your orders will change, too."  He was right.  On the next run the new orders came.  Our firewood-gathering mission was declared a success, and our orders were changed to logging timber for construction.  The new mission had no end date.  
We didn't mind the cut in rations.  They'd gotten that bad.  The news about Atlan lifted spirits even after we realized it wasn't going to bear on our immediate situation.  Men took to naming their mantises after the combatant countries and pitted them against each other and other insects—clack beetles and scorpions were favorites.  Even the men in first fist, who were steadier than the others, took to that.  I allowed it.  Fighting insects was better than fighting each other.  
As per the Steel Bar's orders we had men watching the settlers' island that entire time.  As far as we saw they almost never left it.  They fished from its shores and sometimes put boats out on the lake to net-fish, but they never grounded on the mainland.  The Steel Bar kept the watch up anyway.  I think he was hoping the settlers would turn out to be the tribals.  It would be much easier to assault a compact place like Isn Don than to shoot at smoke in the jungle.  
For two months the tribals were quiet.  No drums.  No traps.  We thought we'd knocked them back permanently, but we hadn't.  They fell back and gave us time to get bored.  Less watchful.  Sloppy.  We entered and left the jungle in ragged lines, out of sight of each other.  Didn't fire into the canopy as vigorously.  Didn't clear for traps thoroughly.  Little things that told the tribals we'd softened.  They were watching.  
Their assault was a full-force attack at dusk.  First fist was about to finish logging, and third was withdrawing from the jungle.  I was on the killing field supervising the moving of logs.  All at once the tribals rushed third fist, howling and screeching.  For two heartbeats the sound froze me in place.  On the tree line a cotz tree exploded.  Someone had pulsed it.  Burning sap sprayed onto the killing field.  Pulses hissed into the sky.  My ears popped from all the sonic fire.  Plant debris flew everywhere.  I ran for the tree line to rally the men, but then I stopped.  Didn't make sense to run that way when everyone else was retreating.  
Then second fist activated the rapid-pulsers and fired into the tree line.  We still had men in there.  Pulses hissed all around me.  Arrows landed on the killing field.  And spears.  Men ran out of the jungle, firing wild.  It was a rout.  I didn't know then, but Hajashan had been the first or second man killed.  I tried to rally third fist, but no one heard me.  
Finger Leader Ahalman managed to rally his men.  They went on their knees at the tree line and laid down suppressing fire.  They weren't trying to counterattack, just hold a line so the other men could retreat.  For six or eight heartbeats they had it.  Good, sustained fire.  Criss-crossed.  Rapid-pulser fire right over their heads.  Just like the book.  Then the tribals used their hallucinogen.  The tree line seemed to waver and turn dark.  The trees bent over and struck at the men with their branches.  Ahalman's troops broke and ran.  
At that point a response team from second fist ran past me toward the tree line.  I shouted a warning about the hallucinogen.  The finger leader waved.  Fifteen paces from the tree line they fanned out and threw burster after burster.  Fire clouds, lightning and gas.  They had fourteen bursters, two per man.  They threw them all.  
Then they pulled back.  The rapid-pulsers covered their retreat.  The Steel Bar was at the gate and sent everyone who could walk to the mess hall.  Support people and medtechs took the badly injured to the medical hut.  I thought the Steel Bar would have heart failure.  His face was red, and his whole body shook.  "Where's Iron Bar Hajashan?" he said.  
"Dead, sir," Ahalman said.  He was at the rear of the mess hall with five men from his finger.  He'd lost two.  He stood rod-straight.  His eyes were incendiary.  "He heard something and stepped away from me, sir.  Two steps.  Right before the assault.  Cat got him.  I blasted it."  
"Hajashan's dead," the Steel Bar repeated.  I knew what he was feeling.  Hajashan couldn't be dead.  Nothing ruffled the man.  It was inconceivable he'd been killed.  
"Half of third fist is dead, sir," Ahalman said.  "When is the counter assault?"  
"At ease," the Steel Bar said.  
"Two of my men were captured," Ahalman said.   
"Finger leader!  You will maintain a tone befitting a finger leader addressing his commanding officer.  I want to know—"  
"Because those tribals will rip their skin off—"  
The Steel Bar shouted, "At ease!"  Some of the young men close to him stepped back.  I thought Danaat was going to rush the man.  Or Ahalman was going to shoot the Steel Bar.  
Then Ahalman said, "Sir."  
"Now, I want to hear what happened.  One man at a time.  Until I'm satisfied."  
That debriefing went better than the first.  The men agreed that they were withdrawing from the jungle when the tribals attacked from the canopy.  
"How did they get into the canopy, if you were watching?" the Steel Bar said.  
"Don't know sir," the man he was questioning said.  "We were watching.  They couldn't have gotten there.  But they did."  
"There were bundji, sir," another man said.  
"At ease," the Steel Bar said.  He didn't want to hear about spirits again.  
They couldn't agree on numbers of tribals or cats.  One said fifty tribals, another said a hundred.  Some said a handful of cats, others said packs.  They all agreed that as soon as Ahalman's men rallied the trees attacked.  The trees caused most of the casualties.  The 92nd had twelve dead, eight from third fist and four from first.  There were twenty-two injured, nine severely.  Three men from third fist were missing.  Third was incapacitated and out of command.  
It took the Steel Bar two hours to hear everything he wanted.  By the end he was barely in command of himself.  He ordered the medtechs to check every man who'd been near the jungle and told them he wanted an antidote to the hallucinogen.  Then he ordered the watch doubled and turned the men over to their finger leaders.  He took Salah and me to his hut and raved at us.  
"Those fuckers from third," he said.  "Did you hear?  Bundji.  Poorest soldiers I've ever seen.  They just got more men killed.  We ought to send them out right now to stand at the tree line until this mission ends.  Let them rot on guard."  
 Salah said, "Sir—"  
"The tribals have brought reinforcements.  Just as the settlers said they would."  
"We can request more men," Salah said.  
"We don't need more men!" the Steel Bar said.  "We need power.  Spheres.  A fighter jumper.  Battlesuits."  
That got Salah.  "Yes, sir, battlesuits—"  
"No, Iron Bar, not battlesuits.  That was an example.  Command's not going to authorize battlesuits.  Pull your head out of your ass and think!"  
I said, "Sir, you already requested a sphere launcher—"  
"Thank you, Iron Bar!  I want you to tell me something, since your memory is so fucking good.  Tell me why Hajashan was out in front of his men.  Did I order him to commit suicide, or did he make that decision on his own?"  
"Sir, Finger Leader Ahalman said he'd stepped forward in response to a sound—"  
"Stepped into a trap.  He just took the initiative, didn't he?  First time any of you have taken the initiative since we got here, and he had to do it today.  They'll cut my balls off for this, Iron Bar.  We have a dead officer now.  Command'll have testicle soup, Old Danaat style."  
Salah choked.  Danaat hadn't said anything like that before.  Funniest thing he ever said.  
"I want the tribals destroyed.  I want a mission to end their fucking resistance permanently.  While we still have men to do it."  
"Sir, we may have destroyed the tribals—" I said.  Tried to say.  He cut me off.  
"Are you telling me they sat and waited to be blasted?  Do you believe that, Iron Bar?"  
"The ready element was fast, sir."  
"At ease.  I want the tribals smashed.  I want ideas, gentlemen.  Not now—think about it.  For now see that camp guard is doubled until morning and take the fit men from third into your two fists.  Salah, you're the senior.  You've got that finger leader, Ahalman.  Ride that insubordinate son-of-a-bitch."  
"Sir," Salah said.  
"Tomorrow night I want your ideas.  Take time.  Think.  Dismissed."  
That meeting unsettled me.  Hajashan was dead.  Salah couldn't control Ahalman.  Our logging mission was turning to fighting, and the Steel Bar wasn't making the jump.  He talked counterattack, but he was thinking fear, not victory.  He was going to make poor decisions.  

At mid-night the drums started to pound.  Like after the first assault.  We couldn't tell where they were.  The men started whispering about Lamis, the soldier who'd been captured and tortured to death.  The Steel Bar ordered the field lights activated at random intervals.  If the sentries saw tribals putting up poles they were to kill them.  The drums sounded all night, sometimes slow and sometimes fast.  Low bass drums.  Like heartbeats.  
When the sun rose there was a pole at the tree line.  They got it there somehow.  A body hung on it.  The Steel Bar sent Finger Leader Mohaja and his men to retrieve it, and they got it back without incident.  It was Rank First Class Habada, from third.  They'd stripped off his skin like Lamis.  They'd cut off his genitals.  They'd slit open his belly and let his guts fall out.  My men brought him in and took him to the medtechs.  Every man in the unit saw the body being brought in.  The tribals still had two prisoners.  
Half an hour later the jumper came.  The 92nd unloaded food and supplies and loaded timber.  The Steel Bar stayed with the pilot all morning, asking about the War.  Which units were deployed where.  Where the heavy weapons were.  What the Battlesuit Corps was doing.  What the chances were for heavy support.  
"I don't know, sir," was the pilot's answer most of the time.  He said the best he could do was to relay requests for equipment we almost certainly wouldn't get.  Our mission simply wasn't high enough priority.  Not with the Döckálfs destroying settlements all over Sergi.  
At mid-day the pilot took the Steel Bar up to look for tribals.  They didn't see anything.  
Later that afternoon the pilot said to us, "The rations are bad.  The Döckálfs burned the granaries in Asaptat.  They sank the Luricanian resupply ships a few days ago.  Whole fleet of them.  Cinch your belts, gentlemen."  
Something in what he said irritated the Steel Bar, and he ordered Salah and me to get him an accurate inventory.  We took several men to the supply huts and opened the tins that had come on the jumper.  The food was high.  There were maggots in the meat.  The other tins were only two-thirds full.  We took an inventory sheet to the Steel Bar.  
He looked at it and said, "Iron Bar S'rtan, take an element to Isn Don.  Tell the settlers we need food.  Take some of the spare tools.  Pay them.  But get the food."  
"Sir, they're stocking for rainy season.  I don't know—"
"Get the food, Iron Bar.  Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir."  
"Good.  When you come back I want to meet with you and Iron Bar Salah in my quarters.  I want your ideas for attacking the tribals."  
"Sir," I said.  
"And, Iron Bar—take Ahalman and his men."
For once I found my balls and said, "Sir, Ahalman is a troublemaker.  Finger Leader Mohaja is much more suited to this sort—"
"At ease, Iron Bar.  If the settlers have qualms about selling us food, one look at Ahalman will shut them up.  Take your men to supplement, if you want.  But take him."  
"Sir," I said.  I pulled Ahalman and Mohaja and explained the mission.  
"We're to secure food, sir?" Ahalman asked.  
"To buy food," I said.  
"My men will prepare one of the rafts," he said, and he sent them to the lake shore.  
I sent Mohaja and his three men to get tools.  
"Sir, we'll need more men," Ahalman told me.  
"Pull them from second," I said.  Second hadn't been hit the day before.  They were calmer than the others.  
"Sir," he said.  He went out to the killing field and brought back third finger from second fist.  The finger leader's name was Kanata.  I didn't know him or his men, but Ahalman did.  He knew what sort of men he was getting.  
We assembled at the lake shore.  The 92nd had built four large rafts for evacuating to the island or visiting the settlers.  There were only seventeen of us, so we used one raft.  Ahalman's men took up poles and pushed us away from shore.  We'd brought electrical bursters, and on my order Mohaja threw two in front of the raft.  I didn't want trouble with lake animals.  
"I'll talk with the settlers," I told the men.  "We'll barter for supplements to our rations."  
"Supplements," Kanata said.  
"That's what I said, Finger Leader.  That's about three stones' weight of food per each man here.  No more.  Understood?"  
"Clear, sir," he said.  
"And if they won't sell us food?" Ahalman said.  
"Then we requisition it."  As per the Steel Bar's orders.  
"Understood, sir."  
"The sun'll be down in an hour and a half," I said.  "I want to be back in camp by nightfall.  Fast and clean."  
As the raft grounded drums started sounding in the jungle.  
"They've got Cosumhar," one of Ahalman's men said.  
"There's nothing we can do for him," Ahalman said.  "Not until we get heavy weapons.  Go."  His eyes glistened.  He knew what the tribals were doing to his man.  
I ordered one of Kanata's men to stay at the raft and keep it clear of lake animals.  The rest of us went to Isn Don.  There were no settlers in the fields; they always retreated to the village before the sun went down.  When we reached the palisade the gates were closed.  
"How do we open them?" Kanata said.  
Ahalman said, "Sonics."  
I told them to wait.  "Let me shout first."  
"They must have seen us coming," Ahalman said.  "They're choosing not to open."  
"I said wait, Finger Leader."  I called for the het, and after a few heartbeats the gates cracked open.  The het stood between them.  
"We've come to offer trade for food," I said.  
"With so many men?  How much food do you need?"  
"Fifty stones' weight," I said.  That should have been enough to hold the 92nd for several days, with what we already had.  Long enough for the pilot to bring additional stocks.  If there were additional stocks.  
"That is too much."  
"We'll pay.  We've brought metal tools."  
"Do they eat metal, in your country?  Rainy season is coming."    
Ahalman said, "Sir, the sun's going down."  
"We need the food," I said.  It was pointless to negotiate for less than we needed.  
"It grieves me to deny your need, but we haven't so much to spare."  The gates began to close.  
Ahalman fired at the gate with his sonic.  It flew open and knocked the het back.  
"Finger Leader!" I said.  
"We'll requisition the food, sir," he said.  "First finger, with me."  
Kanata said to his men, "Pair up.  Spread out and requisition food."  
"The food storage huts are down the central alley and to the left," I said.  I wanted to requisition food and leave as swiftly as we could.  
"Sir," Ahalman said.  He took his element down the central alley.  Kanata's men spread out among the huts and started pounding walls.  
"Food!" they shouted.  "Bring out food!"  
"Neat and orderly!" I told them.  "Back here in thirty minutes."  
"We'll take care of it, sir," Kanata said.  
"Finger Leader Mohaja, your element has security," I told him.  "Keep the gates open."  
"Sir," he said.  I could see he was unhappy with the mission, but he was too good a soldier to complain.  
That whole time the drums pounded long and low.  Kanata's men seemed to move in time to them.  The drums seemed louder than they'd been in camp or on the lake.  Somewhere in the jungle one of our men was being mutilated.  
"Those are our rainy season stores," the het said to me.  He stood a few paces away, watching Kanata's men take food from the settlers.  Once the settlers understood what we wanted they brought it out in bowls and baskets.  There were ugly looks from some of the men, and some of the children cried, but they were cooperative.  
"I understand your situation," I said to the het.  "Do you understand mine?"  
He didn't answer.  Ahalman's element disappeared into the center of the village, out of sight.  Kanata's men grabbed food from the settlers.  Fast and orderly.  That was all I wanted.  
"Tonight the jungle people will try to kill two fish with one spear," the het said.  "They bear no love for my people, either."  
I didn't have a chance to ask what he meant.  Kanata's men had just gone around the curve of the palisade, out of sight, when the firing started.  It was a pulser burst from the center of the settlement.  Ahalman's element.  A moment later an electrical springer discharged on the lake side of our camp.  The crackling was incredibly loud.  Something had tried to enter camp from the lake.  I shouted for the search teams to pull back and rally at the gates.  If camp was under attack we needed to be there.  
The tribals' drums thundered.  Some of Kanata's men saw me sign 'rally' and ran toward me.  Others panicked.  Two of them threw an old man to the ground and kicked him.  The het slipped away.  Pulsers fired inside camp and inside Isn Don.  Springers discharged, one after another.  A major assault element was attacking our camp.  
I shouted at Kanata's men to stop kicking the woman, but they didn't.  A soldier from my fist heard me and ran to stop them.  One of Kanata's men shot him with a sonic.  He was torn apart.  Then Ahalman shouted, "Ambush!" from the center of the village.  I never believed that.  The only treachery at Isn Don came from Ahalman.  
"Stop those men," I ordered Mohaja.  He and his men ran to stop Kanata's men from abusing the settlers.  I went after Ahalman.  
A family of settlers ran toward me down the central alley of Isn Don, screaming.  One of them was pulse-burnt on the chest.  Someone had blasted a young woman's arm off at the elbow.  
"Move!" I shouted, and they scattered.  I ran for the center of Isn Don.  I wanted Ahalman.  He'd fired on the settlers and destroyed our mission.  I'd drag him back to Steel Bar Danaat.  He'd face proceedings.  The drumbeats pushed me along like hands.  It was as though the tribals were there pounding my head with their fists.  Pounding my legs and my back.  Forcing me to run.  My body seemed to leap forward like a fighter jumper.  I wanted Ahalman.  
I ran into the clearing where Steel Bar Danaat and I had eaten with the settlers.  There were eight or ten dead settlers and one of Ahalman's men with a spear through his throat.  There was a lot of blood.  Ahalman and two of his men were in the center of that area.  One was on guard, and Ahalman and the other were raping a girl.  Ahalman had her hair in his hand and her head pulled back.  The man's face was demented.  
They weren't men to me anymore but animals.  Worse than animals.  I went at them.  The man on guard was turned away from me, and I got halfway to him before he saw me coming.  He turned his pulser on me, and I shot him with my sonic.  He was beyond range and was only knocked down.  But his pulser was broken.  He got it pointed at me, but it didn't fire.  My next shot was from six paces away and took him in the belly.  I shot the other man before he could pick up his sonic.  Dead center from five paces.  
Ahalman kicked the girl away from him and drew his sonic.  I shot him in the head.  That animal wasn't going back to camp.  I shot him three or four more times.  I can't remember exactly.  Then the girl pawed my legs, and I shot her, too.  I felt hands and fired.  All my shots fell with the drumbeats.  She rolled onto her back.  Her face was swollen and bruised, and her mouth had been torn.  She was no older than fourteen.  
Then a pulser discharge hissed over my shoulder.  Ahalman's other two men were coming into the clearing.  I ran.  I didn't have range, and I didn't have any more killing anger.  They were excited and missed me four or five times.  I ran down the alley and found the gates shut.  Mohaja and his men weren't there.  Kanata and two of his men were backed against the gates, firing at jungle rats the size of small dogs.  Rats flooded the area.  They were coming through holes on either side of the gates.  Made for them, no doubt.  The settlers—maybe the het's wife—had some way of calling them to fight us.  
"Sir!" Kanata shouted.  I don't know what he thought I would do for him and his men.  They'd attacked civilians and killed one of my men.  Let the rats have them.  
More springers discharged at camp.  Rapid-pulsers hissed.  The drumbeats sounded in bursts, faster and faster.  I ran to the palisade and jumped for the catwalk.  A rat grabbed my leg and bit, but my uniform was tough.  I kicked the rat off.  Other rats climbed the palisade.  Kanata's men realized I was leaving them to the settlers and shot at me, but I was beyond range.  All I felt was tingling.  A pulse hit the palisade next to me and burned my hand.  I leapt off the palisade and hit the ground hard and broke my right leg.  Compound fracture, bones sticking out.  Rats swarmed outside the gates, but they ignored me.  Whoever was calling them was strong.  
I tried to crawl for the raft but didn't get far.  Kanata or one of his men discharged an electrical burster.  He must have thrown it at the rats or discharged it by accident.  It was extremely powerful, or it touched off the other bursters they were carrying.  Chunks of palisade logs fell around me, and something hit my head.  
When I woke I was on the jumper, close behind the pilot.  Strapped to a field stretcher.  Steel Bar Danaat knelt next to me, holding a broken smelling salts capsule in his hand.  The jumper was packed with men and equipment.  
"Sir?" I said.  My head throbbed.  
"We're evacuating, Iron Bar.  Camp is gone.  Or soon will be.  Right now it's on fire.  Whole jungle's on fire.  I'd like to see the tribals survive this."  
"Spheres?" I said.  
"Jumper.  The tribals sent crocodiles to attack from the lake.  Hundreds of them.  The pilot saw our weapons fire and came back.  He saw tribals crossing the killing field and activated the storm generator."  
"He burnt the camp?" I asked.  
"We set the buildings on fire with the rapid-pulsers.  Too many crocodiles for hand weapons.  We drove them back but lost a lot of men.  Salah, too."  
"I see."  
"Listen to me, Iron Bar.  I don't know what happened on the island—no, don't tell me.  We have to discuss what we're going to tell the board of inquiry."  
"Sir," I said.  "My men.  Mohaja and his men."  
"Missing.  Half of Isn Don was blasted apart.  You and the man you'd set to guarding the raft are the only two survivors as far as we know.  No, I said don't tell me about it.  It's over now.  We're headed back to the Rock.  We have to talk about what'll be said."  
He was right.  The situation was confusing, and the Inquiry would have trouble understanding it.  We clarified the facts during the jump.  In the clean version I'd taken an element to Isn Don to trade for supplies, but the tribals had sent a force there as well as to our camp.  My element had inflicted severe casualties on them before an electrical burster mischarged and killed most of my men.  I was thrown clear of the blast.  At the same time the Steel Bar, with the jumper pilot's help, successfully repulsed an attack by an army of tribals.  No one could have known there were so many.  If anyone was at fault it was the exploration team for failing to note how determined the tribals were to repel outsiders.  
The Inquiry liked that version.  Posthumous medals were awarded.  They didn't like it enough to leave Steel Bar Danaat in command.  He was relieved of the 92nd and sent to the northern line as a supply officer.  I don't know how he did.  I was promoted to steel bar and moved to the northern line myself, where I served against the Ceretesians for the rest of the War.

— end —



Foreword — "Flight"

The Little Nations were an aggregate of thirty-four political bodies situated at the extreme southwest of Crassia.  They were not nations in the traditional sense but eight nationettes, so to speak, and more than a score of colonies, sultanates, monastery-territories and city-states.  Of Crassia's nations they were the youngest, settlers having moved into the region only sixty years before the War (approximately 20,420 S.C.).  Though the first settlers came to establish farms, contact with Oaxacol traders in 20,437 S.C. drew thousands of entrepreneurs and merchants to the area.  Animal hides, amber, tropical bird feathers, exotic perfumes, chocolate and many other trade goods soon flowed north to Crassia, and the Little Nations merchants who controlled that flow became the governing class.  By 20,455 S.C. the Little Nations were centers of commerce famous for opportunity, adventure and danger.  
The danger arose from NaHrouz who lived in the Little Nations area.  Clashes between settlers and NaHrouz soldiers were frequent, but, since the NaHrouz never organized large raiding parties, the settlers assumed their population was small.  The War ended this misconception and destroyed the Little Nations.  In the third year of the conflict armies of NaHrouz, aided by Döckálf magi, emerged from the Middle Mountains and the Raven Tors and attacked.  In three months they conquered the Little Nations and established them as slave states.  
It was not until late in my travels that I heard what had happened to the Little Nations.  I also heard that many refugees from that area had gone to southern Balon to build colonies in the coastal jungles.  I decided to visit one of these colonies and after a few months reached Kutai, a settlement of two thousand refugees surrounded by a stout palisade and heavily patrolled.  It was a town of rough-hewn wooden buildings and few amenities, but the air of determination and hope was refreshing.  
My initial attempts to elicit accounts failed.  The physical threats to Kutai, in the form of pirates, diseases and Balon's hostile tribal people, were serious and continuous, and my work was seen as a waste of time.  After a week I surrendered to the flow of activity and found a job taking inventory for the port authority.  A few months later I reintroduced my project, making clear that I would only elicit accounts during my one day off each week and late in the evenings.  The next day I recorded the first of many Little Nations accounts.  
Maha Bussoni was an energetic woman of twenty-one who was Kutai's acting pharmacist.  One of her tasks was to inventory incoming and outgoing supplies of drugs and pharmaceutical compounds, and frequently we worked together.  On one occasion I asked how she had come to Kutai, and over the next month she told me.  Since she refused to leave her work for formal interviews I took notes, and from those notes I have reconstructed her account as follows.  
Maha is a large, strong woman who was in her mid-twenties at the time of our interviews.  Her black hair was short and plaited, her eyes jet.  The Luricanian influences of her father's side manifest in a round face and walnut-colored skin, while her mother's Atlanean ancestry has given her intelligent eyes.  During the time I was in Kutai she took no days off from her work, and I have no doubt that if Kutai survives today Maha contributes a great deal to that community.  



Flight

No one was in control of the evacuation of Sirinus.  It was a mob pushing out of the city.  There were only four gates, and people got trapped in the squares behind them.  There were thousands of people behind the north gate, where my family was.  Everyone was trying to force their way through the crowd.  As though that helped!  I was pushed and hit and elbowed in the ribs.  We were so tight that all I could do was go where the crowd went.   I saw one little boy slit a woman's coin bag and steal her money.  I shouted to her, but she didn't hear.  Later I saw three young men knock a woman down and stomp her.  Then the crowd pushed them on.  I didn't see her get up.  There must have been a lot of people trampled.  
If I'd been alone I would have turned back.  But my family was by me, and that gave me courage.  There were five of us:  my father and mother, my older brother Mustafa who was eighteen that year, Saami and me.  I was carrying Saami.  He was seven but small for his age because he'd been sick for a whole year when he was little.  I was a big girl of fifteen, so I carried him.  My father held onto my left arm, and my mother held my right arm.  Mustafa was in front of us; my father had hold of his belt.  Someone grabbed my bottom, and I tried to kick behind me and almost fell down.  I didn't do that again.  That wasn't the only place I was grabbed.  
Some people sang songs and made jokes.  "Rhaol!" one man shouted.  "Rhaol!  The monthly report's due tomorrow!  What are you doing here?  Do you want to lose your position?"  
"Hey!" another man shouted.  "Muhammad!  Did you bring a latt board?"  
"House, real cheap!" someone called out.  "In the scribe quarter!  Any takers?"  
I saw my father laughing, I guess at those people.  It was strange to see him laugh.  He'd been so unhappy since the War started.  Before the War he'd been saying we should move to Blackstone, where he and my mother met.  He was tired of Sirinis and wanted to retire someplace more cultured.  Then the War started, and Atlan fell to the Ceretesians.  After that my father spent all his free hours in his study or with other men at the coffee houses.  He hardly spoke to us.  So it was odd to see him laughing.  
At mid-day the crowd pushed us out the gates.  There were militiamen there, watching.  Lot of good they did.  People were robbing and trampling each other in the square, and there they stood.  I was angry that they didn't do something, but I don't know what they could have done.  How could a few militiamen have done anything about a mob?  As soon as we got away from the city people spread out.  A lot of them ran, but we didn't.  My father herded us to the side of the road and looked us over, and I set Saami down to walk for himself.  
My father said, "Anyone hurt?"  None of us were.  
"I need to rest," my mother said.  
"The NaHrouz won't rest."  
"If they're even coming," she said.  
"They're coming."  He started walking again, and she walked next to him.  My brothers and I followed.  
We were sure the NaHrouz were coming because their hammering had stopped.  About a year into the War they'd started hammering night and day.  The noise came all the way to Sirinus.  That frightened everyone.  We'd not thought there were so many NaHrouz.  Some people left for Decadurinis and Luricania then, places we'd heard the War hadn't reached.  About forty thousand people left in two years.  There were only two hundred thousand people in Sirinus to start with, including the transient merchants and adventurers.  It was upsetting to see so many people leave.  
But most of us stayed.  More countries were entering the War every month, and people said there was nowhere it wouldn't reach.  Sirinus had strong walls and scores of wizards.  If the NaHrouz could take it, where would we be safe?  Well, all that was talk.  One Restday morning three years into the War the hammering stopped right before temple time.  Everyone knew what that meant.  The NaHrouz had finished making whatever they'd been making.  They were coming.  
Maybe if Sirinus had been an old city where people had lived for generations we would have wanted to stay and fight.  But the city wasn't even thirty years old, and a lot of people were only there to make money before they went somewhere else.  An hour after the hammering stopped people began to evacuate.  We watched as neighbors packed their carts and headed for the gates.  Our parents had lived in Sirinus for twenty-one years, and we were settled.  But when your friends are running, and your employer is running, and the city militia is running, and the wizards, you can't stay.  Stay for what?  For the NaHrouz to eat?  So we threw as much as we could into two old traveling bags of my father's, and we ran, too.  
Most of the people on the road were "mids" like our family.  That's what the merchants who governed the city called the educated people who worked for them.  There were no governors on the road.  Any governor who wanted out hired a wizard to transport them to where they wanted to go.  There were merchants and housewives and widows in black.  There were administrators in leathers and adventurers from all over.  There were no Oaxacol on the road.  They were leaving from the south gate.  People took all sorts of things with them.  They had pets on leashes and furniture in carts.  Some had sleeping pillows and dressers.  Where were they going with those?  Our family didn't have a cart, so everything went in the bags.  We'd brought all our gold and silver and jewelry and a few personal things.  We had food, clothes and blankets.  My father said it was better to go fast, so we didn't take much.  I couldn't believe people took furniture.  
Once Mustafa said, "I hope we run into NaHrouz," and he held up his little hand-crossbow.  He used it to hunt birds.  He was always practicing with it.  
"You can't kill a NaHrouz soldier with that," our father said.  "They have armor."  
He said, "They have eyes."  
"You have too much imagination," our father said.  
Mustafa set our pace, fast.  He was very angry.  The NaHrouz had ruined everything he'd been working toward.  He'd been trying to get into the militia since he turned sixteen, but it was almost closed to anyone who didn't have a father or brother in it.  Our father didn't know anyone in the militia, so Mustafa had to do all the meeting and talking.  He'd practically lived in the militia quarter for two years.  He'd gone to their coffee houses and made friends with them and learned to use a crossbow and a scimitar.  He'd worked nights guarding a warehouse and spent his own money for the weapons training.  The NaHrouz destroyed his chance to become a militiaman.  
I was surprised that he'd decided to come with us.  When the evacuation started he'd come home to ask my father what he wanted to do.  My father said, "Run for the coast.  Find passage to Decadurinis."  Mustafa collected his things.  I think if he'd been in the militia he would have stayed and fought the NaHrouz.  But the militia hadn't accepted him yet.  So he came with us.  
The NaHrouz ruined everything for me, too.  I'd been studying for two years to be a healer's assistant.  Healer's assistants didn't make a lot of money, but they helped people.  I liked that.  As a healer's assistant I could train in Sirinus and not have to leave for Atlan's or Luricania's healer's academies.  Healers always needed assistants, so I knew I'd have work.  That was important.  I know women in a lot of countries stay home and raise babies, but you didn't do that in the Little Nations.  There was so much work that everyone was expected to have a position.  If you stayed at home people thought either your husband was rich or you were odd.  You didn't have babies until you could afford to hire a girl to care for them.  
My mother kept saying, "Mustafa, slow down, you're going too fast."  But he didn't, and she kept falling back.  She was a big woman in her early fifties and wasn't used to so much walking.  She was a scribe who worked for one of the richest merchant houses, translating orders from the Oaxacol language into Trade.  There weren't many people who could read Oaxacol.  It's a picture language, and it takes years to learn all the pictures.  My mother had been well paid.  That didn't help her on the road.  
My father said, "Come on, Lila.  We can rest when we reach the coast."  That annoyed her, but it helped her keep going, too.  For a while.  We walked about a metapace before she had to stop and rest.  Djinn, it felt good to take that bag off my back.  We'd dumped a full stone's weight of rice in it, and I'd put all the herbs we'd had in the house in, and with the blankets and other things it was heavy.  Mustafa took everything out of his bag and arranged it to suit his back better.  
"Come do mine, too," I said.  
"Can't."  He didn't even look at me.  I hated that.  
"Why not?" I said.  
"I don't know what'll be comfortable for you," he said.  "Arrange it yourself.  Make it so you can stand it.  You'll be carrying it a long way."  
"Why don't you carry more?" I said.  
"I'm not as big as you."  
"I have to carry Saami half the time."  
"Then you'll be thinner when we reach the coast."  He didn't say that cruelly; he said it like a fact.  But it still bit.  I'd always felt sensitive about being heavy.  He knew that.  
"I'll take the bag," my father said.  "You watch Saami."  
So I gave him the bag.  He repacked it, and we walked.  I don't think my mother had enough rest, but she didn't say anything.  Not long after that we met Khamil Abd el-Baady and his family on the road.  They were friends of our family from the temple.  They'd gotten out of Sirinus before us, but Khamil was sixty and fat.  He was used to sweetmeats and candied fruits, not walking up hills.  He and his oldest son, who was also named Mustafa, were pulling loaded hand-carts.  He was wheezing when we came alongside him and Jeen and their six children.  
"Clever bastards, eh, Faad?" he said to my father.  
"Who's that, Khamil?"  
"City Council.  What do you want to bet they dreamed all this up to drive us out of the city?  We all run out, they seize our houses and resell them to new immigrants.  Not bad, eh?  Wonder how much they had to pay the NaHrouz to keep up the noise so long?"  
That made my father laugh.  "I'll wager you're right," he said.  "Wonder how much they can sell our house for?"  
"More than ours.  We set some surprises in there for housebreakers.  Eh, boy?"  That was to his Mustafa, who was seventeen.  He and my brother weren't friends.  Khamil's Mustafa wanted to be a buyer like his father.  
"As the djinn are our witnesses," Khamil's Mustafa said.  "I'd hate to be the NaHrouz going through there."  
"They won't go through anything," my brother said.  "They'll burn it.  That's what the Ceretesians are doing in Atlan.  Lob oil over the walls—"
"All right, son," our father said.  "Enough.  We don't know what will happen."  
Mustafa stopped talking, which surprised me.  He hadn't listened to any of us for years.  I thought maybe the evacuation had unsettled him.  
We walked with Khamil and his family for hours.  Whenever we stopped to rest my father and Khamil kept up their joke about the Council selling our houses to new immigrants, wondering who they'd sell to and how much they'd get.  That sounded ghoulish to me, but they seemed to enjoy it.  Jeen and my mother and I watched over the children and talked about who we'd seen leaving.  I felt better traveling with them.  We walked slowly enough that my mother could keep up.  Saami, too.  He didn't go far from me.  He was shy then.  Jeen told us they wanted to take ship to Decadurinis or Tocencia if they could afford it.  Khamil had family in Tocencia.  We wanted to go to Decadurinis.  My mother's family was there.  
The road into the mountains was good stone, easy to walk.  Still, my father had to shift the traveling bag every few hundred paces.  He was fifty-six and wasn't used to carrying weight.  Or walking so far.  He was an accountant for a big trading company and not very active.  He leaned forward and sideways and tugged the carrying straps and grunted a lot.  
By the time Utu was low we'd climbed almost to the entrance of the pass.  When I turned to look behind us the road was full of people.  There was a haze over the plain, and the city was a big, dark circle.  We'd already gone ten metapaces.  When I turned back my father was staring up the bank on the west side of the road.  Both families stopped to wait for him.  
"Come on," Khamil said.  "We might as well join the rest of this rabble, Faad."  The road went between two mountains.  There were cliffs on both sides.  It wasn't as tight as the square had been, but there were thousands of people going into the pass.  No room to stop.  Once we started up we'd have to go all the way to the first summit, six or seven hours up the pass.  
"No, we'll go alongside the road," my father said.  "Through the mountains."  
"What!" my mother said.  "Faad, you're crazy!  We'll do no such thing."  
"If you were NaHrouz, what kind of people would you want for slaves?" my father said.  "Docile, yes?  People who won't fight.  What kind of people do you see all around you?"  
"People with more brains than the ones who stayed in the city," my mother said.  "Maha, the thin air's making your father dizzy.  Are you and Saami ready to go?"  
"We're ready," I said.  I didn't want to leave Jeen and her family to go into the mountains.  That seemed crazy.  We'd travel much faster on the road, and there would be other people with us.  There were snow tigers in the mountains.  Cliffs.  Falling rocks.  NaHrouz.  
"They may not even attack the city," my father said.  "Think on it.  They make some noise, and a hundred thousand people run out.  They have soldiers in the pass to take everyone away, and they don't even have to fight."  
"Faad, you're dreaming," Khamil said.  "What do you think the NaHrouz were making—Gift's Day presents?  Armor, that's what.  Swords.  Arrows.  They'll use them.  But you do what the djinn tell you to do.  Hope to see you at the first summit."  They went on.  
"Well?" my mother said.  
My father took off the traveling bag and held it in front of him and climbed the bank.  
"You come down from there," my mother said.  She ran over to pull him down, but he climbed out of her reach.  "You're being absurd!"  
"Better than being a slave or being eaten.  Son, you coming?  You always wanted to see a snow tiger.  You'll never see one in the pass."  
That was exactly the right thing to say to Mustafa, and he climbed the bank.  He probably thought he'd shoot any snow tiger he met with his bird-bow.  My mother and father shouted at each other for forty or fifty heartbeats.  People looked at us, but no one stopped.  They must have thought afrit had gotten into us.  Then my father and Mustafa walked into the hills.  
Saami shouted, "Father!" and pulled his hand out of mine and ran.  I caught him and scolded him, and he started crying.  
"Let's go," my mother said.  "They'll come back down."  
"I want my father!" Saami shouted.  He kicked the dust and wouldn't come along.  He'd never done anything like that before.  
My mother said, "Saami!  You'll summon afrit, acting like that!"  She grabbed hold of his arm and scolded him, but he pulled away and glared at her.  That was something she'd never done, and it scared me.  I thought she might hit him.  
"Maybe we'd better go with them," I said.  
"Now you're taking his side?"  
I wasn't going to argue with her.  She could argue forever.  My father said she wasn't like that before they moved to Sirinus, so I think she learned it when she learned the Oaxacol language.  They can haggle for days.  So I walked to the side of the road and climbed the bank.  My mother shouted after me to come back down and walk with her, but I kept going.  After twenty heartbeats she came up after me, holding Saami's hand.  When we got to the top of the embankment my father was a couple hundred paces ahead of us, and Mustafa was behind him.  
"That wasn't very daughterly," my mother said.  "I expect better from you."  
"It wasn't very motherly to grab Saami's arm like that," I said.  I didn't talk back very often.  Mustafa did the talking back.  
"Let's go!" my father called.  "We have to get away from the road before we make camp."
The hills weren't steep, but the soil was loose.  We slipped constantly.  There weren't many bushes to hold onto, so we had to lean forward and dig our toes into the soil.  My father slid back half a dozen times, and we all moved out of the way in case he tumbled.  Mustafa had his militia boots on and was strong from all the weapons training he'd done.  He went about fifty paces in front.  My father went to his left and my mother behind my father.  Saami and I were in the back.  Saami kept grabbing my leg.  I thought we'd tumble every time he did that.  For a while my mother grumbled about my father going crazy and dragging us into the mountains for snow tigers to eat.  Then she grew tired and stopped grumbling.  
It was the end of summer, and Utu was hot.  I was soaked with sweat and was miserable.  My legs ached, and my lungs hurt.  My shoes weren't made for climbing hills, so my feet blistered.  Then the blisters broke, and my feet slid around in my shoes, and I got new blisters.  They hurt terribly, but I didn't complain.  My mother's shoes were worse than mine, and she didn't complain.  I buckled my shoes tighter, but the blisters kept forming.  There must have been an afriti harassing me.  
I cursed to myself that whole afternoon.  It seemed stupid to climb hills when we could have stayed on the road.  The only thing I could think of was that the djinn had told my father to take us off the road, but it still seemed stupid.  Saami whined the whole time:  he was tired, he was sore, when would we stop, his feet hurt, where were the tigers.  I told him to shush, but he kept on, and I didn't have strength to keep saying it.  Djinn, that scraped my nerves.  
At first I thought we were walking anywhere Mustafa wanted to go, but then I saw we were walking toward the biggest mountain on the horizon, a blunt-topped one named Bald Top.  It was on the west side of the pass road, at the top of the pass, and was so high that its top was covered with snow all year around.  Sometimes my father took out his little Technocrat's compass and pointed it at Bald Top.  I don't know why.  It wasn't as though we could lose the mountain.  
After we'd gone a few metapaces into the hills we found a NaHrouz air shaft.  Mustafa came back to tell my father, and he came back to tell us.  "It's right up there, on the left side of the stream bed.  Be quiet when you pass it."  As though we needed to be told that.  I thought it was going to be scary, because the NaHrouz were scary, but it was just a square hole about three paces to a side and deeper than we could see.  It was dug into the hillside above a stream bed and didn't have an overhang to protect it.  Warm air blew out of it.  It gave me the shivers.  The NaHrouz torture chambers and slave pens and soldiers were under us.  Saami held my leg, and I put my hand on his head.  We went past it silently, watching so we didn't kick pebbles.  Then we walked faster until it was well behind us.  
My mother stopped us as Utu was going down.  She said, "That's it!  Not one more step."  I felt the same way.  Mustafa found a small cave full of animal bones and hair that we had to clean out.  We all fit into it if we didn't move much.  
"These bones are old," Mustafa said.  He sounded disappointed.  
"It's not a tiger anyway, son," my father said.  "These are rabbit bones.  Coyote, maybe."  
"In a cave this big?" Mustafa said.  
"Mmm.  Let's build a small fire.  That'll keep animals away."  
"Where'd you hear that, at the trading company?"  
"I used to climb in these hills with friends, a long time ago."  
"Twenty years," my mother said.  
"Doesn't matter.  Fire kept the animals away then, and it'll keep them away now."  
Mustafa collected brush while my father set up a fire pit with flat stones.  My mother took the cooking pot out of Mustafa's traveling bag and mixed rice with bits of meat and vegetables.  I helped her.  It took half our water to cook a stew.  That made my father wince.  
He said, "I hope we find water tomorrow."  
"I thought you said you climbed around here," I said.  "Don't you know if there's water?"  
"We didn't climb here.  Too many NaHrouz.  We used to go east to Scarlet Mountain."  
"Well," Mustafa said.  "And here we are."  
"Get more firewood," my father said.  
Dinner was short.  We were too tired to talk, but my mother gave my father hateful looks, and Saami whimpered about his sore feet and blisters.  After dinner my father and Mustafa took the rain cloth out of his traveling bag and stretched it over the mouth of the cave.  It was a big oilcloth we'd brought for shelter.  They tied the top to roots and threw dirt on it.  
My mother said, "What's that for?"  
"It'll make the cloth harder to see," my father said.  
"Oh."  
Mustafa didn't have blisters, but the rest of us did.  Dust and sweat and blister-juice glued our shoes to our feet, and it hurt to pull them off.  We scraped our shoes out and wiped off our feet and lanced our blisters.  There wasn't enough water to wash.  We were all sweaty and nasty, but there was nothing to be done.  My father dug a hole inside the cave for the coals and put rocks over them.  That was in case we needed a fire during the night.  Then he buried the fire pit and scattered the stones.  We went into the cave, and my father and Mustafa weighed the bottom of the rain cloth down with rocks.  My mother lay one of the blankets on the ground, and we covered ourselves with the other three.  We were warm that night.  

Our climb to Bald Top took five days.  We had plenty of rice and vegetables, and during the first few days Mustafa shot a rabbit or two every day with his hand-crossbow.  After that we were too high, and there were no more rabbits.  As we came closer to Bald Top there were plenty of streams and pools, so we didn't worry for water.  We did worry about our feet.  We wrapped them and buckled our shoes tight, but after two days of climbing all of us but Mustafa had blood-blisters.  Every evening we had to lance and drain them.  Disgusting.  
My father grimaced every time the traveling bag shifted on his back and hissed when his blisters stung.  My mother gasped and puffed.  I gasped and puffed, too.  In the city I never had to walk very far and never on bloody feet.  My neck ached from carrying Saami.  Sometimes I wanted to stop and scream at my father for taking us off the road, but I didn't have the strength.  And I thought the djinn must be guiding him.  I only wished they had warned us before we left the city that we'd be going into the mountains, so we could have brought climbing shoes.  
After the first day my mother hardly spoke.  She climbed when she had to climb and walked when she had to walk.  Later she told me she was just trying to keep melancholy away.  For the year before we evacuated she'd spent most of her time at the merchant house.  She'd been taking on extra work and talking with her boss and his boss about putting her in charge of the translators.  Then everything she had been working toward so hard was swept away, and she couldn't let it go.  
It wasn't easy for me to leave Sirinus, either.  My healer's assistant training wasn't as demanding as my mother's position, but there was a lot to know.  I'd learned all the important herbs and how to prepare simple medicines and how to check for wounds and sicknesses.  I'd spent more time with Kullto the pharmacist, who trained healer's assistants, than with my family.  When I was home my father was shut away in his study or at the coffee houses, and my mother was at her merchant house.  Mustafa was always gone to the militia quarter.  Then in one day everything was over, and I was back with my family, and we were running.  My body ached, my feet hurt, and I was frightened.  The NaHrouz were all around us, and under us.  I tried not to think about them too much and not to complain and prayed we would get to the coast.  
Saami was the only one who seemed to like the mountains.  As we went higher he stopped complaining and started looking around.  He came to me with things he'd found, asking what kind of lizard this was or what was this rock crystal.  It was good to see him so lively.  After he'd gotten over his sickness he'd been withdrawn.  That had worried my mother and me.  But in the mountains the afrit finally left him, and he started exploring.  Once he came to me with a flat, gray stone about the size of his palm that was broken in half.  
"Look," he said.  He opened the halves, and in the middle was the imprint of a black fern leaf.  Right in the rock, like a woodcut.  None of us had seen anything like that.  
"It's good luck," he said.  "The djinn gave me this to say we'll get to where the ferns grow."  He must have remembered ferns from our vacations to the coast.  
I don't know how far we walked each day.  On maps it's twenty-five metapaces from Sirinus to the top of the pass and twenty more to the first town, Duaton, on the other side.  But it was much farther the way we went.  Maybe we walked ten metapaces a day.  That's two hours' walk on a road, but in the mountains it took ten.  The higher we went the steeper the mountains were.  The brush disappeared, so there was nothing to hold on to.  The air thinned, and we had to rest more often.  Sometimes cold wind came down the mountains and blew up dust that stuck to our skin.  We looked like trash pickers.  We took baths in a pool the third day out of the city, but only that once.  The wind was cold, and the water was freezing.  We had to dry off with our blankets and then walk with them wrapped around us so they'd dry out.  I thought I'd freeze to death.  After that I didn't get into any more pools.  
I thought of the NaHrouz constantly, though I tried not to.  If we ran into them, what could we do—shoot them with Mustafa's hand-crossbow?  Run, so they could shoot us?  There were so many sounds in the mountains, like pebbles rolling down slopes and lizards scurrying over rocks and birds scratching in the bushes.  There were bird calls that could have been sentinels.  Every time I heard a noise I thought it was them.  
Once Saami asked me, "Are we ever going home, Maha?"   
"I don't think so," I said.  
"I miss my friends.  I wish we didn't have to leave."  
"Me, too," I said.  
That made me think about my friends from the temple—Olla and Saad and Kullto.  Olla was in her third year of study, and Saad was in his fifth and last year.  I'd thought Saad was very handsome, but I hadn't told him that.  Probably I wouldn't have.  I was shy with my desires, then.  I didn't know what had happened to any of them.  I hoped they'd run for the coast and prayed for the djinn to watch over them.  
I thought about our maid, Seren, too.  Our nanny left after Saami started basic school, when he was six.  After that my parents hired Seren to cook and keep house.  She was sixteen and pretty.  She hadn't lived with us.  She'd wanted to live with her own family, and my parents let her.  She wasn't a very good worker, but she told wonderful stories about the djinn and afrit.  She was a good cook when she wanted to be but liked too much salt.  My father hated that.  He told her to stop putting in so much salt, but she did anyway.  Why he kept her I don't know.  Mustafa said because she was young and pretty, but that was him being hateful.  The evacuation was on a Restday, when Seren didn't work for us.  I don't know if her family stayed or ran.  
I didn't know what was happening to Khamil and Jeen, either.  For all we knew they were already sailing to Pamandari.  Or had been captured by the NaHrouz.  I wanted to talk about them, but by the time we made camp each day I was too tired.  We made camp, ate dinner and went to sleep.  That was the way it was all through the mountains.  
In the middle of the fourth day we found a whole field of NaHrouz air shafts.  We'd climbed over a boulder field, and beyond that was a long valley that led to Bald Top's base.  We went up the middle, walking along a stream.  My feet and legs felt light as dreams, walking on flat land.  I hardly felt my blisters.  Bald Top was huge in front of us.  
"We're going to get to the mountain today," Saami said.  "Maha, we're almost there."  
"I don't think so," I told him, but I knew what he meant.  It was the first time we'd been able to see Bald Top with no other mountains in the way.  
Then we reached the shafts.  At first we only saw the roofs the NaHrouz had made for them.  They'd built pillars of stone and put slabs of rock on top of them.  Under the slabs were holes.  There were forty or fifty of them scattered across the valley.  Mustafa went to look at one and then came to tell us what they were.  
"And look at the cliffs," he said.  "I didn't notice before."  
There were a dozen big holes way up the sides of the cliffs.  There could have been a hundred NaHrouz watching us.  They might already have sent soldiers to catch us.  I saw the holes and froze.  My feet wouldn't move.  NaHrouz raped human women they caught.  They couldn't make you pregnant; they did it for fun.  Sometimes they used swords or knives.  Then they killed them and left the bodies for people to find.  
My father said, "Come on," and pulled my arm to make me move.  I wanted to run away from there, but Mustafa said, "Slowly.  Don't catch attention."  We were already out into the valley, so we kept going along the stream.  Slowly.  I waited to hear armor clink or arrows whistle or doors open in the cliffs for NaHrouz to come out.  But we walked up the valley until we couldn't see the holes any more, and no NaHrouz came.  
Past the air shafts was garbage.  It looked like the NaHrouz had been dumping there for a hundred years.  There were mounds of earth and stone and pottery, millions of pieces of pottery.  There were bones, animal and human.  Bones stuck out of every pile, shoulder blades and ribs and backbones.  The skulls were broken, and the long bones.  I cried the whole time we were there.  Saami had to walk with my mother because I was so upset.  
"Slaves," my father said.  
I knew who they were.  Every few months a caravan would be taken.  There was always talk of so-and-so who disappeared or so-and-so's son who went traveling and didn't come back.  My mother said the Oaxacol traders had the same problem.  All those people taken.  
Mustafa led us through there quickly.  At the end of the valley was a waterfall with a big pool at the bottom.  Most of the water went down a hole in the bottom of the pool.  There were NaHrouz bones around the pool, forty or fifty skeletons.  They had obviously been killed fighting each other, but they didn't have armor or anything.  
Mustafa poked around, looking for a crossbow or sword, I guess.  He didn't find anything.  
Saami hunched down by a skull and reached to touch it.  
"Don't," I said.  I didn't know why, but I didn't want him touching it.  It put shivers in me.  He touched it anyway, and I smacked his hand.  "It's not healthy," I said.  
His face got red, and he said, "It's just old bones."  He touched one of the teeth.  
"Saami," I said.  
"It's just old bones."  He said it like Mustafa would have said it, angry and growling.  
"Don't talk to me like that," I said.  It was the stupidest thing.  There we were up in the mountains with NaHrouz everywhere, and I was telling him not to touch some old bones.  
"Then don't hit me," he said.  "Because if you hit me again I'll hit you back."  
I almost slapped him, and that scared me so much I stood and walked away.  I'd never hit anyone.  My mother had slapped Mustafa a few times when he was growing up, but he'd deserved it.  He had a sharp mouth even when he was little, and it got worse as he got older.  Was Saami going to be like his brother?  Who did he think he was, talking to me like that?  Who'd taken care of him when he was sick?  Who watched out for him afterward, when he was weak?  After all that he was vile-mouthing me just like Mustafa.  
My father said, "Look."  He picked up a long leg bone and swung it around his head.  He made these stupid noises like an animal and hit the bone into the ground.  It broke, and he laughed.  Mustafa laughed, too, and Saami stared at them.  
"The afrit have gotten into you," my mother said.  
My father scratched his armpit with one hand and jumped around like a lunatic, and that's when I remembered the monkey from the circus.  It was a big one from the Oaxacol lands.  It did things like that.  But it couldn't stand the cold in Sirinus and died.  Finally my father dropped the broken bone and washed his hands in the pool.  Then he went to the waterfall and started searching for a way up.  My mother looked at me and shook her head.  I didn't know what to think, either.  He'd never done anything like that.  He must have been getting out some of the worry he was feeling.  Or something.  
There were worn stairs cut along the side of the waterfall, and we climbed up.  At the top I looked at my father again.  There were shadows under his eyes, and his mouth was shut tight.  I remember now that his face was a little blue, but I didn't see that then.  Probably didn't want to.  That was the first time I saw that my father was getting old.  Somehow I'd thought that if the NaHrouz caught us he'd do something.  I didn't know what.  Something.  But I saw then that he was just a tired, middle-aged accountant who'd talked us into going through the mountains, and he didn't know any better than the rest of us what would happen.  
After that I prayed more than I had ever prayed.  In the city I took the djinn for granted.  Our parents worked for important merchant houses and always had money.  So I hadn't asked the djinn for much.  Isn't it sad how people stop talking to the djinn when things are going well?  We went to temple, and we kept the days, but we'd never really talked with the djinn like Khamil and his family did.  Up in the mountains I started telling them about us and asking their help, in my head because I was too tired to talk out loud.  

The fifth day in the mountains we went around the west side of Bald Top and climbed the last ridge on our way up.  The wind blew hard off the mountain.  We had to wrap ourselves in the blankets as we walked.  Saami and I shared one.  Even with that I shivered all day.  My body was numb with cold.  There wasn't any snow where we were, but the wind was freezing.  My feet were so cold I could hardly feel them; I was thankful for that.  Every time I looked at my father I was frightened.  The cold got into him more than us.  He was hunched over and shivering.  My mother had to help him walk.  
Saami kept saying, "It'll be okay, Maha.  It'll be okay."  He could say that easily; I was there to carry him when he was tired.  Sometimes he walked next to me with part of my blanket around him, and sometimes he went with our mother.  It made me crazy to hear his little teeth chattering.  I wasn't strong enough to carry him the whole way, or I would have.  Most of that day I was fazed from the cold and exhaustion.  A snow tiger could have been next to me, and I wouldn't have known.  So when Mustafa let out his victory shriek I thought it was a bird at first.  It was exactly like that sound a falcon makes.  I looked up, and he was standing on the ridge top with his arms over his head.  The wind blew his hair wild, and his blanket flapped.  His hands were fists.  Then he turned around and shouted something, but I couldn't hear.  We climbed to the top of the ridge as fast as we could.  We couldn't see far because it was almost nightfall, but we were at the highest point on our trip.  We were looking down.  
"Thank the djinn!" my mother said.  
Mustafa found an overhang, and we stopped.  It wasn't a good place.  There was no water and only a little brush.  The overhang broke the wind, but the rain cloth flapped so much that Mustafa pulled it down.  We used it as a blanket.  Mustafa gathered brush, but there was only enough to half-cook some stew.  That used the rest of our water.  We only had four days' worth of food left.  What we were going to do when it ran out I didn't know.  
My father was catching sick.  We all shivered during dinner, but he shook.  My mother sat with him and rubbed his arms and legs, and they wrapped blankets around themselves, but still his teeth chattered.  I gave him powdered Baston's blossom to help his circulation, but without hot water it didn't do as much good.  We needed Sothweed and Burr-brittle but didn't have them.  
We went to sleep after dinner.  My mother was at one end of the blanket, and Mustafa was at the other.  Saami was in the middle.  My mother snuggled with my father to warm him, but it was so cold that even with the blankets and the rain cloth and all of us sleeping together we were chilly.  If it had been any time other than summer I think we would have frozen to death.  For me that night went on forever.  Sometimes my mother coughed.  My father's teeth chattered.  Saami groaned in his sleep, but at least he slept.  
The next morning my head was full of cotton.  I never completely woke that day.  I remember Mustafa looking around outside the cave.  I was going to ask him what he was looking for, and then I thought of snow tigers.  I didn't ask if he found tracks, and whatever he saw he kept to himself.  We ate some dried vegetables and then left that place.  I took the traveling bag my father had been carrying.  He was too weak.  It was much lighter than when we'd started.  
That day we started down the other side of the mountains.  There was a mountain at the bottom of the pass called Stubby because it was flat on top.  Mustafa was leading us there.  He told me later it was easier to pick a path coming down than it was going up because he could see what was coming.  Maybe he thought it was easy.  
Bald Top's west slope was all ravines, and the wind blew hard down them.  We had to wrap the blankets around ourselves again.  My father coughed constantly and couldn't keep his attention.  He fell down several times, and my mother helped him up.  Saami cried and complained all day.  I probably cried myself.  If I didn't I should have.  We walked and stumbled and fell and got back up and climbed up and down ravines.  All day.  That afternoon we found a cave with fresh deer bones in it.  Mustafa took us two hours past that, and we stopped in a hollow between three big rocks.  Dinner was a little dried meat and vegetables.  We didn't have enough water to cook.  Mustafa piled rocks next to him and put his bird-bow on top of those.  My father slept in the center that night.  He wasn't coughing any more.  He was too weak.  The wind blew all night and pulled the blankets and whipped up dust, but I was so tired I fell right to sleep.  
The next morning I had a little more strength, I think because I could see the lowland fields.  Mustafa had fallen asleep sitting up.  His bird-bow was where he'd left it.  He looked around the camp again.  My father seemed stronger than the night before.  He didn't shiver so much.  My mother asked how he felt, and he said, "I'll be better when we're lower.  Warmer."  Mustafa and I folded the rain cloth and put it away.  We all ate some dried vegetables, and then we wrapped blankets around ourselves and started.  The djinn went into Mustafa that day.  When we were ready to go he took a long look at us.  His face hardened as though he'd put on a mask.  I'd seen him angry and upset, but I'd never seen that look.  It was fear and willfulness, and it was ugly.  
"What's wrong?" I said.  
"We have to get to the lowlands," he said.  Then he turned and walked.  Fast.  My mother shouted at him to slow, but he didn't.  
"Follow him," our father said.  "Drag me if you have to."  
"Be quiet, Faad," my mother said.  "No one's dragging anyone."  She took one of his arms, and I took the other, and Saami held my other hand.  My father stumbled, but Mustafa hardly slowed.  When I looked at Father I saw why Mustafa was hurrying.  His skin was grey.  The afrit were stealing his heat.  Even walking, even surrounded with a blanket, he was losing heat.  He needed warmth, fast.  
At mid-day we found a stream and drank and filled our waterskins.  There was brush, but it was green.  No good for fires.  In the afternoon the air was warmer, and all of us except my father took off our blankets.  That night the djinn led us to a cave.  My father went straight in and rested.  Mustafa gathered brush, and my mother cooked stew.  My father could hardly eat.  I helped him hold his cup.  
"Thanks," he said.  A little piece of carrot fell out of his mouth, and my mother caught it and made sure he ate it.  His eyes were dull.  I made tea with Baston's blossom, and he drank it.  Then he went to sleep.  
"We need to stay here," my mother said.  "He needs to rest."  
"We all need rest," Mustafa said.  
"Don't smart back," she said.  
"Three days of food.  Four more days down the mountains."  
"I don't care, son.  We need to stay."  
"We stay, we die."  
My mother's face paled, and she turned away and covered it with her hand.  Mustafa was right.  We were all thinner than when we started.  We were eating tiny meals.  Our legs were shaky.  If we waited for my father to get stronger we'd be too weak to reach the lowlands.  
"Saami, help me gather brush," Mustafa said.  They went out, and my mother and I took off my father's boots and wiped his face and hands.  We rubbed his arms and legs and covered him with the rest of the blankets.  My mother was being strong, but her hands were shaking.  
"Watch his feet," she said.  "Make sure they're covered."  
"They are," I said.  
"You can do better than that."  She reached over and fussed with the blankets.  
"The tea will help," I said.  She nodded.  We made him as comfortable as we could and then put down the rest of the blankets.  When Saami and Mustafa came back Mustafa gathered a pile of rocks by the cave mouth and put his bird-bow on top of them.  
"He's resting," my mother said.  
"Good," Mustafa said.  Then we bedded down for the night.  

The next day my father was dead.  I knew it as soon as I woke.  I could feel him not there.  Mustafa was awake and sitting up.  He'd put the rain cloth away and was looking out over the mountains.  I couldn't tell what he was feeling.    
"I dug a hole," he said.  
When my mother woke we did what had to be done.  There wasn't wood for a pyre, so we washed his body and said the prayers, and Mustafa helped us set the body in the hole.  It wasn't deep.  Mustafa had dug it with a flat rock.  The body almost filled it.  We did it all quietly.  Djinnist scripture says you're not to mourn the dead because they're in the land of the djinn and are happy.  It's a sign of weak faith to weep when someone dies.  So we didn't mourn aloud.  I didn't feel sorrowful, not then.  Just frightened.  Frightened that the NaHrouz might find his body and do something horrible to it and frightened that the djinn had taken him away from us.  If they would do that they could take my mother and Mustafa and Saami, too.  They could leave me alone in the mountains.  That scared me so much I hardly felt anything else.  
We didn't wake Saami until after the body was in the hole.  My mother said it was no good for him to see the preparations.  When we woke him and told him he was quiet.  Not like Mustafa, looking off into the distance, just quiet.  I thought seeing his father so sick had made it less a shock for him, until we started putting dirt in the hole.  Then he cried and lay on the body.  
"Come on, Father, you have to get up," he said.  "Please get up.  Please.  Don't die."  
"Saami," my mother said and pulled him off the body.  He didn't fight.  He huddled against her leg and cried while Mustafa and I buried the body and rolled heavy rocks over it.  We didn't leave markings for the NaHrouz to find.  Saami put his fern stone on one of the rocks, but Mustafa pushed it into the pile.  
"No good catching their attention," he said.  "Let's go."  
The next four days are grey in my memory.  Mustafa led us down.  The north side of the Middle Mountains slope right down to the lowlands, and we had to go slowly.  That made me hate being heavy.  I'd lost a full stone coming over the mountains, but I was still big.  The soil was loose, and my mother and I fell more than Saami and Mustafa.  My mother didn't say anything, but I cursed.  Saami must have learned some interesting words.  Once Mustafa fell and cut his left arm on a sharp rock.  The cut was deep, and I bandaged it.  
"Good," he said.  He wore the bandage for ten days before his arm healed.  
There was more brush the lower we went, and we had to force through it.  Wind blew up from the lowlands instead of down from the mountains, and I smelled growing things.  Fields spread out below us.  My feet weren't so bad, coming down.  They were starting to callous and didn't blister as easily.  And by then I was used to the pain.  
We ate the last of our rice and vegetables the third day after my father died.  Mustafa killed a rabbit that day, and we made rabbit soup.  Every bite felt like I was taking food away from my father.  I knew that wasn't right, but that was the way I felt.  My mother only ate because I kept telling her to.  Otherwise she stared at the bowl.  
"Tomorrow we'll be out of the mountains," Mustafa said.  
"If we make it," my mother said.  "I'm so tired."  
"Tomorrow we'll be out of the mountains, mother," Mustafa said.  His look was so ugly that she didn't say anything else.  
The next afternoon we left the mountains.  We broke brush all morning, and that exhausted us.  Saami had a bad time.  He was too small to break brush, and I was too tired to carry him.  He had to walk on his own, and that made him miserable.  
"But we prayed, Maha," he said.  "I prayed every night, and the djinn didn't help us."  
"How can you say that?" I said.  "Look at your brother.  Who's showing him the way?"  
"But he died.  He died."  
Sometimes I was cross and told him to shush, and then he was hurt and quiet, and I felt guilty.  It was hard for me to explain to him because I didn't understand any better than he did.  It seemed senseless for the djinn to have our father lead us into the mountains and then let him die and then have Mustafa show us the way out of the mountains.  
We reached the fields in the afternoon.  The first settlers had terraced the lower mountains, and we broke out of the brush onto the terraces.  I didn't like the smell of brackish water and dirt, but I was glad there was no more brush.  There were hard-packed trails between the fields and at the edges of the terraces.  Three hundred paces below us the fields spread out all the way to the coast.  Mustafa had us wait while he went to look.  He was gone at least an hour.  When he came back he said, "Farm houses about a metapace east.  Walk along the brush.  Go into it if you see anything moving."  Then he set off, slowly and carefully, and we followed.  It was hard for me to walk on flat ground because I was so used to the mountains.  Every step I took I wanted to go up or down.  Saami tried to step down three or four times before he adjusted.  When we came to the farm houses we stopped and watched them for a while.  There were only seven, big mud-brick farm houses with wooden doors and shutters.  They were closed up, which was strange.  It was hot, and they should have been open.  
Finally my mother said, "Well?"  
"Where are the animals?" Mustafa said.  
"Inside, maybe."  
"Maybe.  Stay here."  He looked around and then went to the closest house.  He walked slowly with his nose up in the air.  Smelling for NaHrouz, I think.  Or bodies.  He had his bird-bow in hand.  I hoped someone would come out and ask where he'd come from.  They'd invite us in for dinner and give us a tub to bathe in and soft pillows to sleep on.  Mustafa tapped on the door and waited for eight or ten breaths.  Then he opened it and went inside.  When he disappeared Saami started to shiver, and my mother said, "He'll be back.  Wait."  
"What if he dies, too?" Saami said.  
"That's enough," my mother said.  "Don't think like that.  That's no good, Saami."  
Then Mustafa came out of the house and waved for us to come.  "The NaHrouz were here.  A few days ago, maybe longer.  Look for anything useful.  I'll be back soon."  Then he left.  The inside of the house was a mess.  There was a central room and a kitchen and two bedrooms.  The NaHrouz had hacked up the beds and broken the furniture, and they'd used the big bedroom for a toilet.  We closed the door and never went in there.  
"They took everyone away like Father said, didn't they," Saami said.  
"Maybe," I said.  "Or maybe the people ran when the hammering stopped, like we did."  
"Wait and see what your brother finds," my mother said.  
The NaHrouz had taken the tools and even the pots and pans and utensils.  They'd smashed the crockery.  We started to clean up, but we hadn't gotten far when Mustafa came back.  He looked as though he'd been crying.  That really frightened me.  
"Looks like Father was right," he said.  "Listen to me now."  When he said that an afriti flew over my pyre.  I knew he was about to say something horrible.  "Stay away from the east side of this place.  We have no business there.  There are plenty of vegetables in the fields to the west.  I'm going into some of the other houses to see what's left.  Pick out the driest firewood for cooking.  Keep the fire small."  
Saami said, "What's in the east houses?"  
"Nothing for us," Mustafa said.  "Help your sister and mother.  I'm going to finish looking around."  
My mother cleaned out the fireplace, and we made a fire.  Then she went to the fields and gathered vegetables, and we cut those up for soup.  There was a well behind the house, and I drew a bucket of water.  I boiled it before we used it, in case the NaHrouz had dropped anything down the well.  Saami fed pieces of broken furniture into the fire and kept it going, and when Mustafa came back there were boiled vegetables ready.  Saami wanted to know what he'd found, but all he said was, "Nothing.  They were thorough.  I want to leave here tomorrow."  
"We can't do that," my mother said.  
"We have to get to the coast," he said.  
"We need a rest," my mother said.  
His expression didn't change, but I felt him burning.  After eight or ten heartbeats he said, "Two days."  He must have been as exhausted as we were.  
Saami said, "I want to rest longer than that."  
"We don't have longer than that," he said.  "They'll check this place again.  We have to go."  
My mother just nodded.  She didn't have any arguing left in her.  
We stayed three days.  Most of that time we slept.  My mother and I took the small bedroom, and Saami and Mustafa slept in the main room.  When Mustafa slept his eyes and cheeks sank, and he didn't move.  His chest hardly rose.  
I said to my mother, "He's going to catch sick."  
"He'll be fine," she said.  "He just needs rest.  He's pulling strength up from the deep."  
"The djinn are using him too hard," I said.  
"The djinn are doing all they can," she said.  "You must trust them, Maha."  
That was hard.  They'd let our father die.  
When he was awake Mustafa stayed by the windows and watched.  Sometimes he explored.  He found a hot spring near the village, and we got to bathe.  Someone had built a stone pool where the hot water collected, and I swear we were so filthy that the water turned dark.  But the heat pulled out the dirt and dust and sweat.  It even pulled out some of the fear and weariness.  That one bath did as much good for me as all the sleep.  
When my mother and I were awake we dried vegetables to put in the traveling bags.  We found clothes and shoes to replace ours.  They were farm clothes, baggy and ugly, but they were clean.  Some of them even fit.  We found good leather sandals that must have been too small for the NaHrouz.  We took those and threw away our city shoes.  Mustafa kept his boots, of course, and his tough militia clothes, and we cleaned those for him.  We were going to clean the house, too, but Mustafa said to leave it.  He didn't want to leave signs that people had been there.  
Saami slept almost three whole days.  When he was awake he cried for our father.  Sometimes my mother and I comforted him, and Mustafa gave him chores to do, and the rest of the time we let him cry.  Sometimes he said to me, "But why, Maha?" and I told him, "Because the djinn wanted him with them," and he said, "But I want him here."  He said that again and again until he exhausted himself.  Then he just cried.  
Mustafa thought we needed sixteen days to reach the sea.  If we were lucky a ship would pass, and we could hail it.  Otherwise we would have to walk to a city and try to buy passage with the gold we'd brought.  We didn't have to worry for food.  Fruit and vegetables were plentiful in the fields, and there were rabbits and game birds all over.  We had to watch for the NaHrouz, but the lowlands were full of bushes and trees and fields.  It would be hard for them to find four people in all that.  It made me bitter, how easy we expected the walk to be.  My father died a few days from the lowlands.  Why did the djinn do that?  What was their great plan, putting crazy ideas in his head and then killing him?  We were djinnist.  We weren't at temple every week, but we kept the days.  If that wasn't enough, why send us off the road at all?  To test our faith?  Or to punish us?  I knew people who said they were djinnist but never went to Temple.  Why weren't they stumbling through the mountains and dying?    
We left the village late in the morning of our third day there.  When we went outside we saw pillars of black smoke rising from the coast and a giant cloud of smoke behind the mountains.  
"What's burning?" Saami asked.  
"Cities," Mustafa said.  He held up our father's compass and started walking.  Saami went after him.  
"Don't bother your brother," I said to him.  "Come back here with us."  
"He's not a bother," Mustafa said.  So Saami walked with him.  
Walking in the lowlands was such a pleasure after the mountains.  The land was flat, and there were good trails at the edges of fields and between villages.  Since it was summer the trails were dry, even trails next to flooded fields.  We walked quickly and left the mountains farther and farther behind.  I liked that.  I liked the food, too.  There was corn and carrots, turnips, peas, beans, radishes, tomatoes, squash and soursop and sweetsop.  There were lemons and guavas, mangos and papayas.  There were even spackleberry patches.  We ate like governors.  
I didn't like the heat.  At first it felt good to be hot and to sweat, after the mountains.  But Utu burned hot all day, and that didn't feel good for long.  For a few days we draped pieces of blanket over our head to keep from being burned.  Later we found hats in a deserted village.  
The smoke clouds we'd seen rose for days.  That upset my mother, but she didn't talk about it.  I walked next to her sometimes and tried to talk to her, but she said to watch out for Saami.  She'd see to herself.  I knew she would never tell me how much she was hurting.  Father was always the one she'd confided her deepest troubles to.  I walked close to her anyway.  
The djinn moved deep into Mustafa.  He thought like some military leader.  He had us repack the traveling bags so nothing would make noise.  He made sure we only moved after Utu was well up and that we stopped before He was too low because the NaHrouz see best in dim light.  We only cooked with the driest wood and only in the day, when they wouldn't be awake to smell smoke.  When there was wet ground we went around it so we didn't leave tracks.  We slept in the fields, away from houses.  Mustafa hadn't learned all those tricks from the militiamen, I was sure of that.  The djinn were helping him.  
There were more empty villages.  Mustafa went in first, and if he found anything horrible he'd come back and say, "Not here," and we'd go on.  Buzzards circled one village, and he didn't go in there.  In the ones that were clean we took fresh water and washed if there was a spring.  Every time we went into an empty village afrit flew over my pyre.  There should have been men in the fields.  Women should have been walking between the houses.  Children should have been running and playing.  
Once my mother wondered out loud why we weren't meeting other refugees, and Mustafa said, "Everyone on the pass road was captured.  The lowland people are already on the coast or captured.  We won't meet anyone else out here."  
"Thank you, son," our mother said.  
Once we found bootprints in a field, going up and down the rows.  Another time we found a NaHrouz corpse near a village.  It had been shot through the face with a crossbow bolt, and someone had stripped it.  By the time we found it, it was almost down to bones.  Mustafa tapped the bolt with his boot and said, "Good."  
When we'd gone through the lowlands for six days we came to the Ghalan Road.  We were half way to the coast.  The road was built up two paces above the fields, I suppose so it wouldn't flood.  We came to it in the morning, and Mustafa didn't want to cross right away.  
"Too easy for the NaHrouz to see us now," he said.  "Let's walk alongside until mid-day."  
"Maybe we can find a tunnel," Saami said.  
"Maybe," Mustafa said.  
We walked along the road for eight or ten metapaces.  Then Mustafa stopped and motioned for us to get down in the corn.  He went ahead.  
"Do you see anything?" my mother asked me.  
"No," I said.  Utu was almost overhead, and His light was bright.  
"There's something on the road," Saami said.  "Way up there."  I couldn't see anything.  
"What does it look like?" my mother said.  
"Boxes," he said.  "Stuff."  
"Not NaHrouz?"  
"I don't think so."  He sounded so proud, seeing something we couldn't.  
When Mustafa came back he said, "There's furniture piled on the road.  If there are NaHrouz beyond that they won't be able to see us.  We'll cross here.  Crawl slowly.  Don't catch attention."  Then he got down on all fours and crawled onto the road, and we followed.  I crawled as fast as I dared, because the road was cobbled and hot.  The other side was a big, wet field.  
Mustafa led us along the road.  "Crouch low," he said.  
"I'm not going to break my back," I said.  
He said, "I'm not going to die because you were worried about a backache."  I crouched.  
About two hundred paces beyond where we crossed we found forty or fifty human bodies.  We must have been upwind, because we didn't smell them until we were there.  Their heads had been chopped off.  Heads and bodies were all jumbled.  They'd been there at least a week.  There were bugs.  Mustafa turned to lead us around them but was too slow.  My mother and I saw them and grabbed Saami.  My mother put a cloth over his eyes and led him.  He didn't even try to peek.  Later he said our faces were so awful he didn't want to see what was there.  
"Don't look," Mustafa said.  "Just look into the field."  He walked into the rice paddy.  There was no trail there, so we had to go into the water.  "Come on," he said.  
But I couldn't keep my eyes off the bodies.  It was like when a wagon overturns and people look to see if anyone was killed.  There were a lot of old people and crippled people and thin little kids like Saami.  Sickly ones, I guessed.  There were fat people.  I saw all those people and started crying.  They had had families and friends and hopes and dreams, and they were all dead.  But what made me cry so hard that Mustafa came back and shook me was that I knew what the NaHrouz had been thinking.  Those were people they thought couldn't walk all the way to the mountains to be slaves.  So they lined them up on the road and cut off their heads.  
"Maha!" Mustafa said.  "There's nothing we can do here.  We have to go.  You have to take care of Saami."  I heard that.  I went to poor Saami, who was shaking because he heard me cry, and told him I was all right.  Mustafa moved fast around the paddy, and we got away from there.  

I was terrified for days after we found the bodies.  We could end up like those people, easily.  It would only take one NaHrouz with a crossbow.  If they started hunting us there was nowhere we could go.  They could follow us forever.  If we were caught they'd torture us.  Whenever I looked up and saw the smoke clouds rising my spirit shrank.  Sometimes I cried from fear.  Mustafa never came back to squeeze my arm like Father did.  
There were more empty villages on the way to the coast, but we didn't find any more bodies.  Mustafa stayed in front, and Saami walked with him.  Sometimes that made me angry.  I'd taken care of him for a year and a half when he was sick, and there he was with Mustafa.  I thought about pulling him back with me, but I knew he'd fuss and try to make me miserable.  At least he wasn't complaining, with Mustafa.  
Five days after we found the dead people we reached the Coast Road.  It was like the Ghalan Road but wider and higher, about four paces.  We went across it as we had the Ghalan Road.  There weren't any bodies on the other side.  No one could farm the land north of the road because it was all sand dunes and grass.  The sea was two metapaces away.  We walked on the grass, watching so we didn't leave footprints.  Mustafa was afraid the NaHrouz would have soldiers by the beach to watch for refugees, so we were careful.  
I first saw the water between two grassy dunes.  That lifted my spirit.  We'd come a long way to get to the sea, and there was the green water.  We went a little closer, and then Mustafa and Saami put the rain cloth over some strong bushes.  They threw sand up the sides and over the top, and from fifty or sixty paces away it looked like another low dune.  We didn't make any more cooking fires.  The fruits and vegetables we ate were raw.  
"What do we do now?" my mother said.  
"Wait.  The NaHrouz must be laying siege to the seaports.  It's best to see if any ships sail by.  If none come in a few days, we'll go north or south and take our chances."  
We were on the beach for eight days.  We didn't dare walk to the water.  A person could be seen for ten or twelve metapaces out there.  We couldn't walk by the road for the same reason.  Or around the dunes, since we couldn't leave footprints.  We gathered brush for a signal fire and watched for ships.  The sea was beautiful, but wave-watching became tedious.  There were sand fleas.  Thank the djinn they weren't the biting sort, but I hated them climbing on me and jumping across my face when I was trying to sleep.  Saami didn't seem to mind.  He sat in front of our shelter and looked out to sea or watched the bugs.  He found ant lion pits behind our shelter and fed sand fleas to the ant lions.  He must have fed hundreds of fleas to them.  
After a few days my mother was ready to leave.  "How long do you want to stay here, son?  The NaHrouz will round us up eventually."  
Mustafa said, "They're waiting to round us up everywhere else, too."  
"At least we'd be rounded up someplace different than here, with these fleas."  
Later that day Mustafa went across the road for food.  He had to wipe out his footprints with brush as he went, and that slowed him.  It took him half a day to gather enough fruit and vegetables and return, and he was tense when he came back.  He practically dove into the shelter and pulled the rain cloth down.    
"Patrol," he said.  "Four NaHrouz."  For hours we huddled and watched through holes in the cloth, but they didn't come.  Later Mustafa found boot tracks not two hundred paces to the west of us.  There were also tracks of two dogs.  After that no one talked about going anywhere.  
On the eighth day the Cocksure came.  That was right as Utu rose, when the sky was turning pink and yellow.  Saami had to pee, and when he opened the flaps he saw a boat.  He woke the rest of us, and we all looked.  All it was was a tiny white something moving north to south.  
"Do we light the fire?" I asked.  
"Get the brush out and the coals ready," Mustafa said.  He'd kept hot coals that whole time.  We pulled the brush out of the back of the shelter and took it between the two dunes in front of us.  From there the ship could see our fire.  
"Saami, can you see what it is?" Mustafa asked.  
"It's little, and not far out.  I don't know boats."  Of course he didn't.  How could he?  
Then we saw a big warship chasing the little one.  The warship's sails were painted with a bloody skull symbol.  NaHrouz.  I'd never heard of NaHrouz on ships before, but they must have taken ships when they captured the seaports.  The warship was almost as fast as the boat, but the boat could turn quicker.  Twice it turned toward the warship and then cut away.  Saami said, "The ship is shooting at the boat, but it missed."  Mustafa told us to keep watch while he looked for NaHrouz.  While he was gone the boat moved from the north to almost in front of us.  It must have caught a good wind, because it pulled well ahead of the warship.  
"We're all right," Mustafa said when he came back.  He dumped coals out of the crockery bowl onto the brush.  It was dry and lit up and burned bright and hot.  I thought, "The NaHrouz on the warship can see this."  If there were NaHrouz close to us on land they'd see the glow.  
"Get the bags," Mustafa said.    
The small boat came toward shore, into the shallows where the warship couldn't follow.  When it was close we saw it was a pleasure yacht, painted white, with white, triangular sails.  We ran to the beach to meet it.  
"Come on!" someone on board shouted, and I grabbed Saami and staggered into the water.  It was only to my waist, but I could hardly walk on the rocky bottom.  The boat came alongside us, and a big man on the deck shouted, "The ladders!  Grab the ladders!" and flung four rope ladders over the side.  Later we found out he'd picked up other people the same way, moving fast, so he'd made the ladders to speed things up.  We grabbed them, and he called out for us to hang on and then shouted to someone else to go.  The sail turned, and the boat started moving fast, and we barely held on while the big man pulled us up.  He was something to see.  He was forty or so, with black hair that was graying on the sides.  Broad-chested.  He wore sea-green pantaloons and a leather vest over a yellow silk shirt.  I didn't notice until later, but he had a thin gold ring in his right ear lobe.  At that moment he looked like the handsomest man in the world.  
"Get to the stern," he said.  "I'll come talk when we have time."  We went to the stern, where there were seats nailed to the deck.  It didn't take long to escape the NaHrouz warship.  There were sand bars all along the coast that the Cocksure could slip between, while the warship had to go out into deeper water.  The Cocksure could turn around in the shallows and go back the way it came, but the warship had to turn a big circle.  Sometimes the NaHrouz shot giant arrows at us from machines on their deck, and one of those went into the water not ten paces away.  Mustafa sat up and pointed his little bird-bow at them and shot a dart.  It didn't even go close, of course.  
"I had to do that," he said.  "I didn't get to shoot at a NaHrouz once."  He didn't smile, but it was a joke.  I was so glad to hear something other than, "Let's go," and, "Be quiet!"  
A wind came off the coast and pushed us well in front of the warship, and it fell farther and farther back until we couldn't see it anymore.  The big man came and introduced himself.  "Ashraf Desook," he said.  "Out of RaHbain.  Ready to eat?"  
We had fruit and sweet curds he kept in a magical cooler box, and toasted bread.  
"Wouldn't you know all this would happen as I was setting to retire," he said.  "Had a nice villa in RaHbain and a pile of gold bricks up to here"—he held his hand out chest-high—"and then the NaHrouz ruined it all."  
"How did you get so much gold?" Saami asked.  My mother told him to shush, but Ashraf said, "I was in the import-export business."  He winked when he said that.  "Lot of opportunity there for a two-eyed man."  Saami didn't understand, but the rest of us did.  He was some sort of grey merchant before the War.  Not that we cared.  
"So why are you here and not off to Decadurinis?" my mother asked.  
"Well, the NaHrouz cost me just about everything," he said.  "So now I'll snatch some of their prizes away from them."  
I didn't think we looked like prizes, but I was glad he'd picked us up.  He told us that ours was his third run and that he'd picked up almost forty people.  A few more trips and he'd call it even with the NaHrouz and do something else.  After breakfast he showed us around.  Cocksure wasn't a huge boat, but it was bigger than we needed.  
"She'll hold twenty-five in a scrape," Ashraf said.  "Had to do that last time, when I picked up a boatload off Lotz.  That was almost three weeks ago.  Nasty run.  There were two NaHrouz light cruisers after us.  Lucky there was a wizard in that group, or we'd have been in a bad way."  He shook his head, and then he took us to meet Abdurahmann, his navigator and helpmeet, a white-haired old man from djinn-knows-where.  Scary looking.  He had beard stubble and the meanest, ugliest face.  He even looked that way when he slept.  Ashraf never did say how the two of them met.  They didn't look like father and son.  
"Don't like kids," he said when he saw Saami.  "Keep the boy out of here."  That was the first thing he said!  But he liked Mustafa.  Mustafa spent most of the trip to Balon in the wheel house talking with him.  He knew a million stories, all sorts of nonsense about sea monsters and loose port women and such.  
Ashraf had planned to spend a few more days sailing along the coast looking for other refugees, but he decided to leave early.  "The captain of that battlemain won't give up," he said.  "We've insulted him, and he'll prowl up and down the coast for a week.  Might as well take you folks on to Balon and give him time to find something else to do."  
He took us to Balon because that's where other refugees from the Little Nations were going.  People from different parts of the Little Nations were setting up a string of colonies on Balon's southwest coast.  The trip took six days of smooth sailing.  Ashraf taught Saami how to work the sails and had him doing all sorts of things around the boat.  My mother and I took over cleaning and making meals.  Ashraf had so much food on board.  I didn't know where he got it, in the middle of the War.  He made it a pleasant trip, and I'll never forget the first time I saw him standing on the deck in his silk pantaloons and leather vest like a pirate or lunatic.  

In some ways we're lucky.  We've been in Kutai almost six years, and it's become home.  I've learned herb lore from everyone who would teach me, and people accept me as Kutai's pharmacist.  I'll be taking apprentices soon.  Mustafa's in the city militia and has a real crossbow.  I think he's found a lover, though he doesn't say.  Saami's in school.  He talks about going to the Technocracy to study mathematics, but I don't see how he'll do it.  The Technocracy sends ships here to trade, but they're not interested in us.  They just want our timber and medicinal plants.  But maybe he'll work a deal with them; he's eager to go.  My mother works for the town council, keeping records.  She's not very happy.  She thinks about the past too much.  I had hoped something would happen with Ashraf—he visited her twice after our run—but that never had a chance.  He kept sailing to pick people up, and half a year after he saved us he didn't come back.  
In other ways it's not easy living here.  The tribal people in the jungle hate us, and whenever we try going inland they kill the exploration parties.  They may push us out yet.  A lot of people die from jungle sicknesses, and there are pirates.  We've been raided by NaHrouz three times.  They never got through the gates, but last time was close.  At least ten times a day I think I can't keep living here.  Maybe that's the only way I can keep living here.  That, and I think of my father's death and all the pain it took for us to get here.  We ran from Sirinus and let it burn.  We'll fight for this place, and if the djinn are with us we'll keep it.  

— end —



Foreword — "Green Eyes"

Very little is known of the society and customs of the Little Nations NaHrouz before the War.  Like the NaHrouz of Thalarar they are a subterranean people whose communities are hidden from human inquiry.  Pre-War estimates placed their total population near 20,000; however, the fact that they fielded some 40,000 soldiers makes obvious that those estimates were inadequate.  They certainly kept human slaves, though how many is not known.  Scholars also do not know whether their society was military-governed or merely contained a strong military component.  
Information concerning the actions of these NaHrouz during the War, however, is plentiful.  During the third year of the conflict they marched from their home tunnels and quickly conquered the Little Nations.  They then sailed to Decadurinis, where they conquered most of that nation.  When the NaHrouz finally retreated from Decadurinis, most of their stragglers were quickly captured and executed.  Some, however, roamed for years in Decadurinis' south lands, which had been depopulated.  By the time these individuals were captured the public demand for executions had subsided, and they were sent to Rathadjeal Prison in southern Decadurinis for interrogation.  Decadurinian authorities hoped to discover from them the fates of at least some of the two hundred thousand Decadurinian citizens missing since the War.  
When I returned to Decadurinis after my travels I heard of these captives and secured permission from Rathadjeal's administrators to interview some of them.  In barred rooms with guards at hand I interviewed six NaHrouz soldiers and one Döckálf mage [whose account, "Shards of Glass," is included in this collection].  I quickly discovered that while NaHrouz excel as soldiers, they are poor storytellers.  The first five individuals told disjointed narratives of murder, rape, torture and glorious battle against overwhelming odds, and I strongly suspect from the fantastical style that the accounts were spun not from actual experiences but from NaHrouz myths.
Urkas Gax proved to be the exception.  His narrative was crisp and taut, and it was obvious that he had presented it to at least one tribunal and probably his fellow inmates.  When speaking he waved his arms, smacked his fist into his open hand and slapped his chair.  At times these gestures disturbed his guards, whose hands would edge toward their scimitars; this seemed to be his objective as much as enriching his account.  
Urkas was a large NaHrouz in the prime of his life (22-23 years old; NaHrouz live about 35 years).  Standing nearly three paces tall and weighing some seventeen stones, he was the largest of the NaHrouz at Rathadjeal.  To human eyes he was incredibly ugly; his grey skin was thick and warty, and his short, black hair stood like bristles on his head.  His face was flat, his deep-set eyes black flecked with red.  Two small slits in the area of the human nose provided him with a sense of smell.  Urkas' mouth was huge and full of canine teeth which had once been filed to sharp points (and had subsequently been filed flat by the Rathadjeal guards).  Short tusks once grew from his lower jaw, but after an attack on his guards these had been removed.  
I should note that I attempted on several occasions to discuss Little Nations NaHrouz society with Urkas.  He told me that he would not reveal anything that might give humans a military advantage over his people and thus would say nothing.  
I am indebted to Tostan Dosh-ran-Fujala, Professor of NaHrouz military history at the Akorthansa Institute of Military Studies, for his assistance in translating Urkas' curses.  His efforts add a great deal of color to the account and help ensure its veracity.  



Green Eyes

That crazy son-of-a-bitch mercenary walked right out into the street with his sword up.  Not a limp-dick northman scimitar, either, but a real sword he'd taken from some NaHrouz grunt stupider than he was.  It was a bastard sword, long and flexible and sharp.  He had NaHrouz armor, too, breastplate and chain mail.  Only human I'd ever seen big enough to wear our armor.  The metal was NaHrouz steel, harder than Rhmm's heart.  Shit, he had better gear than I did.  
The village where we met this asshole wasn't on our captured map.  Damned near every village we found wasn't on that map.  The village was halfway up Decadurinis' west coast, twenty metapaces inland.  Farming village.  Mud brick and thatch houses.  Stone buildings at village center.  This was a couple months before The Three Bitches erupted back home and blew the whole War, when we were still smashing everything in our way.  
I was in command of ten dickbirds the Hammer wouldn't have minded losing.  He wouldn't have minded losing me, either, after the fuck-up at the gatehouse at Asenduraf.  (No one told me the defenders had a wizard.  Nine grunts and two tong-rank noncoms aren't bad trade for a wizard, I'd say, but I damned well didn't say that to the Hammer.  As was he personally gave me twenty lashes and knocked my rank down from whip to tong.  Then he took my troopers and gave me the dickbirds.)  After Asenduraf all my squad pulled was guard duty and recon.  When there was action we pulled security.  Pussy work.  But we didn't bitch.  Next slot down was digging shitholes and garbage dumps.  At least on security and recon you got to keep your weapons.  
The Hammer knew how to hold a grudge.  Son-of-a-bitch sent us out on a mission while the rest of the Fighting 68th fucked off on the coast.  We'd just rolled over a fat coastal village, so the unit was taking time to enjoy themselves.  The Hammer sent my squad for a four day recon—just long enough that the unit would be ready to move when we came back.  Our mission was to reconnoiter a half-circle forty metapaces in radius, looking for towns that weren't on our maps and refugees running inland.  The idiots we'd just captured had stayed to finish their harvest.  The Hammer was hoping others were equally stupid.  
"Take these sorry bastards and teach them how to recon.  Do a good job and one of these days you'll get your troopers back," the Hammer told me.  Then he punched me alongside the head to let me know I wasn't completely out of grace.  I took the mission back to my squad, and two hours later we were heading north along the coast.  We hadn't walked two metapaces before the grunts started to whine.  I busted one in the face a few times, and they shut up.  
Coastal weather was a fuck.  Rainy season was starting, and it drizzled all day.  There was a cold wind that froze our balls.  Our home tunnels are in volcano country, hot and dry, and we weren't used to that weather.  We weren't used to daylight, either.  We see best in the dark.  Bright light's a bitch to our eyes.  Even with the rainy season clouds it was hard to see.  But we had to travel during the day because that's when the humans were out.  Didn't do any Rhmmdamned good to hunt them at night, when they were hidden.  
The weather was rough, but the area was soft.  Farmlands as far as we could see.  Flat and brown.  When there were roads I walked down the middle, and the grunts walked on either side.  That way they were there to block incoming crossbow bolts and arrows for me.  It also allowed them to cover each other if we were ambushed.  When there was no road we traveled in a diamond, me in the center.  Same reasons.  Not that we expected any action from the farmers.  Every once in a while we hit a town or village with some kick-ass in it, but that never lasted long.  I was spoiling for a fight but expected four days of stroking myself.  
We didn't find shit the first day.  We walked forty metapaces north of the 68th's position and turned inland.  There were fields, already harvested.  A few villages, burnt down.  The farmers did that to spite us.  That evening we set up rain shelters that didn't keep the rain out and spent a typical night in the field.  
Second day reminded me of Asenduraf.  The first Hammer I served under used to say, "Give a grunt a chance to fuck up and he'll do it every time."  My grunts were trying to prove him right.  Late in the morning we came across a deserted village.  It was typical, four or five dozen houses surrounding a caravansary, a store and a granary.  Road went through the middle.  There didn't seem to be anyone there, but I didn't give a shit what it looked like.  Asenduraf looked easy, too.  So I sent the two stupidest grunts into the village to look for hiders or valuables left behind.  They worked their way to the granary, and then one of them kicked open the door instead of going through a window like he should have.  I about shit myself when I saw that.  The Fighting 68th had cleared a thousand buildings.  He knew what to do.  But he was stupid, which was exactly why he'd been given to me.  He kicked open the door, and the granary blew up in a fireball that leveled half the village.  Most of the houses by the granary caught fire, and the caravansary was blown to pieces.  I let the grunts watch for a few heartbeats.  Then I told two more to get in there and finish clearing the place.  They did it right.  
We'd heard about those granary traps, but I'd never come across one.  Decadurinian granaries have two areas, a threshing room and a silo.  The farmers poured alcohol into the silo and vented the vapors into the threshing room.  Then they sealed the threshing room windows with wax to hold in the vapors.  They embedded bits of iron—nails, pieces of old buckets, anything—in the bottom of the door and stuck pieces of flint in the floor behind the door.  Any asshole who kicked the door would spark the iron and flint.  If the vapors had been building for a few days you got a big blast.  The 68th hadn't lost many grunts that way, but the 53rd lost a full recon.  
The farmers had stripped the village of everything but a half-empty cask of fish oil.  It was too heavy to drag with us, but I'd mention it to the Hammer.  He might have a use for it.  That night I decided we'd sleep in one of the houses.  Right after sundown Rhmm started pissing, and we found the farmers had holed the roof.  I sent grunts to check other houses.  Those were holed, too.  By the time we got tarps up we were soaked, and our gear was soaked, and we slept for shit.  
Next day we got up ready to rip someone a new asshole.  Rain ended about two hours after we started walking, but the wind blew hard and cold all day.  The ground was mud, and everyone fell on his ass two or three times.  By the time we found the live village that afternoon we were mean.  
We knew it was going to be live or recently abandoned.  The wheat fields around it had just been scythed.  There were fresh footprints on the road.  We moved into the fields and closed in, slow and careful.  A metapace outside the houses we could hear the dumb bastards talking and working.  They didn't have security posted.  I stopped the grunts in a date palm grove five hundred paces southeast of the village and sent two recon teams.  I drew pictures in the dirt and explained twice what I wanted them to do.  They almost did it right.  They managed to crawl through the fields, have a look and get back.  The village was like all of them, a few dozen houses surrounding three public buildings.  North-south road through the middle.  At the granary, on the west side of the village, at least fifteen human males were loading three big carts with sacks of wheat.  Four more with bows on guard.  No sign of females or whelps.  
Farmers.  They must have known the 68th was only thirty metapaces away.  But damned if they'd leave their precious wheat.  So they'd sent their females and whelps inland and stayed to thresh their wheat and load their carts.  How many fields were there inland where they could have gotten wheat?  But no, by Rhmm, their wheat was in that granary, and they'd have it.  Shit.  You come across stupidity like that and wonder how the Decadurinians ever got to be so rich.  
Not that my grunts were any smarter.  One of the recon brilliants stood up behind a wall to watch the farmers.  Rhmmdamned wall only covered him to his knees.  He should have crouched behind it and peeked over the top, but not him.  He had to stand.  Of course the bowmen saw him and shot him.  They hit him a few times, but their arrows were shit steel and his armor good NaHrouz manufacture.  That saved his ass.  He ran, and somehow they missed him.  He and his partner made it back to the date palm grove.  Once he gave his report I beat the stupid bastard half-senseless.  From then on his name was Dumbshit.  
In situations like that I was supposed to get word to the Hammer, and he'd send enough grunts to take the place.  We always needed more slaves.  But we didn't have time to send anyone back to the Hammer once Dumbshit blew our element of surprise.  If we wanted them before they ran we were going to have to capture them ourselves.  And we did want them.  The grunts were horny for a fight, and I was horny for my rank back.  The situation looked good.  I had eight grunts with crossbows and steel armor.  Each of us had ten crossbow bolts.  They had four farmers-turned-bowmen with shit-steel arrows and no armor.  It was almost sweet enough to tempt me to send the grunts charging in.  But that's how recons disappear.  The noncom starts thinking like he's got five hundred grunts to back him up, and they rush in like we did at Asenduraf, and suddenly he and his two surviving grunts are eye to eye with a wizard.  
So I didn't send them in.  Instead I decided on containment and terror tactics.  First I sent Dumbshit after the cask of fish oil we'd found.  Then I sent two grunts around north and two to the south of the village, on the road.  I sent another grunt to the east and one to the west.  The last one stayed with me in the palm grove.  Seeing the two brilliants blow themselves up and Dumbshit get shot at must have taught them something.  They crept through the fields until they found good cover behind walls, and they must have stayed out of sight because the farmers didn't shoot them.  
The farmers knew something was happening.  They were looking across the fields and gabbling like slaves before the feast.  Dumbshit had put the fear of Rhmm into them.  Once a bowman started to edge out into the fields, and three others yanked him back.  The rest loaded grain onto the carts as fast as they could.  One seemed to be directing the others.  Local leader, I thought.  Prime target for a crossbow bolt.  I saw some flashes of light from him and thought he might have a mail shirt.  I sure as Hells didn't think they had a mercenary with them.  
Once the grunts were in place I shouted the order.  They stood and fired into the village.  Then they took cover again.  The farmers shit themselves.  They screamed and shot wild, and not one arrow hit any of us.  I saw one farmer go down.  Dropped like a stone.  Couldn't tell if he was dead or winged, but if he was winged it was bad.  Some of the others dragged him into the caravansary.  They were all over each other to get inside, even the bowmen.  Not one of them tried to find cover and return fire.  
I shouted the order again, and my grunts fired their second bolts.  One of the donkeys went down, braying and kicking.  Another ran up the north road.  The grunts let it go.  The 68th already had more donkeys and carts than we could use.  The third animal stood in the road until some farmers ran out of the caravansary and coaxed it inside.  We fired at them, but I didn't see any drop.  We were piss-poor shots in daylight.  I ordered the grunts to stand fast and let the farmers stew.  I wasn't worried that they could understand what I was saying.  I was speaking NaHrizi.  We hadn't found a Decadurinian yet—not even the scholars—who knew a word of NaHrizi.  
I wanted to keep the farmers contained until Dumbshit got back with the oil.  I was hoping our reputation would make every grunt count for five and that the farmers were half-witted from fear.  If they figured out how few of us there were they would run.  They only had to go two hundred paces in any direction to escape.  Our armor was too heavy to run in.  So half an hour after our attack I had the grunts fire again.  Someone hit the fallen donkey in the throat.  It didn't die then, but that shut it up.  Suited me.  Donkey braying slashes my nerves.  
Almost lost the entire situation anyway.  About an hour after we'd shot the donkey the mercenary got the farmers under control and tried to get them out of there.  I'm assuming that's who got them going, because I didn't see another one in the litter who had any balls.  All at once fifteen to twenty men threw open the stable's doors and drove the donkey and its cart toward the north.  They were shouting like idiots, trying to scare us.  The bowmen were in the cart.  As soon as they cleared the caravansary they started shooting wild to keep us down.  Arrows went straight up and into houses and way out into the fields.  One of my north grunts took a bitch-hit through his left lung, but he kept shooting.  
 Now it was me who was shitting himself.  Another of my grunts was down, and there went the farmers.  They got fifty paces out of the caravansary before some of the grunts saw the weak point in their strategy.  They shot the donkey and downed it.  The cart rolled.  One of bowmen landed under the cart and got his head smashed, but another took his bow.  Later the north grunts said they saw the mercenary guiding the cart.  He must have been knocked stupid when the cart rolled, because I'd wager he'd have kept them going if he'd been able.  But he wasn't able, and the farmers broke and retreated.  We hit at least two more as they ran, but the others dragged them into the caravansary.  We couldn't tell how badly we'd stung them.  
The grunts retrieved as many crossbow bolts as they could and rested.  I walked the perimeter, hoping for a glimpse of their leader.  He'd done a good job controlling two dozen shit-scared farmers.  The sun was too bright for me to get a good look into the village.  I might have seen the sluice-holes in back of the caravansary if I'd been able to see, but I'll get to that later.  Once an arrow shot two paces over my head.  My west grunt returned fire.  That kept them down.  We took inventory and found we had about five bolts per grunt.  I just wanted the farmers to stay down until Dumbshit got back.  We'd only hit five or six of them and probably hadn't killed more than two.  There were fifteen to twenty of them, enough to overwhelm us just by piling on us, if they found the balls.  I definitely wanted a surrender.  
There wasn't anything to do for the grunt who'd taken the arrow.  It had gone in next to his heart, and its head was too deep to dig out.  We broke the shaft off and pulled it out so it wouldn't get yanked around by his armor when he moved.  He took the pain like a trooper.  Figures that the one rough fucker I had was the one who took the arrow at the onset.  He held on until sundown before he told me to cut him.  We stripped him down and dragged the meat to the palm grove.  I put the spare grunt on north guard and waited for Dumbshit.  
He got back with the fish oil at sundown.  I sent him to the guard points to collect waterskins, and we filled them with oil.  The rest of the oil I saved.  I had Dumbshit run the skins back to the others and tell them what I wanted them to do.  Short and simple.  Then he and I moved up with the cask to join the south guards, since I could see the entrance to the caravansary from there.  
Rhmm started pissing again, but that didn't fuck up my plan.  I didn't want a big fire.  Then we'd have no place to keep prisoners.  I wanted the farmers routed so we could take the caravansary without losses.  We'd already hit them hard enough to make them jumpy.  Oil fires would have them shitting blood.  I shouted the order, and the grunts lit the oil skins on fire and pitched them onto the rooftops.  The skins burst, and burning oil ran down the roof tiles.  The fires were decent-sized but weren't going to burn long.  Everything was too wet.  So I bunged up the cask and sent Dumbshit into the village with it.  He was supposed to work his way to about fifty paces from the caravansary, jab the cask a few times with his dagger, light it on fire with a flint and steel and roll it into the village.  The fumes inside would heat up and blow the cask.  Burning oil would go everywhere.  That would panic the farmers.  
I told him what I wanted three times and made him repeat the orders.  He got them right.  Surprised me so much I thought he could actually do it.  I thought maybe seeing three fellow grunts die in two days had smartened him.  I smacked him alongside his head to let him know I was impressed, and then I sent him in.  He put the cask on his shoulder and went from house to house until he was near the caravansary.  He must have used up every bit of brain he had in those two hundred heartbeats, because after he got to the village center he caught stupid.  He holed the cask and lit it as I'd ordered him to do.  Then he picked it up over his head and walked into the village with it.  Just walked into the street as though he'd go to the caravansary and knock on the door.  Flaming oil dripped off the cask and fell on his helmet and slid down his back.  Not enough to damage, but it should have warned him.  
What he was thinking was Rhmm's own business.  Maybe he thought he'd get a promotion if he did something ballsy.  Maybe he was so excited to get that far he thought he'd go beyond the call of duty.  Whatever it was, as soon as he took two steps onto the street the farmers shouted at him, and the dumb bastard looked.  The arrow got him in the neck.  The cask fell on his head and rolled into the street.  He thrashed for a while.  A cheer went up from the caravansary.  The grunts fired a few bolts to keep anyone from running out and dousing the cask.  Forty or fifty heartbeats later it blew apart.  Flaming fish oil went all over.  The fires weren't as big as I'd hoped, but the flames looked hot and hungry.  I loaded my crossbow and shouted for the grunts to move in.  
That's when we got a new downpour.  The smallest fires were out in ten heartbeats.  The only ones that kept burning were splashes of oil that had gone under eaves and into doorways.  We moved in slow and careful, taking cover.  We'd all seen Dumbshit eat the arrow.  We'd almost reached village center when the east grunt shouted, "They're escaping east!  East!" like a high-strung old bitch.  I ran to the east side of the village and could just see silhouettes out there.  A dozen humans were running northeast through the fields.  Two more crouched by a boundary wall and fired arrows at the east watch grunt.  I shouted for everyone but two grunts to get to the east side of the village and shoot the farmers.  Those two were to watch the caravansary doors in case the humans tried any surprises.  We shot at the running farmers and dropped a couple.  The rest got away.  Their archers were scared and shot for shit.  They didn't hit any of us before we killed them.  We didn't check the bodies; that could be done later.  I ordered all the grunts into the village to find out how the farmers had gotten away.  If there was anyone left I wanted him.  The Hammer would strip me down to a grunt for losing all those slaves.  I wanted flesh.  
Later we found sluices in the caravansary stables where the horseshit collected.  The sluices had openings in the wall for the stable boys to shovel out the shit.  When the downpour started the farmers crawled out the openings into the high grass behind the caravansary.  Then they crawled into the fields.  If we hadn't tightened in when we did they'd have escaped clean.  
But we didn't know any of that when we went into the village.  There were still fires burning.  I ordered one grunt to clear the buildings while the rest of us covered him.  He went through the west side of the village building by building.  No one fired on him.  He busted through the window of the granary and looked in there and shouted back an all clear.  I told him to get his ass to the caravansary.  He was careful, but that didn't do him any good.  He crouched outside a window and peeked over its sill and took an arrow right above his nose.  Threw him back on his ass.  I put two grunts on security and told the other three to take the place.  Two ran around back to go through the windows, and one went for the door.  I covered him.  
Then the mercenary stepped out of the doorway.  He was a big bastard, as tall and stout as one of us.  I guessed he was a foreigner.  Too big to be Decadurinian.  I guess that's why he stayed behind—too big to crawl out the shit-holes.  He couldn't widen a hole without us hearing.  I shot him as he stepped out, but the bolt broke on his breast plate.  I switched to my sword.  Rhmm willing I'd have some sweetmeat before the Hammer took me down.  
The mercenary and the grunt closed.  They were about the same size, and both had bastard swords.  The grunt stepped and slashed.  The merc knew that one.  He had to parry—no shield—but he carried straight into a riposte.  He tried to slash the grunt in the neck, but the grunt's helmet took the hit.  The grunt tried to beat the merc's sword down, but the merc parried and lunged and jabbed the grunt in the gut.  Grunt lost his air and stumbled.  The merc beat the grunt's sword down, two fast hits, and then pulled his sword up over his head, two-handed, and hacked the grunt's neck.  My grunt dropped.  
Smart thing for me to do was call my two grunts off security and let them take him down.  Fucker knew how to fight.  Might hack me good.  But we'd been weeks without action.  It'd feel good to cross steel with someone who knew what he was doing.  More than that, I wanted blood before the Hammer stomped me.  So I advanced.  He had an open helmet, so I could see his face.  Wide cheeks and mouth.  Square chin.  Short black hair.  Luricanian, I thought.  His eyes shone green even in the piss-poor fire light.  I'd never seen green eyes in a human before.  
I feinted to see what he'd do.  He wasn't expecting a feint from a NaHrouz.  Most of us step and slash.  Or lunge and jab.  He tried to beat my sword down, but I expected that and stepped back.  He wanted to beat my sword down, hack my neck, get the fuck out of there.  I would have lunged and slashed, but he beat me to it.  Rhmm, he was quick.  And he'd practiced body silence.  His body didn't give away his moves.  I parried his slash and tried to lunge, but I slipped in the mud, and he parried.  We both stepped back to assess.  
Bad conditions.  Water ran into our eyes.  The light flickered.  He must not have been seeing for shit.  He wasn't as tall or strong but was quicker.  He was tired, and I was overeager.  We were apart for four or five heartbeats.  Then we closed.  
He knew he was quicker and stepped and slashed at my neck.  I parried and tried to jab his balls, but he parried that.  He grinned then.  Big white teeth and glittering green eyes.  Rhmm had touched that one.  He feinted a slash at my neck, but I'd seen his feint.  I tried to beat his sword down, but he parried and riposted.  Don't know how he knew what I was going to do.  Body noise.  He knew his shit.  He hit my blade above the hilt and damn near knocked it out of my grasp.  My hands went numb.  He lunged and slashed my left knee.  That was a new move, and I missed the parry.  Armor held, but my leg numbed.  I went down on my knee.  He hit my sword so hard he disarmed me and raised his sword over his head, two-handed.  Getting ready to hack my neck.  Then one of the grunts I'd sent around the caravansary shot him in the back.  He dropped his sword.  I got up and drew my katar and punched it through his face.  
That was the end of the action.  There were six bodies in the caravansary.  Three had been killed by our crossbow bolts, and three had been badly wounded and had their throats cut.  Looked like they didn't want to be our guests.  I was left with one fuck of a mess.  Half my grunts were dead, and we'd failed to capture any slaves.  I had to think hard about going back to the 68th.  But for that evening it didn't matter.  We moved the bodies into the granary and stayed in the caravansary for the night.  We cleaned the mercenary's carcass and boiled it.  He was tough but not bad.  I got the heart and the eyes.  

— end —



Foreword — "Black Daggers"

Atlan was Crassia's oldest nation and one of its strongest political powers.  Its farmlands supplied nearly all its food, and its large merchant fleet made it independent of the Varinian and Luricanian shipping cartels.  Its capital, Blackstone, was a major banking center which regulated much of Crassia's flow of wealth and was also a center for the arts where fresco painting, sculpture and dance were strongly backed by government gold.  High Akkadian, the language of scholars, wizards and the élite classes, evolved there, and Blackstone housed the largest and best-stocked libraries in the human nations.  It also housed the Wizards' Academy, the unique institution for the training of human wizards, and was home to more wizards than any other Crassian city.  
The War destroyed Atlan as a nation.  Early in the conflict the human wizards of Blackstone rebelled against the Döckálf magi, who retaliated by destroying their Wizards' Academy, Blackstone Library and most of Atlan's merchant fleet.  The Döckálf Queen sent armies of her Ceretesian and Irsminian vassals into Atlan, and in two years those armies completely depopulated the Eastern Reach and central farmlands.  Blackstone was besieged for over a year and destroyed.  Many of the major battles of the War were fought on Atlanean soil, and the most destructive weapons of both sides fell heavily on that nation.  Today southern Atlan is poisoned waste which can only be crossed by the Technocrats in their metal vehicles.  The Atlanean people, now estimated at three hundred thousand (from a pre-War population of three million), were scattered across Crassia, and only in the last few years have they begun to return to their homeland.  
New Blackstone was the first stop of my travels.  Built outside the old capital, the new city was a collection of shacks and shanties inhabited by fifty thousand Atlanean survivors and an equal number of refugees from other nations who had come to settle the depopulated lands.  The Technocrats were swiftly establishing police forces and public service institutions, but when I arrived crimes such as violent theft and murder were common.  Water for the new city came from two springs which had been near the old walls.  Communal toilets were easily found by their stench.  I was warned not to leave the inn at night, as slavers risked the Technocrats' patrols.  
As soon as I arrived I began to elicit accounts from anyone who would speak with me.  In particular I wanted accurate accounts concerning Great Master Luritsuran, a human wizard of great power who had tipped several important battles in humanity's favor during the War.  I had not yet learned how to distinguish ordinary accounts from outstanding ones, and for weeks I recorded nearly every account that was offered.  Though I heard many stories concerning Great Master Luritsuran, all of these were obvious fabrications.  Then one evening Faisal Abdurahmann walked into the common room of my inn and introduced himself as one of the three hundred and fifty wizards who had defended Blackstone from the Döckálf magi and their afrit.  He wanted to share one of his experiences with me so that people would understand what the siege of Blackstone had been like and would remember its victims.  His account follows.  
Faisal is Atlanean in his moderate build and light complexion and has the slightly bowed limbs of someone who suffered nutritional deficiencies in his early youth.  His features are sharp and his eyes unusually alert.  Though he was only thirty-two when I interviewed him, his hair was already the grey of a man well into his middle years.  During our interview he sat with his back to the wall, away from windows and in view of the door, and every few minutes he stopped speaking and listened to the sounds of the city.  



Black Daggers

It was late in the ninth month of the Shadow War when the afriti came to Seabreeze.  The son of a bitch.  It had the whole city to feed on, fifty thousand rich bastards and three hundred thousand fat merchants.  But instead it came to the Tangle to feed on the poor.  For a while none of us knew it was there.  That was a busy evening at Seabreeze, even though it was almost mid-night.  The work week was over, and the men of the neighborhood had pried a few coins from their wives to come to the coffeehouse.  No women at Seabreeze.  Like all aHwas, Seabreeze was for men.  Women went to the silwas for company and drink.  
There were about twenty men on the patio of Seabreeze, sitting on old wooden chairs at old wooden tables.  They played dominos and vanga and drank coffee and tea and sahaleb.  Seabreeze, like all aHwas, didn't serve alcohol.  Alcohol makes some men fight.  The men talked and smoked toffah and hashish in their water pipes.  They clapped each other's backs and shouted, "Play!"  
I was the waiter for Seabreeze, and they had me running that night.  I ran for drinks and game boards and the rag to wipe tables and the broom to clean up sawdust when there were spills.  I ran for water pipes and tobacco and fresh coals for the pipes.  So I was warm and didn't notice when the afriti began to feed.  It was a subtle feeding that felt like a cool breeze on my skin.  Around me other men pulled their vests close and shivered.  Bakala, a bricklayer, asked no one in particular where the crazy cold wind was coming from, but even that didn't catch my attention.  That was the kind of stupid carelessness that got so many wizards killed during the Shadow War.  
I noticed at last because a man in the parlor called for tobacco, and as soon as I went inside the cold stopped.  The day had been a summer day, hot and wet.  And Seabreeze was not named literally; it was deep inside the south end of the Tangle.  The cold was unnatural.  
What I felt was an afriti feeding.  Some afrit eat flesh, and some devour only the soul.  Others feed on the life essence, drawing it out little by little as the body grows colder and more tired, and when the body dies they feast on the soul.  That was what the afriti at Seabreeze was doing.  
For the first time in weeks I knew fear.  I was hiding in the Tangle because of afrit.  Every night they slipped into Blackstone and fed.  Their Döckálf masters sent them to kill wizards, and we in turn hunted them.  That was why we called the siege the Shadow War.  No one made magic unless they had to, or unless they were very powerful.  That was not me.  Mine is the magic of light and color, not war.  Before the War I was a map keeper for the merchant fleet's Map Office.  I knew only a few killing spells.  Early in the Shadow War a smoke afriti came to the Map Office and killed all the wizards there.  It tore their bodies to pieces and spattered their blood on the walls and took their souls.  That was a rest day for me, so I was not there.  After that I returned to the Tangle.  I worked at Seabreeze because it was low work with people like those I grew up with.  Trash pickers.  Fruit sellers.  Sewage collectors.  Day to day people.  Who would look for a wizard in such a place, with such people?  At the aHwa I felt safe from prowling afrit.  
But the War had found me again.  What brought an afriti to Seabreeze?  Was it hunting me, or was it simply feeding?  Would it feed a little and leave or stay long enough to kill?  
I knew it had to be an air-afriti.  An afriti could only have reached Seabreeze by flying or by transporting itself through a portal, and I hadn't felt transport magic.  It hadn't walked to Seabreeze.  There were a score of wizards hiding in the Tangle then.  It never would have gotten to Seabreeze if it had had to walk past them.  But knowing there was an air-afriti near gave me no power over it.  There are many types of air-afrit, each a different color and hue.  Each has its own powers and weaknesses.  Without knowing its color I could not cast the proper spells to destroy it.  I might attack and not destroy it, and then it would take my soul.  I would end as had so many wizards, wandering the city for a few days before seeking a quiet place to die.  With no soul nothing of me would ascend to Utu.  So I did not probe for the afriti and risk revealing myself to it.  I would wait for it to reveal itself first.  Then I would try to learn its color, and if a chance came I would kill it.  
I went to the man in the parlor who had called for tobacco and asked, "Toffah or hashish?"  He was a stout man of maybe thirty-five who wore the plain, sky-blue candis of a middle merchant and had the sharp eyes of a businessman.  For an hour he had been sitting alone, smoking a water pipe and drinking Varinian coffee.  Strongest drink we served.  He wanted to be awake, alert.  Expecting someone.  The parlor was the business part of Seabreeze.  Men came there to buy and sell.  Everything was rationed, and the black market was strong.  
"Toffah," he said.  Weak tobacco.  I nodded.  On a normal evening I would have watched him.  People were sometimes bought and sold at Seabreeze, though it was not a place for that.  There were other aHwas that welcomed flesh merchants.  Slaves were staked to rooftops for the afrit to devour.  That way the afrit would not kill the people in the building below.  
When I heard such transactions I marked the buyer and the seller, and later I turned them over to the vigilance squads.  Those were wizards and soldiers who hunted those who would deal with the Döckálfs.  People who were turned over to the squads were captured and given a choice:  aid the wizards by serving as bait for afrit-traps or be executed.  I do not know what became of the three men and the woman I turned over.  
"Here you are," I said to the businessman and handed him his tobacco.  He had callused fingers, very hard fingers.  I looked over his head through the window and saw Abdu-Zarii, a trash picker with seven children, pulling his vest close.  
"Damn it, Tashan, do you feel that?" he shouted across his table.  "That cold breeze?"  Their table was less than a pace across, but he had to shout to be heard.  The patrons were noisier than usual that night.  
Tashan Abdufede smoked a water pipe.  Of all the men who came to Seabreeze, only he knew who I was.  He was the recruiter for the Wizards' Academy who had found me and helped me enter that place.  He of course had better sense than to talk with me and put questions into busy minds.  People bought and sold wizards, too.  
Tashan leaned toward Abdu-Zarii and said something I could not hear.  Then he reached into a pocket of his candis and drew forth a kari scarf which he tied around his waist.  Those are long sashes colored like rainbows.  They are used by the fellahin, the farmers from Atlan's interior, to ward off afrit.  Kari scarves are useless, but they make people feel better.  There was a great deal of money made during the Shadow War by the sellers of such charms.  
A young man named Dahmid saw me looking out the window and called, "Dominos!  We want dominos!"  I nodded at him and picked up a game board.  As I walked out of the parlor I glanced across the patio and into the street.  There were no places for an afriti to hide.  It had to be invisible, which meant it was strong.  There are spells which reveal the color of invisible afrit, but magic of that sort cannot be shaped in secret.  I had to use other means.  As soon as I stepped onto the patio I felt cool again.  But the sawdust which covered the patio was still.  No breeze blew.  The coolness was the feeling of my life essence being drawn to the hungry afriti.  
I took the domino board to Dahmid and Mahmoud.  They were worthless young men who would never rise above the Tangle.  They were the sons of trash pickers and fruit sellers and did not even have the pride to do their jobs well.  They spent their time speaking of wealth and plump virgins, just like their fathers.  
Mahmoud ordered coffee as I set the board down.  He didn't look at me.  The first time he had come to Seabreeze he had tried to order me about as he would have a boy doing my job.  I had slapped him in front of his friends, and after that we understood each other.  That was the way men solved such problems in the Tangle.  
"Sahaleb for me," Dahmid said.  
Then Abdu-Zarii cursed, and I turned to see his glass tumble to the tiles and break.  Drops of tea flew far into the street, and two or three of them struck a certain place in the air and hissed.  I think no one saw that but me.  When I looked carefully in that place I saw heat-shimmers from the flames which surrounded the afriti.  
Other customers at Seabreeze shouted for tea and coffee and game boards and coals, and for a time I ran in and out of the parlor and the kitchen.  The men inside the parlor did not seem to feel the afriti, but many men on the patio wore kari scarves or had put on medallions with the crimson eye.  More superstition.  
When the many calls for service lessened I looked around as if looking for anyone wanting anything.  The afriti had moved.  I could no longer see its heat.  Again I felt fear.  What if it knew who I was?  It might take my soul in pieces, with great pain.  Perhaps it would kill those around me first, keeping me for last.  I knew only a few spells for killing afrit.  "Rainbow spray" kills imps and weak afrit.  "Utu's finger" might kill a strong afriti if it was well used.  But if not it would only cripple, and the afriti would strike in reply.  And there was "black daggers," a spell to shape when all hope was gone.  That spell would kill most of the men on the patio, and the afriti, and myself.  But our souls would be safe.  
The afriti nibbled our life essences.  An hour of such feeding, and men would fall sick.  After that they would die.  Two men in the parlor stood and dropped coins on their table.  I went and wiped the table and took the coins.  Then other men called for drinks, and I went to Taymour in the kitchen to get them.  An ugly little man, Taymour.  Not a dwarf but nearly so, stout and dark.  There was Luricanian blood in his fathers.  He had married Jalima, a blind woman who was older than he.  They were talk for all the Tangle, the ugly, little man and the blind spinster.  Rubbish has a way of piling up, people said.  But when Taymor and Jalima had Alata, who was a beautiful child, that talk stopped.  In the Tangle people say that such children come from love.  People whose children were not as beautiful found it wise to say nothing about Alata or his parents.  
As Taymour set the drinks on my tray I stood still and sensed for the afriti.  Men murmured in booths.  Alata tended a balky fire to keep water and milk hot.  A water pipe gurgled.  A young man sighed with pleasure.  He was at Seabreeze every day, smoking tumthah.  In normal days Taymour would not have allowed that.  Over time tumthah makes the smoker permanently stupid.  But during the Shadow War, he said to me, how could he tell others not to escape the fear and the pain?  If they wanted to buy, he would sell.  
When I had been still for a moment I felt the touch of cold on my skin.  Even there at the back of Seabreeze where the fire burned and pots steamed, I felt the afriti feed.  A powerful afriti, to have such strength and control.  Blue or perhaps violet.  But I did not know for certain.  Without certainty I could not act.  
I took several large candles from a box in the kitchen.  One way to find the color of an invisible afriti of the air is to place a burning candle near it.  When the afriti passes the candle, its flame becomes the color of the afriti's fire.  This will not work with brazier-light such as lit the patio at Seabreeze.  Those flames are too large and full of themselves to show the color of another fire.
"Five candles?" Taymour said.  They were rationed then, though Seabreeze had a large supply for its parlor.  All aHwas had candles.  There was no more oil for the lamps.  
"People are skittish," I said.  "Wearing their kari scarves.  Afrit are close tonight."  
"Candles won't drive them back," he said.  
"Can I light them?" Alata asked.  "Please, can I light them?"  
"Three," Taymour said.  "Wherever you think will do good for cheer.  Yes, son, you can light them as soon as Faisal sets them up.  Now watch that milk.  It's burning."  
I put three candles on my tray and left Taymour and his son.  I could not be around Alata for long.  Every time I saw his smooth face I was angered and grieved.  At seven years old his hands were already rough from work.  He had had no chance to live, and if the Döckálfs and their afrit had their way he would never have that chance.  With the Shadow War going as it was he would almost certainly be butchered with all of Blackstone's children when the city fell.  
On the way out of the parlor I asked a buyer and a seller if they were finished with their domino board.  One was an Atlanean at mid-life, fleshy and comfortable.  His clothes were leather, from breeches to vest.  I would watch him.  He was a man who wore the skins of other animals.  The other was much younger and nervous.  He was Decadurinian, handsome, with straight, black hair combed back.  His eyes shone with fear.  He wanted out of the city and would pay anything.  I saw a score of such men every night.  
"No more dominoes, thank you," the older man said.  He sat back.  The young man handed me the box, and I put it on its shelf.  As I stepped onto the patio the dust in the street stirred near Dahmid and Mahmoud.  It puffed as it does when stepped on or blown by the tiniest whirlwind.  Heat shimmers rose above the dust.  The afriti was moving closer to Seabreeze.  
I set the candles on tables and called Alata, who came out with a brand and lit them.  Dust stirred at the edge of the patio and then further out in the street.  The afriti knew the danger and had backed away.  Did it know I set the candles intentionally?  I felt sweat come out on my face.  
Then Nafatam shouted for tobacco, and I gave my attention to him.  Nafatam was a butcher who ate too much meat, too much everything.  He had three huge sons who he sent to extort money from other shopkeepers.  Many people said his sons brought young women to him, and if they did not want harm to go to their family they satisfied his desires.  
"Are you the wizard?" the afriti's voice said in my ear, and I nearly screamed.  The voice was like pitch-smoke whistling from a burning log.  I knew my fear had been seen, and I shouted at Nafatam, "In a moment!"  
"That had better be a damned fast moment!" he shouted.  He was not used to being spoken to that way.  But his sons were not there, and he did not fight without them.  
From the side of my eye I saw the afriti shimmering in the street.  How had it known there was a wizard at Seabreeze?  I had done no magic in weeks.  Had it heard something, perhaps Tashan speaking to someone about me?  Was it even now preparing to rip my soul from me?  Fear urged me to cast my black daggers spell and kill it.  I could throw the spell behind it and spare many of the men on the patio.  But black daggers is an imprecise and powerful spell.  Some men would die, and others would be maimed.  Sweat was on my armpits, my back.  Seconds, and the spell would be made.  
"Wizard, mage or master?" the afriti hissed.  Its magic carried its voice to my ear.  
"There are no wizards here," I said to Dahmid, who was the closest person to me.  He frowned at me as though I was mad.  
"Didn't you ask if there is a wizard or master here?" I asked.  I wanted the afriti to think I did not understand its voice.  It did not seem certain that I was the wizard.  I would give it nothing.  Dahmid looked at Mahmoud, and they laughed.  Then the afriti's hunger pulled strongly.  Many men touched their afrit-charms.  
"There is something wrong," Abdu-Zarii said.  
"There is an afriti near," Tashan said.  "The wizards will kill it."  
"Tobacco!" Nafatam shouted.  "And coals!  Now!"  
I glanced at his bristling.  Nafatam had lived his entire life by giving fear to others, like a Döckálf or a NaHrouz or an afriti.  Even during the Shadow War, when we all lived in terror, he added the terror of his sons to that outside the gates.  They had beaten many Seabreeze customers and taken their money.  No one needed such a man.  
Three men at a table on the patio stood and put down their coins.  "This is a dark night," one said to me as I went to clean up.  Then they left Seabreeze.  The afriti let them go.  There were more orders, and I ran.  I did not get Nafatam his tobacco and coals.  One night in the seventh month of the Shadow War I had seen him trembling as his lips turned blue and his face paled.  No one offered to help him.  Was his heart still weak?  If it failed, could the afriti resist taking his soul?  That would busy it a few moments.  I could cast the spell to determine its color and could attack it.  How angry would Nafatam have to be before his heart failed?  
The third time I passed his table without bringing his tobacco and coals he stood and roared, "Whoreson, I asked for tobacco!"  His body shook.  
I said, "If you want tobacco, Nafatam, why don't you have one of your sons get it?  They do everything else for you."  I turned toward another customer, and then I turned back and added, as though it was an afterthought, "Or why don't you go pull it from your wife's cunt?  I hear anything will grow in there."  Then I went to another table to give other men their drinks.  Nafatam's face turned the color of old clay.  His lips shook, and the muscles of his mouth worked.  The afriti's heat shimmered in the street behind him.  Did it feel his weakening heart?  I glanced at the candle two tables over, but the afriti was too far.  
Nafatam gasped and puffed, and his face turned crimson.  His cheeks blew out with each breath.  For long moments he quivered.  Then he reached into a pocket and took out a silver piat.  He set the coin on his table and stood and left Seabreeze.  The afriti moved beside him.  From its heat shimmers I saw that it wore a tall man-shape.  It followed him twenty paces beyond the patio, and I readied the spell to tell me its color.  Then Nafatam ran down the street, and the afriti let him go.  Silently I cursed the strength of his heart.  Now his sons would visit me.  I would have to let them beat me, or I would have to kill them.  Or leave Seabreeze and find a new hiding place.  
I picked up Nafatam's water pipe and his empty glass.  My plan had failed.  The afriti was still at Seabreeze, still feeding.  Where were the other wizards?  Was it such a strong afriti that no one wanted to fight it?  
"You are the wizard," the afriti's voice hissed in my ear.  "You, clever one."  Then the back of my candis was on fire, and my skin was burnt.  I fell over Dahmid and Mahmoud's table and knocked their dominoes to the tiles.  All over the patio men stood and called out, "R'ja!  R'ja!"  A word of power to drive off imps, not powerful afrit.  
My back was pain, and my sides were pain, and the flames ate the sleeves of my candis.  
Dahmid shouted, "He's on fire!" and splashed his sahaleb on my back.  Men fled the patio and ran down the street.  Dahmid tripped over my flailing arms and fell across me.  His body put out the flames.  Alata ran from the parlor with a bucket of water.  The afriti leaped over the tables at him.  I saw the heat-shimmers of its claws outstretched.  It passed a candle, and the flame turned brilliant violet.  Only black daggers could destroy such a powerful afriti.  I made the spell and threw it, and a sphere of blackness the size of a man's fist appeared behind the afriti and burst.  Pieces of it flew like knives in every direction.  The afriti was torn to scraps of flame and darkness.  Alata screamed.  Dahmid stiffened and lay heavy on me.  When the spell was done there was not a live person on the patio of Seabreeze except me.  

I am Faisal, Maged's son.  I was born in the Tangle, in Blackstone.  I am thirty-two years old.  My brother Suran was apprenticed to a carpenter when he was ten.  My brother Amah was apprenticed to a brickmaker when he was six.  My brother Khoulief was apprenticed to a potter when he was nine.  I had no such aptitudes.  I could remember stories and songs, names, things I had seen and felt, in much greater detail than most people.  By the time I was seven I had memorized all of the Book of Utu.  But there is no place for such skills in the Tangle, where men earn their living with their hands.  
When I was eight Tashan Abdufede, who was at Seabreeze that afrit night, came to my family.  He said he was paid by the Wizards' Academy to find children with good memories.  He said I could become a wizard.  The Headmaster would accept me for free if I worked hard.  My mother and father did not believe him and refused to let me go, but he talked with them for a long time, more than once, and brought my father gold.  Finally they let him take me to the Academy.  Tashan took me from the poverty of the Tangle and gave me the life I had had before the Shadow War, a better life than any boy of the Tangle dared dream of.  
And I killed him.  I killed Alata, who never had even a chance for life.  I killed Dahmid and Mahmoud.  They were fools, but did they deserve to die for being foolish?  My black daggers killed Abdu-Zarii whose family needed him and all those other men.  But I lived through that night and all the nights of the Shadow War.  I destroyed two other afrit, neither as strong as that violet one.  And when I knew the city would fall I fled and saved myself.  
Do you have any other questions about what I did during the Shadow War?  

— end —  



Foreword — "After the Flash and the Thunder"

Before the War Decadurinis was the wealthiest of human nations.  Government-funded education was the center of the Decadurinian economy, and the primary national export was highly educated and trained young people.  Graduates repaid the expense of their schooling by three years of arranged service to the nobles, scholars, and merchants of many lands, during which time the bulk of their wages was paid to the Decadurinian government.  Graduates who returned to Decadurinis after their service were encouraged to teach and pass on their experience to new students.  In addition to this cultural richness, Decadurinis had a gentle climate which allowed it to grow most of its own food.  Close proximity to Seligar, the Döckálf home isle, ensured that no pirates or marauders harassed Decadurinian coastal cities as happened in many other nations.  
The proximity to Döckálf power, however, did not protect Decadurinis during the War.  In the fourth year of the conflict NaHrouz armies sailed northward from the conquered Little Nations to land on the south shores and pillage their way up both coasts.  Over two hundred thousand of Decadurinis' million inhabitants were killed and an equal number enslaved.  One hundred thousand more fled to the inner nations.  The NaHrouz stopped their advance only when three Little Nations volcanoes simultaneously erupted and threatened their home tunnels.  They immediately returned to the Little Nations to see to their women and young, and Decadurinis survived.  Following the War most of the nation's people consolidated in the northern cities, which they quickly walled against Ceretesian and Perdian pirates from the north and Varinian privateers from the south.  It is from these fortress cities that they are rebuilding the nation's economy and once again sending forth talented, well-trained young people to work for the nobles of many lands.  
After seven years of traveling I returned to Decadurinis ready to begin editing the accounts I had gathered.  However, my instructors urged me to travel in Decadurinis for a few months more and elicit accounts from my countrymen.  Under their encouragement I followed that course.  In the small farming town of Mina I was approached by a young woman who began asking me questions about where I was from and what I was doing there.  Her manner was surprisingly forward for a woman from a small village, but I saw that her fellow townspeople took little notice of her behavior.  Clearly she often spoke with travelers.  Our conversation led to my research, and soon she introduced herself and volunteered that she had a story of her own to tell.  Over tea and fresh honey bread at the local caravansary she told me the account which follows.  
Hamila Sabazi is a tall woman with a strong face and long hair as black as her eyes.  Her skin is an olive shade which I have not seen elsewhere in Decadurinis; she tells me there is Varinian in her mother's side.  During our interview she asked nearly as many questions of me as I did of her and was very curious about the customs of people—especially women—living in other lands.  



After the Flash and the Thunder

My lover Yehya and I had a fight the evening before I found the stranger.  It started when I asked him if he had brought the copper ring as he'd promised, and he said he would have brought it with him that very time but had heard something that had made him change his mind.  
"Oh?" I said.  He had made excuses before about bringing that ring.  "What was that?"  
"I heard from someone we both know, a man, that you have a mole on your left thigh," he said.  "I don't remember such a mole.  I want to know how he knew that."  He was truly angry, and his voice was a growl.  
"What makes you think he was right?" I said.  I was teasing, as I always did when he was angry.  Sometimes his anger turned to passion when he was teased.  
"Because I played 'Guess It' with your friend Arilla this morning and asked her how many hairs grow out of that mole, and she said none."  He grinned when he said that.  He thought he was so clever.  
I said, "So you went to Arilla instead of coming to me?"  
"If you are taking up with this other man, why would you tell me the truth?"  
"You're saying I'm a liar?"  That made me angry, and I stopped teasing.  
"I'm saying I want to know how he knew you have a mole."  
"And I'm saying if you have questions about me, you should ask me."  
So we quarreled until my father and brothers grew tired of the noise and threw Yehya out of my father's house.  That fight was like most of our fights.  I wanted him to bring me the ring, and he would not.  We had taken up with each other for two years, and for the last few months of that we quarreled often.  He accused me of wanting other men in the lake villages, and I worried that he was taking up with other women on the caravansary route.  I thought if he truly desired me he'd bring the ring, but he wouldn't, so there must be another woman.  That fight didn't end well because Yehya was thrown out of my father's house, and we couldn't finish it.  
Because I was still angry the next morning I rose early to go to the lake for water and to wash my feet, and if anyone was there I'd make certain they saw my mole.  I took the water jug and went before Utu was up.  We rise early in the lake villages but no earlier than Utu.  I was thinking of Yehya and the ring.  Here when a man desires a woman for his wife he gives her ten rings, starting with tin and ending with gold.  When he brings her the gold she must say yes or no.  Yehya had brought me the first five rings, and then he did not bring the copper.  He didn't want to rush, he said the first time he came to Mina without it.  The second time he said I had angered him with something I had said, so he was waiting to bring the ring until I apologized.  The third time he said that he had heard from a man we both knew that I had a mole on my thigh.  
I was thinking about Yehya so much that I didn't notice the stranger until he groaned only ten paces away from me.  I almost dropped my water jug.  There was a dark shape next to the water, too big for a dog and too small for an ass.  It looked like a person, all sprawled out, but I thought that couldn't be.  No one in his right head would sleep on the cold lake shore.  
Then he groaned again.  For a moment I thought to run and get my father or my oldest brother, Taha.  What if the man was dangerous?  But he was flat on the ground and sounded sick.  And I was curious about who he was.  He couldn't be from the lake villages.  Even drinkers wouldn't sleep by the lake.  I thought of my fight with Yehya and decided it would serve him right for me to be seen with a stranger.  It might make him jealous and urge him in his courting.  That was not good thinking, but my anger thought for me.  So I put down my water jar and picked up a rock.  The stranger wore a dark robe that covered him, and it was hard to tell what were his arms and what were his legs.  I couldn't see his head.  
"Who are you?" I called to him.  He mumbled something, and I moved to where I could throw my rock at his head if I had to.  "What did you say?" I said.  "You'd better tell me."  
Then I remembered the flash of blue lightning from the night before.  There had been a late dry season storm, and during my quarrel with Yehya there had been a flash of blue lightning that lit the whole sky.  The thunder had boomed so loud that all the dogs in Mina had started barking.  I wondered if the stranger had something to do with the blue lightning.  Wasn't that the sort of magic storm-wizards make?  I would have run then, but he spoke, and I stayed.  
"Where?" he said.  His voice sounded hurt, and I almost went closer.  But I didn't.  
"You're near Mina," I said.  "Who are you?  How did you come here?"  
But he didn't speak or move again.  After a few moments I tossed my rock onto his back.  It thumped and rolled off, but he didn't move.  There were branches on the shore, and I picked one up and pushed his hood back.  He looked maybe thirty, and I thought he was from Atlan.  I'd seen Atlanean men in the caravans and knew the broad nose and curled hair.  There was stubble on his chin.  He had long fingers and soft hands like an educated man.  I thought again that maybe he was a wizard, and that made me move well away.  But he didn't twitch.  
I ran back to my father's house.  Utu was rising, and my brothers were getting up.  Taha and Hamdi, my older brothers, heard me and came out to meet me.  The War was fierce then, and every time we heard running feet we expected a messenger saying the NaHrouz were coming.  
"What?" Taha asked, and I told them.  
"You tried to talk to him?" he said.  "That was stupid."  Hamdi shook his head and looked sad.  
"Don't shake your head and tell me I'm stupid!" I said to them.  "He's been on that beach for Utu knows how long, and he needs help."  
By then Fabar and Kaliz came outside.  Fabar was fourteen, and Kaliz was twelve.  
"We'll take him to the caravansary," Taha said.  "Fabar, get a blanket so we can lift him.  Stay here and tell Father what's happened when he wakes.  Kaliz, go tell them at the caravansary that we found a hurt stranger and that he needs a place."  
"The caravansary!" I said.  "They'll ignore him.  Taha, he's sick."  
"There's a 'prentice healer."  
"The autumn sickness is going around.  She's too busy to care for him."  
"We'll see," Taha said.  "Stay here."  
Then Kaliz ran off to the caravansary, and Fabar brought the blanket, and Taha and Hamdi went to get the stranger.  It was not long before they returned with him.  
"Shawazi Anwer said to Hells with strangers," Taha said angrily.  Shawazi Anwer owns the caravansary.  
They put the stranger in the big room, next to the fire where he could warm.  Then I went to the kitchen while they looked for wounds.  He didn't have any, and he wasn't feverish.  He only seemed exhausted, as though he'd walked a long way.  But his feet weren't blistered.  Certainly he hadn't walked the road alone; there were too many bandits.  He hadn't come with the caravan, either.  I had seen those men arrive.  
"How long before the healer comes?" Taha asked me.  
"I don't know," I said.  "As soon as she can."  Budur lived in Qena, two hours' walk from Mina.  No one in Mina had horses or even mules to send word to her.  Most of the riding animals had been taken by the government to use in the War or had been bought by the caravan master.  But people walked between the lake villages every day, and word would go to Budur.  She had one of the last horses and would come when she heard.  
Fabar and Kaliz wanted to stay home in case the stranger woke, but Taha sent them to school.  My father wanted them to continue schooling even during the War.  He had gone to the agricultural university in Parantha, and Taha had done the same.  My father said that men who went to university learned new methods that made them better farmers than men who didn't go.  
When my father woke he asked who the stranger was and how he had gotten into our big room, and Taha told him.  "That sounds like Shawazi Anwer," he said.  "All he and his family think about is money."  
"They've always been that way," Taha said.  
"We don't need his caravansary," my father said.  "There's room here for this stranger."  So it was decided.  My father ate, and he and Taha went out to the fields.  Hamdi stayed with me in case the stranger woke.  I mended one of Fabar's robes, and Hamdi worked on the chest he was making.  He was courting Bahia, a farmer's daughter from Harranayia, on the west side of the lake, and he was making their furniture himself.  The caravan wasn't bringing furniture then.  
Not five minutes after my men left my aunt came knocking.  That was my aunt Abylle, my father's sister, who had helped raise us since my mother died birthing Kaliz.  That happened when I was seven.  It was my aunt who taught me how to care for my men and do as women do.  
"Where is he?" she said as soon as I answered the door.  She's like that sometimes.  She married a weak man she could order around, and after she'd been married to him for many years she'd gotten used to giving orders.  
I said, "If you're asking where my father is, he's in the fields, as you should know."  Then I shut the door and sat again.  If you let my aunt speak to you like that even once she will start doing it all the time.  Hamdi glared at me from the door of his and Taha's room, and I was embarrassed, but I was not going to give in to my aunt.  Hamdi went across the room, red in the face, and opened the door.  
"Morning of jasmines, Hamdi," my aunt said.  
"Morning of roses, Om Sayed.  Please come in."  
She came into the house slowly to show how offended she was and sat on a pillow well away from me.  She smelled of fresh bread.  "Tea would be nice," she said.  "It's chilly."  
Hamdi went to the kitchen to get tea and glasses.  
My aunt looked at the stranger and said, "He's Atlanean, clearly.  Any sign of how he came?"  
"No," I said.  
"I'll bet he's a wizard.  He rode that blue lightning here from Atlan.  The War is worse there than it is here."  
"So I've heard," I said.  We both heard the same news through the men from the caravan.  I hadn't decided what the stranger was.  The wizard from Qena looked more like a man who sells the favors of his daughters than a wizard.  The stranger looked like a wizard.  
"I heard you were fighting with Yehya again," she said.  
"Yehya is fine," I said.  She didn't mean that she'd heard we'd fought but that she'd heard us fight.  She lives across the alley from my father's house.  
"Yehya is late doing what he should have done a long time ago," she said.  "All these quarrels tell you how unready he is to marry.  Caravan men..."  She complained about Yehya every time we spoke.  I think she knew I didn't care for that talk, because she leaned close to the stranger and said, "Have you checked him for wounds?"  
"Yes," Hamdi said.  He brought in the tea and handed us glasses and sat.  "His body is well."  
"There's that to be thankful for, anyway."  
We talked about Marite's new baby for a long while, and then my aunt asked Hamdi about the corn worms so that he could tell us about them.  Otherwise he'd have been uncomfortable with all that women's talk.  Finally my aunt said to me, "There are so many things happening, with Yehya being here and this stranger arriving.  It must all be unsettling."  She was giving me a chance to apologize.  
I said, "I have felt strange today."    
"Mmm.  I have to go look after my bread.  You must come and tell me when he wakens."  
"I will," I promised.  
I think every woman in Mina came to see the stranger that day.  He was very exciting.  Even in good times Mina doesn't get many visitors.  Some people brought gifts to welcome him when he wakened.  My friend Arilla was one of those.  She's from Mina, but her father sent her to school in Mansala, on the coast.  When she came back she was a teacher and refused to marry farming men.  Her education made her a spinster.  That's why I never wanted to go to a city school, because my father and aunt told me what happens to educated women in the lake villages.  Arilla had heard about the stranger from my brothers and had come to see for herself.  
"What are your students doing?" I asked her.  
"Figures," she said.  "They never do enough figures."  She smiled that smile that said how much better it was to be the teacher than the student.  She was very pretty that morning, and Hamdi kept looking at her until finally he excused himself and went back to work.  She asked all the sensible questions about the stranger, and then she said, "He's a little pathetic, isn't he?  His robe is so ragged, and he looks half-starved."  
"I hadn't thought of him like that," I said.  
"But handsome in a way.  City pretty."  She reached over and touched his hair.  
"I'll bet he knows his figures," I said, and she laughed.  
"I'm sure he does," she said.  "I brought this orange for him, but it looks as though he won't be waking soon.  Maybe one of your brothers would like it."  Then she had to go back to the school.  Other people came, and my father's house was busy all morning.  
That afternoon Budur, the healer's 'prentice, came to examine him.  She opened his robe and touched him here and there and listened to his heart and opened his eyelids.  She blew breath into his mouth and squeezed his wrists and his ankles.  Then she put her hands on his temples and was still for a long time.  Finally she said he had fought with an afriti, and it had hurt his soul.  Because she was only a 'prentice she didn't have the magic to help him.  He had to heal on his own or die.  
"Is he a wizard?" I asked her.  
"I can't tell.  But he is odd.  There are wounds in him, all over.  Some are very strange.  He's been in the thick of the War, I'd guess."  
"How long will he be this way?" I asked.  
"Long.  Months."  
Then we talked about how busy she was with the autumn sickness and how she had no room for the stranger, and I told her what my father had said about his staying at our house.  
"That was generous," she said.  
"My father does not like Shawazi Anwer."
"He may not like this stranger if he stays too long."
"We'll see," I said.  
She showed me how to feed him so he would not choke and how to stretch his fingers and arms and legs so they would not stiffen.  Then she left, and he was mine to care for.  
It was a day of happenings.  Late that afternoon Yehya came to visit.  He'd put on clean clothes and scrubbed his face, but he still smelled like a man.  The first thing he did when he saw the stranger was whistle and say, "Ugly, isn't he?"  
"He looks like an educated man to me," I said.  "A wizard, my aunt thinks."  
"A thief, more likely.  He was probably following the caravan and then went and got drunk by the lake.  Someone said there was a bottle in the water near where you found him."  
"Really?" I said.  I hadn't heard any such thing from the women who had visited.  
"Yes.  You should take him to the caravansary."  
"We tried.  Shawazi Anwer said to Hells with him."  
"Then we should take him to that witch who lives near Harranayia."  
"Why take him anywhere?  He's fine here."  I didn't want to fight again, but we hadn't finished our quarrel the night before, and there was still anger to say.  
"Until he wakens," Yehya said.  "What if he is a wizard, and he wakens angry?  Or sick-headed?  Maybe he'll kill your family or everyone in Mina.  Maybe he'll loose an afriti."  
"No one knows if he's a wizard," I said.  "Not even Budur."  
"She's only a 'prentice.  What does she know?  You keep him here, he'll be trouble.  I'll go talk to the witch before the caravan leaves."
"My father said he can stay here," I said. 
His eyes narrowed, and he said, "There would be no reason to bring a copper ring to a woman who was thinking about another man."  
"It would be a sorry man who would fear competition from a starved man in a coma," I said.  
That stung him, and he said, "He's dangerous.  You're so stubborn you'd let him kill you, but what about your brothers?  Your father's old.  Do you want something to happen to him?"  
"My father can swing a pickhoe better than you can swing a sword," I said.  "He's not afraid of the stranger.  Only you are."  
"I'm not afraid of him."  He took a step toward me.  "You're making a mistake, keeping him.  You don't have any sense, like your aunt says."  
I took a step right back at him.  "Oh, and you do?  Strutting around as though you can kill all the NaHrouz in Decadurinis by yourself, and you want to tell me about good sense."  
"I have more sense than to keep a sick wizard in my father's house," he said.  
"You don't know what you're saying, so you shouldn't talk," I said.  
"I know there are seven towns on this caravan road, and there are unmarried women in every one of them.  They'd be happy to be courted by a rich caravan guard."  That was what he said every time he was really angry.  
"A rich caravan guard who drinks away his money and fights with the caravan master," I said.  
He hated to be reminded of his fights with Ismail Makyoun, and his face turned dark.  
"And whose face looks like a baboon's when he gets angry," I said.  
Hamdi was still in his and Taha's room, and that made him laugh.  
"You didn't tell me your brother was here!" Yehya said.  
"You think I'd let you in without someone here?" I said.  
He leaned close to me and said, "Sometimes you do."  He grinned and tried to catch me up, but I stepped away.  That annoyed him, and he said, "I came to tell you that I can't have dinner with you.  Ismail wants us to help prepare the caravan to leave early tomorrow."  
"I know," I said.  I'd heard that through women who'd come to see the stranger.  
"The witch has room in her house," he said.  
"Good-bye, Yehya," I said.  
He glared at me and then glanced at Hamdi's door and said, "Until tomorrow."  
As soon as he left I began to worry.  His job as a caravan guard was crazy-dangerous.  There were bandits, and any day the caravan might run into the NaHrouz army.  If they did it was the guards' job to fight while the caravan ran.  But Ismail Makyoun was the last caravan master who would travel between the coasts, and he and his people were becoming rich.  Yehya said that after the War he'd open a caravansary in Qena or Harranayia.  Then we could marry.  
I didn't like that we hadn't ended our fight.  He would be angry when the caravan went on to Tuoft.  There would be women in the caravansary there.  I didn't know if our quarrel would drive him toward those women or keep me in his heart.  No one in the caravansary would tell me if he had women in other towns, of course.  All I could do was worry.  
That evening I was very busy.  The stranger needed soft food, and it had to be fed to him in small bites.  I was not good at that yet, and feeding him took a long time.  I sponged his skin and got him blankets and put him near the warm fire.  All those chores kept me from thinking about Yehya too much until I went to sleep.  I slept poorly that night.  
In the morning I rose before my men and checked the stranger, and then I went to see Yehya off.  That morning did not seem special.  It was only another cool, cloudy day before rainy season.  No one else was at the caravansary.  The caravan had come and gone more than ten times since Decadurinis had been invaded.  It would come and go again, people felt.  So I was the only one to see the caravan people off.  When I got there they were almost ready to leave.  Yehya saw me and came over.  He was wearing his leather armor and had his shield strapped onto his back and his scimitar at his side.  He didn't use a helmet—he said they didn't let him see well—and the breeze blew his hair.  He was still angry and squeezed me quickly and kissed me.  He had oiled his armor and smelled of soap and oil.  "I'm sorry we quarreled," he said, but I knew he wasn't.  On his way back to Mina he might be sorry, but he wasn't yet.  
"So am I," I said.  
"I'll bring atalan tea," he said.  "We'll have dinner at the caravansary."  
"That would be good."  
Ismail Makyoun spurred his horse toward the road to Phoraz, and the caravan started moving.  
"Good-bye," Yehya said.  
"Until later." 

A few days after Yehya left the harvest began, and my men worked hard.  They rose early and came in very late and spent their days loading and unloading, moving and threshing, stacking and tramping down.  Even Fabar and Kaliz had to work in the fields.  When my men came home they were filthy and starved.  That was good, because they kept me too busy to worry about Yehya.  
We grew used to the stranger quickly.  He didn't do anything except sleep and eat whatever I fed him.  We kept him in the big room, with its heat.  I gave him some old blankets and his own sleeping cushions.  He was insensible, so I had my brothers turn him over before they left in the morning and when they came in from the fields at night.  That way he wouldn't get sores.  I dribbled water into his mouth and fed him fruit and vegetable mashes.  My aunt made diapers for him, and those had to be kept clean.  
Few people came to see him after Yehya left.  Since he was insensible people became bored with him.  I talked to him during the day and told him about Mina while I did the mending and cooking and cleaning.  He hadn't said anything since I found him.  When I looked into his eyes there was no one in them, and even when I washed him he didn't move.  My aunt said it wasn't proper for a young woman to wash him intimately, so she did that, but I washed the rest of him.  It was strange to touch him and feel nothing from him.  My aunt also helped me stretch his limbs.  It took more than an hour every morning to stretch and wash him.  It's hard to move someone when they're like that.  My aunt told him news from the caravansary, and she would say things like city names from Atlan to see if he would react.  But he didn't.  
Eight days passed before he spoke again.  Utu was going down, and shadows filled the house.  My men hadn't come home yet, and I was in the kitchen making dinner when he said in a deep voice, "Ashapool."  I ran into the big room.  He was turning his head as though he was watching something in the room.  That frightened me, and I glanced around and said the words which drive afrit out of houses.  
I waited, but he didn't say anything else.  His staring at things that weren't there made me fearful, so I draped a towel over his head and went back to the kitchen.  The word he had said sounded like a foreign name.  Or an afrit name.  Budur had said his spirit was injured by an afriti.  Was Ashapool its name?  Had Yehya been right, and the stranger was trying to summon an afriti into our house?  I built a big fire in the kitchen and stayed close to it until my men came home.  Taha saw the towel over the stranger's head and pulled it off.  The stranger was asleep.  
"Why did you put a towel over his head?" Taha asked, and I told him.  He only laughed at me.  "That's probably where he came from, or where he wanted to go.  If the healer thought there was an afriti in him she wouldn't have let him stay here."  Which was sensible and true.  But after that I had fearful dreams about afrit swimming through the air of our big room.  In those dreams the stranger was clear like lake water, and I could see inside him the black skeleton of an afriti.  
Each morning after Yehya left I put on the five rings he had given me, and they were warm.  In the lake villages women say that if a man truly loves and desires a woman his rings stay warm for her.  When women greet each other we like to touch our friends' fingers as though we are greeting them, but really we are touching their rings.  Young women especially do this.  If the rings are cool, women say to each other, "Let's hope his blood is hotter than his rings," or, "I guess she's not heating his blood anymore."  
The morning after the stranger spoke my rings were cold.  One by one I put them on, trying to find warmth in any of them, but there was none.  They did not grow warm on my fingers, either.  For a long while I lay on my sleeping cushions with the cold metal on my fingers, and then I pulled them off and threw them in the drawer.  None of my men knew there was anything wrong except Hamdi, who stayed after my father and other brothers left for the fields.  
"Are you sick, Hamila?" he asked me.  "Are you having bad dreams?"  
"I'm well," I said.  "A little tired."  
"Are you certain?  You're very quiet this morning."  
"If I was upset I would say something," I said.  "Now go, they're waiting for you."  
He looked at me to say, "I don't believe you," but there was much work to do, and he went.  
Later that morning my aunt came as always to visit.  We talked of small things for a while, and she helped me care for the stranger, and finally she asked, "What happened?"  
I told her of Yehya's cold rings, and she said, "Well, it was very cold last night.  And these stories people tell about warm and cold rings aren't always true.  People make up all sorts—"  
"You felt them yourself and said what a marvel they were," I said.  "A story can't be true one day and a fancy the next.  His rings are cold.  Cold!"  
That was when the stranger looked straight at my face.  His eyes were jewel-shiny, not dull like usual.  "Yes," he said.  "Yes."  We stared at him, and then my aunt went to send word to Budur.  I stayed with the stranger.  His eyes were too strong to look at, so I went to the kitchen and made tea.  I didn't know why he had said "Yes" and didn't want to think about it.  
Budur was in Mina that morning and came to my father's house quickly.  She asked my aunt and me to stand in the doorway to the kitchen, away from her, so she could feel the stranger more easily.  She was tired in those times.  The healer from the lake villages had gone off to the War, and Budur had to do all the healing.  The first time she'd examined him had taken an hour, but that day she needed two.  Finally she said he was trying to find his way from inside himself back to people, which was what she had said before.  
"He said, 'Ashapool,' " I said.  "What does that mean?"  
"Maybe where he's from?  I don't know.  You should have your brothers and father speak to him.  The sounds will help him find his way back."  Then she smiled and said, "Try wearing some of those thin spring clothes your Yehya likes so much.  That will give this stranger a reason to come back."  
"Only a healer would say such a thing," my aunt said.  " 'Healing,' you call this."  
Budur laughed.  "I'll come back in ten or twelve days to see how he is.  Send for me if he speaks again or does anything strange."  
My aunt and I said nothing about the stranger's talking.  If we had there would have been people at my father's house day after day waiting for the stranger to speak.  I told my men what Budur had said about talking to the stranger, and they began speaking to him.  Kaliz picked up the stranger's arm every time he came inside and slapped his hand as young men do to greet each other.  The stranger never reacted to that.  Taha nodded to him and said, "Hello," or, "Good morning," but after a few times he said, "This is foolish," and didn't talk to him anymore.  My father, of course, did not speak with him.  
"He's like a block of wood," he said.  "If he doesn't speak proper words in a month we should chop him up and burn him."  That made my brothers laugh, and Kaliz pretended to chop him up and toss him in the fireplace.  Fabar never said anything that I heard, but more than once I saw him lean close to the stranger and whisper into his ear, and from his grin I knew he was telling him filthy jokes and riddles.  I don't know if the stranger heard those or not.  
My aunt tried to speak with me about Yehya's cold rings, but I wouldn't. 
"He's only been gone a little more than week," I said.  "The caravan won't be back for days."  That was true, and she said nothing more about it.  Still, my sleep was troubled with bad dreams.  Again and again I dreamed of the caravan winding through the hills above Phoraz.  It passed into a gorge, and a thousand shadows rose on top of the cliffs and pushed down boulders.  There were screams from the caravan men and then nothing.  I woke sweating and shaking, and sometimes I cried.  Every morning Yehya's rings were cold.  I prayed for the caravan to be safe and for Yehya to return, but those were bad days for prayers.  
Then twelve days had passed since the caravan had gone, and it was due.  But it didn't come.  
"They're more heavily loaded than usual," Taha said that evening.  "That'll slow them."  
"He'll be back soon," Hamdi said.  
"Ah, the NaHrouz have probably roasted him on a spit and eaten him," Kaliz said.  My father hit him on the back of his head before anyone else could.  
"Eat, Hamila," my father said.  "Or you'll starve before he comes back."  
"If," I said.  "If he comes back."  
My father said, "No use thinking that way.  You have to wait and see."  
"I don't want to wait and see," I said.  "I want him to come back.  It's easy for all of you to say, 'Don't worry.'  You have nothing to lose."  
"We all want him to come back," Hamdi said.  "All of us."  
I walked past the caravansary two or three times every day.  My dreams became dark and painful, but I could not remember them.  I did not sleep well.  When the caravan was seven days late, later than it had ever been, two men from the caravansary rode west to see where it was.  My aunt tried to comfort me, but I would not hear her.  
"We don't know anything," she said.  "This is a bad time of year to travel."  
"When?" I said to her.  "When will they come?"  
"I don't know.  Have faith."  
Harvest ended, and there was a harvest feast which was cheerless because of the War.  My men worked on the threshing floor and in the tool shed close to home.  They came in and out of my father's house all day and made awful messes.  Two of my aunt's grandchildren caught sick, and she had to go to Harranayia to help care for them.  There were too many sick for Budur to heal them all.  I no longer had my aunt to talk to, and I worried all the time.  I needed help with the stranger and someone to tell my fears to, but there was no one.  My brothers did not yet have wives or girl children.  My aunt was the woman from my father's family who helped us.  My friend Arilla was in her class all day, and, besides, sometimes she looked at Yehya as though she wanted him herself.  I did not want to share my fears with her.  So I was alone.  
Hamdi saw how busy I was and said, "I could ask Bahia to come and help you.  She could stay in our aunt's house."  
"No," I said.  He was thinking with his heart, as always.  "Who will care for her brothers and sisters?"  Bahia had only one younger sister and three brothers.  She was in the middle like me.  
"She would help," he said.  
"I know she would," I said.  "But we're well.  Kaliz and Fabar will have to do more in the house so I can care for the stranger."  
"It would be good for a woman to be here with you while our aunt is gone," he said, and he frowned as he does when he is becoming stubborn.  
"Would you take Bahia away from her family to help ours?  We can do what needs doing."  I said that sharply to tell him that I was about to quarrel.  He hates to quarrel with me.  
What I was not saying was that it was not good for Bahia and me to be together.  When she and Hamdi had first taken to each other she had commented to a friend of mine from Harranayia that I was very protective of my men.  She had been afraid that it would be hard to take Hamdi away from me.  Later Hamdi spoke about me to her, and from things she said to him I knew she was jealous of my place in his heart.  It was better if she didn't come to help me.  
"If you need help, tell me," he said.  
"I will," I said.  
After my aunt left the only person I talked to about Yehya was the stranger.  I told him how fearful I was and how I wished the War would end or that Ismail Makyoun would stop taking the caravan between the coasts.  I told him how I had waited years for a man like Yehya to come to Mina.  All my friends were married by the time they were sixteen.  When my seventeenth birthday came they had urged me to marry any man I could find, but I wouldn't.  I said it was better to be a spinster than married to a boring farmer.  Then Yehya came to Mina.  He had more heat in his blood than any lake villages man.  He had traveled and done exciting things.  And now he was with Ismail Makyoun and the other crazy caravan people and could be killed any day.  
Sometimes I held the stranger when there was no one else in my father's house.  He was warm and never moved, and I could hold him and let myself tremble.  
"Shh," I said to him.  "Don't worry.  He'll be fine.  The caravan is well."  
That attention must have helped him.  The morning the rains truly began I found him squatting in front of the fireplace when I came into the big room.  The fireplace was filled with flames of many colors, and he was whispering, "Ashapool, Ashapool, Ashapool."  The flames had horrid shapes like flying monsters and people skeletons and birds with long, sharp beaks.  I shouted, "Stop!" and ran and grabbed him on the shoulder and threw him on his back, and he lay unmoving.  Taha came out of his room and saw me standing over him.  
"What did he do?" he said, and I told him.  He helped me put the stranger on his cushions and then looked in the fireplace.  There was no wood in it.  "Nothing burnt," he said.  
"What was he doing?" I asked, though I knew he didn't know.  I didn't care what he answered, so long as it sounded reasonable.  
He said, "I don't know.  Ask the healer when she comes."  He was so calm that I felt silly for being afraid.  
The next day the riders from the caravansary returned.  My father liked to walk in the rain and was passing the caravansary when they came in.  So he was the one who brought the news.  He came slowly into the big room and shut the door and said, "The riders are back."  
"What did they say?" Taha said.  We were all in the big room around the fire.  
"Phoraz is burned.  The NaHrouz have gone up the coast.  The caravan was destroyed on the road.  I'm sorry, Hamila."  
My brothers were silent.  Even Hamdi only looked at me.  Suddenly their sad looks angered me, and I shouted, "Sorry!  Sorry is no good!  All those people are dead, and sorry won't bring them back!"  I shouted other things that I don't remember, and their faces didn't change.  That made me so angry and frustrated that finally I couldn't shout any more.  
My father said again, "I'm sorry."  
The stranger turned his head toward me and said, "Fuff."  Just "fuff," as though that was a real word.  That stupid sound was like a lash.  I ran from all of them, from my useless men and the cold rings in my drawer and the stranger with his nonsense words.  I ran across the alley and stayed that evening in my aunt's cold house.  My men let me be.  That whole night I was awake, hating.  I hated the NaHrouz and Ismail Makyoun for running his caravan to Phoraz.  I hated the stranger with his stupid words and his idiocy and his needing caring for.  I hated my brothers for their silent looks and my father for bringing the bad news and all of them for telling me that Yehya would come back.  All that hate cooked my heart like an urn firing in an oven, and by the next morning I felt hard and empty.  
People came to console me.  I invited them inside and thanked them, but their words and their comfort did not reach my heart.  "Gone," people said.  "We're so sorry he's gone."  'Killed and eaten' was what they meant.  The NaHrouz eat anyone they kill.  My friend Arilla said, "I'm sorry, Hamila.  He would have been good with you once he settled."  
"I'm not sure he would have," I said.  "He lived like a fool and died stupidly."  As soon as I said that I believed it.  I picked up those words like a blanket and wrapped myself in them, and for the rest of the rainy season they were my warmth.  
"He still cared for you," she said.  
"No, he didn't," I said.  "He had women in other places."  
"Women he'd brought five rings to?"  
"He probably brought five rings to five different women," I said.  "Or more."  
"He never brought any to me," she said and pretended to be annoyed.  I didn't laugh, and she said again, "I'm sorry."  
The more people said that, the angrier I became.  But I kept my anger to myself.  I didn't quarrel.  My old life was gone, I told myself, and I would start my new life right away.  Yehya was dead, and there was nothing I could do for him.  I would go on.  

Rainy season is long and boring.  Everyone stays indoors for days at a time while the rain falls.  Fog covers the lake and the towns, and the air turns cold.  Everything slows.  Fabar and Kaliz were in school all day and spent their evenings doing the work Arilla gave them.  My father insisted that the War would end soon and that they could go to the agricultural university if they did well in school.  I thought that the universities would all be burned down, but I didn't say that.  Even as I was becoming so cold I couldn't say anything to upset my father.  Hamdi had his table and chairs to make, and Taha and my father spent their days at the caravansary playing vanga with other men.  I sewed torn clothes and made a new robe for the stranger, a heavy, winter robe, and we ripped his old one to rags.  It was thin and had been mended many times, and I wondered why he had only been able to afford such mean clothing.  
The stranger moved sometimes.  He turned his body or sat up or held out his arms and then pulled them back.  At times he took the food I gave him greedily, and once he blew bubbles with his mash until I scolded him.  Every few days he said odd words like "flax" or "weasel."  But most of the time he only stared into the fireplace, even when no fire was lit.  
Usually in rainy season we played games and told winter stories.  I had a potter's wheel for making simple things—mugs and plates and candle holders—and my brothers brought it in from the tool shed and put it in the big room.  My father even bought expensive clay from Mina's potter, who knew where to dig it and how to purify it and what to mix into it to make it fire strong and hard.  But I did not want to tell or hear stories or talk about anything or make anything.  Poor Hamdi was bursting with desire to speak of Bahia and his wedding, but I would not hear it.  Whenever anyone tried to talk about it I started coughing or talked loudly about other things.  At first Taha told me to mind my manners, but I said, how could he talk about marriage after what happened?  I needed silence, I said.  After we argued three or four times no one mentioned Hamdi's marriage when I was there.  That time was so cold for me that I don't remember even feeling pain for how badly I was treating Hamdi.  
One morning two months into rainy season I rose and found the stranger sitting outside my door.  He had his blankets pulled close around him and was asleep.  I started to push past him and bumped him with my knee.  He moved a little and said, "Thorns."  
I pushed him with my legs, and he drew away from me.  "Ashapool," he said.  
"Why do you keep saying that?" I asked him.  I was afraid of that word and wanted him to stop saying it.  
"Down the drainpipe," he said.  "Burnt orange.  Ranhammon."  
"What?" I said.  That was the most he'd ever said at once.  I thought maybe he had just taken another step toward healing.  Then I thought that if I helped him find his way quickly we could put him out of my father's house.  So I sat down on the floor in front of him to talk.  I leaned close to him, and that was when he caught me.  One moment he was as far away as the clouds, and the next moment he was there.  His eyes seized my spirit.  He could see me, he knew who I was, and I couldn't push him out.  I tried to cry out but choked instead.  My body stiffened, and I couldn't move.  At the sides of my eyes the door to my room and the furnishings of the big room grew dark.  The sound of the rain faded.  
The stranger leaned close to me, and I saw fire in his eyes.  I tried to run then, but I couldn't even rise to my feet.  The fire filled his eyes, and I saw that it wasn't fire but many afrit flying above a city at night.  They looked like hawks and falcons and story-monsters, and their bodies burned with flames of every color.  I stood on a rooftop higher than the buildings around me.  There were fewer lights than a city should have.  I felt the stranger near me, but I couldn't see him.  Strange thoughts came into my head, and feelings that weren't mine.  I couldn't keep them out.  
Fear.  That was what he felt and I felt.  I could hardly breathe for fear.  His head was full of strange thoughts and feelings.  He was thinking magic.  None of it was clear.  What was clear was that the city was Blackstone, and it was dying.  Food was running out.  People were starting to eat each other.  Every morning there was fresh blood on the cobbles.  There were Döckálf magi outside the walls and afrit inside, hunting the wizards.  Me.  Him.  The stranger.  They hunted even in the day.  Sometimes I heard them crawling under the cobbles and through the walls and in the drain pipe outside my window.  My friends were being killed and eaten.  Their souls were being taken.  The afrit knew who I was.  Someone had sold my name.  Maybe I could hide for a week or even ten days.  But they would find me.  
Then a great afriti in the form of a hawk soared over me.  Its feathers were blue fire flecked with orange and yellow.  It looked down, and my breath stopped.  I grew numb with fear.  The afriti folded its wings and dropped, its hawk-face and dark claws stretched toward me.  It screeched, and licks of fire came out of its mouth.  There were confused, strange thoughts in my head, and a flash of light, and for a moment I saw the shore of our lake here in Mina, at night.  Then I fell onto my side and lost myself.  
The stranger said, "Ashapool," and closed his eyes.  
I lay there for a while because I was too tired to stand.  Otherwise I would have kicked him for doing that to me.  When I heard my men moving in their rooms I managed to get up, and when Fabar came out I told him I was sick and went to bed that whole day.  I didn't tell anyone about the stranger's sitting by my door or the night-city, not even Budur when she came a few days later.  She examined him and sat next to him stroking his hair and talking to him, but he didn't move.  
She said, "He feels me, but he's stuck.  Keep talking to him.  He knows we're here."  
But I didn't.  I had nothing to say to him or anyone.  I didn't care anymore where he had come from or who he was or what had happened to him.  All I wanted was for him to heal and leave.  

When her grandchildren had thrown off their sickness my aunt came back from Harranayia and saw how strange I had become.  She came to my father's house almost every day and talked to the stranger and did the things I should have been doing for him.  She was just helping, she said, but that wasn't true.  She was doing almost all the caring for him.  I still fed him, but she was the one who cleaned him and stretched his muscles.  I was the helper, and not a good one.  
My aunt talked about things happening in Mina and the world.  She told me about her grandchildren who had nearly died of sickness, and I told her of the stranger's words and how my men were talking to him.  I could almost stop talking with my brothers and father, but it was harder to stop talking with my aunt.  She was always the one I went to with my troubles and good news.  Even in that bad time I still talked with her.  
One day, maybe a week after she came back to Mina, she said, "I always said Hamdi and Yehya were crafted by the same maker."  We were in the kitchen, making mash for the stranger.  When she said Yehya's name I thought suddenly of the first time I had seen him walk into the caravansary.  Arilla and I were sitting and talking when he came in.  He stood half a hand taller than the other caravan men, and his long, black hair was tied back.  His neck looked strong as a stallion's.  His armor was dusty and dark with sweat-patches.  He laughed at something someone said and clapped one of the men on the back, and his eyebrows rose, and then his eyes saw me and for a moment sharpened with desire, and my breath was stolen from me.  It was only when Arilla kicked me under the table that I looked away from him.  
I felt sick when I remembered that and thought of the gleaming rings and Yehya's face and my father saying, "I'm sorry," and I told my aunt, "I'm sick of hearing about dead people.  All day people come to remind me of Yehya.  I don't want to hear any more!"  
My aunt pretended to be surprised, and then she nodded and put the cups on their shelves.  That was all she said of such things for a time.  
The rains went on, and another month passed.  The air became colder, the days shorter.  Water stood in the fields.  The lake rose.  The people at the caravansary held a ceremony for the dead.  It was a short ceremony in the afternoon, with no healer to say prayers.  Budur had too many sick to see to.  The caravansary men had dug a hole, and each of them said a few words for the men they had known.  Then they threw in pieces of wood and metal from the caravan.  I had brought Yehya's rings, thinking I'd throw them into the hole, but I couldn't.  People would see me, and by the next morning the hole would be dug up and the rings taken.  So I kept them.  Through the ceremony I didn't think of Yehya.  I didn't weep or speak to anyone when it was over.  
The stranger began saying more silly words.  He reminded me of Ata, a farm boy who was born simple.  He spoke in that same nonsense way.  He never learned to speak right, because when he was ten his father said he would never be normal and killed him.  I thought of that and wished the stranger would die so we would be rid of him.  Sometimes he was sitting outside my door when I came out in the morning, and I kneed him aside.  I didn't want to see more afrit and fire, and I didn't want his fear.  
A month after my aunt compared Hamdi to Yehya she started talking about birthdays, trying to guess how old the stranger was.  Then she mentioned Taha's twenty-sixth birthday coming and said, "I worry about him, Hamila.  He isn't courting anyone.  Twenty-six is old for a man to be unmarried.  People are wondering what's wrong."  
"Shawazi Anwer didn't marry until he was thirty-one."  
"Shawazi Anwer is not a man to imitate.  He refused to marry because he didn't want to share his family's wealth.  And look who he married.  Is that what you want for Taha, a cold wife who loves gold more than her own children?"  
"I want Taha to find his own wife in his own time," I said.  "It is no one else's business."  
"Maybe he doesn't court anyone because he knows no one will have him."  
"What!" I said.  Taha was strong and handsome and industrious.  He'd been to the university and had a degree in agriculture.  He owned three fields of my father's land already and would inherit three more when my father died.  I did not know why he wasn't looking for a wife, and neither did anyone else.  "That's ridiculous," I said.  
"Really?  Think of what any woman who looks at Taha must see.  She sees an oldest brother with an old, unmarried sister who Taha will have to take in if she needs a place to go.  Any woman marrying Taha may also be marrying you, Hamila."  
"Your head is full of cobwebs this morning," I told her.  "You should go sleep."  But her words stung me.  Nineteen was old for a lake villages woman to marry.  If I married I would probably be a second wife, and that is ugly.  Second wives do all the work and take all the punishment for wrong things the first wife does.  It is better to be a spinster than a second wife.  So an unmarried sister as old as I was might well have to move in with her brother some day.  Many women would avoid Taha for that reason.  
"If women are afraid of marrying my brothers because of me, what about Bahia?" I said.  
"I didn't say anything about Hamdi.  Though he is hurting because you won't listen to him talk about the most exciting thing that will happen in his life.  I was talking about Taha.  You feel sorry for yourself and punish your men for fate, and he is the one who will suffer most for it."  
"Taha suffers?" I said.  "Taha?  Taha did not lose anyone.  Taha does not have cold rings in his drawer.  What are you telling me, Taha suffers?"  
"People expect you to grieve, but you've made your heart a stone.  Can you imagine any woman wanting to marry a man with a sister as cold as you are now?"  
That was more than I could listen to.  "Get out of this house!" I shouted at her.  "Get out, or I will tell my men that you are unwelcome here, and you will never come back.  Get out!"  
She would have quarreled with me, but I shoved her away, and she left.  "You're only hurting your men," she called from the street.  "You're being selfish!"  Then the rain forced her to go inside.  That was the last time we spoke for a long time.  
It was the stranger who suffered for that quarrel.  When I stretched his muscles I twisted his arms and legs so that he wheezed and gasped.  Often I did not feed him, and he became so thin his ribs showed.  He stank because I only washed him once in a while.  Hamdi started caring for him instead.  He still said odd words, and I sometimes found him sitting outside my room.  But after one morning when I put my foot on his chest and pushed him away he sat farther from my door, and I could ignore him easily.  
Ten or twelve days after my aunt and I quarreled Bahia came to talk to Hamdi.  The rain had stopped that day, and she had taken the chance to walk from Harranayia to Mina to visit.  She was nervous, and as soon as Kazil invited her in I knew what she wanted to say.  An afriti got into my head, and I knew my aunt had gone to talk with her, to spite me for our quarrel.  Bahia and Hamdi went walking along the road that goes out into the fields, and as soon as they were out of sight I raged to Taha about my aunt and the foolish things women say about people.  He must have thought I was crazy.  
"What did she say to you?" he asked.  "Was she going to talk to Bahia?  Do you know what Bahia has to say?"  
But I didn't know.  I was listening to my own anger and fears.  "No," I said, "I don't."  
What Bahia wanted was for Hamdi to give her the rings more slowly.  He had been giving her a ring every fourth week, and she said that was too fast.  She wanted more time to enjoy their courting.  Hamdi of course said yes.  That was what he told us later, after he walked her back to Harranayia.  My father and brothers accepted that, but I didn't believe she had decided on her own.  I was sure my aunt had spoken with her.  Why else would she want him to slow their courtship?  Hamdi had given her four rings already and had bought the other six from the caravan.  He loved her more than anything; his courting would go on all her life.  Slowing the courtship had not been her idea.  Just to prove she was right, my aunt had whispered to Bahia or her mother, "Wait and see what happens with Hamila.  Wait and see if she won't be a stone around your neck."  So Bahia was waiting to see what I would do.  
That was how strangely I was thinking in those days.  
After Bahia came the stranger began watching my pottery wheel.  My brothers had set it in a corner of the big room with the clay my father had bought, and it sat forgotten.  Then one evening I found the stranger sitting near it, watching it.  He had moved when no one was in the room.  
"What are you doing?" I said.  "It can't move by itself."  That was the first thing I had said to him in weeks.  But he did not speak or even turn his head, and I went past him into the kitchen.  Later when I came back into the big room he was sitting in front of the fireplace again, watching the empty grate.  He began to do that every evening, moving when no one was in the room.  Five or six days after the first time my men came home before he went back to the fireplace.  
"Look," Fabar said, "the idiot wants to make something."  
"A new head for himself," Kazil said.  "Full of brains.  The one he has is empty."  
"Maybe he wants to make a hollow head for you," Taha said.  "Then you'll both be empty-headed, and you can talk to each other."  
They all laughed, and then Kazil went to the stranger and said, "Do you know how this works?"  He crouched and pushed one of the pedals with his hand so that the wheel turned.  The stranger burst out laughing.  His laugh was short little puffs of air, ha-ha-ha.  Kazil was so surprised that he jerked upward and hit his head on the underside of the wheel, and that made Taha laugh.  Kazil told Taha to shut up, and Taha went and cuffed him, and they wrestled while my father and Hamdi and Fabar encouraged them.  Finally they were both exhausted and lay in the middle of the big room as my father and Hamdi and Fabar laughed.  The only ones who had not laughed or cheered were the stranger and me.  
The morning after the stranger laughed I came out of my room and found him sitting outside my door.  I was tired from bad dreams and didn't have strength to push him away.  The air was cold, and his blanket looked warm, and I leaned over and took it for myself.  He didn't fight.  He looked exhausted, as though he too had bad dreams.  His face was thin and pale, and there was beard-stubble on his chin.  Hamdi had cut his hair in a farmer's bowl-cut.  On a city man that looked ridiculous, but of course he didn't complain.  
I was looking at the dark circles around his eyes when he caught me.  One heartbeat his eyes were dull, and then they turned to holes.  There were no afrit or towers or stars.  Instead there were cold fields.  Their mud was ugly grey and covered by water.  That made me shiver.  In the spring the fields would be warm and moist, but now they were cold and dead.  I saw the hole where we had buried the caravan pieces filled with mud and scraps of burnt metal and wood.  I saw Yehya's rings in the drawer in my room.  The steel ring spun in circles and made an odd whirring sound against the wood.  It spun slowly, and I wondered what would happen when it stopped.  Then there was nothing in the stranger's eyes but dull pupils.  His head slumped forward, and he slept.  
I stood and let his blanket fall and went to the pottery wheel in its corner.  I didn't know what I wanted to do, only that there was something I wanted to make.  I put a lump of clay on the wheel and water in the water tray.  Then I pushed the pedals with my feet and shaped the clay.  But the clay was too cold, and I pedaled too fast.  The lump broke into pieces that tumbled off the wheel and stuck to the wall.  I was too weary to try again.  I didn't even wash the clay off my hands.  I could hardly get to my room and shut the door.  As soon as I lay on my sleeping pillows I fell asleep and didn't wake for half a day.  When I came out of my room Hamdi asked what I had made on the wheel, and I asked him if he saw any new things sitting around the house.  He said no, he didn't, but if I had made new things they would be firing now at the potter's.  
"You've been angry and quiet this rainy season," he said, "but nothing else.  You've hardly spoken in months.  You haven't gone to visit anyone.  You haven't made anything."  He smiled a silly Hamdi smile and said, "You know, Yehya would shake you and call you a silly bitch and tell you to smile before he left you for some caravansary tart."  
I was startled because I'd never heard him say 'bitch' before.  He so surprised me that I thought of Yehya the last time he kissed me and remembered the smell of his leather oil and his man's scent.  Those memories I could not stand.  
"Yehya is dead," I said to him.  "If Bahia was killed you wouldn't run around visiting people.  You wouldn't be making things.  You should be asking why Bahia suddenly wants you to court her so slowly, instead of worrying about me."  
His face reddened, and before he could speak I said, "Perhaps she's not sure which woman you love more."  
He said, "What are you saying?  I love you my sister and her my wife.  They aren't the same.  Bahia—"  
"You've been my brother for nineteen years," I said, "and still you don't understand women's jealousies."  I left him before he could say anything else.  
That wasn't what I truly wanted to say to him.  I wanted to warn him about our aunt.  'She's angry at me and wants to humiliate me by poisoning your chance to marry Bahia.  I know what she's doing.'  But I didn't say that.  He would think I was sick-headed.  

Because I was sick-headed I began to watch my aunt.  Some days, after my men had gone out, I stood by the window in the big room and looked through the shutters at her house.  She didn't come outside often, and when she did she went straight to the caravansary or the market and came straight home.  Women visited her, though.  She had many friends, and they were always going to see her.  Some mornings my aunt's voice seemed to come to my ears, saying, "She'll become a bitter ghoul clinging to her men, and no one will marry them."  Those women who did not like me would lick up that sort of talk.  They'd repeat it to their friends, who'd repeat it to their friends.  If it was said enough times it would be as good as true, because everyone would treat it that way.  
"Do you hear her?" I said to the stranger.  "Do you hear her talking about me?"  
Sometimes when I spoke to him he would say words like "Bloodspike" or "Shadow hunter."  I don't think he ever said "Ashapool" again.  I never did find out what that meant.  
There were many chores, as always, and as I did them I thought of my aunt and the poison I was sure she was spreading.  If I went to her house I could confront her lies.  People would respect someone who faced whispered lies with loud truth.  But then I thought, what would those women see, looking at me?  Would they see me or some creature my aunt had made me into?  Some ghoul?  My aunt knew how to make me angry.  She would make me quarrelsome, and they would say to themselves, "See, her aunt was right.  She is becoming a ghoul.  Better stay away from her brothers.  Wouldn't want that in the family."  So I didn't dare go to my aunt's.  
At last rainy season began to pass.  The days grew longer and a little warmer.  There was a day when a tiny hole opened in the clouds, and for three or four breaths light shone through.  I opened the shutters to let in air and saw the light fall on a tree at the edge of one of the fields.  Then I knew what I could do to silence my aunt's whispers.  Once after Yehya and I had made love I had missed my time and feared I was pregnant.  As Utu willed it I had not been, but right after I missed my time I had been terrified and had gone to my aunt to beg for her advice.  She had said this and that about women missing their times, but I wouldn't hear her.  "What if I am pregnant?" I had asked her.  "What then?"  
"Would you want a baby now?" she had asked.  
"No!  Yehya wouldn't marry me because I was pregnant.  You know him.  He'd say I was trying to trap him.  What can I do?"  
She told me about a drug that old women make from certain leaves.  It kills the baby in the womb and makes it come out early.  But it had to be taken three months into the pregnancy, or it would cause the woman terrible pain.  She might die if it was taken too early or too late.  
My aunt said, "If you take it at the right time it doesn't hurt.  I did it once.  The man is dead now.  I loved him and thought that if I had his baby he'd marry me.  But he didn't.  When I told him I was pregnant he shunned me.  I went to my grandmother, and she had me wait until the time was right.  It worked as she said it would."  
"Where did you put it?" I'd asked her.  In the lake villages even miscarriages are buried.  
"My grandmother gave me an urn with a lid, and we sealed it and buried it under that old tree.  At night, so no one would know."  
That was what I remembered when the light fell on the tree.  Taking such drugs was punishable.  A woman could be imprisoned or even stoned for such a thing.  I would dig up the urn and leave it exposed.  Someone would see it.  People would open it and see the bones.  Budur would come and touch them, and with her healer's magic she would know whose it had been and how it died.  People would have something to talk about then!  Anything my aunt said would be scorned, and her lies would do no harm to my brothers.  That evening I went to sleep early.  Long before dawn I would go to the tree and dig up the urn.  That was my plan.  
The stranger was waiting when I opened my door.  He wasn't sitting to the side as usual but was in front of me.  There was no light, and I stepped into him.  
I told him, "Get out of my way," but he didn't.  Instead he grabbed my arms and said words I didn't understand.  Blue light glowed around us.  His eyes were bright and sharp.  
"Make the hollow," he said.  
"You make the hollow," I said.  I pulled out of his arms but couldn't look away.  In his eyes were the tangled roots of a tree with an urn buried among them.  Then the lid fell off the urn, and there was a tiny skeleton inside.  
"Let me go," I said and stepped back.  I wanted to kick him, but I couldn't.  I couldn't even raise my hand toward him.  That was his magic, I think.  Then I began to see a shape in my head.  It was shadowed, and I couldn't see it well.  
"What is this I'm seeing?" I asked him, but he didn't answer.  
A tingling started deep in my chest.  It tickled at first and then hurt and then burned.  It hurt so much that I tried to cry out to Taha and Hamdi to come help me, but I couldn't.  I stumbled away from the stranger and hit against my pottery wheel.  The stranger's blue light filled the room, and I could see everything.  The water and the clay were still by the wheel.  I thought I had to get the shape out of my head and onto the wheel, so I sat and started to pedal.  The clay on the outside of the block was hard, but when I broke that away there was wet clay inside.  I put a lump on the wheel and pedaled.  The shape in my head wasn't clear, but my hands seemed to know what to do.  They added another lump of clay and shaped it and then added more.  It was an urn I was making, Thalararian style with a narrow bottom fixed to the wheel.  It widened as it rose so that it looked like an upside-down pear.  
When I made the top I didn't leave a hole.  I added more clay and plugged it up.  That felt like the right thing for that urn.  Then I took my feet off the pedals, and the wheel slowed and stopped.  The urn was as high as my arm from wrist to elbow.  Grooves from my fingers spiraled up its sides.  The burning in my chest was gone.  
The stranger walked to the wheel and squatted.  In one hand he held a twig he had plucked from the broom, and with that he wrote strange squiggles and symbols in the wet clay.  He started at the bottom and followed the grooves up, turning the wheel with one hand and writing with the other.  He was weak and had to rest several times.  When he reached the top he stopped writing.  I pressed my thumb into the plug at the top of the urn, and he said a word, and I felt my heat go through my thumb into the urn.  The stranger put his hand on top of mine, and I felt his heat move through my thumb.  Then we took our hands from the urn.  
"Now," he said.  I took a thread and sliced the bottom of the urn free of the wheel, and the stranger went and slept.  I carried the urn to the potter's, and she fired it for me that day.  
The next morning I woke feeling lost and lonely and strange.  The rain only tapped on the roof, and there was light behind the clouds.  Rainy season was ending.  I wandered around my father's house for a time looking for Yehya before I remembered that he was dead.  It was as though I hadn't known before.  I opened the shutters and looked at the grey clouds and remembered the cold, dark hole and the rings and Yehya's strong arms around me, and I felt him so far away in Phoraz, killed in the rain.  I remembered his laughter and how his mouth tightened when he was angry.  I remembered the hard look of desire in his eyes and the warmth of his arms when he caught me up.  I remembered my bad dreams of shadows rising above the caravan and destroying it and the screams of the caravan men.  Then my heart broke, and I lay on the cushions in the big room and wept for a long time.  
When the stranger woke his eyes were red and puffy, but he lived in himself at last.  
"Did you have it fired?" he asked.  
"Yes."  
We went to the potter's and got the urn and took it to the lake.  It was much heavier than it should have been, and we had to trade it off every forty or fifty steps.  
"What's in it?" I asked him.  "What is this thing?"  
"A holding place," he said.  "For pain that was rotting."  
We borrowed a fishing boat and took the urn to the deepest hole in the lake and dropped it in.  It sank quickly.  

The stranger stayed in the lake villages and took the place of our wizard who had gone to the War and never returned.  At first I spoke with him often, but in a few weeks we had nothing more to say.  He is a wizard from the greatest city in the world, and I am a farmer's daughter from Mina.  Then he met Arilla, and they married and had children.  
That is what happened to me during the War.  

— end —



Foreword — "This is Home"

Atlan's Southern Reach has always been the nation's hinterland.  Endowed by nature with high hills and dense rain forest, the peninsula is famed for heat, humidity and foul weather.  The Bakra Peaks to the west form a barricade to storms moving westward from the ocean and force them to dump their moisture on the Reach.  As a result the rainy season is unusually long, and the rivers of the region remain flooded half the year.  The Southern Reach is also home to many types of poisonous reptiles, spiders and disease-bearing insects.  Though the Atlaneans have made numerous attempts to colonize the area, colonies have never survived for long.  The Atlanean government's policy toward the Southern Reach for the last fifty years has been to extract raw goods—timber and pelts—and to discourage further colonization attempts.  
The War did not come to the Southern Reach until late in its fourth year, when Admiral Ismail Shazar of Luricania was forced to land twenty-seven thousand Atlanean refugees on its shores.  Thus began the most successful attempt so far to colonize the Southern Reach.  
Unlike the majority of the accounts I gathered, this one was not collected as the result of a chance meeting.  I had heard of the final evacuation of Blackstone's children by Admiral Shazar's fleet and wondered what had become of them.  It was common knowledge that the fleet had been destroyed somewhere between the cities of Blackstone and Acalon, but no one knew if the refugees and crews were still alive somewhere or had gone down with the ships.  I followed rumors and stories first to Acalon and then backtracked to the Southern Reach, where I discovered the colony of survivors from the Luricanian 4th Fleet.  
For more than a week I was a "guest" of the Admiral's at his villa.  My manuscript scrolls were taken from me for several days and then returned.  I was questioned by lieutenants—why was I there, what did I want, did I expect to return to Decadurinis with the Admiral's story?  Then, a week after I arrived at the colony, I was introduced to Admiral Shazar.  On the balcony of the second floor of his villa, overlooking fields which were beginning to green with spring crops, he asked me again the questions his lieutenants had asked and many others about the accounts I had gathered.  Finally he said that he would be proud to tell the world what had happened to the Luricanian 4th Fleet.  
Later he explained that a number of people—slavers, religious zealots, Atlanean survivors and others—have visited the colony to entice or steal members away.  The Admiral and many of his officers feel strongly protective of the colonists and do not want the colony reduced by even a few members.  As a result all visitors are treated with suspicion until their motives are ascertained.  
The Admiral is short like most Luricanians and is barrel-chested and strong.  He is in his mid-fifties and very dark-skinned with white whiskers and thinning hair cut in short, military fashion.  His face is deeply lined, his voice loud and resonating.  He expects his orders to be obeyed immediately, as I saw time and again with the villa's servants and his lieutenants.  Though officially he was discharged from the Luricanian navy, he continues to wear his uniform.  



This is Home

We knew we were sailing into trouble that last run.  The fleet's wizards couldn't contact Blackstone's wizards even when we were close to the city.  The Döckálfs were blocking our magic in preparation for an attack, or they were attacking.  Or the city was lost.  We couldn't use clairvoyance magic to look ahead.  The Döckálfs had blocked that since the beginning of the siege.  We advised our wizards in Acalon, and then I put the fleet on alert.  
We sailed into Blackstone Harbor an hour before Utu rose.  We'd been doing the supply and evacuation runs for two years, and there was a routine.  When we came into the harbor we'd be harassed by air-afrit—they'd drop fire or swoop down and carry some poor bastard off deck.  Then the Döckálf magi would send water-afrit after us.  We always had a sharp fight getting into the harbor and another getting out.  That run they left us alone.  
"Change of orders, sir?" Rishman asked me.  He was the Battle Fleet Commander, second in command.  
"Not yet," I told him.  
To my right, Anuur said, "Steady."  He was the Fleet's Wizard and had command of the twenty-five wizards attached to the 4th.  He had communication with the other wizards and was relaying my order down the chain.  
There were only the three of us on Hurricane's battle deck.  A few senior officers were down on the main deck, well spread out.  We'd learned early in the War that groups were prime targets for afrit and mage attack.  As soon as we sailed into the harbor the air turned cold.  That was late in the dry season, and Blackstone normally didn't grow cold until well into rainy season.  The Döckálfs were doing something new.  The air was so clear we could see candle lights in the minarets—not the glow, but the actual flames—and guards on the walls.  The walls looked intact, but the siege was a wizard's war.  Appearances didn't count.  Rishman said the stillness reminded him of the fog banks off the Isle of the Damned.  
Anuur got answers for me.  The magical defenses were holding, but the city was weakening.  Someone—that meant the Döckálfs—was creating a miasma of fear in the city.  The spell was strong enough to affect half a million people, which meant a number of magi or priestesses.  They were inside the walls.  If the spell was kept up, the city would crack soon.  There weren't enough wizards left to hold the defenses and fight off the new threat.  
The wharves were quiet as we came alongside.  We'd caught a strong wind and made the voyage in three days instead of the usual five, so there was no one on hand to unload the food or guard the ships.  I put our crews and marines to the tasks.  Even with all our noise entering port and unloading, no one came to see who we were.  I decided to go ashore personally and find out from the Great Council what the Döckálfs were doing.  I could have sent a junior officer, but I wanted to do something.  We'd sailed the Blackstone run so many times that I hardly had to issue an order.  All I did was stand on Hurricane's battle deck to establish a reassuring presence for the junior officers.  I wanted to see for myself what was happening in Blackstone.  
Anuur reported no afrit in the city so far as he could detect, so Rishman was the only one I took.  Anuur wanted us to bring a detachment of marines, but I thought the more who went the more likely we'd catch attention.  It wasn't far from the wharves to the council hall, and Rishman and I both had strong talismans and djinn-bottles in case we were attacked.  I told Anuur to watch over us and to send help if there was trouble.  
There were sounds, rustling and muffled thumps.  But no dogs barked, no roosters crowed, no one sang the call to prayer.  The morning sounds were snuffed out.  I could feel the Döckálf magic flowing through the city.  It clung to me and made me feel small and cold.  I kept pulling my coat around me.  We found out later that the Queen had been making her spell for four days.  No wonder that the city's wizards were weakening.  
The guards at the council hall doors looked sick.  They knew what was happening.  Fifty thousand hungry Ceretesian cannibals were about to break into the city.  Utu knew how many afrit were coming with them.  And the Döckálfs were coming to take slaves and souls.  When the wizards broke, everyone in the city would be killed, and the guards knew it.  They sent a runner to announce us, and then they let us in.  
The inside was dimly lit with paraffin lamps.  There were about thirty people seated around the Speaker's Hall.  They looked as though they hadn't slept in days.  Four were Speakers from the provinces, and two were Maharajahs from Blackstone.  Originally there had been ten Speakers and four Maharajahs, but the others had fled or been killed.  Guild heads were there, too, about fifteen of them.  So was Balaz, the city's head wizard.  That surprised me because all those leaders in one place had to be irresistible to the Döckálfs.  That said how desperate they were.  
I told them we'd started unloading the food and that we'd need longshoremen to take over the unloading and soldiers to guard the ships.  We'd be ready to board evacuees within three hours.  Then I asked them about the new magic and how they were countering it.  One of the Speakers told us that longshoremen and soldiers were being roused, and then she asked us if we would be willing to commit the fleet to the city's defense.  Her abruptness said more about their desperation; Atlaneans are always respectful of protocol.  
"I can't make that decision without knowing your enemy," I told her.  
"Of course," Balaz said.  He was in a wheeled-chair then.  Midway through the siege he'd fought a smoke afriti, and it had crippled him.  "The new magic is coming from the Döckálf Queen.  She's finally showing us what she does."  The man's face was flushed.  I think he was actually excited.  "She's acting as a channel for the pain and fear of her people, pouring it into the city.  She's going mainly after the wizards, trying to weaken us just enough that we'll fail.  If she was alone I don't think she could do it.  There are still a hundred and fifty wizards here.  We'd find some way to drive her out.  But she's brought at least a septad of magi with her, and something else.  A smoke afriti, we think, but unusually strong.  Maybe a lithaden."  
"One of the Twenty?" Rishman asked.  He'd been afraid of the wrath of Utu for a dozen runs.  The way he saw it, if Utu wanted Blackstone to fall we shouldn't interfere.  After he'd said that sort of thing three or four times I pointed out that maybe we were the instrument of Utu to save the city.  Then I told him I didn't want religious sentiment interfering with his military decisions.  After that he kept those thoughts to himself.  
"We think so," Balaz said.  "We think it's shielding the Queen from our detection magic.  We can feel her spell and estimate her strength, but we can't find her."  
"And you think the fleet's wizards can," I said.  
"No.  We believe that if you add your magic to ours, we can force the Queen to reveal herself.  You have how many—twenty-five?—wizards with you—"  
"Ship's wizards," I said.  "Weather magic.  Spells for sea battles.  Not this."  
"We can use any assistance you can spare."  
I gave the request some thought.  We needed Blackstone to stand.  Decadurinis had fallen, Atlan was gone, Luricania was disintegrating and the Little Nations were enslaved.  Blackstone was humanity's oldest, strongest city.  If she stood, we stood.  I knew we couldn't break the siege.  We didn't have the power.  But we might have been able to help find the Queen and drive her out.  We might have been able to help the city hold until the Technocrats arrived.  The Queen had just sent a hundred thousand of her Ceretesian and Irsminian vassals to fight them, but I had no doubt they would cut through.  They'd already destroyed the forward Irsminian army, sunk all the Queen's ships and killed Utu-only-knew how many magi.  They'd just sent one of their crystal ships to RéAmora, and it had inflicted heavy damage.  They would arrive at Blackstone.  It was a question of how long.  
I weighed all that and told them the fleet was still leaving by mid-day.  "We don't have the magic to fight the Queen and a septad of magi and a lithaden," I said.  "We're evacuating."  
I don't think they were surprised.  Their next questions concerned who we were taking.  Two of them—no point saying which two, they're dead now—tried to bribe me to take them and their families.  I quashed that.  Normal evacuation procedure had been to evacuate those of "economic benefit."  That's how the Deys phrased it.  In two years we'd evacuated a quarter million people, mostly middle and upper class, with their gold and jewels.  But this was probably our last run.  Anyone we left would be torn to pieces and eaten.  Their souls would be taken.  We had to evacuate as many as we could, from all backgrounds.  
Rishman leaned over to me and said, "Children."  He was letting religious sentiment influence his thinking again—there's that passage in the Book of Utu about warding the children of one's enemies as you would your own—but the idea wasn't bad.  Luricania had lost three hundred thousand men in the War.  Young people could be taught to farm.  
"Children," I said.  "We have space for fifteen thousand adults or twenty thousand young people."  
"Without their parents?" one of the guild heads said.  
"Young families will have first priority.  No one over twenty.  No children under five without family to watch them.  First come, first boarded.  When the ships are laden we sail."  
They argued, of course, told me I was a ghoul and sick and ungodly and everything else they could think of.  They were talking about seizing ships when Balaz let out a shout like a crack of thunder that shut everyone up.  I'd never heard a spell like that.  The fleet's wizards created a version of it later.  
"Please forgive us, Admiral," he said.  "We're very frightened.  Your plan is fair.  We'll begin evacuation immediately."  
They tore into him, but we didn't hear much.  We headed back to the fleet.  
Runners left the hall behind us, shouting.  People started to move.  Rishman and I hurried back to the wharves.  The Queen's spell dragged at my feet and legs and made my skin cold, even moving fast.  I was afraid to slow and let the cold reach my heart.  The flotilla commanders and Anuur met us aboard Hurricane for a strategy meeting.  They knew the drill.  They just needed to hear what Balaz had said about the Queen and how long the city might hold.  Anuur told us he'd worked out a spell with some of the city wizards to go under the Döckálf blocking magic.  When we left we'd be able to communicate with the city.  
The longshoremen and soldiers and evacuees came all at once, but the junior officers kept order.  By the time we came out of our strategy meeting they were loading evacuees.  I went with Rishman and Anuur onto Hurricane's battle deck to oversee.  There were fifty-four ships in the fleet:  merchantmen and warships, troop transports and command vessels.  The Döckálfs had destroyed most of the wharves, so only eight to ten ships could dock at once.  The Queen's spell rattled everyone, but we knew we would be out to sea as soon as we finished.  As the sailors say, we were all asses and elbows.  
Fifty or sixty thousand people came to the wharves.  For such a large crowd they were frightfully quiet.  They were thin and grey-skinned and pathetic.  The city was out of food, or the defense forces were getting the tiger's share.  Some of them tried to swim to the ships, but the fleet's wizards made currents that drove them back to shore.  Others jumped in and sank like stones.  I don't know how many drowned.  They tried to push onto the wharves, and the marines held them back.  If they'd been stronger they'd have rioted, and it would have been a bloody mess.  But they were starved and beaten down and weak.  
"Utu," Rishman said.  
"Utu isn't here," I said.  I wasn't in any mood.  I've never been a strong believer, though I went to temple with my family while we were growing up.  Had a lot of fights with my father over matters of faith.  To me it's a question of where you put your trust.  For me that was settled when I was a boy, when a fungus wiped out the rice crop two years running.  I prayed, and my family prayed, and everyone we knew prayed, and people grew thin and died.  I thought then, and I thought again that morning in Blackstone, that if Utu was going to let happen what was happening, I had no use for Him.  
The junior officers decided who came on board.  Nasty job.  We didn't take anyone obviously crippled or sick.  The fleet didn't have enough healers.  Anyone who looked older than twenty had to show identification or wait until we could see if there was room.  Sometimes that was ugly.  Three young men at the end of Hurricane's wharf knifed a junior officer to death when he decided they had to stay.  The marines killed those three, but there were other incidents.  Quite a few junior officers and marines ended up with cuts and bruises.  It wasn't just fleet people who were targets.  I saw a beggar girl pushing her way toward us when a group of adults—solid, middle class merchants—surrounded her.  She never came out.  
"Look alert!" I shouted to the marines.  Anuur made a spell to carry my voice, and two of them looked back at me.  I pointed at the ones who'd surrounded the girl.  "None of those bastards gets on board.  None of their children, either."  Anuur put a glow on the ones I meant so we'd know them.  I knew they weren't in their right heads—the Queen's spell had been weakening them for days—but partly that was sheer viciousness, and I didn't want it on my ships.  
I noticed a lot of unaccompanied young women boarding, including some who looked older than twenty.  I let it go.  Single women would mean marriages, and that was good for Luricania.  
We finished loading evacuees in five hours, the fastest we'd ever loaded the fleet.  Final count was twenty-seven thousand young people.  There were thousands more on the wharves when I gave the order to recall the marines.  They pulled back slowly, scimitars and shields raised.  People threw bottles and stones, but they held calm.  A group charged them on one wharf, and our wizards firebombed them.  No one else wanted that.  The marines got on board, and we pulled in the planks.  That's when the crowd finally broke.  They let out a roar that scared the Hells out of me, and thousands of them jumped into the water.  Hundreds more threw their kids at us.  Threw them like sacks of rice, screaming and flailing into the water.  Someone had a Technocrat's light tube and set a few sails on fire.  The wizards put out the fires and summoned magical wind to push us out to sea.  Hurricane came about so fast I had to hang onto the rail.  I had one last look at those poor bastards on the wharves.  They'd calmed again and were silent.  Watching us leave.  
  There were no incidents leaving the harbor.  As soon as we reached open sea the air warmed again.  We stopped shivering, and the fear went out of us.  Sailors started shouting orders back and forth, and I realized we'd hardly raised our voices in the harbor.  That spell of the Queen's was brutal.  The kids liked the shouting.  Some of them gave us no end of trouble shouting out false orders.  I wish that had been the worst of our problems.  
We started organizing and counting the evacuees.  Some of the younger ones had never been away from their parents.  Poor little lubbers were homesick and terrified.  They had no idea who we were, where we were taking them or what was going to happen.  The older evacuees understood what was happening to Blackstone.  They knew their relatives and friends who'd been left behind were going to die.  They had to carry that and look after the little ones.  
Petty officers organized work details and assigned tasks.  We needed a head count.  Food lockers had to be guarded.  The cooks needed helpers.  We needed duty rosters posted where everyone could see them.  Toilets had to be cleaned constantly.  Water buckets had to be kept clean and full.  We needed responsible people to ensure it all got done.  
We'd tried to weed out sick people on the wharves, but some got on board.  As we found them we sent them to Mercy, one of our hospital ships.  We found forty or fifty a day, most with malnutrition and parasites.  None were serious.  The healers worked long days, but so did everyone else.  Organizing twenty-seven thousand evacuees was an enormous task, and eighteen-hour days were expected.  That run was our eighteenth, and we knew the drill.  
Balaz had said the wizards would probably break by mid-day, but they held longer.  In the late afternoon Anuur reported a major offensive against the gates, and by nightfall the Ceretesians were in the city.  After that the Döckálfs broke the communication spell.  Anuur wanted to let our wizards in Acalon know what had happened, but I was against that.  The Döckálfs would intercept our communications and find us.  
"The Acalon wizards should be watching us," I told him.  "They know our situation."  
"The Döckálfs might be blocking them," he said.  
"If the Döckálfs are strong enough to take Blackstone and fight the Technocracy and block the Acalon wizards, it's better we don't attempt communication and let them know where we are."  
The Deys did need to know our situation.  If the winds were good, in five days we would be landing a huge, unique group of evacuees in Acalon.  The port authorities needed to be ready for them.  But, when toss came to throw, I'd risk the anger of the Deys over Döckálf magic.  I put out the order that the wizards were not to use magical wind and restricted use of clairvoyance.  If the Queen wanted us she'd have to put a lot of magi to hunting.  I was betting they were too busy with Blackstone.  We might reach Acalon before they could turn their full attention to us.  
For the first two days we sailed into a strong port bow wind, slow progress but steady.  I was thankful for the calm seas.  As it was hundreds of evacuees were sick.  They came up from below decks to run for the railing, all day long.  Would have been funny if it wasn't so pitiful.  We did what we could to make the evacuees comfortable.  Everyone had a hammock and a blanket and two hot meals a day.  The good thing about the evacuees being miserable was that they didn't make much trouble.  
At mid-day the second day Fleet's Healer Zaabalawi asked permission for a burial at sea.  
"What happened?" I asked her.  
"They're all little ones, Admiral, most without family.  We tried to take care of them, but there are too many.  They had such a bad year during the siege, especially the orphans, and they couldn't bear being taken from the city.  Even if they hated it, it was home.  They just curled up and died.  We need to get the bodies off the ships before they corrupt."  
That afternoon I went over to Mercy for the service.  We brought over the families of the ones who had families.  They were dressed in bright colors and stood quiet and respectful through the whole ceremony.  That's something I've always admired about Atlaneans.  Decadurinians are polite and Varinians are sophisticated, but talking with those people you often get the feeling they're only waiting until it's their turn to talk again.  With Atlaneans I've always felt they were listening and thinking about what was said.  I said a few words about the cruelty of war and how the gods take special care of little ones.  I told them we were heading for new opportunity and, though some of us wouldn't make it in body, their spirits would be with us.  Zaabalawi wrote the words for me, and they were pretty good.  I think it helped the older evacuees to have me say something.  Then we gave thirty-two wrapped-up little bodies to the sea.  
After the ceremony Rishman and I headed back to Hurricane on a launch.  He knows me better than anyone, I suppose, and he said, "That's hard, burying kids that small."  
"I gave the order to bring them," I said.  "I should have said ten years old, not five."  
"They would have died in the city, too," he said.  "At least here their souls are safe."  
"Word'll travel.  It'll be hard on the other evacuees."  
"More will die before we reach port," he said.  "They'll have to get used to it."  
That brought me around smartly.  He was right.  The evacuees were going to see a lot of death.  They would have to get used to it.  And so would we.  I made sure that Zaabalawi assigned older girls without children of their own to help care for the littlest ones.  
On the third day the Döckálfs found us.  Maybe they'd been watching us since we'd left Blackstone.  Considering what they attacked us with, they must have worked on it for a while.  Around mid-morning Anuur reported a storm ninety metapaces to the east and moving toward us.  
"What have they done?" I asked him.  
"Found a tropical storm, wove in lightning and wind spells and redirected it to us," he said.  "Same thing they did to sink the Atlanean merchant fleet."  
"Can you break it up?"  
"No.  Too big, too strong."  
"Can we skirt it?"  
"They'd move it to contact."  
"How much time?"  
"It's a spiral shape.  The outer arm will arrive in three hours.  The main storm will be four or five hours behind that.  Then the other arm.  We've started the wards."  
"It's that close already?" I said.  
"They shaped it northeast of here and just moved it into our area.  We were conservative with detection spells."  As I'd ordered, though he didn't say that.  
"Do what you can," I told him.  
I should have known what they were going to do.  They needed to destroy Blackstone to make an example, and their point was weakened if they didn't kill everyone.  They couldn't let twenty-seven thousand Atlaneans escape.  A storm was the best way to attack the whole fleet at once.  
I put out the storm warning, but the crew didn't need it.  They knew the feeling of the wards being cast and were already changing to the storm sails.  All they needed to know was how big it was, and the wizards would tell them that.  I ordered most of the healers off Mercy and Sea Lily and spread them over the fleet.  For a while there was a flurry of launches as the healers dispersed.  
Thunderheads piled up and moved toward us.  The entire eastern sky was black.  The fleet spread out so there'd be less chance of ships hitting each other, and we moved away from shore.  We'd been sailing close to land, since it's hard for sea monsters to enter shallows.  When the squall line was a few metapaces away, Hurricane's captain, Doujasha, cleared the decks of all non-essential crew.  I went into the enclosed observation deck with Anuur.  
The first waves were fifteen paces high and rocked Hurricane.  Gusts topped two hundred metapaces an hour.  The storm sails cracked so loudly I could hear them inside.  Rain drops exploded on deck; sounded like fat frying.  Sailors and crew in harnesses ran all over Hurricane to keep her lines clear.  She was the biggest, strongest ship in the fleet, a NaHrouz battlemain Rishman and the marines had captured, and she rode it out fine.  Some weren't as fortunate.  Sea Snake's aft mast was torn off, and Valiant lost her main mast.  Thresher and Scourge were blown into each other, and Thresher went down immediately with all hands and six hundred evacuees on board.  Scourge was holed and barely stayed afloat.  Two hundred of her evacuees drowned.  Lightning struck around the ships and raised plumes of water.  Hurricane's decks vibrated with the thunder.  If not for the lightning wards, half the fleet would have gone down.  
The wizards were too busy to help troubled ships.  The wind shears and lightning wards took constant maintenance, and they had to watch for other Döckálf magic.  I listened to Anuur's reports and nodded my head every once in a while.  There were damned few orders I could give.  "Hold steady," was about it, and any idiot knew to do that.  At one point I saw three children crawl out of a forward hatch and head for the railing; I guess they didn't want to throw up below decks.  The wind and rain swept them over the side.  None of us could do anything.  
  The first squall lasted a little over an hour.  Thresher was the only ship that sank.  Valiant, Gale Rider and Scourge were badly damaged, and we transferred their non-essential crew and evacuees to other ships.  Seventeen ships were moderately damaged.  Nine hundred evacuees had drowned or been battered to death.  At least thirty crew members were injured, and eight had been swept overboard.  Hundreds of evacuees were in shock.  Anuur reported that the main body of the storm was six hours away.  Overwhelming sentiment among the senior officers was for weighing anchor in shallow water to ride it out.  If we found sheltered anchorage in a bay or river mouth, the jungle would break the wind, and shallows would break the waves.  The wizards could smooth the waters and put out wind shears.  Any ship that was wrecked would stand a good chance of being blown to shore, with survivors.  
I was for going on.  If we didn't find good anchorage the waves would be more treacherous than on the open sea.  If we weighed anchor the Döckálfs could stop the storm over us and pound us as long as they liked, but if we sailed on we'd be through it in a half-day.  Even the Döckálfs couldn't move an Ohnad Sea storm backward to follow us to Acalon.  
I was about to order the fleet to sail through the storm when Zaabalawi argued to weigh anchor.  The evacuees were her concern.  Hundreds of them were injured and in shock, and they were terrified.  If we found good anchorage the waves would be lower, the ships would move less, and land would be in sight.  For lubbers that would be important.   
"Fleet's Wizard," I said to Anuur, "How long can they sustain their storm?"  
"Days.  But the worst of it will be the first few hours.  That's when the magi will pour in most of their magic.  After that it'll be rain."  
I gave the order to seek shallows, and the wizards started hunting for a suitable place.  Zaabalawi was right.  We had to lessen the shock for the evacuees, or we'd have thousands of invalids.  After the worst of the storm passed we could continue on to Acalon.  A half hour after I gave the order the wizards found the Tilanti River delta, and we made for it.  They thought it would give good anchorage, but they couldn't be certain.  The Döckálf magic in the storm interfered with their clairvoyance.  They also told me there was a good-sized town on the west side of the delta.  Whoever was there had cleared fields and built almost a thousand houses.  It looked abandoned, but that was hard to say.  With the storm they might be battened down.  
The fleet's wizards summoned magical winds, and in an hour we reached the delta and found it wouldn't provide anchorage.  The bottom was too soft, and there were too many mud bars.  The wizards found a cove farther along the coast where the most damaged ships could shelter, but that was all.  The central storm would arrive in four and a half hours.  Waves would top twenty paces high, and winds would gust at three hundred metapaces an hour.  There'd be much more lightning.  Anuur was able to tell me that the town on the delta was abandoned.  
I asked for ideas, and Doujasha, Hurricane's captain, had the best one.  We could move the evacuees with supplies into the town.  The most damaged ships would go to the cove to ride out the storm while the main fleet spread out and sailed on.  They would ride through the storm and return for us when it blew past.  Some of our ships would sink, but most would make it through.  It was a solid idea, and we took it.  
 We unloaded the fleet in record time.  Under normal circumstances that could take an entire day, but the evacuees wanted off the ships.  I sent marines first to clear houses of wasps and snakes.  Two or three marines were bitten and killed by teal-mouths, and more were bitten and saved by the healers.  Then crewmen moved supplies into the buildings.  The healers checked the houses for sickness and didn't find any.  There was no sign of flood or fire or battle.  We didn't know why the town had been abandoned.  Finally the evacuees went over, and we put them to work clearing growth from the buildings.  The town had only been abandoned a few years, and most of the buildings were serviceable.  We put crews to repairing the rest.  
There wasn't much commotion when the fleet left.  Everyone was too busy.  We had people digging fire pits, fixing roofs, clearing houses, stowing supplies and boiling water.  There was dinner to make and upset babies to tend.  We needed toilets, kitchens, guard posts.  We were lucky for the houses.  There were enough that we could get everyone inside.  The crowding wasn't good for morale or hygiene, but we didn't have a choice.  The squall line was moving in.  
I decided to stay on land.  The 4th was going to sea with skeleton crews and most of the fleet's wizards.  Their job was to survive the storm and return for us.  It was a hard mission, but simple.  They didn't need me.  The people on land needed a lot of decisions made.  So I put Sabudar—one of the flotilla commanders—in charge, and the fleet left us on the delta.  The landed wizards kept contact with the sea wizards until they had to put all their attention into the storm wards.  
Rain started as soon as Utu went down.  We were at the edge of the storm, so there was no lightning or thunder.  The rain went on all night.  One of the houses flooded when a stream overflowed, and half a dozen rotted roofs fell in.  There were injuries.  We stuffed everyone into the remaining houses.  We senior officers were packed with crates of supplies into a former temple.  It wasn't comfortable, but it was better than most had.  I didn't hear complaints.  
As I said, we expected the fleet to sail through the storm and return when it was over.  That would be one day if the Döckálfs let the storm move on or longer if they stopped it.  They stopped it and anchored it in place.  We were under one of its arms, and its body was south of us, out to sea.  Anuur told us the storm would last at least four days, longer if they put more magic into it.  We had rations for two days, four if we stretched.  
I had Anuur try to advise Acalon, but the Döckálfs blocked his magic.  That meant that most other magic we tried would fail, too.  It might have been possible to open a magical portal to the supply ships and bring food through, but the Döckálfs would send afrit through any portal we made.  We needed to gather food from the fields outside the town.  
The next morning the wizards aboard the ships briefly contacted us.  They'd passed through the storm.  Eight of our fifty-two ships had gone down.  Most of the others were moderately damaged.  Hurricane had been hit by three lightning bolts but was still afloat.  She'd make Acalon.  All six ships we'd sent to cove had wrecked, but most of their crewmen and wizards were alive.  They'd built temporary shelters and were waiting for the fleet to come and get them.  
As soon as Utu rose I ordered crewmen into the fields to gather food.  The Atlaneans had apparently survived for three or four years and had had time to lay in fields along the river.  They were overrun with weeds, but there were plenty of vegetables.  There also were snakes.  Three of the food-gatherers were bitten and died by the time the healers got to them.  I'd never heard of snakes that went out in the rain, but the damned things were everywhere.  We needed the food, so we sent marines to assist the gathering teams.  More people were bitten.  
Southern Reach snakes have mean poison.  Yellow-belly poison kills the nerves.  The healers say it's fast and painless, but the seizures look terrible.  Flathead poison rots flesh.  Skin and muscle melt away from the bite.  By the time you get to a healer the wound is gushing blood.  There isn't much they can do about that much blood loss.  
Food crews weren't the only ones who had an ugly time.  The rain went on all day, and I had to send work crews out to finish fixing roofs and digging toilets.  With the water rising we had to keep sewage away from us.  We also sent people to gather wood.  The wizards had spells to dry wet wood so we could burn it.  One of the wood-gathering crews found a banana plantation in the hills just west of the delta, so we had those nice, broad leaves for roofing.  There was a villa on the plantation that was big enough for two hundred people.  The walls and timbers were sound, but the roof was rotten.  We sent marines to clear it and crewmen to put temporary roofing up.  
As if there wasn't enough happening, people caught sick.  We were boiling river water for drinking, but some evacuees drank straight from the river.  So did a few of the sailors, the damned fools.  An eight-year-old city kid has an excuse for ignorance.  People started complaining of chills and aches.  They started coughing.  The healers scrambled to cure them.  During our eleventh Blackstone run grey fever had gone through the fleet.  We'd lost more than three thousand evacuees and dozens of crew.  We couldn't get bodies off the ships fast enough.  Sharks followed us all the way from Blackstone to Hexalon.   
But the healers were weak.  Healing magic comes from contact with Utu's light, and the storm cut that off.  Healers can store some of Utu's energy for magic, but that doesn't last long.  They couldn't stop it, and by evening thirty or forty people were sick with black river fever.  
Zaabalawi tried to contain it.  She commandeered a big house close to the jungle and cleared it out.  Everyone who felt sick was to go there.  But some became frightened and didn't go.  Or they tried to be tough and stayed where they were.  Normally black river fever doesn't spread easily, but we were on top of each other.  Everyone was wet and exhausted.  The fever spread.  
Black river fever's ugly.  After a few hours of coughing and chills a person starts shivering.  You can pile blankets on him, and his teeth still chatter.  After he's had the shivers for eight or ten hours his skin gets black patches.  Then his muscles swell.  Most victims choke to death.  For the rest, the swelling closes off blood vessels until their heart quits or bursts.  Usually that happens within three days of catching the fever.  
We couldn't tell at first how serious it was going to be.  The healers knew what it was, which helped them fight it.  We knew it wasn't easy to spread, but we also knew that nearly any sickness would spread under our conditions.  Once Zaabalawi had the sick house set up I ordered the marines to get the sick to it.  After that the fever was Zaabalawi's to worry about.  
That night I sat in a chair in the doorway of the senior officers' quarters and watched the marines and the healers take sick people to isolation.  Our quarters were above the houses, and the marines and healers had to pass us to get to the sick house.  Some of the flotilla commanders played cards behind me.  Couldn't have been money involved, or they'd have been noisier.  Rain pounded the roof and the plants in the jungle.  Streams gurgled past our quarters.  There was no wind then.  I liked the smell of the place.  It smelled like the hills where I grew up in Luricania.  I grew up on a farm—who doesn't, in Luricania?—but the jungle didn't frighten me.  Luricania was jungle two hundred years ago.  The jungle and our great-grandfamilies beat on each other for a hundred years, and now most of Luricania is farms.  
Healers and marines walked by all night.  Twenty-five people an hour were taken to the sick house.  Zaabalawi had to commandeer another house.  Around mid-night the first person died.  She was a girl of six or seven who'd been injured during the storm.  She was a pretty little thing with her hair in long tails on either side.  Zaabalawi brought her down the hill past our house, and I asked her what she was doing.  
"She's dead, Admiral.  I'm taking her to the river.  We've got to get the bodies out of here."  
"Understood," I said.  "Tell Troop Captain Basolon we'll need a marine detachment digging pits for the dead.  Well out in the jungle."  
"Done, Admiral," she said.  
"What was her name?" I asked.  I don't know why.  We'd lost eight hundred evacuees during the storm, and this was just one more.  But this one was in front of me.  
"Sathrah," Zaabalawi said.  Then she went down the hill.  I suppose she was thinking about her own daughter.  She and a lot of others had been killed when the Döckálfs destroyed our Healer's Academy.  Zaabalawi had been with the fleet at the time, and the girl was in care at the Academy.  They burned it down and killed them all—healers, apprentices, patients.  
That put me to thinking about our losses.  Most of Luricania's leaders and regular soldiers were dead.  The Ceretesians were giving us a hard fight in northern Atlan, and we were losing thousands of men there every month.  We were getting ready to send another army to Thalarar to fight the NaHrouz before they could come north, and we'd lose a lot of those men, too.  We were taking one Hells of a beating.  The Döckálfs had sunk most of our ships and destroyed Hexalon with tidal waves.  They'd burned scores of towns.  Same thing they were doing all over Crassia.  We were fighting, but we're a farming people.  Most of our military had been built up during the first two years of the War.  We in the merchant marine had experience with the sea, but we'd never fought fleet-to-fleet.  During the Battle of Red Tide we lost forty ships in one morning.  There'd been too many engagements like that.  We were sea captains in a wizard's war, and our own wizards were a feeble match for the Döckálf magi.  If they turned up at an engagement we lost, and hundreds of men died.  The only reason we were able to wage a war at all was because there were so many of us humans to every Döckálf.  
That was how low I sank that night, worrying about things I couldn't change.  The black river fever put fear in me.  I was thinking of the grey fever.  It had eaten through every ship in the fleet, striking the oldest first and then the middle aged and then adults.  It never ate into the children, but it was a terror to everyone else.  We dumped hundreds of bodies overboard every day of the voyage.  The evacuees threw anyone they thought was sick to the sharks.  We had crewmen and sailors deserting in the launches.  We barely held the fleet together.  I wanted Zaabalawi to contain the black river fever so badly I almost prayed for it.  But I knew that wouldn't help.  
Graves detail started that night.  The marines dug pits about a metapace into the jungle.  They started with two big pits, but by morning so many were dying that they were digging two pits every hour.  Fifty to sixty bodies per pit.  There's not much to a mass burial—blank faces and staring eyes and the smell of rot setting in almost as fast as they die.  The jungle is greedy that way.  We didn't have quicklime to seal in the fever, so no one goes near the place now.  An apprentice scribe carved a tree—this giant of a rijbijik that grew next to the first two pits—with the names of the dead.  She did it in High Akkadian calligraphy.  Beautiful work.  Stood there all night and carved to lamplight.  The next day another 'prentice scribe came and took over for her, and after that they worked in shifts.  
Everything was worse our third day on shore.  Anuur still couldn't communicate with Acalon.  There was too much magic in the storm.  Rain kept falling.  More roofs collapsed.  The river rose and flooded the lowest houses.  Everyone and everything was soaked.  We lost more people to snakebite.  A sailor picked up a colorful frog and died.  Damned thing had poison on its skin.  Half the animals in the Southern Reach use poison.  So do the plants.  When we put out the word not to touch the frogs we found out several children already had and had died.  With all that was going on we hadn't heard about them.  
But those were annoyances and stings.  The blow came at mid-morning.  The master wizard aboard Hurricane managed to communicate that Döckálf magi were attacking the fleet.  Half the ships were already sunk.  She said she'd communicate again if they won through.  But she never did.  We had to assume that most of the sailors and wizards were dead.  Six of my senior officers were gone.  Luricania had lost her largest remaining fleet.  

Our entire mission changed then, but no one—myself included—grasped how much it changed.  Not at first.  When the master wizard contacted Anuur there were only three other senior officers in the command quarters.  We decided not to tell everyone that the fleet was destroyed.  Senior officers needed to know, but the rest of the fleet's people and the evacuees didn't.  Not yet.  The weak ones would give up, and we couldn't have that.  There was too much to do.  
The wizards knew, of course.  They weren't supposed to listen to each other's communications, but you don't become a wizard if you lack initiative.  Anuur said he'd see to it they held the secret as long as necessary, and he did.  It couldn't have been too hard for him to stay on top of the six surviving wizards.  
When the senior officers came back from their rounds I held a strategy session and told them the news.  Most of them were shocked.  They couldn't believe their fleet had been destroyed.  Other fleets, certainly.  Not theirs.  Others of us had had fleets sunk before.  That one was the third fleet I'd served with—the second I'd had command of—that the Döckálfs had sunk.  For Anuur it was the fifth.  Those of us who'd been through it before held steady for the rest.  
Rishman was the first one to speak.  He said we had to start building a colony.  In ten heartbeats he made the jump that took the rest of us the whole day.  Ath-en-Tadau—one of the flotilla commanders—tore into him for a fool, and they started arguing, and Zaabalawi had to remind them that we had thousands of evacuees whose lives depended on our decisions.  She had to do that a dozen times.  
One of the ship's commanders suggested we make a magical portal to Acalon, but Anuur said we couldn't do it.  There weren't enough wizards left in all of Luricania to transport twenty-five thousand people across the Ohnad Sea.  They couldn't summon enough djinn to come get us, either.  We could forget rescue by the wizards.  
We also couldn't count on naval help.  Most of Luricania's surviving ships were being refitted in Tocencia to carry our army to Thalarar.  There were the 2nd and 3rd Fleets, but those were warships.  They couldn't take thousands of evacuees.  The Pamandarians had spread their ships all over the seas to escape attention.  It would take their government months to assemble enough ships to evacuate us.  And the Varinians had declared neutrality.  Even if Anuur could contact their government, they wouldn't risk angering the Döckálfs by taking us to Acalon.  
Flotilla Commander Fadaj asked why we couldn't go to northern Atlan and meet our army in the Eastern Reach.  They had support from the 18th Fleet.  I couldn't believe he asked that.  He was proposing marching twenty-five thousand people, most of them children, through the jungle for a week, over the Bakra Mountains and across the northern wastes in hopes of finding our army.  Without food.  In the rain.  The man was a brilliant sea commander but an idiot on land.  The others laughed him down.  
Troop Commander Basolon said, "Making plans is irrelevant if this fever kills us."  
"Fleet's Healer?" I said.  
Zaabalawi said, "It's going to be rough, Admiral.  Everyone who catches it will die, but most won't catch it.  Fifteen hundred have died so far—"  
Rishman said, "How many?" 
"Fifteen hundred.  In three days.  Now the fever's widespread.  Today two thousand will die.  It's taking the weak and injured first.  Tomorrow it will move into the healthy.  The day after that, the strong.  This isn't grey fever, either.  It'll take as many children as it can get.  We're going to lose six or seven thousand people.  If Utu is kind."  
"But most of us should survive," Basolon said.  
"Yes.  Most of us will."  
Someone—I don't remember who—asked if we could keep up with the bodies.  
Zaabalawi said, "Yes.  We can throw them in the river if we have to.  The flood waters will push them well out to sea.  But I think the marines can handle it."  
"We can," Basolon said.  "Just tell me what you need."  
It wasn't easy to accept what was happening.  I didn't want to think about how many people we were going to lose to the fever, and I saw from their faces that a lot of the others didn't like it, either.  Flotilla Commander Fadaj—the one who wanted to walk across Atlan—kept insisting our government would do something to help us.  The discussion would move a little, and then he'd say something like, "Why worry about housing?  Two, three weeks from now the ships will come for us."  Poor bastard wouldn't accept that we were stranded.  Rishman would say, "Ships from where?  Luricania?  We were the ships.  The Technocracy?  They don't have a navy."  Then Fadaj would say, "Pamandari has ships.  Varin has ships."  And Anuur would say, "We discussed this before.  We're here for the long term."  
No one mentioned the Döckálfs.  If they came there wasn't a thing we could do.  Anuur had some impressive spells, but he and the others together wouldn't have slowed a Döckálf assault.  We could run into the jungle and die, or we could stand and fight and die.  It didn't bear thinking about.  We needed to think about how to live.  
I'm not sure when I made the gut-leap from fleet to colony.  I was thinking how unlikely it was that we'd be pulled out of there, and then I thought of my great-grandfather Sahman.  He was my mother's father, the one who'd brought our family from western Luricania to the north to fell jungle and clear a farm.  That's when I knew Rishman was right.  We weren't refugees, we were colonists.  This place was going to be our home.  We had to pound the Southern Reach like our great-grandfamilies had pounded the Luricanian jungle.  Or it would kill us, like the Atlaneans who'd tried to colonize it.  
"We have to take this place," I said.  
"Admiral?" Captain Doujasha said.  
"We have to move into this place like we want it.  Not hunker down and hope to survive.  We need people out in the fields gathering food.  Snakes or no snakes.  We have to get in the jungle and find fruit, berries, roots.  Frogs or no frogs.  There must be herbalists and farmers among the evacuees.  We have to find them and put them to work."  
"Sir, that's what we're discussing—" Doujasha said.  
"No, Captain, it's not.  What we're discussing is how we can hold on until help arrives.  It probably won't.  Ever.  We have to get out there and see what we've got.  Now.  We have to plan for tomorrow and next month and next year.  We have to think as though we're going to be here for the rest of our lives."  
Utu bless them, they took me up.  Rishman first, and then Basolon.  The fighting men.  Then some of the ship's commanders.  I don't think they believed in a colony.  Rishman did, but not the rest.  They understood that we had to get moving.  That we needed a mission.  Hunkering down doesn't push weak, frightened people into the jungle with the snakes to look for food.  But taking the place for ourselves was an idea they could catch hold of.  Even if they didn't fully believe in it.  
We set up teams of senior officers to oversee sanitation, gather food, inventory supplies and materials, build cots to get people off the wet ground, repair and build new housing and care for the sick and injured.  We set up a group to work out our needs over the next year.  Anuur was to contact the Acalon wizards and to find out how badly damaged our six ships were that we'd sent to the cove.  Maybe we could repair some of them.  We could turn to piracy ourselves, preying on the NaHrouz.  Rishman liked that.  
For the inevitable questions we'd say the fleet had been blown south and was heavily damaged and wouldn't return for at least three weeks.  That way the necessity of everything we were doing would be obvious.  When the time came we'd let it be known that the Döckálfs had sunk the fleet and that we'd have to carry on.  Zaabalawi wasn't comfortable misleading the evacuees, but I didn't see anything better.  If we told them we were stranded, they'd panic or give up.  We needed their strength working for us and not against us.  She wasn't happy about keeping the secret, but she understood the alternatives.  
The rain fell in sheets our third night on shore and the fourth day.  There would be a lull, and then water would pound down.  There was a sound like a clap of thunder with every sheet.  More roofs fell in.  Streams overflowed and dragged down houses.  Dozens of people were injured.  One house collapsed into an underground stream that broke through to the surface.  Fifty people died in that.  I wanted Anuur to tell me when the storm would end, but he couldn't.  It depended on how much magic the Döckálfs were willing to put into it.  
Zaabalawi's fever predictions were conservative.  By the fourth day so many people were sick that the marines couldn't get them all to the sick houses.  We had fifty marines burying the dead, and still people dumped bodies in the river.  Marines and healers carried people up the hill all day.  Others went on their own, sometimes two or three abreast.  It looked like the whole colony was dying.  We posted tabulators to keep count of the sick and the dead; by their tally we had three hundred people an hour going to the sick houses and about the same going into the pits.  By the end of the fourth day we'd lost a total of almost six thousand people to the fever.  
None of the senior officers died of it.  I had Zaabalawi hold back with her healing, and when any of us caught it she took it out of us.  We were lucky it was black river fever and not something like sephalan.  That lingers, and you can catch it more than once.  Black river fever goes through once, and you catch it or not.  No second or third attacks.  Once that day I was going to go to the sick houses to see what was happening there, but Zaabalawi was against it.  
"No point, Admiral," she said.  "You can't do anything, and they don't need a morale boost.  They know they're going to die.  If you go you'll get sick, and I'll have to take it out of you.  Then I won't have strength to heal whoever catches sick after you."  So I stayed in the command house and played cards with Doujasha until I realized he was cheating.  He cleaned out half the senior officers during the storm.  Richest man in the colony, we called him.  
On the fifth day the rain fell even harder.  We had to suspend the work crews and food gathering.  But the fever slowed.  It took about a thousand that day.  Zaabalawi said the worst of it was over but that we'd be losing people for at least another week.  
On the sixth morning the storm ended.  No one expected that.  Anuur hadn't said anything about it ending.  He and I were talking about salvaging supplies from the cove and didn't notice it was over until someone started cheering.  People staggered out of the houses and shouted and prayed their thanks.  There were noticeably fewer.  We sent food details into the fields and the jungle straight away.  The details to carry the sick to the sick houses and to bury the dead went on.  
Late that afternoon Anuur created a magical portal to the cove.  That was risky, and we talked it out for hours before I allowed it.  He couldn't find any signs of the Döckálfs and thought they'd moved on and trusted their storm and the fever to finish us.  So we circulated word that the Fleet's Wizard was going to open a portal and that anyone who wanted could watch.  
He made it on top of a grassy hill to the west of the colony, where everyone could see.  The marines cleaned their armor and stood in ranks around the portal in case any afrit came through.  The other wizards stood at the base of the hill to support Anuur and to guard.  Anuur looked his best in his gold-threaded candis and rainbow sash.  He did all the flourishes, chanting and raising his arms and all that.  
"Serious Wizard Makes Great Magic," Rishman said to me, and we both laughed.  But Anuur was full of drama, and everyone loved it.  People climbed onto roofs and stood on each other's shoulders to see.  I probably gaped myself.  In battle spells are thrown fast and hard.  There aren't any flourishes.  It'd been a long time since I'd seen a wizard enjoying his magic.  When the portal appeared it looked like a black mouth opening, with sharp fangs of gold light.  Anuur or one of the others even made growls come out of it.  Some of the kids shrieked and ran into the crowd.  One little boy threw a stone at it.  Basolon shouted for the marines to snap ready, and all one hundred of them cracked to attention and raised their shields and scimitars.  Ten of them ran in front of Anuur as he moved back.  The crowd fell so quiet I could hear the marines' mail shirts clinking.  Then the wizards at the cove opened the portal on their side, and the two hundred survivors from the wrecked ships started coming through.  Someone cheered, and then hundreds of people cheered.  I felt it, too.  The Döckálfs had knocked us hard, but they hadn't beaten us.  
The next day Utu burned off the clouds.  For the first time since we'd come ashore we could look across the delta to the sea.  Everyone was lively that morning.  There were even a few smiles.  First thing I did was order the healers to rest.  They'd had the worst of things.  Basolon organized ready squads and put marines on the coast to watch for enemy ships.  It would be like the Döckálfs to send NaHrouz to finish us off.  We put a hundred kids on the river with makeshift fishing gear, and they pulled in fish.  Catfish, mostly.  Delicious, even without sauce.  We spread our story about the fleet being blown off course, so no one expected it for a few weeks.  Everyone could see how much needed to be done to make life bearable, and we fell to it.  We were stiff and slow, but we moved.  We finished clearing foliage from the buildings and piled a mountain of firewood.  We dug new toilets and repaired houses.  All the activity helped morale.  
The black river fever burned for days after the rain stopped.  It took eleven thousand of us before it was over.  With the people we'd lost at sea that was twelve thousand dead since we'd left Blackstone.  Over a third of the evacuees died, four-fifths of the healers, three-fourths of the wizards and a third of the sailors and crewmen.  We'd lost forty marines of the three hundred, one in eight.  Tough bastards.  We had two hundred pits filled with bodies.  We burned both sick houses and built a new one.  Once Utu came out the healers were able to fight back new sicknesses and the other problems—snakebite, frog poison, botflies, screwworms.  
Over the next few weeks the colony began to take shape.  We built new houses and cleared the wild growth out of the fields.  We dug drainage for the buildings.  We organized the evacuees into communals based on family ties and any skills they had.  Between the marines hunting meat and the gatherers in the fields and jungle we kept from starving.  Crewmen chopped the jungle away from the banana plantation, and as soon as the villa's roof was repaired we moved headquarters there.  We sent a salvage team to the cove; they got Avenger afloat and returned with tools and the last of the supplies.  Everyone cheered when Avenger came into view outside the delta.  She was flying old, yellowed emergency sails, and she listed to starboard a bit, but she was seaworthy.  
Three weeks after the storm ended people started asking when the fleet was returning.  We were able to hold off for a few days, but then they had to be told.  We called an all-hands assembly right outside this villa.  Seventeen thousand people were there, more than I'd ever talked to at once.  We looked like castaways, tattered clothes and ragged hair and weary faces.  We'd had a rough time, and it showed.  I looked them over for a few moments, and they looked me over.  They wanted to know what was happening, and they wanted the truth.  All that was on their faces.  Zaabalawi had written me a speech, and Anuur cast a spell to carry my voice.  
"Good morning," I said.  "It's good to see so many of you looking so well.  Over the last few weeks we've taken blows that would have finished a lot of people, but we've kept going.  That's iron, people, and you should be proud of yourselves.  I know I'm proud of you.  
"We expected the fleet to return today, but I have bad news about that.  There's no easy way to say this, so I'll just say it:  there is no fleet.  The Döckálfs attacked the ships, and they're gone.  There's no fleet and no way the wizards can take us home.  There's no one who can come and get us.  We're going to be here a while, probably a long while.  
"A lot of you were wondering what would become of you in Luricania.  Most of you don't have family there, and you were worried about the future.  You made friends among your shipmates, and you didn't want to lose them.  Now you don't have to.  You want to know what the future holds?  Look around you.  It's whatever we make it, and I think that can be a great deal.  We have battle-hardened marines, experienced healers and professional wizards.  We have all of you with all your individual skills and talents.  We can build a place for ourselves, from the ground up.  We can build it strong."  
There was more, but those were the best parts.  I can't say they took it well, but they were too worn down to rebel.  The Döckálfs had kicked them around for four years, and now the magi had given them one last kick.  And you know what they did?  They snapped to it.  Not always gracefully and not always cheerfully, but they rose to meet every challenge they were served, and there were a lot of them.  You want to know who the heroes are?  Pick anyone you see.  

The evacuation happened six years ago plus a bit.  Of our original thirty thousand evacuees and crew, fourteen thousand are still alive.  We have a thousand more born since we got here.  We expected boatloads of War refugees, but they never came.  Everyone went to Decadurinis and Pamandari.  Even the Technocrats haven't visited, which has surprised us.  We thought as soon as the War was over they'd start mapping every square pace of their new territory.  But they're busy rebuilding Blackstone and their own country.  We haven't seen so much as one of their crystal ships yet.  I'm sure that once you publish this they'll come for a visit, but by then we'll be ready for them.  Should be interesting.  
We named this place New Blackstone.  No one knew the Technocrats would rebuild old Blackstone.  If toss comes to throw they can rename their city, since we named ours first.  In the early days of the colony I thought I'd go on being the Admiral, but it didn't work that way.  I wanted this place to be like a Luricanian farm colony, wide-spread hamlets governed by a strong central authority, and the evacuees wanted it run like an Atlanean city, people piled on each other and run by consensus.  There were ten Atlaneans to every Luricanian, so they live in one town and have a Great Council.  They've selected Speakers and Maharajahs, just like home.  Most of the men of the Luricanian 4th married Atlaneans and live in the colony town.  The old salts, Rishman and Zaabalawi and Basolon and I among those, live on the outskirts.  Anuur left a few years ago to help build a new Wizard's Academy.  
The farmers among the evacuees taught anyone who didn't have a useful skill how to farm.  We expanded the original colony fields and brought in fruit trees from the jungle.  Pamandarian traders found us a few months after we arrived here, and they supply us with seeds and tools and even luxuries now and again.  Rishman and the marines take Avenger pirating and capture enough pirate ships to pay for everything we need.  Pirates are getting more dangerous, though.  They're swarming Balon and setting up towns.  No one has the naval force to stop them.  My work for the next year will be to negotiate defense pacts with Luricania or Sergi and get more traders in here.  We're past the survival years.  It's time to grow.  
I'll tell you two things I remember about our first days here.  The fifth night of the storm, when the rain was falling so hard you had to hold your head down to breathe, I opened the door to watch the rain.  A marine was walking past with a wizard light over his head.  He had fever-patches on his hands and face, and he was covered with mud.  He was carrying a big girl of ten or twelve who was coughing and shivering.  When I opened the door he stepped away.  
Then he cleared his throat and said, "Sir, I'll have this armor cleaned up and turned in by morning.  I expect you'll have need for it."  What the Hells could I say?  
"Carry on, marine," I said, and he did.  By Utu, he did.  
The other memory is of all those young people looking up at me during our first all-hands meeting.  You'll see a lot of them in the town, older and stronger than they were then.  They've done good work, and they'll be fine.  Sit back and watch them a while.  It's their story now.  

— end —

	

Foreword — "A Feast For The Ghouls"

Seven centuries ago the people of Thalarar rose against the Döckálfs, and since that brief, lost war they have suffered the worst abuses of Döckálf rule.  The strongest men were taken as slaves to fill Döckálf galleys and work the kruné mines, and the rest barely subsisted.  Garrisons of NaHrouz soldiers from the Desert of Screams were stationed across Thalarar to guard the mines, and these soldiers amused themselves by murdering, raping and torturing the Thalararian people.  The land was used as a dumping ground for the toxic wastes of centuries of mining and magical experimentation, and what was once a garden nation was reduced to desert.  Today Thalarar's soil is so poisoned that only the hardiest crops—potatoes and a few others—will grow, and the coastal seas are subject to periodic “red tide” effects of algae which cause mass deaths of the aquatic life.  
During the War NaHrouz soldiers decimated what little civilization existed, destroying the lake shore communities which had provided the nation’s agriculture and burning scores of villages.  Near the end of the War, as the Döckálfs realized they would lose, they poisoned hundreds of wells and murdered the mine slaves.  They salted fields and destroyed so much livestock that today there are not enough healthy animals to breed for food.  The surviving Thalararians live in extreme poverty, scrabbling for what little food exists and dying of starvation by the tens of thousands.  Though Sergi's military has pushed the NaHrouz out of Thalarar, NaHrouz soldiers from the Desert of Screams frequently raid into the country and continue to murder humans there.  
Sergi has annexed Thalarar as a protectorate and has established relief camps which do not supply nearly enough food to the people.  They have provided soldiers to protect these camps, but from what I saw these seem to be the soldiers who were most disturbed in mind and spirit by the War.  Stories of these soldiers joining NaHrouz bands to kill local people are common.  For the greater part the Technocracy confines its interests to the kruné mines, and the Thalararian people, though freed from slavery, languish outside the well-stocked mine fortresses.  
For three months I searched Thalarar for survivors of the Battle of Mareotis Lake, the largest battle in the southern theater.  Rumor had it that there were no survivors of the clash between the Luricanian Ninth Division and the NaHrouz Superior Second Regiment.  However, more than a hundred thousand men and NaHrouz had fought in that battle.  Somewhere, I was convinced, there were survivors.  
Everywhere I went I heard the same:  the battle had occurred to the north, and all involved had been killed.  Following these rumors, I traveled in a merchant ship north along Thalarar's coast and spoke to people in the coastal communities.  In the village of Malawi I met a survivor—the only survivor, according to him—of the Battle of Mareotis Lake.  His name was Hamad Abu Seri-Chall, or “Hamad, Slave of Priestess Chall,” the Döckálf priestess who controlled the area of Thalarar where Hamad lives.  All Thalararian names end with a similar label of servitude.  Hamad was a twenty-two-year-old fisherman who had served when he was seventeen as the pack bearer of Commander Bir-jen-shiba of the Luricanian Ninth Division.  In this capacity he witnessed at close hand the key events of the Battle and the decisions behind them.  
Hamad is a typical Thalararian.  He is tall and emaciated, his body hard from much work and few pleasures.  His skin is dark, his hair short, black and tightly curled.  In our conversations I was struck by what seemed to be a complete lack of expression to his features.  Though his voice demonstrated a range of emotion, his face seemed always to remain a mask.  As we spent more time together I realized that he did indeed show emotion but that his expressions were extremely subtle.  This masking ability is common to Thalararians in outlying areas of the nation, where the conditions of slavery were cruelest and the NaHrouz presence strong.  



A Feast For The Ghouls

The djinni the Mage summoned was not beautiful as in the stories my Ma told me when I was a boy.  She had a fat belly, and her skin was mottled like the underside of a caja fish.  From the navel down she was thick brown smoke which swirled within the summoning circle the Mage had made for her.  Her face was the plain face of a woman who has had several babies and who has seen the seasons come and go twenty-five or more times.  Her coarse, black hair reached down to the small of her back.  It was loose and shone in the light of the braziers that lighted the Mage's tent.  She smelled of sage and a little of honey.  
She came into the summoning circle all at once, as real as the wooden poles that held up the tent.  There was no wondrous clothing of gold or silver on her body.  The first thing I saw were her breasts heavy with milk, and I knew the Mage had summoned her from her babies.  
"Commander,” the Mage said, “her name is Mirshira.  You may ask her your questions whenever you are ready."  Her voice was firm and strong.  The Mage was a human woman of perhaps thirty years, with smooth skin that said her years had not been hard.  She was short and stout like all the Northern people I had seen, and her brown skin shone as though she oiled it.  Her eyes were large and brown.  Her mouth was wide, and though she did not often smile, in my eyes she was much prettier than the djinni.  She wore a uniform like all the soldiers, pantaloons with a sash, boots of shiny, brown snake hide that went halfway to her knees and a shirt that was all angles and lines.  The cloth was yellow-brown streaked with dark brown and spotted with black.  Desert colors.  She sat cross-legged in a summoning circle of her own that she had drawn with blue dust on the sand floor of her tent.  Her hands rested on her knees.  The summoning took her a short time, and I think it did not tire her.  
"Commander?" she said.  
My Lord and Master shifted in his chair.  He was not as big as most Northern men, though he was half a head taller than I and a little heavier.  He was always moving and running and giving orders and looking at maps and eating and going from tent to tent to check supplies and to see what the section commanders and the soldiers were doing.  But I think he moved then not because he was restless or hungry but because of Mirshira’s bare breasts.  Northern women, I heard soldiers say, are always covered like the Mage.  
"Mirshira," My Lord and Master said.  "Forgive us for taking you from your—"  
"What is it you desire, oh man?" she said.  She spoke the same Northern language as My Lord and Master, which is not much different from our language in Thalarar.  After five days with My Lord and Master and his army I had grown used to the new sounds and words and could understand much of what was said.  
My Lord and Master cleared his throat and sat up straight.  He too wore a desert-colored uniform, but his boots were made of black hide.  He had very short, black hair in curls on his head, and his skin was very dark.  His was an ugly face, narrow and small.  His fingers were long like those of Kaoul, our lobsterer in Malawi.  
"Mirshira, I need to know the land to the south," My Lord and Master said.  
Mirshira drifted within her circle, held there by the Mage.  The smoke under her flowed this way and that.  The movement would have put me to sleep if not for their voices.  
"Commander Bir-jen-shiba, the desert lies before your army," Mirshira said in her fisherwoman's voice.  "It stretches on for three day's march before you reach a lake—"  
"What lake?" My Lord and Master said.  He reached toward me and said, "Map, Hamad."  
I gave him the map of my nation that someone had so carefully drawn on rolled-up goat skin.  What a rich land is the north, that there is time to draw maps!  My Lord and Master unrolled the skin.  Thalarar's coasts were drawn, and there were dots for villages on the coasts and blue lines where rivers met the sea.  He had explained all these symbols to me.  I have never seen those villages or rivers, but he said they are there, and I believe him.  
My Lord and Master spread the skin across his knees so Mirshira could see.  She smiled then, and for the first time I saw what would tell a man she was a djinni if she was to walk on legs:  her teeth were all there, white and straight.  She beckoned for My Lord and Master to move the map closer.  He held it outside her circle, and she frowned at it and then pointed.  My Lord and Master turned the map around, and the corners of his eyes crinkled with pleasure.  On the floor I sat up straighter and saw a blue oval which had appeared within the outline of Thalarar.  
"Oh, Commander," Mirshira said, and her eyes narrowed.  "You brought your soldiers to battle the NaHrouz, and they know this.  They have come from their tunnels by the lake and made ready to destroy your army.  They have formed a regiment and are marching even now."  
My Lord and Master cursed and jumped up from his stool and paced around the Mage's tent.  He walked around the braziers filled with flaming oil and the tent poles and the trunks full of the Mage's things.  "We're not ready," he said.  "We haven't had enough time to prepare."  The Mage and Mirshira and I waited as he cursed again and then went back to sit on his stool.  
"How many NaHrouz in a regiment?" he said.  
"One hundred thousand," Mirshira said.  The corners of her mouth rose.  She did not love My Lord and Master for having her summoned from her babies.  
"One hundred...I have half that many men.  Half!"  
"And five hundred fifty cavalry, forty scorpions, four healers, and me," the Mage said.  
My Lord and Master only looked annoyed and said, "How do they move, Mirshira?  Are they supported by Döckálf magi?  How are they supplied?"  
He asked such questions all that night.  Mirshira drew pictures in the sand of her circle and talked of NaHrouz movements, three Döckálf magi and the black metal kruné.  My Lord and Master asked questions, cursed, asked more questions and sent me for roast kid and figs.  The Mage sat with her hands on her knees, listening and sometimes suggesting to My Lord and Master questions he could ask.  When I was not running for food I watched everything, for I knew that I would never again see a djinni or a Mage or a man like My Lord and Master.  
At last he scratched his chin and said, "Mirshira, one last question, and then you are released."  
"Commander?" said she.  
"As Utu is the beginning and the end, as Utu is the creator and the destroyer, by Utu I bind you to tell me this:  have you said the truth here this night?"  
Mirshira moved not at all.  Even her smoke ceased to move.  "Commander, no mistruths have passed my lips this night," she said and was gone all at once, leaving not a wisp.  The Mage stood and stretched her arms over her head and rose on her toes.  My Lord and Master watched her as a man who has returned from the desert looks at a well.  
"Kaija," he said to her, and she lowered her arms and sank back on her heels.  "One hundred thousand..."  
"They have no bows, no scorpions, no horses.  We'll kill half of them before they reach us."  
"And their armor?  The black metal?"  
"Kruné," I said.   
My Lord and Master startled, and I knew he had forgotten that I was there.  "What?"  
"Kruné is the black metal," I said.  "Once when the NaHrouz came to Malawi I heard them call the metal this name."  
"Knowing its name doesn't help us, Hamad," the Mage said.  She stepped out of her summoning circle and rubbed it out with the toe of her boot.  
I looked down at the sand.  It was not wise to look at the Mage.  During the second night that My Lord and Master's army had camped near Malawi, after My Lord and Master hired me to carry his things, I saw a soldier slap the Mage's bottom.  She was leaning over near a hut in the village, looking at something on the ground I could not see, and I think the soldier thought she was one of my people.  She straightened and turned to face him, and his grin turned fearful.  Then he made the sound a goat makes when men come into its pen with knives.  
He turned and ran four or five steps and burst into flame.  Flame sprouted out of his skin and his nose and ears and through his clothing.  He opened his mouth, and flames came out as though he was an afriti.  He fell burning and twitched, and oily, black smoke rose from him.  The fire burnt him to ashes which blew away with the night breeze.  The Mage saw me then, and I thought she might burn me, too.  But instead she walked in the direction of the army's tents.  Because of this thing I had seen I did not look at the Mage or talk to her except when she talked to me.  
The Mage said, "The Döckálfs are my worry.  They'll kill me early in the battle unless we give them something else to do."  
"You could summon—" My Lord and Master started to say.  
"I will, Commander.  I'll summon everything I can between now and then.  And the Döckálfs will summon their afrit."  
"Three magi," My Lord and Master said.  "Three!  I thought all the Döckálfs had been called north to Blackstone.  It's too much.  We haven't had enough time for scouting or to properly lay plans.  We aren't prepared for a major battle."  
"We have the bottle," the Mage said.  
For a moment My Lord and Master was still, and then he said, "Not unless we're going to lose.  Maybe we won't need that thing."  
"One hopes," the Mage said.  
My Lord and Master called for a runner.  A tall man with bushy hair came to the flap of the tent and poked his head in.  "Commander."  
"Tell my section commanders I want them immediately."  
The man touched his right hand to his forehead and then went back outside the flap.  When first I had seen this I asked a soldier why they did this thing with their hands.  He told me that it meant their lives belonged to the Commander.  There is no such custom in Malawi.  
"Hamad," My Lord and Master said, and he went to the flap and threw it open.  Utu's first light came in, clean and new.  I stood and picked up the map and a plate with scraps of roast kid on it and followed him.  "Mage, I expect to hear a solution to the Döckálf problem soon."
She touched her right hand to her forehead, and we left her.  
We went to My Lord and Master's tent and passed the two huge soldiers who were guards at the flap.  As My Lord and Master passed they touched their hands to their foreheads.  My Lord and Master had me set the map on the long table that filled half his tent while he opened a metal box filled with honey cakes and took one out.  Then he sat in his chair at the end of the table and ate it and looked at me in the puzzled way he sometimes did.
"Hamad," he said, "tell me something."  He spoke with his mouth full, and I could hardly understand his words.
"Yes, My Lord and Master."
"I've told you not to call me that," he said.  "I'm not your master.  You're not a slave anymore."  Crumbs flew from his mouth.   
I looked at the sand.  There was fear behind his words and his anger.  He was afraid for the Mage and the soldiers and himself.  Maybe he was even afraid for me and the people of Malawi.
"Hamad, I know you people have suffered.  But why do you stand for it?  There are a quarter million of you in Thalarar, for the love of Utu.  How could you let this go on so long?"
That was the lobster game.  When men in Malawi hunt lobsters they shove a stick into the lobster's holes.  Each time the man hits the lobster it grabs at the stick.  If he hits it enough times it becomes angry and holds on, and the fisherman hauls it out and beats it to death.  The NaHrouz play this game, too.  They say hurtful things to people, and beat them, and if anyone fights back they kill that person.  
"We live in Thalarar," I said.  
"Yes, I know that, Hamad.  I just said that.  Do you think you could elaborate a little bit?"   
"Commander..."  He had asked this question before with other words and never understood my answers, and I knew that he did not really want answers.  He was afraid and wanted to hurt the NaHrouz, but they were not there, and I was.  
"We've paid you in good silver.  Has any woman in your village been touched?  Have we taken your food or killed your animals or burned your huts?  I'm not asking for gratitude, Hamad, only a response.  Something!"  His words hit me again and again, but I did not grab the stick.  Men in Malawi are smarter than lobsters.  
"Commander," I said, because I had to say something, "when the Döckálfs are angry they come to the villages and kill.  Sometimes they kill everyone, and when a woman walks from Malawi to her village to visit there is no one there but crows.  When—"
"That's why we're here!" he said.  "Don't you understand that that's what this war is about?  We're here to set you people free.  By Utu, you could at least pretend to be pleased."  His voice burst out like fire from the soldier's mouth.  
I said nothing.  What could be said?  
He sat back in his chair.  "You people," he said.  "If you don't fight you'll never be free."
Not long after that Section Commander Sa'adin entered the tent and touched his right hand to his forehead.  
My Lord and Master said, "Hamad, I won't need you until Utu is high."  
"Commander," I said and left.  Section Commander Sa'adin watched me with his lips curled down.  He was the biggest man in the Northern army and seemed always angry.  He was in charge of the cavalry soldiers and rode a beautiful grey horse that no one else could approach.  His armor of silver scales made him look like a fish.  A huge scimitar hung at his side.  
As I went out he said, "Commander, forgive me if I overstep myself, but why do you insist on hiring these natives to do work our own soldiers—"  
"Our own soldiers are needed for the fighting.  Which is precisely why I've hired the locals.  This is their war, too, Section Commander.  They stay."  
Then I was outside the tent and heard no more.  The two soldiers at the flaps looked at me as Section Commander Sa'adin did, as a man looks at a dog.  I walked through the rows of tents toward Malawi.  The tents were all the same size and made of canvas dyed yellow-brown with black specks.  I did not know why the Northerners dyed their tents to look like sand, since anyone could see they were tents.  Most of the tents belonged to soldiers, ten or twelve in each one.  Some tents were for section commanders.  Others were for food and water.  Those were guarded.  My Lord and Master said that some soldiers tried to steal food.  Did they not have enough to eat, or were they simply men who would take something because it was there, like NaHrouz?  
Everywhere the Northern men made ready for fighting.  Some sharpened weapons with small, black stones which rasped when they were rubbed against steel.  Some put feathers on arrows.  Smiths made arrowheads and scimitars and repaired armor.  A few men went around with feathers and bits of paper and turned men's words into marks on the paper.  The captain of the ship which comes to Malawi once every month can do this thing with words and marks, too.  It is ship-people magic.  Men brushed the horses and put shoes on them and talked to them more gently than they talked to each other.  
As I walked back to Malawi two soldiers started to move toward me, but their commanders would not let them.  I did not know if the soldiers wished to talk with me or beat me.  One man argued with his commander and pointed at me.  Utu shone yellow behind him and turned his body into a shadow with an open mouth.  I thought of the NaHrouz who were marching with their Döckálf magi and wondered if all the soldiers would soon be dead.
Then I was through the camp and looked down on Malawi.  The walls of our huts are rock, and the roofs are dried mud held up by timbers taken from the beach after storms.  One of the soldiers told me that their nation is not far from Thalarar, and from there come the trees we use for timbers, but I cannot see any land when I look north from the beach.  I wondered if My Lord and Master's army had taken every scrap of cloth from their homeland for tents and all of their food to feed them and all of their men to fight the NaHrouz.  Fifty thousand men, My Lord and Master said, and one hundred thousand NaHrouz.  The numbers were too big.
I walked through Malawi to where my father stood by our hut.  Many of the men were gone, hired by the Northern soldiers to carry things or to help in the camp.  Boys stood in the sea and cast their nets and pulled them dripping onto the wet beach.  The nets were empty.  The sea was turning red as it did every few years, and the fish that had not yet died were hiding far away.  No one knew why the sea turned red or when it would happen, and when it did we starved.  In a month's time the red would fade, and the fish would return.  By then there would be fewer people.
My Pa is an old man.  He has seen forty full turns of seasons, and his hair is grey and his face lined.  He is very thin and walks slowly because his back always hurts where the NaHrouz broke his spine.  He smells of squid, which are all he catches because he knows their ways and makes a special net which other men are not clever enough to make.  
"The army is going," I said to him.  
He shaded his eyes with one hand and looked at me.  His eyes were grey with years, and I wondered how clearly he could see me even in the strong morning light.  
"Good-bye, then, Hamad," he said.  
"Good-bye, Pa," I said.  
He moved slowly toward the sea, where he would cast his clever net and catch no squid because the sea was red.  I went inside our hut to visit my Ma who lay sick in her hammock.  She was almost as old as my Pa, and her black hair, too, was turning white.  There was sweat on her face, and though she was covered with a blanket she shivered.  A rat had bitten her toe, and her foot had swollen, and the old woman who has no name said that only if Utu was kind would she live.  I touched her face with my fingers, but she did not stir.  Utu is not often kind.  
"Good-bye, Ma," I said.  A fly tried to land on her face, but I killed it by clapping it between my hands.  I never would have done such a useless thing, but I had been with My Lord and Master for five days and had seen him do this many times.  I, too, do not like the sound of flies.  Then I left the hut and walked through the village.  Malawi is small, forty-two huts by the water.  A boy can walk from one end to the other in a few eyeblinks and can throw a stone across it.  But it was everything I had ever known.  Near Shuren's hut a group of old women sat with bundles of string and made a net and talked while babies sat near them.  One-armed S'lina walked with her little girl Nata down the middle of the village, and boys and old men like my Pa who could not be of service to My Lord and Master's army threw their nets into the sea.  Somewhere near, fish baked.  A child cried.  It was very young to have so much noise left in it.  
I walked through the village and climbed the small slope.  The tents of My Lord and Master's army wavered like a heat-vision.  The people of Malawi would speak of the Northern men when the army left, but not for long.  
There was a great shouting from the camp, and I saw the section commanders walk from My Lord and Master's tent.  They shouted for their soldiers to put the tents on the camels and prepare to march.  Soldiers rushed from the tents, and the camp became noisier than the loudest storms.  Men shouted.  Camels grunted.  Horses whinnied.  Section commanders ran shouting and struck soldiers with their fists and told them to move faster.  Clouds of dust choked everyone.  The camp smelled of sweat and horses and camels and leather and fish and sea air and dust.  Soldiers took the tents down and tied them to the backs of camels which did not like that.  This happened so quickly that I knew the soldiers had done it many times.  
I came to My Lord and Master's tent, and the soldiers at the flap let me in.  My Lord and Master sat in his chair at the end of the table, eating roasted meat of a sort I had never seen or smelled before.  It was hot and fresh.  Perhaps it was camel, for I had seen soldiers kill a camel the night before.  With swift blows of their scimitars they cut it up as it still lived.  My Lord and Master ate quickly, slashing off pieces of meat to stuff into his mouth.  He said nothing until he had eaten the last piece of meat.  
"Hamad, you ride with me."  He wiped his hands and stood and went to one of the many chests and threw open its lid.  "You'll carry this and this and this and this..."  I put the things in the pack he had given me when he had hired me.  
"Have you ever been in battle, Hamad?" he said.  
"No, Commander," I said.  
"The 9th has a year and a half behind it of fighting the Ceretesians in Atlan.  We've done all this before."  He said this firmly, but I think he said it for himself and not me.  He went to the chest which held his food and took from it more things for me to carry.  These I put into the pack, and then we left the tent.  Soldiers took down the tent and folded it up and put it on a camel.  My Lord and Master’s things went into a cart.  Then the camp was gone, packed onto camels and onto the carts that the camels pulled.  The soldiers put on black robes which covered their bodies and had hoods which hid their faces.  A soldier brought two camels for us to ride, and My Lord and Master climbed onto the larger one, which was dark brown.  I got onto the smaller one which was yellow-brown and emptied My Lord and Master's things from the pack into the baskets strapped to the camel’s sides.  
The army began to move.  Most of the soldiers walked, and some led camels.  Soldiers and camels walked in long rows like the rows of tents.  Most of the section commanders rode camels, and other soldiers also rode camels as though they, too, were section commanders.  Later I learned that they were foot soldiers who rode to confuse the Döckálfs and their afrit.  Dust rose under our feet and turned the sky brown.  My Lord and Master and I joined a row.  
Utu was very hot.  Soldiers talked with each other for a time, but as we walked on they stopped talking.  One soldier, a man with a scimitar as long as my arm, complained many times about Utu's heat and the dust.  Finally My Lord and Master rode to him and commanded him to shut his mouth.  By then we were farther into the desert than I had ever gone.  The dust made me cough, and My Lord and Master had a soldier bring sand robes for us.  He sat on his camel as he pulled his on, as though he had practiced, but I had to get off my camel to put mine on.  He waited while I did that.  Then we rode.  Sometimes My Lord and Master said, "Apple, Hamad," or “Banana,” and I took a handful of dried chips from the baskets and handed them to him.  He had taught me the Northern names for fruit, since we have none in Malawi.  
"Have some apple," he said once.  I did, and the taste was sweet and made my mouth water.  
Later that day the Mage rode to My Lord and Master on a horse that was white with brown spots.  "They're searching for me," she said to him.  I looked at my camel's head and listened.  
"I've seen no afrit—" My Lord and Master said.  
"They're using far-seeing magic."  
"Will they find you?" My Lord and Master asked.  
"Not this easily.  I've protected myself.  But I wanted you to know they're out there and—"  
"I knew that," My Lord and Master said.  
The Mage said nothing.  After a moment she left us.  
For the rest of that day we rode in silence.  I thought My Lord and Master would ride to the section commanders to talk with them, but he did not.  Dust settled on us, and we and our camels became the color of the desert.  My robe kept me cool, and I thought how strange that was since it was black.  The way it was made, in layers, must have done magic with the heat.  All those long hours I bounced on the back of the camel, smelling its stink, handing food to My Lord and Master and watching the soldiers.  They walked with their chests forward and their eyes watching ahead as though they would meet the NaHrouz right away and battle them before dinner.  
My Lord and Master looked often at the sky.  "They're coming, Hamad," he said to me.  I thought he meant the NaHrouz and wondered why he was looking for them already.  Then I remembered what the Mage had said about afrit, and I began watching the sky, too.  
The shadows grew long.  We ate pieces of apple.  The soldiers grew tired, and their heads hung low.  Dust rose.  There was a strange heat in the air which did not come from Utu, and My Lord and Master said, "Hamad, look for ripples in the air.  Look for strange lights.  Look for—"  
"Afrit," I said.  
"Yes.  They'll probably try to flush out the Mage."  
We rode farther, and I wondered if we were to ride all night.  Utu sank until only His last flames burned at the edge of the world.  Far ahead were the scouts.  
Then a camel exploded.  It happened behind us, a loud, wet popping, and we turned to see red meat and brown fur falling.  Soldiers drew their scimitars.  Chunks of meat hung on many soldiers.  My Lord and Master reached into a pocket of his shirt and pulled forth some thing I could not see.  A shaft of flame rose from the dead camel into the sky, and I realized that it was an afriti.  It were hidden from sight until they attacked.  My Lord and Master squeezed his fist, and I heard glass crunch.  Drops of blood fell from the bottom of his fist.  From between his fingers came dark, yellow smoke which rushed like an arrow at the afriti.  Later My Lord and Master told me that the smoke was a warrior djinni under the Mage's command.  
Then more camels burst, and soldiers were on fire, and there were many flashes in the sky.  The afrit moved in great loops, very quickly.  Their bodies were streaks of colored flames.  Within this fire was a black skeleton like that of a man who had burnt to death.  As one the afrit began to shriek, and I trembled.  Their voices were loud and terrible, like crows, and when one passed above us its heat burnt my eyebrows so that the hood of my robe filled with stink.  Wind blew around us and raised dust, and I closed my eyes.  There were sounds of bows releasing arrows.  Soldiers shouted and cursed, and there were more popping sounds of dying animals and a sound I knew was bodies hitting sand.  
 An afriti shrieked and exploded.  Hot wind gusted around me, and my camel grunted and stopped moving.  I opened my eyes a little and saw my Lord and Master's smoke-warrior spear an afriti and the afriti turn into a fireball and fade.  Any afriti which swooped at My Lord and Master the smoke-warrior destroyed.  The thunder and heat of dying afrit knocked me, and I clung to my camel’s neck.  More soldiers and camels and horses died.  
I smelled blood and burnt meat and hair and singed robe.  My Lord and Master shouted orders that even I could not hear.  The smoke-warrior struck a purple afriti and burst it, and flames whooshed outward as a great, purple ring.  The hot wind of its death blew me back on my camel and scorched my face.  Only by fortune did I close my eyes in time.  Then the wind stopped, and the heat faded.  I opened my eyes.  There were no afrit left in the sky.  
"Are you injured, Hamad?" My Lord and Master asked, and I said no.  He kicked his camel and rode off to shout at his section commanders.  I stayed where I was.  Around me the rows formed and broke and formed again as soldiers calmed their animals.  
Then the Mage cried, "Döckálf!" and small, green firebirds rose from the backs of many camels.  They were only the size of my fist and burned bright green.  They rose swiftly.  High above us a tiny Döckálf floated like a bramble-seed on the wind.  Lightning came from him and struck many firebirds, and they disappeared.  But there were too many, and the Döckálf flew away.  The birds flew faster and swarmed around him and then flashed into green fire.  Thunder rumbled.  The Döckálf fell.  My Lord and Master shouted, and scouts galloped toward the place where the body would hit the sand.  It had a long way to fall.  
The Mage rode to us and talked with My Lord and Master.  Her words were quiet, but I heard her say, "Too easy, Commander.  Hurt him, maybe.  Kill him, no.  But my spells say he's dead."
My Lord and Master nodded.  "A look-alike, maybe.  Or a trick."  
“Maybe,” the Mage said.  "But nothing I can detect."  She said a few more things, and then she turned her horse and rode to her place near Section Commander Sa'adin.  
"Well, Hamad," My Lord and Master said.  "Let's hope that's one down."  
"Commander, did the Mage make the firebirds?" I asked.  
"She did, Hamad.  She summoned them and hid them on the backs of those camels.  Did you see how they all flew up at once?"  
"Yes, Commander," I said.  
"She enchanted them to release when she shouted out the word, 'Döckálf!'  Now the other two Döckálfs will be—"  But he did not get to say what the other two Döckálfs would be.  The scout commander came for us, and we rode ahead of the soldiers to where a circle of scouts on their horses surrounded something dark on the sand.  The scouts were small men, smaller even than My Lord and Master, and thin.  They rode small horses, too, and I thought they had been picked because they were hard to hit with arrows.  But then I remembered that the NaHrouz do not use bows and did not know why My Lord and Master picked small men for scouts.  
When we reached the scouts they opened their circle for us.  There was not much to see.  The Döckálf's body was small and burnt and had fallen from a great height and come apart.  There were guts and brains and blood on the sand.  The Döckálf that My Lord and Master and the Mage had so feared was a child no older than thirteen.  
"It's dead, Commander," a scout said.  
My Lord and Master grunted.  "Yes, soldier, it is.  Let's—"  
The body disappeared as had the smoke-warrior and Mirshira, even the blood and the parts which were not attached any more.  My Lord and Master slapped his camel's head and shouted, "Away!" and we rode.  The scouts came with us, but when they saw nothing happening they turned back and rode to their places in front of the soldiers.  My Lord and Master and I went to a new place among the rows of soldiers.  
He looked at the sky and shook his head.  "Children," he said.  
"Commander?" I said.  
"That Döckálf was a child.  Their Queen is sending children into battle."  
I said nothing.  It was not so odd that it was a child.  I had seen a Döckálf younger than that one skin a woman alive.  The one the Mage had killed had been old enough to do anything.  
I reached into a basket and took out a small bottle of the red bitter-water which he loved.  I handed it to him, and he laughed and took it.  "Thank you, Hamad.  I chose well when I chose you as my bearer."  He pulled the stopper and let it fall to the sand and drank the water.  
Soldiers quickly dug pits for the dead and buried them.  Section commanders rode to My Lord and Master and told him how many of their soldiers and animals had died.  Forty soldiers had been killed and a hundred more hurt.  Eighteen camels had died and seven horses.  All of the giant crossbows that My Lord and Master called scorpions had burnt up, and many supply carts had burned.  No soldiers or section commanders were touching their hands to their foreheads as they spoke to My Lord and Master.  He must have commanded them not to touch their hands to their foreheads for fear the Döckálfs were watching to learn who the commanders were.  
When the dead were buried the section commanders raised their fists, and the army marched.  We walked the rest of that day and even after Utu left the world.  The night fires came out in the sky and turned the sand silver.  I was tired from riding and was a little asleep and a little awake.  The marching sounded like waves striking the beach.  The fight with the afrit and the long march had tired the soldiers, and they walked stooped with their arms hanging loose.  Some grunted with pain, but no one spoke.  In the light of the night fires their bodies looked hunched and strange, and their faces were hidden.  Their shadows seemed to crawl over the sand.  
As the soldiers grew more tired their boots began to drag.  That sound made me think of the stories my grandpa had told me when I was small, of ghouls creeping into Malawi at night to steal away children.  He said they dragged their claws on the sand.  They were once people who were turned into monsters by Döckálf magic, and now they lived near the kruné mines and ate the bodies of dead slaves.  
After a time My Lord and Master held his fist high.  Everyone who saw him raised his fist, and the army stopped.  Section commanders rode to My Lord and Master, and he told them to put guards around our camp and the supply tents and to let the soldiers rest.  Soldiers began setting up the tents.  Section Commander Ouralius, a heavy commander whose voice always puffed when he spoke, said, "But, Commander, the NaHrouz are probably marching toward us right now.  What if they reach us while we're asleep?"  
"They won't," My Lord and Master said.  "If they marched all night tonight they could attack us in the morning, but they won't do that.  They're best at night.  They'll march tonight until they see our scouts.  Then they'll stop and dig in and wait for tomorrow night."  
Section Commander Ouralius scratched his chin as though he had a beard, though he did not.  "And will we?"  
My Lord and Master said, "What we do, Section Commander, will depend on what the scouts tell us about the NaHrouz defenses and strength."  
The section commanders rode back to their soldiers.  I wondered if the Döckálfs were watching and listening to all that was said and done.  I looked around us but saw no floating eyes or places in the air which wavered like heat.  My Lord and Master's tent was raised by tired soldiers.  They seemed like Thalarar men with bent backs and long faces.  They put up the tent and opened the flaps and moved My Lord and Master's things inside.  Then they put up their own tents.  I wondered if they were angry at My Lord and Master for having to put up his tent also.  The two big soldiers with faces of stone stood outside the flaps of the tent.  
"Sleep while you can, Hamad," My Lord and Master said.  "We'll rise early."  He took off his sand robe and threw it over a trunk.  
"Yes, Commander," I said and went to the cot which the soldiers had given me.  None of the other men from Malawi slept on cots.  I was fortunate that My Lord and Master had chosen me to carry his things.  He took a honey cake from a chest and ate it as he paced around the table, and as soon as he finished it he left the tent.  My body ached so much from the ride that I could not eat.  Soon I fell asleep and dreamed of burning men and afrit and the body of the Döckálf lying wet and broken on the sand.  
The next morning rose My Lord and Master called me to wake before Utu had risen.  I rose and found all the section commanders at the table, eating and speaking in a fury of sound.  My Lord and Master said, "Hamad, join us."  
"Commander..." someone said.  
"Eat, Section Commander D'con.  Eat, and let Hamad eat in peace.  He's served me well.  By this time tomorrow night many of us will be dead, and all of the NaHrouz.  Enjoy this meal."  
The section commanders were not happy with these words, but My Lord and Master ignored them.  I think he ate more than any, even Section Commander Sa'adin.  Much of the red bitter-water was drunk that morning.  I sat on a box at the far end of the table from My Lord and Master, and the section commanders passed me vegetables and fruit and slices of cooked meat dipped in spices.  I ate everything they gave me and drank water, for they did not share their red bitter water.  
For Northern men there are many rules to eating.  A section commander who wished to speak swallowed his food, wiped his mouth with a piece of cloth and put down his fork before he spoke.  This was not true for My Lord and Master, who could speak whenever he wished, like a child, even when a section commander was speaking.  Food was passed from commander to commander, skipping none unless he said, "Pass."  Food was offered to me, too, unless I said, "Pass."  In Malawi there is not so much ceremony while eating.  
All of the commanders were clean.  One section commander smelled of something rich and strange as though he had oiled his skin.  The smell of the scent was not pleasant, but I did not let that stop my eating.  When the meal was almost over the scout commander came into the tent and spoke.  The NaHrouz had made camp a short ride ahead of us, in a valley full of rocks.  They were building a wall in the shape of a horseshoe with the open end facing behind them and were placing piles of rocks in the desert around their camp.  
"They know we have cavalry," Section Commander Sa'adin said.  
My Lord and Master thanked the Scout Commander, who left the tent.  Then he said, "We can send the cavalry around to the rear and attack from there or, better yet—they're probably expecting that—we can stop five hundred paces away from them and fire our bows until we've depleted half our arrows.  Then we wait for them to charge.  When they do we put the cavalry on them while the main force falls back.  Then the archers fire again.  We can do that two or three times before they'll pull back and wait for night.  We'll retreat toward the coast.  Make them come to us.  We'll use cavalry and archers until we're out of arrows.  Then we engage."  He speared a big piece of meat with his fork and pushed it into his mouth.  
Everyone sat still, thinking on these words which had come so fast from My Lord and Master's mouth.  Section Commander Sa'adin cleared his throat and looked at me, and the other section commanders looked at me.  I thought I had broken one of the rules for eating.  My Lord and Master picked up his glass of red bitter water and drank a swallow and put the glass down.  
"Hamad," he said, "please leave us.  When you see the section commanders leave you can come back."  
"Commander," I said.  I pushed my box away from the table and put it in its place and went outside.  The air was cold, and my breath came out like smoke.  The soldiers still guarded the tent flap.  It was strange to me that My Lord and Master would let me watch the Mage summon Mirshira and then not let me stay and listen to them plan their attack.  I think he had to send me away because the section commanders were there.  
In the camp I heard the sounds of sleeping men and tent cloth puffing in a very small breeze and horses sleeping.  Soldiers walked around tents.  I looked up at the night fires.  They would burn if the tents were there or not.  The desert did not care about the Northern army or the NaHrouz or me.  I roamed the camp until I came to the horses.  They were all tied near the rows of tents which belonged to Section Commander Sa'adin's soldiers.  They were beautiful animals, large and strong.  I made little sounds like the soldiers did and reached toward one's nose.  The horse snorted hot breath, and I scratched its nose as I had seen soldiers do.  
It was then that I felt heat coming from above and looked up and saw the night fires rippling.  A guard shouted warning, and more guards shouted.  The tent in front of me roared into flames, and down the row a horse lit with blue fire.  It broke from its post and staggered a few paces before it dropped and burned.  Soldiers ran naked from their tents with bows and fired arrows, but the arrows burned up when they hit the afrit.  
Horses screeched and pulled against the leather strips which bound them to their stakes.  I ran away from them.  Afrit of all colors—blue and sea-colored, yellow and orange and violet—flashed and wailed.  They dove into tents and men and horses and camels and then soared into the sky, trailing fire.  Soldiers shot their useless arrows.  All around me were soldiers with bows and scimitars, horses running, camels running, section commanders shouting.  
I ran toward My Lord and Master's tent.  Flames leapt up in front of me and to the side and behind as the afrit flew between the tents lighting everything.  My hair crackled from the heat.  Pieces of burning cloth floated upward, and afrit swooped to hit them.  They dove and grabbed up soldiers and dropped them burning onto tents.  Arrows whistled upward and burnt up or fell back.  One soldier I passed lay quivering on the ground with an arrow through his eye.  
A blue-flamed afriti roared toward me.  It was larger than a man and so hot that tents started to burn even though it did not blow fire on them.  Soldiers dove onto the ground to get away from its heat, but many were burned.  The flame-eyes of the afriti were sky blue and rippled with small licks of green and red and yellow fire.  Its body whooshed and crackled, and a buzzing noise came from its mouth.  I stood still because there was no place to run.  
Then it disappeared like a puff of fire above a burning log.  The Mage's voice was close to me, shouting, "Get away!  Clear this area!  Run!"  The soldiers who had fallen on the ground to escape the blue afriti stood and ran even if their clothes were burning.  I turned and saw the Mage ten paces behind me.  Her hair blew this way and that in the hot winds, and her uniform flapped.  Dust and smoke rose around us.  The Mage looked at me, and I saw from her face that something terrible was going to happen.  I ran.  An arrow fell down my back and cut me, but I did not stop running.  I glanced back and saw many afrit diving at the Mage like a burning rainbow.  
 I jumped into a metal tub that men used to water the camels and sat down.  The cool water covered my body and splashed onto my face.  The afrit hurled balls of flame which hit the sand around the Mage and burst into clouds of fire.  She was a black shape of a woman inside the flames.  Her arms were raised over her head, and I wondered what spell she had made to stand in all that fire.  Then the first afriti—a violet one as tall as two men wearing the form of a one-eyed giant—struck her.  Violet fire flashed everywhere, and I ducked my head into the tub.  The wind from the explosions picked up the tub and threw it, and it hit something very hard.  

When I became sensible again a soldier was helping me walk.  His face and hands were burned, and there were tiny, white blisters on his fingers.  He smelled like roasted meat.  Utu had been up an hour already, and the air was hot.  Smoke rose all around us.  My clothes were wet.   
"Can you walk?" the soldier asked.  Red and white jellyfish swam in front of my eyes.  My body hurt as though I had been fishing for days without rest.  
"Yes," I said.  
He let go of me, and my knees shook.  "Good enough," he said and left.  He limped as he walked, and I saw dried blood on the right side of his sand robes, low on his leg.  Maybe he was hit by an arrow.  I very slowly walked to My Lord and Master's tent.  The camp smelled of ash and hot wood and burnt canvas.  Soldiers silently buried bodies and took down the unburnt tents.  When I reached My Lord and Master's tent soldiers were packing it away.  My Lord and Master sat on his camel and watched.  His face was burnt on the left side, and most of his hair was gone.  There were blisters and red patches of raw scab covered with white cream.  Around his left eye was an outline of fingers, and I realized that he had clapped his hand to his face when the fire had struck him and so had saved his eye.  He wore a clean sand robe.  
"Hamad," he said.  "I'm pleased to see you.  I wish we had some healers, but the afrit singled them out.  Your camel's dead, but—here."  
A soldier with holes burnt in his uniform led a brown camel to me.  His face was dark with burns, and yellow fluid ran from the bottoms of his eyes.  He gave me the camel's reins and left.
"You know the things I'll need," My Lord and Master said.  "Hurry.  We move in a few minutes."  He stood in the stirrups and looked forward as though he was trying to see into the distance, and then he sat back down.  He moved slowly, and I knew he was in pain.  
I took from the tent the far-seeing tubes and the other things My Lord and Master used, and then I filled a basket with dried fruit and nuts and honey cakes.  The trunk which held these was never empty, and I knew that somewhere My Lord and Master had a great supply of these foods.  As I finished loading the baskets on my new camel the soldiers formed into rows.  My Lord and Master and I joined a row.  Soldiers groaned and cursed, and I saw that many suffered burns.  Few had bandages.  Some soldiers looked up at My Lord and Master in anger, but they saw his burns and looked away.  A soldier not far from us chanted something, and I thought from the sound of his voice that he was praying.  
Then the section commanders raised their fists, and we walked south to fight the NaHrouz.  The soldiers stopped groaning.  Feet tromped, and animals snorted, and leather creaked, but the voices were still.  My Lord and Master did not ask for food.  Maybe he was thinking about the Mage.  She had been right to say that the Döckálf magi would find her and kill her.  Now My Lord and Master's army had no mage to battle the Döckálf magi and the afrit they would send. 
Again the scouts rode ahead until they were tiny with distance.  There were fewer scouts and fewer horses and camels.  The camels especially were far apart and staggered under heavy loads.  When we had gone a little way I turned and looked back.  The sand was blackened and melted, and the burnt outlines of tents made ragged rows.  Ash swirled.  
The Scout Commander who had reported to us that morning never came again.  After several hours another scout came and spoke with My Lord and Master, who held up his fist and stopped the army.  Ahead were many thin pillars of rock.  From that direction I heard metal banging on metal.  I began to watch the sky.  
The section commanders rode to My Lord and Master.  They spoke of how many men had died in the afrit attack—more than two hundred—and of ways to attack the NaHrouz camp now that the Mage was gone.  The scouts said that the NaHrouz had finished their wall and were camped behind it.  Many guards walked the wall.  The scouts had seen no special tent for the Döckálf magi, and they had seen no bows or war machines.  
Then from the camp of the NaHrouz came a flash of blue light, and a rock pillar broke apart and fell.  My Lord and Master whooped and laughed and stood in the rings which held his feet, and we all stared at him.  The Mage was suddenly on his camel, right behind him, leaning against his back as though she had no bones.  Her hair was mostly burnt away, and her eyes were closed.  There was sweat on her skin, and her uniform was dark with sweat.  My Lord and Master turned and held her up.  His face was hard, but his mouth twitched.  Section Commander Sa'adin called for soldiers, who brought two poles with cloth stretched between them.  They put the Mage on this and held the poles on their shoulders and walked with her next to us.  
"Commander," Section Commander Sa'adin said.  "The Mage..."  
My Lord and Master grinned wickedly.  The burnt skin on his face cracked and leaked fluids.  He did not notice or did not care.  "The bastards just lost their magi," he said.  
The section commanders were confused, and My Lord and Master said, "Last night our Mage let herself be attacked by the afrit.  She knew the Döckálfs would find her and that she had to escape their attention.  The best way to do that was for them to believe she was dead."  He called to me for dried figs, and I gave him a handful.  He ate the chips and said, "As the afrit fell on her she transported herself to the top of one of the rock spires and started hunting the Döckálfs.  Since she destroyed that spire I assume that's where they were."  
"The afrit?" Section Commander Sa'adin asked.  
"Were freed when the Döckálfs died.  They'll return to their own world.  They don't like being kept here any more than we like them being here."  My Lord and Master said this quietly, but his lips tried again and again to smile.  
Section Commander Sa'adin was the happiest I ever saw him.  "There'll be a promotion for her," he said.  
"At least two ranks," Section Commander Ouralius said.  
"If she lives," My Lord and Master said.  
I thought she would not live.  She had not moved since she had appeared on My Lord and Master's camel.  There were no wounds on her that I could see, but she lay very loose and still.  
The commanders talked for a time about how My Lord and Master's plan should be changed, pointing toward the NaHrouz and the rock spires and drawing in the sand with the ends of their scimitars.  After their talk and their pointing they had hardly changed his plan at all, but everyone had said what he wanted to say.  By that time Utu was directly over our heads.  Soldiers stood and sweated or sat and sweated, and the camels lay on their bellies and rested.  Many of the soldiers watched My Lord and Master and the section commanders, and when the talking was finished the soldiers rose to their feet.  
The section commanders returned to their rows.  My Lord and Master raised his arm and pointed toward the NaHrouz, and we started forward.  The camels and the carts holding the supplies stayed.  Wounded soldiers guarded them.  
The soldiers in the rear slowed so that a gap grew between them and the soldiers in front.  The soldiers in the rear held bows, and those in front put their hands on their scimitars.  The horsemen split into two groups and rode at either side of the foot soldiers.  There was great noise of horses moving and metal clanking, but the soldiers stayed silent.  Only the voices of the section commanders rose above the noises of moving.  
We came closer to the thin rocks, and I could see that they were very tall.  Soldiers began to hum a slow, quiet song.  From the NaHrouz camp the banging of metal grew louder.  I looked up and saw the air rippling, but it was only Utu's heat rising.  The sky was dark blue, and there were clouds far ahead that must have been over the lake Mirshira had spoken of.  I had never been to a lake and wondered if we truly would go there after the battle, if we lived.  The new Scout Commander came and spoke with my Lord and Master, and the three of us rode ahead of the army.  Four more scouts joined us.  One had his right arm bandaged, and I smelled herbs that had been put in the cloth to keep rot from his burns.  
"Glasses, Hamad," My Lord and Master said and reached toward me.  I took the glasses from the basket of things and handed them to him.
We rode to the top of a hill of sand.  The beating metal sound was loud, and behind us the humming of the soldiers was strong.  Below lay the NaHrouz camp.  Its wall was a pile of orange stones as tall as a Northern man.  NaHrouz stood in their black metal armor on the wall.  I thought that even if My Lord and Master's army did not attack them they would bake in Utu's heat.  Ghouls would smell their cooked flesh and come and eat them, and there would be no need to fight.  As the scouts had said, they had made piles of stones for fifty paces around the wall.  Inside the wall there were rows of small tents made of dirt-colored cloth.  There were no big tents, and I thought that the NaHrouz commanders did not wish to be known as My Lord and Master did not.  In the back of the camp were carts guarded by many NaHrouz.  It was from those that the metal-beating sounds came.  
My Lord and Master turned his glasses this way and that, saying, "Hmmm," and grunting.  The scouts watched around us.  
"There aren't enough down there," he said.  "Where are the rest?  Sleeping?  Not enough tents.  But the scouts would have seen a mass movement..."  Then he swore and sat up straight in his saddle.  He turned the glasses quickly away from the camp to the desert on either side of it, and then he looked at the tall rocks.  Suddenly he threw the glasses at me.  They hit my chest and bounced, and I nearly did not catch them.  He pulled his camel's reins very hard and hissed at it, and it turned and raced back toward his army more swiftly than I have ever seen a camel go.  My camel turned and followed his, and the scouts rode with us.  
"Flanks!" My Lord and Master shouted at the section commanders.  "They've split their army already, and they'll be attacking our flanks!"  
"But our scouts—" Section Commander Bundara said, and My Lord and Master said, "They're going through their tunnels!"  
Section Commander Sa'adin rode to his horsemen.  My Lord and Master raised his arm and waved his hand in a circle, and the section commanders mimicked this.  The soldiers formed two circles, one inside the other, with a wide hollow in the center where My Lord and Master and I and the other Malawi men stayed.  Soldiers with scimitars were the outer circle, and soldiers with bows and scimitars made the inner circle.  There was a space perhaps ten paces wide between the circles.  The soldiers with horses stayed outside the circles.  
My Lord and Master leaned forward on his camel.  "Where are they?" he said.  "Where?"  He turned this way and that, looking.  
Then a soldier and a horse screamed and flared, and I saw an orange and red afriti blazing through the rows of horses, blowing red flames from its mouth.  
"No!" My Lord and Master shouted.  A yellow afriti appeared in the air by the outer circle and flew among the soldiers.  These afrit were larger than the ones which had attacked before, and behind them each left a trail of flames and burning bodies.  When they blew fire many soldiers were burnt at once.  The afrit attacked the cavalry until the horses panicked and ran.  Their riders slapped their heads and tried to make them stop, but the afrit chased them and blew fire onto them.  Then the afrit pulled the soldiers from the backs of the horses and flew into the sky with them, and the burning soldiers fell twisting to the ground as the Döckálf mage had fallen.  Very soon the rows of cavalry broke, and there were only many horses running crazed.  
One afriti especially drew my eyes.  It was the size of a giant from the stories, twice as tall as a Northerner, in the shape of a fat man.  It wore a sash of blue flames around its middle.  It saw Section Commander Sa'adin and spread its arms and flew toward him, howling so loudly I could hear it over the shouting and cries.  It spat blue fire on the soldiers beneath it, and the spittle burnt them to ash.  
Section Commander Sa'adin did not run.  He said something to his horse, and it dropped onto its belly.  He stepped off and drew his scimitar, and as the afriti came at him he stood tall and firm.  I knew then that he had a magic scimitar like those in the stories, one that could cut afrit.  The afriti laughed again and put its arms in front of it like a man does when diving and streaked toward him.  Section Commander Sa'adin stepped aside so swiftly I hardly saw him move and at the same time swung his scimitar.  The afriti's side was split open.  The afriti wailed and tumbled in the air and then broke into burning pieces.  All the afrit shrieked and flew above the soldiers, screaming like children being skinned alive.  
Then the ground began to shake, and there was a noise louder than thunder.  A hole opened between My Lord and Master and me and the inner circle of soldiers who still held their bows.  It was twenty paces wide and grew swiftly.  Sand and pebbles slid into the hole.  My Lord and Master sat on his camel like a statue, staring at the hole which was thirty paces from us and then twenty-five and then twenty.  He did not move, and so I did not move, and the soldiers did not move, though they looked at My Lord and Master.  The ground shook again, and another hole opened to the north, a hundred paces past the soldiers.  That one was fifty paces wide.  
My Lord and Master nodded.  "They're not flanking us.  They're under us."  He raised his arm and pointed behind us and turned his camel.  My camel followed.  Shouting rose from the soldiers, and they began to move quickly, almost running.  A small, red afriti saw My Lord and Master do those things and rushed toward him, but he saw it and put his hand on his scimitar.  The afriti flew high above us.  Scouts rode to us and reported that the NaHrouz were not moving from their camp.  My Lord and Master nodded, and they rode away.  
"Forcing us back, Hamad," My Lord and Master said.  "Out of arrow range."  
More holes opened in the ground, and sometimes soldiers were sucked into them and disappeared.  This happened so quickly that other soldiers could not even throw them ropes.  The first hole that had opened stopped growing when it was fifty paces across, and sand and pebbles sank into it until it was only a low place.  The red afriti stayed above My Lord and Master and me, flying in circles.  Section Commander Sa'adin rode to My Lord and Master, and they spoke, but there was too much noise for me to hear them.  Section Commander Sa'adin looked up at the red afriti with his lips very tight, and I knew he wanted it to come down so he could kill it.  The afriti shrieked at him but did not come down.  
When we had gone five thousand paces My Lord and Master lifted his fist, and we stopped.  "Section Commander," he said to Section Commander Sa'adin.  "The afrit will destroy the horses if we keep them here.  Take the cavalry back to the supplies.  Come back when the Mage wakens or dies."  
"Commander, we are needed here—"  
"Now, Section Commander.  Ride now."  
"Commander."  He turned his horse and rode back to his soldiers.  In a few moments he and the horsemen rode north.  Many afrit followed them.  
"Damn the Mage," My Lord and Master cursed.  "Either she didn't kill the Döckálfs, or the afrit decided to stay."  Then he said a great string of curses too quickly for me to understand.  When he had spit out all his anger he looked around us, and I also looked.  We had run to a flat, low place with small hills around it.  My Lord and Master called the section commanders to him and told them that that was the place where we would fight.  
"Have the men build a rampart to slow the NaHrouz.  Have them work in teams, one working and one resting.  Don't let them exhaust themselves."  The section commanders went and gave these orders, and the soldiers started piling stones and sand.  
My Lord and Master sat on his camel most of the day.  Sometimes he ate, and a few times he climbed down from his camel and walked around.  Above us the afrit circled, sometimes making strange patterns with flames and sometimes flying very quickly.  Twice when I looked up they were hidden from my eyes, but I could see their heat moving through the air.  Many of the soldiers watched them, too.  
I daydreamed of Malawi.  My eyes were open to watch the afrit, but in my head I was back in the village, up to my knees in the warm sea, casting a net with my father.  The red was gone from the water, and squid filled our nets.  My mother was healed from her rat bite and stood in Utu's light, looking out at the sea.  The NaHrouz were all dead, and their bones lay in heaps in the desert.  Surrounding Malawi were fields of trees bearing all the fruits My Lord and Master had brought:  apples and bananas, oranges and dates, prunes and pears.  I could walk to the trees and eat as much as I wished, and no one would take the fruit away.  So I dreamed.  
Late in the afternoon clouds of dust rose from the direction of the NaHrouz camp, and the scouts rode back to say the NaHrouz had formed into squares and were at last moving.  They would reach us as Utu left the world to darkness.  I wondered if those in the tunnels had come to the surface or if they were still beneath us, working to create more holes.  
The soldiers built their wall until an hour before Utu went down.  It rose as high as a man's waist and was loose so that when soldiers walked on it the rocks fell.  They liked this, since the NaHrouz would fall when they tried to come over it.  Then the soldiers sat to rest and eat.  Two men from Malawi brought food for My Lord and Master and me, and we also ate.  
As Utu sank to the edge of the world I heard the sounds of marching from every direction.  Great clouds of dust rose around the low place where we waited.  Once My Lord and Master said, "Where is she?"  I, too, wanted the Mage to come and destroy the afrit.  
The marching came closer.  The soldiers of the outer circle knelt, and those of the inner circle stood with their bows ready.  My Lord and Master watched the heat ripples of the hidden afrit.  There were only ten or twelve of them.  Two stayed above him and me.  
Then the NaHrouz were there.  For an instant they were metal statues crowding the tops of the hills all around us.  Their black armor gleamed, and their skin glowed orange, and their long spears and scimitars were hard shadows in Utu's fading light.  
"Aim!" My Lord and Master shouted, and soldiers put arrows to their strings and drew the strings back to their cheeks.  Never had I seen such a sight as all those men all at once doing the same thing.  Then My Lord and Master shouted, "Release!" and the arrows shot forth.  NaHrouz fell down the hills and rolled and slid and lay in heaps with shafts sticking from their faces and joints in their armor.  But many, many arrows had leapt forth, and not many NaHrouz fell.  Most of the arrows bounced from their armor or broke.  
The NaHrouz raised their spears and roared, and their voices filled our small valley like a flood.  My Lord and Master's soldiers shouted their own cry which did not sound nearly as loud and put more arrows to their bowstrings.  Then the NaHrouz marched down the sides of the hills.  My Lord and Master shouted, "Release!" and the soldiers fired.  He paused and shouted, paused and shouted.  NaHrouz screamed and clutched their bodies.  The fallen slowed the others and gave My Lord and Master's soldiers time to aim.  
Then the afrit became visible and flew among us.  The small red afriti that had been over My Lord and Master and I, and a yellow one that was bigger, flew toward us, but My Lord and Master drew his scimitar, and they flew off.  I had not known that afrit were afraid of dying.  In the stories they always fight until they are killed.  They threw fire onto soldiers' faces and onto their hair and tore off arms and legs and tossed them back and forth until even the bones burned away.  Section Commander Ouralius struck a large green afriti with his scimitar and killed it.  By then too many NaHrouz and soldiers were shouting and screaming for My Lord and Master to be heard anymore, so he stopped shouting and glared at any afriti which came too close.  
The night fires began to burn in the dark sky.  NaHrouz lay in heaps, but more rushed toward us.  I wondered that they did not have bows like My Lord and Master's army.  They could have stood on the hilltops and shot at us as My Lord and Master's soldiers shot at them.  Then I thought the Döckálfs did not let them have bows because NaHrouz could shoot Döckálfs as well as men.  It was a wicked game the Döckálfs played with the lives of so many peoples.  
The battle was simple.  My Lord and Master's army was huddled like a crab, and the NaHrouz tried to squeeze it until it burst.  The afrit helped them by cooking My Lord and Master's soldiers inside the circles.  We had to hold the NaHrouz out until so many were dead that the rest would run back to their tunnels.  That was all.  Sometimes I watched the NaHrouz coming closer to the wall and watched the bows bend and release and so many arrows fly that it seemed not a single NaHrouz could possibly live.  Many of them had shields, which My Lord and Master's soldiers did not have, but when they fell on the wall they exposed their faces for a moment.  That was the end of them.  They were so close that the arrows seldom missed.  
Sometimes I watched the afrit attack the soldiers.  Most of the afrit wore the shape of black skeletons surrounded by flames of different colors.  Others looked like flaming dogs or snakes or vultures.  Once a dark red afriti popped high above us, and I looked for the Mage but did not see her.  As the battle went on I saw other afrit disappear in the same way.  Perhaps they could only stay in our world for a certain time before they had to return to their own.  It seemed strange to me that the afrit did not attack My Lord and Master all at once as they had the Mage.  Surely they knew he was the Commander.  But I saw that they never attacked in twos or threes.  Sometimes one afriti would burn a man and then another would finish him, but they did not attack as one.  Only in attacking the Mage had many attacked at once.  
After a while My Lord and Master's bowmen had only a few arrows in the boxes on their backs.  Men from Malawi took arrows from crates to them, but the afrit saw this and burned up the crates and the Malawi men.  I could not watch.  When the rain of arrows began to slow more NaHrouz crawled or slid or fell over the wall.  They piled around it, twitching, until others trampled them to death.  The closest were only five or six paces from the outer ring of My Lord and Master's soldiers.  Then the soldiers reached into their arrow boxes and found no arrows, and when they shouted for more there were none.  One by one they threw their bows behind them into the open space where My Lord and Master and I were and sat down to rest.  
It was then that the small red afriti came for My Lord and Master.  It dove toward his left side, away from his scimitar, blowing fire before it.  My Lord and Master slapped his camel on the head to make it turn, but that only angered it, and it did not move.  My Lord and Master turned his body to face the afriti, and it flew away.  He shouted and shook his scimitar, and because we were watching that afriti we did not see the yellow one.  There was a great wash of heat so close that my hood crackled and my face burned, and I fell from my camel.  My Lord and Master cried out, and I looked up to see the yellow afriti, wearing the shape of a great crow covered with yellow flames, clutch his shoulders with its claws and carry him into the sky.  His scimitar fell to the ground.  Soon they were very high, and I saw the afriti's pale fire as a dot of light.  My Lord and Master's scimitar was silver in the light of the night fires.  I had never seen him use it.  I looked at it and wondered, who would be My Lord and Master now?  
Not long after that the NaHrouz reached the outer circle of soldiers, who stood with a great cry that sent the afrit flying upward.  Then the soldiers and the NaHrouz crashed together.  Because I was in the center of the circles I did not see them fight, but I heard.  From the side of my eye I saw emerald fire, and I turned my head to see an orange afriti in the shape of a man's skeleton swoop down and tear Section Commander Ouralius' head from his shoulders.  The afriti laughed and held the head before it as it flew over the soldiers, wiggling it from side to side as though it was saying, "No, no, no."  In that moment I wished the Mage would return and bring much pain to the afrit.  
There was nothing for me to do.  I did not know how to fight, and I could not run.  I did not move for fear of the afrit.  After a time the camels lay down next to me, and together we listened to My Lord and Master's army make war with the NaHrouz.  
When I dared to look up the night fires had moved far along their paths, and the night was more than half gone.  The soldiers of the inner circle stood with their scimitars ready, and I knew that the NaHrouz were breaking through the outer circle.  The circles of My Lord and Master's soldiers were much smaller than they had been.  There were only three afrit, and they moved slowly as though they were tired.  The hills were still black with NaHrouz.  How many could a hundred thousand be?  
There was a shouting of many voices behind me, and I peered over the camels to see several NaHrouz break through both circles of soldiers.  The afrit flew to the break and burned soldiers who tried to close it, but their flames burnt the NaHrouz as well.  My Lord and Master's soldiers fought very hard and closed the break, but four NaHrouz ran past them and into the open place where I lay with the camels and where men from Malawi tended wounded soldiers.  
The closest NaHrouz carried a great sword in both hands.  He was large even for a NaHrouz, nearly as tall as my camel's head when it stood.  He did not carry a shield, but he wore a kruné helmet.  There was nowhere I could go, so I did not run.  When he was only five paces away I saw that his armor was made of metal scales like Section Commander Sa'adin's armor.  I wished he was there to fight that big NaHrouz.  Such a fight would have pleased him.  
Then there was a sound of bursting flesh from within the NaHrouz's armor, and he fell in front of me, jerking.  Blood ran from his mouth and many joints in his armor.  Beyond him I saw the others which had broken through the circle also twitching on the sand.  The Mage crouched behind them.  She crawled to me and leaned on my camel, which snorted at her to go away.  She looked like my mother a week after the rat bit her.  
"Commander?" she whispered.  
"An afriti took him," I said.  
She closed her eyes.  "Cavalry, too.  Afrit.  Sa'adin got some."  
So there was no cavalry and no leaders still living.  How could the army win, with its head and legs torn off?  
I looked back at the big NaHrouz.  His face was uglier in death than in life, for his muscles had stiffened to look like rage.  I thought of my little brother Olwan who had thrown a stone at a NaHrouz when he was five years old.  That soldier's face had looked the same way.  They were in Malawi taking food, and Olwan called them names and threw the stone.  I saw it happen, and fear squeezed me like a giant fist so that I could not even breathe.  Two NaHrouz soldiers held him against the wall of our hut while another drove spikes through his hands and feet.  Then they cut open his belly and let his insides fall out.  They brought all the people in Malawi to see and beat anyone who looked away and forbade us to remove his body.  It stayed there for months with maggots and flies and the stink of rotting meat until the flesh was gone and the bones fell from the spikes.  Then the NaHrouz came back and threw his bones into the sea.  I was eight then, and that was the first time I had seen such a thing.  
I looked away from the NaHrouz.  The Mage looked death-sick, and I thought that if I talked with her she would live a little longer.  "Why did you come here?" I asked her.  She looked too weak to do anything to the NaHrouz or even the few afrit.  
Her head was down on my camel's back.  "We mustn't lose," she said.  Her hands were doing something near her belly, but I could not see what.  Then she raised her arms and set a large bottle on the camel's back.  It seemed heavy, but I think that was because she was so tired.  It looked like a fat bulb with a long, thin stem plugged with a stopper and shone like blood in the light of the night fires.  She held it with one hand and put her other hand on the stopper.  Her breathing was loud.  Sweat shone on her face.  
"Mage," I said.  "What is in the bottle?"  
"Afrit lord," she said.  I looked again at the bottle.  It seemed small to hold a lord of the afrit.
"But how will you put it back in?" I asked.  
"It'll go home."  
Those words were no comfort.  Hadn't My Lord and Master said that very thing about the other afrit when the Mage killed the Döckálfs?  
A rust-colored afriti flew toward us, but when it saw the bottle it screeched and disappeared.  The other afrit heard this, and in the time it takes to draw two breaths they were gone.  The Mage laughed softly, and then she raised her head and lifted the bottle.  
"Down, Hamad.  Don't move."  
I lay between the camels with my face in the sand and put my hands over my head.  The Mage touched my neck and said something I did not understand.  "Protection," she said.  "From heat."  
I felt tromping through the sand and knew that more NaHrouz had broken through the soldiers and were running toward us.  There was a popping sound of a stopper leaving a bottle and then thunder.  Heat poured over me, and sweat broke out all over my body.  The camels grunted.  I smelled meat cooking.  There were screams near me, and heavy bodies fell over me, onto the camels.  Something metal crunched into the sand next to my head.  There were many cries and screams that sounded like carrion birds far away.  I put my thumbs over my ears.  
The thunder became words in a language I had never heard, not human or NaHrizi or Döckálf.  It was a language like the afrit-screeching, so loud it came through my thumbs into my ears.  For an instant I longed to look at the afrit lord, but the Mage's words held me pinned.  Truly I did not want to be noticed by such a thing.  I prayed that it would go on to its own world and leave mine but hoped that first it would kill all the NaHrouz.  The thunder went on, and the heat went on, and they so exhausted me that I was made senseless.  

When I woke I found I had turned over on my back.  There was no light through my eyelids, and I knew it was still night.  The air blowing across my face was cool, but there was heat surrounding the rest of my body.  Metal popped.  Something dripped nearby, and there was wetness on my legs.  Flames crackled not far away.  There were cracking sounds and slurping, and I feared to open my eyes.  I very much wished not to know what the dripping was or the wetness or what made the slurping sounds.  For a time I lay still, feeling the sand, breathing only through my mouth.  
Finally I opened my eyes.  Thin clouds of smoke covered the low place where My Lord and Master's army had fought.  The sky was beginning to lighten.  The camels were twisted around me so I could hardly move.  Two NaHrouz lay over me, held up by the camels.  They had been burned so hot for so long that their skins had burst open and their insides had come out.  The dripping came from the body of a NaHrouz which lay over my legs.  Juice leaked from cracks in its armor.  I put my hands on one of the NaHrouz over my chest and tried to push it off, but it was too heavy.  Its armor was very hot but not hot enough to burn my hands, and I pushed until I tired myself and had to rest.  
As I lay sweating from the heat there were heavy footsteps on the other side of my Lord and Master's camel.  Something belched and then warbled strange words.  Fear made my heart shrink.  A shape moved over me, a four-fingered hand with great claws shadowed against the night fires.  The hand rose and then seized one of the NaHrouz bodies, and flesh ripped, and then the hand rose holding loops of guts.  A long, narrow head bent down, and I thanked Utu its face was in darkness.  The ghoul stuffed the guts into its mouth and smacked its lips.  By my legs a bone cracked as another ghoul broke it.  There was a wet tearing sound as the ghoul pulled the bone out of its meat, and then sucking.  These sounds were all around me as the ghouls fed.  The smell of the burnt armies had drawn them from the kruné mines to the south.  
There was a hard crunching sound above my head, and tearing, and then the sounds of claws scraping bone.  Slowly I moved my eyes to see, not because I wished to but because sometimes eyes move when they should not.  One of the bodies above me jerked.  The ghoul clucked and smacked the NaHrouz's head several times.  Bones cracked.  The ghoul stood back, holding in its hands something large and round—the brain of the NaHrouz.  I could not move or even think.  I wept and was afraid the ghoul would see the tears shining on my face and would throw off the NaHrouz bodies and tear me open and eat my insides.  I so feared those claws that my tears came harder and flowed over my face.  But still I made no sounds.  
The bodies above me shook, and the camel's bodies jerked as the ghouls tore them open and devoured.  Sometimes the warbling and clucking sounds turned to screeching like cats as they fought.  Then the eating would begin again.  
All at once they ran away as Utu came into the world.  I heard digging in the sand around me as they buried themselves.  When Utu's light shone strong and clear I pushed at the NaHrouz over my chest as hard as I could.  The ghouls had torn its armor away, and its chest and throat and face and belly had been eaten.  Gnawed ribs stuck out.  I closed my eyes and pushed it back up and over my camel.  It rolled and clanked and then was silent.  No ghouls came to see.  I thanked Utu for rising before the ghouls had eaten through the bodies and found me.  
When I stood the cold breeze took my heat, and my teeth chattered.  Around me lay tens of thousands of men and NaHrouz, blackened and smoking still, some with arms or legs sticking up, others torn apart by ghouls.  Pieces of bodies and bones were scattered everywhere.  Most of the bodies lay in a vast circle, and within this circle were dozens of mounds of dirt where ghouls had buried themselves.  Nothing moved but me.  Carrion birds will not come to a place where there are ghouls.  I did not see the Mage's body.  I think she let the heat destroy her because the afrit lord would have taken her soul if she had lived, but I do not know this for certain.  
It took a long time to get away from the bodies, for NaHrouz were piled for a thousand paces beyond My Lord and Master's soldiers.  They would have won if the Mage had not opened her bottle.  I trotted while Utu was still low in the sky, following the tracks the cavalry had made.  When I had gone for an hour I found the place where the afriti had dropped My Lord and Master's body.  It was badly burned, and the ghouls had only gnawed at places.  They had broken his head open and eaten his brain, but his face was there.  I saw it as I ran past.  His eyes had rolled up so that he seemed to be trying to look at his eyebrows, and that seemed funny, but I could not laugh.  He had come to Thalarar to liberate us, he said, and he died.  Did he think killing the NaHrouz would take away the memories of boys nailed to their family huts or the crying of women raped by the NaHrouz or the screams of the men who tried to fight and were tortured to death with hot metal and sharp knives?  
I thought of the tiny painting of his wife and children that he had shown me and how he watched the Mage when she walked.  I thought of how he ate so much and ran about and shouted orders.  I remembered Section Commander Sa'adin splitting open that huge afriti and the faces of the soldiers who had fought so hard.  I thought of the afrit hurtling down like a flaming rainbow at the Mage and the burnt bodies and the hungry ghouls in their mounds behind me, waiting for dark.  And then I wept because Utu is great and terrible and beautiful, and I do not understand what He wishes from the world.  I have not wept since.  
The supply wagons were all burnt, and there I found the bodies of Section Commander Sa'adin and the other horse riders and their dead horses.  His great, heavy scimitar was next to him, but such things are not for Thalarar men, and I left it.  As I went past that place a camel which I thought was dead rolled over and looked at me.  I took its reins, and it stood and carried me.  It was burnt all over and oozing blood and fluids, but it ran and walked and staggered much of the way to Malawi before it died.  Utu was sinking, and the boys were walking out of the sea with their empty nets when I returned.  My Pa stood in his place trying to catch squid which were not there.  No one said anything.  There would be less food for everyone now that I had returned.  
When I went into our hut my Ma was gone, and her things.  I sat down and waited for my Pa.  In the morning I would take his spare net, and together we would fish the red waters.  

— end —



Foreword — "Shards of Glass"

Before the War the flow of human traffic to Seligar, the home island of the Döckálfs, was one-way:  humans went as slaves and never returned.  As a result, our pre-War knowledge of Döckálf society was severely limited.  Certain aspects were well known—their society was segregated by sex as well as occupation and social class, male magi maintained political control over the human lands while female priestesses controlled the magi, there were guilds of assassins and warriors to complement the magic of the magi and priestesses, and the Döckálfs possessed an implacable will to rule.  In short, humanity's contact with the Döckálfs was limited to their most warlike aspects, and other facets of their society were unknown to us.  
The War ended Döckálf rule and nearly destroyed them as a people.  Sergi's use of suicidal air ship attacks reduced substantial portions of the capital city, RéAmora, to rubble, and after the fall of Seligar's vassal armies the island was open to invading Technocrat forces.  The Sergian military captured RéAmora and immediately executed as many members of the Mageguild, the Assassin's Guild, the Warrior's Guild, the Priestesshood and the Healer's Guild as could be identified.  The pre-War Döckálf population of 32,000 was reduced to fewer than 9,000, the majority of whom were children.  Today Seligar is an international protectorate which is policed by the Sergian military as the human governments debate the long-term fate of the Döckálfs.  
The following account was told to me by Rujad-Loth, whose name follows the Döckálf convention of family name-personal name.  He was a Döckálf mage who had been attached to the NaHrouz force which invaded Decadurinis late in the War.  During the NaHrouz withdrawal from Decadurinis he was injured and subsequently captured by human wizards and sent to Rathadjeal Prison.  I interviewed him in Rathadjeal after I had interviewed the NaHrouz who were incarcerated there.  To my knowledge this is the only Döckálf account ever recorded by a human.  
At one hundred years of age Rujad-Loth was a young Döckálf (life spans of 500 years are not uncommon), equivalent to a 20-year-old human, but he seemed less mature than a human of that age.  He frequently broke into threats and invective, and at times he became hysterical.  He seemed alternately to be pleased to present his narrative and angered, as though I was eliciting it against his will (so far as I know he was not forced by the Rathadjeal administrators to speak with me).  I believe these outbursts were due to his years in solitary confinement, his impending execution and perhaps shame at having only a human scholar to relate his life's experiences to.  
Rujad-Loth was a little over two paces tall, short even for a Döckálf, and thin to the point of emaciation.  Though his build was very human-like, his facial features were sharper than a human's, and he of course bore the elongated, pointed ears of his race.  His eyes were light blue flecked with grey, his thick hair black.  His skin was grayish instead of healthy black, and he seemed perpetually exhausted.  He said several times that the prison officials were poisoning him to keep him too weak to use his magic, a claim I suspect was true.  He used few bodily and facial gestures to accent his account, relying almost entirely on voice to carry the meanings of his words.  
Rujad-Loth was executed by poisoning three weeks after our interview.  



Shards of Glass

Do you look at me in this human prison and laugh?  Think I soon will be dead and dust?  Do you believe that my death will end the reign of Queen Seri-Anar and Seligar and erase the glory of all my people have done and shall do?  I am not the fingernail on the smallest finger of my Queen.  My death is nothing to Her or to me because the Mageguild still exists, and Seligar still rises above the waves.  Look to your dead and dying kingdoms to see your future, human!  
I hear the guards and the master wizard walk the halls of this place and yap in the human tongue about the War.  They talk of the destruction of RéAmora and the executions of my people.  They believe your kind has won because Seligar rests.  The master wizard tells me my people are being exterminated and the fruits of my country plucked by human hands.  He keeps me weak with poison because he knows that if I grow strong again I will break free of this place.  If they do not kill me soon he will grow careless, and I will make him my pet for a hundred years.  
He comes every day to torment me with his magic and ask me questions.  When I answer he torments me again.  He is waiting to hear what he already believes, and the truth is not to his liking.  The question he asks most often is this:  How can I still believe Queen Seri-Anar lives and will lead my people to victory when RéAmora is said to be rubble and She is rumored dead?  
How can I believe?  How can I not?  It is such a simple matter that he cannot understand what I tell him.  Even when I speak his low tongue he cannot understand.  He looks for meaning behind my words when the meaning rides them in clear sight.  How can I believe?  Because I have seen the blood and the fire and the flesh, and I have smelled the incense of Her Temple's innermost chambers.  I have felt Her love like the well of life, and the flames of Her anger have burned my heart.  Hers is the strength which makes single wasps into a hive and will bring us to victory.  
I see in your eyes no more understanding than I have seen in his.  Can you listen, then?  Can you listen and learn?  I will tell you what I have known and how I can still believe.  

When I was a child of thirty-five I met our Queen for the first time.  That was how old I was when my mother took me to the Guild Hall to be tested for the power, on the fifth day of summer.  That is a day when power flows exceptionally well.  All boys who have shown signs of the power are brought to the Guild Hall on that day but at different times so they do not meet.  At the Arch of the Magi three magi waited for me.  They did not say their names and said nothing more to my mother than, "Wait."  Then they took me into the Guild Hall, one at each side and one behind.  At the first door they led me into an empty room of brown stone, the testing room.  It seemed very large to me as a child, but when I went into it as a young man it was not large at all.  
"Rujad-Loth, do you know why you are here?" said the first mage.  He was young, and his cloak had only a few gold threads in it.  He had a thick face and a heavy body and looked at me through clouded grey eyes as though I was a rebellious slave that should be destroyed.  I feared him.  Clouded eyes hide madness.  
"I have the power," I said.  
"What did you do with the power?" said the second.  He was much older than the first and had copper eyes with flecks of red in them, like a god.  That is all I remember of him.  I feared him.  The gods are all mad, and powerful.  
"I killed my sister," I said.  
"How?" the third asked.  He was the oldest of the magi.  His face was narrow as a crystal skull, and his eyes were ice blue.  His cloak was thick with gold thread.  I remember the cold of his voice and his eyes like the northlands.  I did not fear him, for his eyes were clear.  
I said, "She angered me, and—"  
The third said, " 'How,' not 'why.' "  
"She walked in front of the fire, and I made flames come out like a hand and burn her."  
"Show us," the second said, and a great fire roared in the center of the room.  It was of orange and red flames, true fire and not magic.  He had conjured it.  
"There is nothing to burn."  
"Burn this," said the third, and a goat stood near the flames.  It made its sound and nosed the floor.  
"I can't," I said.  
"Why is that?" said the second mage, he with the eyes of a god.  
"It didn't make me angry," I said.  
 "No?" said the second mage, and he pushed me.  "What makes you angry, boy?"  
"Don't push me," I said.  
He pushed me again, and I stumbled toward the flames.  
"Killed his own sister," the first said.  "Do we want to accept a boy like that?"  
"I didn't do anything wrong!" I shouted at him.  I was very young, and my heart still ached for my sister.  It was her blistered face I saw in my dreams.  "My father said my sister was too stupid and lazy to be an assassin or a priestess, but I can be the first mage from House Rujad!"  
"A mage?" the third said, and he laughed.  "You, little worm?"  He stepped toward me with his hand out to push me, and I made a fist, and the fire grew a great hand that reached for him.  Then the fist and the flames were gone, and the magi looked at me.  
"Welcome to the Mageguild, Rujad-Loth," said the first.  "Welcome to your new home."  
The first and third magi took me deeper into the Guild Hall while the second went to tell my mother that I no longer belonged to her.  From that day I was a child of the Mageguild.  The two magi took me to the Sanctum of the Mother, which is near the heart of the Guild Hall.  In the corridors air-afrit flew along the roof on errands for the magi.  Some nodded to the older magi but did not look at me.  The magi told me they were taking me to our Queen, who wanted to meet all the boys accepted into the Mageguild.  They told me how to speak to Her and what to say.  
"Can you remember?" asked the third.  
"Yes," I said.  
Then the door to the Sanctum of the Mother opened, and steam and incense came out.  "We will wait," the second mage said.  
It was hard to see in that room.  I think it was very small, but I am not certain.  It is our Queen's room in the Guild Hall, and magi enter it only when they are first accepted for training.  The incense was narcotic and made my head feel light.  I walked into the room, and our Queen in Her blue robe stepped out of the steam and knelt before me.  It was so strange to see Her kneel that I laughed, even though the magi had told me never to laugh at Her.  
She said, "I am honored to meet you, Rujad-Loth.  I have heard of your power.  Do you understand what is happening to you today?"  
"Yes," I said.  "The magi will teach me to use my power."  
"And clever, too," She said.  "Today you are starting to walk a long road.  Are you ready?"  
"Yes," I said.  
"I believe you are."  She held me and kissed me as my mother had.  "You are my beloved son now, Rujad-Loth.  You will make our people proud.  You will be our strength, and you will serve them and me."  
"Yes," I said.  Then She pulled off my clothes and bathed me in water which smelled of Her and cleaned my body as my mother had done.  I will never forget that scent.  It is Her scent, and no other woman may use it.  Her strong hands touched my body with the sponge and the soap, and they washed away the life I had had before that day.  Twice my Queen put Her hand under my chin and lifted my face.  
"Such a handsome boy, and such fierce eyes," She said.  
"I killed my sister," I said, and the pain in my child's heart turned to pride.  
She smiled, and Her eyes were as golden as the rings on my dead sister's hands.  "And powerful," She said.  After the bath She dressed me in the clothing of the initiate and returned me to the magi, and my new life began.  

There was only one person in the Mageguild who had meaning for me.  That was Abmi-Okrath, who came to be the leader of our novad.  I met him the same day I was accepted for training, when the magi took me to our common room.  
"This is my bed," he said when I walked in the room.  He was a large boy and older than most of us and could have beaten any of us with his fists.  His eyes were topaz yellow.  Of the seventeen of us accepted that year only five had clear eyes.  Abmi-Okrath's were clearest.  
"That is what you keep saying," another boy said.  "How will you keep that bed if I want it?"  That was Vreen-Toc, who hated Abmi-Okrath because Abmi-Okrath was stronger.  They would fight and fight again, and though Vreen-Toc was strong he would always lose.  Why Abmi-Okrath never killed him I don't know.  
"I'll squeeze my fist and stop your heart," Abmi-Okrath said, and I knew he wasn't lying.  
"The magi won't let you," Vreen-Toc said.  
"The magi will let me keep your soul to trade with the afrit, if I take it," Abmi-Okrath said, and that was true too.  Abmi-Okrath always cut everything into true and untrue.  Those boys who could see truth thrived, and those who could not suffered.  They fell down stairs, or their hearts stopped, or something else happened.  Abmi-Okrath's power was the power to move and squeeze things.  The magi punished boys they caught killing other boys, but sometimes we killed each other.  Dead boys gave up souls, and souls could be traded for power.  

There was a day when Abmi-Okrath seized me in the yard and threw me onto the ground on my back and knelt over me.  I was thirty-six then, almost thirty-seven.  His eyes were bright topaz, and in them I saw reflected my own face, its fear and anger.  "You watch, Loth," he said.  "You see everything, but you almost never speak.  You don't do magic in front of the others.  Some boys are planning to kill you and take your soul to trade with the afrit.  They are three, and they'll get you.  I need eyes watching my back, Loth.  I can protect you."  
"I don't like to talk," I said.  That was true, because I could not lie to Abmi-Okrath.  I preferred to watch and to practice my magic in private.  I made the air move the way I wanted and the water in glasses and tubs.  I shaped fire and made dust into little animals that could walk three or four steps.  Sometimes I made little dust animals that tore one another to pieces.  Do you know how many scores of human soldiers fell before my stone animals and my fires during this War?  Ha!
"You don't have to talk often," Abmi-Okrath said.  "Only when necessary."  
That day I fell on the side of truth, and for fifty years of training I watched Abmi-Okrath's back.  I listened, and I watched, and sometimes I told him things.  It was for Abmi-Okrath that I learned to speak what I saw and heard.  He in turn watched me make my animals and my dust-men, and he would say things such as, "Can you start the dust men on fire as they fight?  Can you shape metals?  Can you turn stone to mud or dust?"  Always he was thinking of more.  He talked to other boys as he had to me.  If they were wise they fell on the side of truth.  If they were foolish they suffered, or they joined Vreen-Toc.  
During those years the older magi taught us.  We memorized the names of the three hundred kinds of afrit and the seventy djinn and the hundred elemental lords and summoned them to answer our questions.  We learned the fifteen fields of magic and practiced their subtleties.  We learned how human magi make magic and how to defeat them.  We studied the organization of human armies and how to destroy them.  We learned how human politicians think and how to bend them to our will.  We memorized the names of the human lands—our names for them—and where they lay and where the Oaxacol people live and the People of the Sun and the Napaji, and we visited many lands.  We learned how wind and rain and lightning form and practiced shaping them.  We performed mathematics and calligraphy and learned High Cerelian and the human Trade languages and High Akkadian.  All that yapping, and that is the language your wizards use to make magic!  
For fifty years we studied and learned and grew in strength.  Every ten years our Queen came to the Guild Hall to see us.  For two days She watched us train.  Every time I saw Her I remembered Her scent and the bath She had given me, and I remembered Her saying how proud I would make Her and our people.  

Abmi-Okrath protected me from Vreen-Toc and Çir-Thulaya and Ashvad-Ko, the maddest of the cloudy-eyed boys.  They were always together.  They killed other boys sometimes.  Vreen-Toc's magic was writing power symbols, and Çir-Thulaya opened doors to other worlds.  Ashvad-Ko summoned afrit.  They summoned a ringed afriti once.  They said they didn't, but Abmi-Okrath knew they did.  The magi knew they did.  We all felt the summoning.  The magi didn't punish them, I don't know why.  But we knew they could summon ringed afrit.  
They almost killed me once when I was sixty-eight.  When we were not training I didn't stay with the others.  I walked the Guild Hall and watched and learned.  Sometimes I crawled out a window in the kitchen, like a spider, and went up to the roof.  From there I could see and smell the ocean, and I bent the heavy sea winds to my will.  Once during a clouded day I crawled out the window and up the wall.  That was an omen day.  I should have remembered it was an ill day but did not.  I wanted to go and call lightning from the clouds.  I was near the edge of the roof when I felt the tingle of magic.  Vreen-Toc and the others had noticed my habits and made a trap for me.  It was a subtle trap, but they must have made it in a hurry.  It was not well hidden.  
I started to back down the wall, and the trap opened anyway.  It was a symbol written in blood and hidden from sight, but when I tripped it the blood burned.  It was a symbol named "Ryeh" which opens doors.  I leapt off the wall.  I knew what was coming though that door.  I knew who had drawn the symbol.  It was far to the ground, and I did not know how to fly.  But I did know how slowly ringed afrit kill their food.  
I saw a fiery doorway open above the sign and smelled the urine-stench of ringed afrit.  Then magic flowed around me, and I fell into the swimming pool in the Guild Hall.  I formed the water into a hooded column like the snake you call cobra to lift and surround me.  At the edge of the pool stood Abmi-Okrath, alone.  The magi were in their chambers; clouded days are for summoning.  He saw me and I him, and then he turned and walked away from the pool and out of the room.  It was his magic of moving things which had brought me inside the Guild Hall.  That was how Abmi-Okrath protected me from Vreen-Toc.  

When I was eighty all the boys in our cohort were separated for individual training.  Thirteen of us still lived.  Each initiate was given a room with its own library that had been used by a hundred boys before him.  He was also given a human slave girl ten or twelve years old.  She lived in quarters with other slaves and came to him every day to bring his meals, and when needed she cleaned his room.  Eight days of every ten a mage came and taught him lessons which lasted the morning.  In the afternoons he read what the mage assigned and practiced his magic and readied himself for the many tests.  During rest days he went to the public rooms and spoke with magi.  He never saw initiates from his own cohort; they rested on different days and in different places.  Sometimes he spoke with his girl, and with the advice of his teacher-mage he learned to give her orders and to punish her.  In time he learned to take her.  
The boys are told they are not supposed to fall in love with their slave girls, but the girls are young and graceful.  The boys are alone and growing into manhood.  Perhaps one day after four or five years an initiate sees his girl looking out the window when she should be cleaning his room, and she looks lonely, and he is curious.  He shouldn't be curious about a human, even a young and beautiful one.  She is an animal.  She cleans his toilet and licks his body when he commands.  What is she to him?  But one day she looks lonely, and he asks her name.  Why?  He did not even think she had a name.  Do you ask a dog its name, or do you name it?  But he knows she is not stupid.  She looks at his books sometimes, and there is understanding in her clear brown eyes.  Humans have books.  They are not beautiful books like ours, but they are filled with writings and illustrations.  Does she know books?  
He asks, "What are you thinking?"  Why?  Why did he want to know what was behind her eyes?  What perversity was in him that he wanted to know of the life of an animal?  
"Nothing," she says in her low tongue and looks at the ground.  
Her mood disturbs him.  She has a mood, like an unhappy pet, and he realizes suddenly that she has many moods and that he has noticed them even though he has not thought to watch her.  He is studying to be a mage, not an animal trainer.  Her eyes are clouded that day.  Her hands are listless.  She looks tired or sad.  What is he thinking?  What thoughts lead him to confusion?  Years have gone since the Queen has visited.  There are no Döckálf women within the Guild Hall, only human slaves.  Is that all he wants, a woman's touch?  This slave girl touches him when he commands, but she is always cold.  There is pleasure for him but not pleasure like shaping the air.  Not pleasure like making fire leap across the room.  He doesn't take her often.  He keeps her to dust his books and clean his toilet.  
"I am your slave," she says.  "Only your slave."  She tries to leave his room, but he won't let her.  He moves the air to hold her in place.  
"What is your name?" he asks her.  He doesn't know why he asks.  He knows her name; he has given her a Döckálf name.  What does he want?  To open her?  He could tear her open with magic, but he doesn't think that is what he wants.  He is unsure.  
"Sabah," she says, and he is startled.  That is not the name he gave her.  How did an animal name itself?  How did it think it was someone?  He falls into confusion, and this time Abmi-Okrath is not there to catch him.  
He speaks with her in her low tongue.  She is from Decadurinis.  Her father is wealthy and powerful among humans.  He is allied to a weak Döckálf house and traded his youngest daughter for political favors.  She was educated and was going to teach human children.  She does not say this at once.  A few words now, a few later.  She can speak a great deal and say nothing.  The initiate threatens her and blisters her, and she weeps, and he hates that she will not speak and would kill her and cannot.  He tells his mage-teacher she is not satisfactory, and he wants her removed, and he says, "If you are unhappy with her then kill her and take her soul.  Afrit trade services for human souls.  Then I'll send you another girl."  
But the initiate does not kill her.  It is hard to kill even an animal when it has a name.  He concentrates on his studies and does not ask her any more questions.  He does not allow her in his chamber when he is there.  He doesn't want her near any more.  He does not want her tongue on his skin.  He wants to remember Abmi-Okrath and the cohort.  He wants to concentrate on his studies so that he will survive the final test of the magi.  For the last two years of his private training he sees her only in the corridors and does not speak to her.  But sometimes he remembers her looking out the window and dreaming whatever animals dream, and he feels something close to pain.  

At the end of ten years my teacher-mage leads me and my slave girl to a large room filled with rugs and pillows.  "Today you return to your cohort," he tells me.  "Your final testing will be soon.  You have studied hard, Rujad-Loth.  Do well."  He leaves, and I enter the room and find that I am the last of the initiates to arrive.  What does that mean?  Anything?  How do the magi decide who is brought first and who last?  Vreen-Toc and Ashvad-Ko and Çir-Thulaya are at one side of the room, and Abmi-Okrath and his six are in the middle.  I go to him.  He is sprawled on the pillows with his legs crossed, and his girl next to him feeds him sugar figs.  His eyes are still clear and topaz and beautiful, but I do not see my reflection in them.  His eyes are full of himself.  "You look well, Rujad-Loth," he says.  "Stronger.  What did you study?"  
"You know my power, Abmi-Okrath."  
"You will be an element lord."  
"Yes."  
"Good.  Have you gone swimming lately?"  
"I have not."  
"Good."  Then his girl feeds him a fig, and he looks to her.  I would speak with him of the magic I have learned, of the mage who trained me, of the magi I met on rest days, but the Abmi-Okrath I knew is not in those eyes.  This Abmi-Okrath does not see Rujad-Loth any more but an element lord.  He sees not Ipthar-Conol but a spirit-singer.  Not Vreen-Toc but a fire-writer.  He is already thinking of us as magi.  I am still Rujad-Loth.  There are no words that can be said between us.  He is a stranger in the center of strangers.  I know their faces, but I do not know who they are.  Ten years have passed, and they are different.  Two are gone from Vreen-Toc's circle.  They had not survived their training.  I remember their faces but not their names.  The ones who live speak with each other:  "This is what I have studied, this is my girl, see how beautiful she is?  See how she attends me?  She knows obedience."  "What have you studied these ten years?"  "When does advanced training begin?  Does anyone know?"  "When is our final testing?  What will it be?"  How can I trust these strangers, even Abmi-Okrath who I once knew?  
Iliele-Kalan, whose magic is vision and spying, asks me why my girl looks unhappy.  I say I do not know.  I am an element lord, not an animal trainer.  He laughs and shakes his head.  
"This girl, now, she knows how to be pleasing," he says, and he shakes the collar on his girl's neck.  It is a wide leather collar with metal studs in it, and the butts of the rivets must be sharp for her neck is cut and bruised.  Her eyes are clouded with pain, and her lips are torn.  She was beautiful once.  She smiles and leans to Iliele-Kalan and kisses and licks his neck.  
"Does yours do tricks?" Iliele-Kalan asks.  
"She tells sad stories," I say.  
"Boring," he says.  "You should have killed her and gotten a new one."  
How long are we there before the pain begins?  Maybe half a day.  All that time we talk and watch one another and feel the people we have become.  But this does not go on.  Our master magi have brought us to go into the future and not to fall back to the past.  And it is pain that will take us forward.  It starts in the belly and feels like needles.  The slave girls cry out, and some scream.  "Oh, gods!" they say, even Sabah, who is no one, an animal with a name, an animal with a father in Decadurinis, an animal who wanted to teach children.  She clutches at her master with hands made strong by fear, and he makes a shield around her and himself.  What is he thinking?  Does he think he can stand against the magi?  For who else is making this pain but the magi in their final testing?  Does this fool think he can stand against so much power?  He puts his affection for his pet above his love for his Queen and his people.  How can he expect there will be no punishment?  
Abmi-Okrath pushes his girl away and stands, and she falls writhing with blood running from her mouth.  Her eyes roll into her head.  Vreen-Toc stands, Ashvad-Ko next to him.  No one else can stand.  With a burning stick of sandalwood Vreen-Toc draws the symbol "Thalúmantho"—the wall and the guardian—before him, and the spell of the magi cannot pierce him.  Ashvad-Ko can do nothing.  Only a mage of great experience could summon an afriti while in such pain.  
Pelmadan-Ylando holds his girl to him and tries to protect her and fails, and they fall twisting on the floor.  Blood runs from their ears and their eyes.  
"Push out the magic!" Abmi-Okrath commands and lifts his hands before him.  He forces the air around him into a wall to protect him.  
I can do that magic.  I shape the air into a storm around my slave girl and me to keep the magic of the magi out.  My magic is close and strong.  We will survive.  I will not let her die as the others are doing.  They are catching up the souls of their dying girls.  Vreen-Toc and Ashvad-Ko, even Abmi-Okrath, make the movements of catching souls.  
Pain rips through my storm and pierces me.  My slave girl screams, and her nails tear my skin.  I will hold.  I will keep this pet.  
Çir-Thulaya falls, kicking.  Where is Vreen-Toc now, with his symbols?  Iliele-Kalan crawls to Abmi-Okrath and lays his hands on Abmi-Okrath's calves.  His magic is to make stronger that which is strong and to weaken that which is weak.  Abmi-Okrath's wall of air grows, and Voril-Shor and Kiren-Lamadar crawl within it.  I hold my bubble of still air.  I do not know you any more, Abmi-Okrath.  Will you kill my girl, too, and take her soul?  
Vreen-Toc reaches before him and catches up the souls of Çir-Thulaya and his girl.  His eyes are swirling clouds.  
My wall of air is breaking.  My pet weeps and falls to the floor, and I will not look—  
I look away, into Abmi-Okrath's eyes, and he is the blade cutting lies away from truth.  The spell of the magi will kill my slave girl and me.  Will I die for an animal?  What would such a death serve?  I must live, that my people will be stronger.  I must join Abmi-Okrath or die.  What a power he has, to separate truth from lies!  I step away from my slave girl, and the spell of the magi pierces her.  I catch up her soul that no one else may take it.  
"Loth," Abmi-Okrath says, and I feel his magic flow.  I bend the air to my will and add my strength to his, and the magic we are making grows to surround me.  Six of us stand with Abmi-Okrath and push with all our power.  But we are not strong.  We have been apart for ten years, and we do not know each other.  Ipthar-Conol cries out and falls, and I feel—we all feel—our magic falter.  Abmi-Okrath reaches into him to take his soul, but he does not take it.  He gives of his strength, and Ipthar-Conol does his magic which is spirit-singing, and our spell to hold out the magi is knit strong again.  
Now Vreen-Toc's magic breaks before the spell of the magi, and he must come to Abmi-Okrath or die.  He and Ashvad-Ko stagger to us.  Vreen-Toc writes his symbols in the air and gives us strength, and our magic surrounds him and Ashvad-Ko and protects them.
Still we are weak.  There are holes and soft places in our magic, and pain stabs through.  Iliele-Kalan cries out, and there is blood on his lips, and Abmi-Okrath gives to him and takes from him, and our magic is strengthened.  One after the next we fall to the spell of the magi and are punctured in our spirits, and Abmi-Okrath reaches into us and gives and takes.  Even Vreen-Toc, who has fought Abmi-Okrath all the long years, is wounded and must be taken from and given into by him.  He is steel and diamond.  He is the pillar of stone.  The spell of the magi crushes the strength in us, and Abmi-Okrath puts his strength in its place, and we give into him our singing and our elements and our symbols and our strengths.  Do you understand what it is like in that room with the magic twisting about us and the dead girls and dead Döckálf boys who would not become men, flung across the bloody cushions?  
But the magi are not finished testing us.  Their spell suddenly turns, and the pain that stabs becomes hooks pulling.  We are not ready.  Our magic breaks in a hundred places and flows wild.  Fire and wind roar.  Bodies char, and there is the stink of burnt flesh.  Tapestries burn.  Cushions burn.  Who can see in the flames and the lightning?  There is only magic flowing wild and Abmi-Okrath standing in the center shouting, "Hold!" and the spell of the magi tearing.
In the pulling and the pain we find each other.  Where are the words?  Humans do not do this.  In our need our spirits reach out and find one another.  I am Rujad-Loth, and my magic is that of air and earth and fire and water.  And I am Ashvad-Ko who summons afrit, and Iliele-Kalan who strengthens what which is strong and weakens that which is weak, and all the other magi of our novad.  Above them all I am Abmi-Okrath who moves and shapes things and whose will is the strength of the novad.  All that they do I do.  All that I do is theirs.  We know one another again.  Where are the words for this, in your yapping?  
Vreen-Toc sees what must be done.  He writes his symbols like bones in the air, and our magic flows around them and draws strength from them.  Iliele-Kalan's magic expands Abmi-Okrath's walls farther from us, and my magic weaves through theirs, and Ipthar-Conol sings his spirit-singing and fills our magic with joy.  Kiren-Lamador sees the weak places in our magic, and Uthal-Dornat binds those places with his binding magic, and Ashvad-Ko and Voril-Shor make small magics to fill the holes in the greater magics and protect us from pain.  Now the spell of the magi cannot wound us, and soon after the test is finished.  
That is how a cohort of boys who are many becomes a novad of magi who act as one.  Each human mage must depend on himself for all things, but each Döckálf mage has the magic of his novad to aid him.  How can your pathetic, isolated wizards hope to compete?  As the War proved to all, they can not.  

Ten days after we become a novad, after we rest and heal, our Queen visits us.  But this time She is not watching us train.  This time She has come to take us from the Guild Hall into the greater world of our people.  There is a special room for Her visit, a room with soft lights and narcotic incense and many pillows.  We enter and sit, and for half a day we await Her.  For half a day the incense fills us with lethargy and dreams that flow like colored sand and water.  
Then our Queen enters the room, with young women following her.  Döckálf women.  They are as beautiful as women can be and wear clever clothing which conceals and reveals.  How many years since we have been near women of our race?  Sixty?  Sixty years seeing our women only through windows, only in dreams.  Our hearts quicken, and we see nothing but those women.  One is tall and has eyes of aquamarine.  Her body is strong and lithe.  Her steps are those of an assassin.  She sees Abmi-Okrath and he her, and in their eyes is hunger.  There is a small one who does not look comfortable, whose eyes are silver.  When she sees me she looks away.  Why do you look away, little one?  Do you want to look out some window and dream women's dreams?  
"You have done well, my magi," our Queen says.  "You have made me proud."  How Her face shines.  How many have heard Her say to them, "You have made me proud?"  Only the magi.  "Today you leave the Guild Hall and enter the lives of our people.  You have earned their trust and their respect.  You have earned the right to walk as the finest among them.  You have learned your magic well, and soon you will be trained to your duties as magi.  But today there are no duties.  Today there are the thanks of my priestesses for all you have done and will do."  She opens Her arms in giving, and the priestesses cross the room to us.  They murmur, I cannot hear if they speak words or only sounds.  Their voices are husky and their lips painted and their lashes long.  Their robes open and close and slide over their curves.  They are scented with flowers and incense and themselves.  The air fills with hunger.  The magi rise and join the priestesses, and they sink into the pillows.  Sweetly they sigh.  
But Silver Eyes walks to Vreen-Toc.  Vreen-Toc!  What has happened?  Why have you gone to him, Silver Eyes?  I wanted you!  Now there are no priestesses standing alone.  There are only eight, while we are nine.  Is this the design of our Queen, to leave one unsatisfied, that the others may feel more pleasure?  
Hands move on skin and mouths touch warmth.  Hair is untied and let fall.  My brother-magi are roused.  I feel their hunger.  Where is sweetness for me?  My lips are untouched.  How long must I stand here and watch smooth legs rising and listen to murmuring voices?  You, Silver Eyes, I would have loved you better than Vreen-Toc.  He has sat next to that brazier half the day, breathing incense.  Do you think he will love you as I could?  
Hai!  I will not watch this.  There are tapestries of animals to look at, animals and shapes and objects.  There are rugs and painted walls and ceilings.  I will look at those.  This tapestry is beautiful.  These are clever animals woven of threads.  How many years to weave this one tapestry?  Look at all these dogs, here.  Why dogs?  Was this what the weaver dreamed when she looked out her window?  
My Queen is looking at me.  I see Her from the edge of my eyes, but I know I am not seeing truly.  I am seeing visions caused by the incense.  
"Rujad-Loth," She says.  "Don't you see me looking at you?"  
"No.  I see incense shadows.  I see dogs in this tapestry."  
"Then turn your head and look carefully," She says, and Her voice is amused.  
How can I not look?  I turn my head and see Her also alone, reclined on a bench of scented cedar.  Was it there all the time?  Her hair flows silver onto the bench like a brook in moonlight, and Her eyes are golden and shrouded by incense smoke.  She is armored with the black metal kruné, but Her body under the metal is a woman's.  There are curves under the armor, just like the curves of the young women moaning behind me.  
"Aren't you lonely over there?" She says.  
"I am forgotten," I say.  
"Forgotten?" She says, and Her eyebrows rise.  "Come and see how forgotten you are."  I walk past the pillows and the twined bodies and go to Her.  She reaches out to me and puts Her hand on my arm.  
"You are frightened," She says.  
"Only a little excited."  
"A little?  I hear your heart from this bench," She says.  "But I can hardly see you through this smoke.  Come closer."  She draws me nearer and touches my face and says, "You are even more handsome, Rujad-Loth, and your eyes are more fierce.  You are not forgotten.  Now, help me with this armor."  She guides my hands to the buckles which hold Her greaves in place.  I can hardly push the straps through the steel eyes of the buckles, but then they go, and the greaves fall, and my hands touch Her legs.  Her skin is smooth and warm.  I smell Her scent that only the magi smell, or is that the incense?  
"Boots," She says.  The boot straps open hard, too, but She pulls Her legs, and I hold tight, and the boots come off in my hands.  There is soft fur inside.  Softness, on my Queen.  
She sits up and raises Her arms, and I pull the mail shirt over Her head.  It slides over Her arms and Her chest and Her back, and it, too, has soft fur inside.  Now She wears only a leather shirt and leather armor that covers Her hips and thighs.  
"Wait," She says.  She lifts my robe over my head.  It is black silk, with one gold thread in its hem.  It slides over my skin and sails over my head behind Her.  Her eyes are melted gold, and Her eyebrows are too beautiful.  Her scent fills me.  My fingers find the straps on Her leather shirt and tease them.  They, too, are tight and strong.  As I tug She reaches to my belly and strokes, and then Her hand moves down, and I pull the strings and tear them from their eyes.  She laughs, and I hurl the strings behind me and pull the shirt from Her body and see Her breasts smooth and naked before me.  
"Wait, wait, Loth," She says and takes my hands that are reaching and puts them on the leather on Her hips.  Even this leather is boiled and tough and laced tight.  My Queen, who is it you fear, that you are armored with kruné and boiled leather?  We are your magi, not your enemies.  But these are only string knots, and I pull them open and take the leather from Her hips.  And here in secret is your silver fur, my Queen, your softness!  
Now Her hands are on my body, touching and caressing.  She kisses me and I Her, but I am not adept.  She strokes me, and there is nothing but Her hands and Her scent and Her warm body on the cedar bench.  I am next to Her, how did I get here?  Her hair falls over my shoulders and back.  Her mouth covers mine and finds my chest and my body.  I reach and feel the curves of Her back, hips, soft fur...then I know my Queen and am filled with Her.  She is in my pores and my mouth.  Her scent fills me and covers me.  Her warmth enfolds me.  Her teeth close on my neck and tear the skin, and Her tongue licks, and Her nails drink deep of the blood in my back.  Her hands guide me, and Her legs squeeze, and Her hips speak to mine with wisdom.  Then She pulls me into Her and shudders with pleasure, and pleasure burns through me, and I give into Her that which is mine.  For a time there is nothing but the heat of our bodies and Her beauty.  Then She slides away and covers herself again with kruné scales and boiled leather and steel buckles.  
"Go, Rujad-Loth," She says, and I put on my robe and rejoin my brother-magi.  They are not looking at me or at Her.  Didn't they see us?  Didn't they see Her beauty?  But even Abmi-Okrath's eyes are clouded.  She hid us from all my novad.  She stands, and the priestesses return to Her.  Their rouge is smeared and their lip paint gone.  Their hair is tangled, and they shine with sweat.  But they are nothing for me.  I have known our Queen, and these are only girls.  

After that day we are free to walk the streets of RéAmora.  We are trained to guard the city, and we are given missions to kill the enemies of our Queen and our people.  
"This novad will be one of the greatest in the history of our people," Abmi-Okrath says to us, and he drives us to make that true.  When a tentacled afriti goes mad with killing ours is the novad which lashes it with pain-whips until it submits once more to our will.  When a Ceretesian tribe rebels against our Queen's rule it is our novad which volunteers to hunt them.  When we find them, they are a thousand with lances on horses, and we are nine in robes.  With shearing spells we cut their horses from under them.  With heavy air we press them to ground.  Then we summon wind and sand.  Before that day is finished all thousand are buried, and we are home in the Guild Hall.  When the Thalararian NaHrouz send inadequate tribute we go into their tunnels to correct them.  The NaHrouz generals have set many traps to waste our magics, and they collapse a tunnel upon us.  But am I not an element lord, with sand and stone my toys?  We break free of the earth and re-enter their tunnels.  We hunt their generals and roast them until they remember their place.  
Abmi-Okrath volunteers his novad for many difficult missions, and always we succeed.  His name is often spoken in the Guild Hall and the streets of RéAmora, and our names with his.  When our people gather before the Temple of the Mother to honor the magi, our novad stands only ten steps below our Queen, and Abmi-Okrath would rise higher still.  Each time we return from our missions our Queen sends women for our novad, and in the room of narcotic incense we satisfy our hungers.  There is never a woman for me, not Silver Eyes or any other, and my Queen never again brings me onto Her bench.  But when the incense is thick and the shadows heavy I remember Her touch and Her softness, and I feel the bite of Her nails and am satisfied.  

Now you think you know.  You think, 'She took him into Herself, and that is why he is loyal.  He cannot bring himself to believe She is dead.'  If that was all there was to Her I would believe Her dead and my people crushed.  My Queen whom I knew that day was a woman, and women can die.  You think you know why I believe She lives and will lead us to victory?  You know nothing.  I have built only the first part of a bridge of understanding between us.  Wait until I build the rest before you try to cross!  
It is our will to power that will bring my people to victory.  Ours have always been the lands between the World's Spine and the Golden Ocean, and we shall conquer the lands beyond those also.  All of this shall come to be because we have the will to power which humans can only mimic.  Our wise ones say the will to power has two sources.  The first is the hunger of a people to be one people and to have one who rules them.  Of the oneness of the magi with each other and our Queen I have told you.  The second source is the will to sacrifice.  I have seen that humans are afraid to sacrifice those closest to them, for they fear death and do not want its touch near.  But our Queen understands sacrifice and has the strength to see it done.  Listen, and I shall tell you of the will to sacrifice which is our Queen's.  
During the fourth year of the War we were not progressing.  Our Ceretesian vassals besieging Blackstone ran out of food and ate their prisoners and ate their slaves and then had nothing left to eat.  The Technocrats and the Luricanians destroyed our Irsminian vassals and marched to break the siege.  A Technocrat crystal ship fell onto RéAmora and erupted like the sun, and a score of small temples and a hundred priestesses were burned to ash.  We had destroyed the Technocracy's capital city and many of their towns and their villages, and we had spread disease among their children and battered their command mountain.  We had flamed their armies until the sand of their nation fused to glass, and they would not stop.  Their metal vehicles and their metal-skinned men came forward and only forward, and their crystal ships and their weapons of light and thunder tore from us our brothers and sisters.  There was great fear in RéAmora, and hunger to finish the War.  
The day the crystal ship fell onto RéAmora and burnt the temples our Queen called Abmi-Okrath's novad before Her.  We did not know why we were summoned.  It had not been our novad which had been guarding the city when the airship fell.  The messenger afriti said to Abmi-Okrath only, "She wants you and yours to report to Her.  She wants you now."  
Abmi-Okrath brought us together, and we walked swiftly through the streets of the city.  Around us the lords led slaves toward the blackened temples.  The magi had put out the fires.  Slaves would clear the rubble.  
We mounted the steps of the Temple and passed through the portals.  The afrit on watch did not look at us, not even Abmi-Okrath whom they admired.  He had brought back many human souls for them.  But now our Queen's eyes were on us, and She was angry.  For what?  The burnt temples and dead priestesses had not been our fault.  Why were we summoned?  In the Temple our steps were light and quick, and we walked together so that our heels struck the floor as one.  We passed others—warriors, assassins, NaHrouz, slaves—who stood aside.  The afrit flying along the ceiling ignored us.  Abmi-Okrath kept our pace.  Fear pushed and pulled us, but it did not settle in us.  We walked too quickly for it to settle.  
We stopped outside the Sanctum of the Magi.  Its doors were open, and its stone benches and cushions were lit by the red light of the braziers.  The tapestries were black and purple, and the rugs were black and purple, and She had had curtains of black cloth hung from the ceiling.  The air was filled with incense.  In the dark places shadows rose and sank.  They slid under the benches and flowed up the curtains and the tapestries.  They were shadow afrit, those which drain the blood and freeze the spirit.  Fear settled into us then, fear and confusion.  We had not failed our Queen and our people.  Why were we in the Temple with the shadow afrit?  
"Enter," She said.  "Enter and sit."  She stood across the Sanctum in front of a dark curtain.  Her black armor had hidden Her from my sight.  
We went into the Sanctum and sat on the benches.  We could not see one another.  We were separated by curtains.  I felt my brother-magi near me, their fear and their confusion.  I felt the hunger of the shadow-afrit like cold wind on my neck.  Our Queen stood in the center of the room, looking at Abmi-Okrath.  
"You have failed," She said.  Her voice was lightning jumping in the storm of Her anger.  "Half a hundred priestesses are dead.  Temples are in flames."  
"We fought the flames all afternoon," Abmi-Okrath said.  
"Why are there flames at all, Abmi-Okrath?"  
"There were failures during the watch," he said.  
"Failures," She said, but She was not repeating.  She looked at us when She said it.  
"The Mageguild is investigating," Abmi-Okrath said.  "Surely this has been reported to you, our Queen?"  
"Failures in the watch," She said.  "Failures at Blackstone.  Failures in Luricania.  There would have been no War if the Mageguild had not failed in Sergi."  
Abmi-Okrath said, "The Mageguild does not fight alone."  
"The Mageguild is my sword and my shield," She said.  "The other guilds support you, Abmi-Okrath.  They follow.  They cannot win this war for the Mageguild."  
"It is not this novad which has failed," Abmi-Okrath said.  
"All the magi have failed," She said.  
A shadow afriti fell on Abmi-Okrath's back then and pierced his neck with its cold teeth.  We gasped at his pain and writhed as the cold ran through his blood, our blood.  Have I not said that we felt each other?  We all felt the cold in Abmi-Okrath's neck.  
Then Abmi-Okrath filled with resentment and anger.  All the rage of a black heart welled in him so thick and strong it sickened me.  He hated Her command of his novad and him.  He hated Her command of the magi.  It was we who faced the enemies of our people while She sat in Her temple in RéAmora.  It was we who faced fire and steel, it was we who bled and died.  Why didn't the Mageguild drag our Queen off Her throne and set itself to rule?  Why were the strong subservient?  All these feelings burst from Abmi-Okrath like pus from a rotten wound.  My brother magi gagged and coughed.  What perversion was in his heart that he wished to cast Her down and set the Mageguild in command?  The hand which wields the sword is not the mind which commands it, why could he not see that?  Abmi-Okrath, when did the sickness take you?  How did you hide it from the healers?  How did you hide it from us, your novad?  I never saw clouds in your eyes.  
"What is your desire, our Queen?" Abmi-Okrath said, and I knew he asked for healing.  I thought She would forgive him and heal him there before us, and he would be restored.  But that was the thinking of one who knew nothing.  It was She who knew what had to be done.  I did not see Her hand take the mace from Her belt.  I saw Her arm rise and Her body move forward and Her arm fall, and then Abmi-Okrath died.  His skull crunched, and his pain threw me to the floor.  He was among us, warm and living, and then he dropped into the cold and the dark.  I teetered at the edge of nothing.  Abmi-Okrath was of me, and I was of him.  I was of our Queen, and She was of me.  Abmi-Okrath had saved me from Vreen-Toc and Ashvad-Ko, and my Queen had saved me from loneliness.  It was he who had taken me into his circle and shown me my place among the magi, and it was She who had taken me into Herself and shown me my place among our people.  His falling spirit pulled me toward the dark, and She pulled me toward the light, and my feelings shattered and fell through me like shards of glass.  
Her healing touch brought me to my own body.  
"Stand, Loth," She said, and I stood.  "Bring him."  
My brother-magi were fallen and insensible, even Vreen-Toc.  Only I stood.  Abmi-Okrath lay next to his bench, his head broken.  The shadow afriti which had revealed his sickness to us was gone back into the dark.  
"He is too heavy," I said.  
"You can bear his weight," She said.  She touched my shoulder, and I leaned down and picked up his body.  His blood ran hot on my hands and soaked through the sleeves of my robe.  It dripped onto my legs.  She walked through the Temple of the Mother, and I followed.  Broken emotions whirled in me and cut, and my spirit bled.  Our novad had no leader.  Our Queen had destroyed us.  We Her magi had failed Her and our people.  But we were needed.  Why had She not healed him?  Had he been so sick?  
It was Abmi-Okrath who led us down through the clouds over the Technocracy's metal mountain early on a morning when the sun shone fierce and hot, and we fell from the sky screaming, the magic flowing between us, and we threw it before us as a hammer of air and smashed one of their airships from the sky and cracked the stone of their mountain—  
My Queen had said, "You are not forgotten," and took me into Herself when I was alone—  
His topaz eyes looked into mine with all the truth in them—  
She was warm and live, and he was dead in my arms—    
We passed through an outer chamber and an inner passage, and black metal doors opened before us, and we entered the Queen's Sanctum where I had never been.  The light was darkest red, swimming in blood, but there was no fire to make that light.  I could smell Her in that room.  It smelled only of Her and blood.  
"Stop," She said.  She was facing me.  I do not remember Her turning.  I do not remember Her moving five steps in front of me.  There was an altar of steel between us.  It was not flat but was a bed of spikes as high as my knees.  It was a spirit-altar, and upon it Abmi-Okrath's soul would writhe.  
"My Queen," I said, but I could not speak.  How could She do such a thing to Her own mage?
"Loth," She said, and I looked at Her face.  She was as beautiful and as still as the first sunrise of autumn.  Her eyes were as golden as love and as clear as the eyes of my slave girl and the topaz eyes of Abmi-Okrath, and in them I saw that strength and wisdom which was our Queen's.  Abmi-Okrath's spirit would writhe on the altar like the souls of countless slaves and would attract powerful afrit.  They would delight in tearing his spirit and would laugh at its pain.  She would capture them and turn them to our needs, and with their help we would crush the Technocracy.  Only She had the will to use his soul's suffering to strengthen our people.  She would stride forward, forward, and we Her magi would walk forever at Her side.  
I dropped Abmi-Okrath's body onto the altar, and it was pierced.  

Now do you understand how I can believe?  That human master can keep me here, and he may kill me one day, but we will never lose.  Look to your own lands to see failure and death.  Your Decadurinis is in ruins.  Your Little Nations and Atlan are swept away as though they had never been, and your Luricania is all but dead.  Your nations have burned for ten years, and they will smolder for a hundred more.  So starve, and as you nibble shoe leather and eat your dead children remember that Her people, we of Seligar, will never be defeated.  

— end —



Foreword — "The Fart and the War of Flames"

Located at the far eastern edge of Crassia, Pamandari has historically remained free from many of the controls which the Döckálfs placed on the inner nations.  The earliest Pamandarians quickly discovered the extraordinary fertility of their lands, and the bulk of the populace became farmers, catered to by a small class of merchants, craftsmen and professionals.  The nation was ruled by unusually benevolent politicians drawn from the most successful of both classes.  Prestige and rank in Pamandari were gained not from the accumulation of wealth but from its redistribution; successful politicians (called "wise men") acquired goods and favors and redistributed them liberally to those who lived in their regions.  An alliance with Luricania provided for Luricania to defend Pamandari from outside attack while Pamandari would provide Luricania with food in the event of rice blight or other natural disaster.  Because Pamandari's leaders always paid their annual tribute to Seligar promptly and without trouble, the Döckálfs maintained only a very small, diplomatic presence in Pamandari.  As a result of their fortunate circumstances the Pamandarians developed habits of free speech and unhesitating generosity which astonish the rest of Crassia.  
The War did not change Pamandari's character.  Protected by its distant location from the central violence of the War, Pamandari survived the hostilities literally untouched:  according to government records fewer than two hundred Pamandarians died in the conflict.  The Döckálfs demanded extra tributes of food during the War, but, as these were immediately delivered to them by the Pamandarians, no Döckálf or Döckálf vassal attacked the nation.  Pamandari also secretly sent food and healers to Sergi, Luricania and Atlan.  In the aftermath of the War Pamandari is perhaps the most intact Crassian nation.  From her abundant fields and orchards come seemingly endless shipments of food to feed the hungry millions of the inner nations and the healers, doctors and nurses to tend to those injured in body and mind.  From her money houses are flowing loans of gold and silver for rebuilding the economies of the inner nations.  
I spent two months in Pamandari, most of that in the capital city of Anjibi.  The city was full of refugees from many nations, and, while I recorded accounts from some of these individuals, none could match the narrative of Maged Al-Faroul, a professional storyteller who practices his craft in Anjibi's vast TaHrir Square.  A tall, lithe man of fifty-two, Maged speaks with the energy of a twenty-year-old and gestures as wildly as any Little Nations merchant.  He smiles, laughs and shouts as he tells his stories.  At each change of perspective he looks in a different direction so the listener knows whose side of the conflict he is presenting.  
This is not a first-hand account but rather a story which has wide circulation in Pamandari.  In its combination of holy war metaphor and farce it reveals the sensibilities of Pamandari's people and gives the reader an excellent overview of the most famous events of the War as seen through Pamandarian eyes.  



The Fart and the War of Flames

This is the story of the War of Flames.  It is as true as Utu above and Pamandari below and the seas between nations.  

IT all started in Seligar, with a fart.  Not a polite fart loosed at the table or a silent fart reeking of old death but a loud grunt of a fart that flapped the Döckálf Queen's cheeks and dampened the seat of her pantaloons.  A queenly fart it was, and it left silence in the Queen's temple and shock on the faces of her subjects.  "Who was that?" roared the Queen.  "Step forward, foul tooter!"  But none of her people moved.  "Captain," said she, "Was that you who unleashed this unholy cloud?"  For the captain of her guard was the largest in the temple, and people were staring at him.  "It was he!" howled the captain, and he pointed at the Head Mage of the Mageguild.  "Not I!" whined the Head Mage, and he in turn pointed at a priestess who was out of favor.  "A plot!" cried the Queen.  "Magi and priestesses together befouling my temple!"  "Not us!" wailed the Head Mage and priestess as one.  "It was the Technocrats who caused this stench!"  "Then they shall perish!" said the Queen.  "Send my magi to destroy them."  And send them the Head Mage did.  
Now, Sergi is the desert homeland of the Technocrats, men devout in their faith and strong in metal magic.  The men of that land would rather build bridges than make love to their women...but, for all that, they have given much good to the world.  From their number-filled heads come water screws and pumps, glass and tools and a thousand more wondrous things.  Truly they are among Utu's chosen people.  So, when the Queen sent her magi, Utu sent a messenger to warn the Technocrats of danger.  Now, strange as this sounds, at the heart of their nation is a mountain of metal wherein their leaders dwell.  When they heard Utu's warning they shut the doors of their mountain and waited for the magi to come.  
And what were the other nations doing as the magi flew over?  Why, they lived as always they had, a wagon train of asses hitched to the Queen.  They sent her their treasures, they sent her their children, always they heard and obeyed.  For, you see, long ago her magi conquered Crassia, and for five centuries men were docile.  But even asses will eventually kick, and these had been long beaten.  They needed only an excuse to break their chains, and that excuse was soon to come.  
In Pamandari, too, we lived as always we had, free men in all but name.  For when Utu first granted lands to His peoples, where did we go but far from the Queen?  We sent her a tribute of food and of men with flattering tongues, and so good was the food and clever the men that the Döckálfs held us in peace.  We plowed our fields and planted our crops, we drank our beer and loved our women, and what wiser life can there be?  
But wisdom is not for everyone.  In every age there is one who stands above others in hunger for glory and power.  Like the mongoose this man sticks his nose in everyone's business and looks about him for chances for fame.  In this War the mongoose was Great Master Luritsuran, a master wizard hailing from Atlan.  When the magi passed over his homeland he felt them, and he cast spells to learn why they came.  Finding war in the air he readied his magic and prepared for the coming of armies.  
From the Queen's island of Seligar eleven magi flew straight to the land of the Technocrats.  Wretched was the day the gods of the Döckálfs squatted and shat forth their magi!  Powerfully wicked, magically strong, their hearts were maggots and their brains full of cunning.  But even Utu has scum between His toes.  Can we expect the world to be better?  The magi flew to the metal mountain, and there they wove their spells.  Afrit they summoned, ringéd and stripéd, spidrous and leprous, umber and scarlet.  "Go forth and kill!" said the magi, "Go and feast!  Go and smash!"  And their afrit went forth and slaughtered.  For ten days they fell upon the Technocrats' city, for ten days they clawed the metal mountain.  Women cried out and children wept fear, and the men were too frightened to fight.  The Döckálfs thought then the Technocracy would fall.  
But did I not say the Technocrats were among the chosen of Utu?  They did not fall.  They did not surrender.  Instead like hornets they filled with anger.  Their warriors threw fire and heavenly lightning to scorch and blast the afrit.  Peals of thunder roared on the mountain and struck deaf the afrit lords.  At last the magi fled with their servants to hide in holes beneath the city.  For the first time since Utu first rose in the world the magi had failed in their mission.  
In mighty Blackstone, that decadent city, the human wizards of Atlan were watching.  "What to do now?" cried the wizards.  "Where to run, where to hide?  The Technocrats have started a war!"  But the vicious among them seized chance by the short hairs and took on the guise of assassins.  Blackstone was home to many Döckálf magi whose eyes were south on their brothers.  While their backs were turned the wizards cut them down.  In an eyeblink Atlan was free of magi and broken away from the Queen.  
In Pamandari we heard naught of these matters.  We keep no wizards to tell us dark news.  Why bring problems from afar to trouble our sleep?  So, while in other nations wizards voiced woe, we heard not a whisper of trouble.  We took in our crops and loved our children.  We read the Book and raised our animals.  We lived wisely and well as always we have, and the War stayed far from our shores.  
The killing of magi brought war to Atlan, and the mongoose Luritsuran came out to play.  As it says in the Book, he who slays armies is he who wins space in the pages of history, and history was the hammock the mongoose would sleep in.  So in the mountains of Atlan he laid traps of harsh magic to swallow whole legions of men.  
"Atlan rebels, too!" cried the Queen.  "It is riot, and War!  Head Mage, punish them all!"  Off he ran to obey.  Two septads of magi flew from her temple to the Wizards' Academy in Blackstone.  "The Döckálfs are coming!  The Döckálfs are coming!" squawked the Headmistress of the Academy.  "They'll roast my pupils to death in their fires, and I'll have no one to order about!"  "Send us away!" begged her wizards, "or we will all perish!"  So the Headmistress made a hole with her magic and sent them far from great Blackstone.  Then she crawled through her hole and shut it up after, and the Döckálfs had no prey.  
In the land of the Technocrats the magi called storms to lash at the capital city.  They froze the air and turned water to ice.  They withered the plants and froze all the animals.  The people burned wood and old paper and dung, but what good could that do?  The frost of the magi was stronger.  People fled to the desert, and the magi called, "Victory!"  But they should have known better, they had already failed once.  The Technocrats summoned lightning and fiery rain, and for three days those fell on the city.  Where once had stood houses and schools and bazaars, naught was left but ruin and the strong metal mountain.  But the magi of Seligar were dead.  
If only all battles had gone so well.  As the Technocrats killed magi the people of Atlan were eaten alive.  They went to sleep one evening and the next morning found an army of Ceretesians at their back door.  The Queen in her rage had summoned her vassals and sent them to Atlan to punish.  By the thousands the farmers of Atlan abandoned their towns, their fields and their homes.  But not fast enough.  On came the cannibals and killers of Ceretesia, and proud Atlan was stripped.  Her Eastern Reach fell, and the armies moved south to devour the heartland cities.  
 Even in Pamandari we heard this news, and for a short time we listened.  But what fool listens to others when his own land needs tending?  Once the news was heard we returned to our farms.  We hoed in our fields and swung in our swings and filled old outhouses with sweetsoil.  We took fish from our rivers and coaxed honey from bees and thanked great Utu for our plenty.  
Let us not forget the mongoose, awaiting the Queen's armies.  The Ceretesians marched through his mountains on their way to Blackstone.  His traps in the passes opened like flowers, and death was their ugly scent.  His explosions and fires killed thousands of men.  Even afrit and magi were pulled from the skies and hurled against cliffs by his magic.  So fierce were his spells and bloody his ways that for a moment the armies were halted.  
But the Queen had had many years to plan her wars.  In Thalarar she raised an army of armored NaHrouz and brought them in ships to fight for her.  Fifty thousand NaHrouz starving for battle boarded her swiftest fleet.  Northward they sailed, ship after ship.  But Utu could not abide such filth on His seas, and He called up wind and rain.  He threw down His lightning and whipped up waves.  When He was done not a single ship was afloat, and the NaHrouz bobbed about on the bottom.  
Well...the world has known storms before, even great ones, but in this War it would see something new.  Never had the Technocrats taken up swords, but now they gathered an army.  In columns and squadrons their soldiers marched north.  With them went airships and carts of metal and weapons of light and flame.  No one knew where they were going or what they intended, save to hurt the Döckálfs.  
This new army was not lost on the Queen.  Another army she raised, the men of foul Irsmin, lowest trash among people.  Southward they marched through the Ceretesian heartland, eating all in their way.  They ate women and children, animals and garbage, anything that could be eaten.  When they were glutted at last they marched south to Atlan to join their flesh-eating friends.  In a few short weeks all that was left of that nation was the single, walled city of Blackstone.  
How could we in Pamandari believe such dark tidings?  Our trading partner, Atlan, fallen!  Surely the people of the inner nations were making a joke.  Away went our diplomats, our spies and our watchers, to find the truth to this word.  The news they sent back was of movements of armies.  Cities were burning.  Navies were sailing.  Half of Crassia was covered in blood.  So our wise men grew careful and thoughtful and called our people home.  
After such a strong start, where went the mongoose?  Some said it was he who sank the Queen's navy, while others said he died in the passes.  Some said he fought in Blackstone or on the high seas, or in Thalarar or Varin or Balon.  Others said he had fled to peaceful lands.  All I can say is that then in the War Luritsuran was silent.  
In Seligar the Queen reeled on her throne.  Eleven magi dead in Sergi, and Sergi unconquered!  Her navy of NaHrouz was sunk.  Technocrats marched to destroy her soldiers, and Blackstone's strong walls held fast.  "Send forth more magi!" she ordered, "and afrit and priestesses.  Sicken the people of Sergi!  Strike down their children and kindle their farms, and we'll see if they fight then."  Away flew her magi and afrit and priestesses to spread their Queen's desires.
But as I have said the Technocrats stand in Utu's full light.  Always they were two steps ahead of the Queen.  For they had healers and potions and hospitals, and what were diseases to them?  Forward pressed Sergi's army with airships and thunder, fast as an arrow in flight.  The Irsminian army met them in Atlan, where it was Irsminian blood that was shed.  
Through those first two years of the War the men of Luricania stood gaping.  A war to the west!  Whatever to do?  Why, what if it came to them next?  But let's give them credit if their heads were too slow, for in the end their hearts won the day.  The Atlaneans had forever been their allies and friends, and this was not quickly forgotten.  The farmers reared up and let out a roar and took up their swords and their bows.  They turned grain ships to warships, old leather to boots and sailed westward to battle the Queen.  
It seemed only Pamandari was outside the madness.  Every other nation had an army and shiny weapons well soiled.  The navies of ten nations fought for the seas.  Cities burned, people died, and Atlan's wide fields ran red.  What had come over Crassia that men would play such a game?  What afrit possessed their minds?  Why couldn't the Queen remember that it was only a fart that had started the War and bring her magi home?  When the many are mad the few must stay sane.  In Pamandari we tended our sheep and thanked Utu for His blessings.  Another year passed as the war-winds blew on, but they did not yet blow our way.  
And where was the mongoose?  Nearly every nation of Crassia was bloodied in war, and men fell to the sword like wheat to the scythe.  Everyone prayed for Luritsuran to use his dark magic.  All prayers went unanswered.  As the Queen's armies marched and her priestesses spread plague, as magi felled cities and women were murdered, where was he then?  
Now the Queen felt the nipping of fear.  Embattled in Atlan, embattled in Sergi, her armies were checked on all sides.  Her magi slew wizards, but more took their places, and her priestesses were not stopping Sergi.  Wherever she looked she saw only enemies, enemies who would not fall easily.  But if she slew one, would not the rest topple?  So the farmers she struck, the people of Luricania.  She sent magi over their heads.  Over the capital city they called storm clouds and lightning.  From the harbor they called waves and rip-tides.  But Utu loves Luricanians as much as he does Technocrats, and He warned them ahead of time.  Though their city was turned to mud and dragged under, only its roaches were conquered.  
Some old ones say each cock crows its hour, and the Queen had had her turn.  It was the Technocracy which next stood up and crowed.  On the border to Atlan men in bright armor burned all that stood in their way.  They tromped upon Irsmin as horses tromp snakes until the Irsminian army broke.  In Sergi itself, where the priestesses made sickness, the farmers raised up their pitchforks.  In one bloody month a hundred priestesses ended their lives on three tines.  
But never a cock crowed that another did not come running to challenge its strength.  Irsmin was gone, but Ceretesia remained.  Its army had grown hungry from siege.  Half the cannibals left Blackstone and marched to crush Sergi, and in the hills of south Atlan steel and flames clashed.  
We men of Pamandari could no longer sit by.  Outside our fair land filth was spreading and rose higher every day.  But what to do was the question.  Wrong action is worse than no action, the Book says, and what wise man wouldn't agree?  To challenge the Queen was to be destroyed.  What good was that to anyone?  So to the Queen we said, "We're neutral—we'll do nothing."  And under the table we extended our hands with food and healers to our friends.  
As armies rose and generals fell, as priestesses died and magi threw lightning, as Technocrats slew northmen and flames ate proud cities, where was Atlan's mongoose?  Where were his death-traps and soul-stealing spells, where were his storms of fire?  The whisperers said he had quit the War—or was he only gathering strength?  
Just when men thought the Queen had no more armies, another rose to her call.  In the Little Nations her NaHrouz marched from their tunnels to conquer the merchant cities.  Like a flash flood they washed over those lands.  They swept away sultanates and knocked down the temples.  The fat traders barely had time to sit up and belch before they were defeated.  
Perhaps the fall of the Little Nations goaded the Technocrats, for they hurled far the javelin of war.  An airship soared from their metal mountain across the sea to Seligar.  So swiftly it flew not one mage saw it coming.  It fell from the sky onto RéAmora and burst as hot as Utu Himself.  Fortresses fell and temples burned.  Magi and priestesses roasted.  The Queen cowered that day and hid under her throne, but in the human lands we cheered.  
Only in Blackstone were there no cheers.  An army of flesh-eaters prowled her walls.  Afrit hungered after her souls.  Magi summoned storms and insects to plague her.  All day and night the city sizzled with magic as human wizards held out the magi.  Blackstone still lived but grew steadily weaker.  The armies of free men saw her falling, but none could move to help.  
In Pamandari we hunted deer and fished W'tan's green seas.  We furrowed fields and put in wheat, but in planting we took no pleasure.  As went Blackstone went the hearts of men, and as one we fell despairing.  Our healers left us, we sent food on ships, and none of them returned.  
  As Blackstone gave under and the Little Nations crumbled, the mongoose of Atlan stayed hidden.  What was he doing?  Why was he waiting?  Where was the force of his magic?  
In this War every nation did as never it had.  The Queen of the Döckálfs had never left her temple, but in the fourth year of the War she traveled to Blackstone.  Surrounded by priestesses and scores of magi she wove a ruinous spell.  Forgotten was the breeze from below which had started the War.  Forgotten was the finger of blame.  The war-winds had gathered to a hurricane, and death filled the heart of the Queen.  For a month she squatted and groaned, for a month her priestesses chanted.  At last she birthed magic that robbed the city of its heart and took away its soul.  The wizards faltered, the watch failed, and the city of Blackstone fell.  
Was there even one man who did not weep when Blackstone broke?  Some not only wept but talked of surrender.  Others threw down their scimitars.  But the Technocrats faltered not.  Through the Ceretesian army they slashed, making roadways of bodies and bridges of bones.  Then who did they meet but the asses of Luricania, who had at last fought through to meet them.  Together the armies of two faithful lands marched north to the magi at Blackstone.  
Luricanians, allied with Technocrats!  Luricanians, fighting at all!  They had raised one army for their friend Atlan, and they'd built a strong navy to sink NaHrouz pirates.  It was their grain ships that fed the free armies and their warships which challenged the Queen's.  And when they heard the Queen calling yet more NaHrouz, they sent a second army to fight.  On Thalarar's sands the two armies clashed.  The dunes of that land became graveyards.  Is this the glory of war that men speak of, when armies are killed to the man?  
In Pamandari wheat was scythed and baranno was plucked.  Oranges ripened and cattle grew fat.  Sweet rains fell, and sweeter women were married, but fear had come to our land.  If Blackstone with all her wizards could fall, how long did Pamandari have?  But Utu does not like fear plaguing the faithful and put us to His work.  The wounded and weakened of a dozen nations came from over the sea.  We opened our arms to all and accepted them as our own.  
Through all the slaughter of the fourth year of the War, Great Master Luritsuran was silent.  
And the Queen was not done.  Not one spell had been in her but twins, death and doom.  As Blackstone fell she went to Luricania, there to birth more horror.  In ten days the fields blighted, and fruit trees withered.  Ten days after that the animals perished.  In ten more the children took sick.  Every ten days a new plague swept the land, until even the strongest grew weak.  For the rest of the War, and even long after, Luricania was sickly and dying.  
At last the armies of Luricania and Sergi reached Blackstone.  For a month they crashed rams into the gates and shouted for the magi to surrender.  But the magi had been busy inside the walls.  When the gates opened at last Blackstone's people came forth, smiling with two grins, with slits in their throats.  The magi had taken their lives and stolen their souls and sent the corpses to fight.  
Evil comes in threes, as everyone knows.  The Queen made two spells but was not content.  To her NaHrouz in the Little Nations she gave new orders, and they fixed their eyes on the north.  On the last of her ships they sailed to Decadurinis, protected by magi and the will of the Queen.  On the shores of that nation they burned the villas.  They torched the cities and set alight fields.  The lawyers, the poets, the scholars, the thinkers, the scribes and the readers were slain.  
Then Pamandari was alone.  Atlan had fallen, Decadurinis burned.  Luricania was too weakened to fight.  Who would grow wheat, who would grow rice, from what lands were fruit to come?  All from Pamandari, or from nowhere at all.  All was as the Queen had willed it.  Now the Döckálfs sent commands to our wise men:  our ships would stop sailing, our food would stop flowing.  We were to do nothing.  The inner nations would starve.  
And then—praise be to Utu who alone sees the pattern!—the mongoose of Atlan returned.  In the Little Nations he caused The Three Sisters to waken and fill NaHrouz tunnels with lava.  Their vicious whelps, their women and slaves, their halls and storehouses burned.  The north-marching NaHrouz turned tail and ran home, and the land of lawyers survived.  
The wave which rises must eventually sink.  These are the words of the Book.  The Döckálfs had lashed out and brought down four nations, but now their Queen was weary.  To RéAmora she ran, back to her temple, to rest and recover her strength.  
Her armies fought on.  The soldiers of Sergi and Luricania tried to take Blackstone, but the flesh-eaters of Ceretesia held firm.  The magi cracked the earth to swallow hundreds of men and sent afrit against the soldiers.  The armies retreated.  Arms could not win the day.  From Sergi's metal mountain a crystal ship flew, so high it touched Utu's face.  Then it hurtled down through blue sky onto Blackstone.  Above the towers the ship loosed lightning, and the winds of war blew savage.  In a flash it was finished.  Where a city had stood lay ashes and bodies.  Where a million people had loved were ruins and char.  But the soldiers of Ceretesia were cooked, and the magi were blasted to smoke.  
All over Crassia the War paused.  Men stood blackened and bloodied, scratching their heads.  The hunger to kill that had ruled them was gone.  Maybe it blew away in the winds from the Technocrats' blast.  Maybe men had had their fill.  After all, such madness can not last forever, and it was time for the War to end.  
In Pamandari our hearts eased.  The Queen's armies were cinders, and her servants were dust.  Her navies were sunk.  Her afrit were scattered.  The mongoose would see to the rest.  In our lands the summer storms brought rain and new life.  Our crops grew high and our fruit grew heavy, and there would be food for all.  
  There is little more to tell.  The mongoose of Atlan challenged the Queen in her temple.  Black lightning was thrown and green fire cast.  Afrit were called to fight djinn.  In the midst of the magic the ceiling stones cracked, and granite accomplished what armies had not.  The Queen of the Döckálfs was crushed under stone, and the mongoose Luritsuran died with her.  Then the soldiers of Sergi came in their airships to take Seligar for their own.  They captured RéAmora and put the Döckálfs in cages.  They torched Döckálf cities and salted their fields.  Now they are the masters, though they don't call themselves that.  So will it be they, one wonders and asks, who far in the future will let out the gas?  

— end —



Appendix:  A Chronology of the Five Years' War

Prelude to War–20,460-20,483 S.C.  

Only those living far from the centers of humanity did not feel the coming of the War.  Increasingly violent riots in Ceretesia, recurring famines in Thalarar, edicts suppressing the practice of magic among humans, gross redistribution of wealth away from producers to those who served the Döckálfs and vast increases in crime by youths against police forces and those in power were the most important of the social, political and economic trends which presaged the War.  Perhaps the single most important factor contributing to the War was the rapid rise in human population, due mainly to improved farming methods introduced by Sergi's agricultural specialists, from approximately fourteen million to seventeen million.  This population boom fed a rise in trade which brought unprecedented wealth and power to human merchants and political leaders.  The merchant fleets of the inner nations—Atlan, Decadurinis, Luricania and Varin—more than tripled in size during this period, and many new war ships were built to protect them.  As human politicians amassed greater wealth they expanded their private and national military forces to the fullest extent that the Döckálfs would tolerate.  The Döckálfs responded with curfews, assassinations of several prominent, "seditious" human politicians and an increase in the numbers of public executions of political prisoners.  By 20,480 it was clear that they had to either relax their security measures or face open rebellion.  They chose to tighten their restrictions, and shortly thereafter the War began.  

Year the First—20,483 S.C.
—In Sergi (the Technocracy), a group of eleven Döckálf magi fly to the capital city of Ravcanvoor and attack it.  No reason is given for the assault, and scholars still do not know what event or events prompted the Döckálfs to this action.  (Many scholars believe that the Sergian government was engaged in clandestine actions against the Döckálfs, which were discovered.)  Ravcanvoor withstands this initial assault.  The siege of Ravcanvoor begins.
—In Atlan's capital city, Blackstone, a Döckálf mage is assassinated by unknown parties.  The Döckálfs retaliate by destroying Blackstone's Wizards' Academy, most of its libraries and the Atlanian merchant fleet.  
—In Sergi, the nation's military forces are unable to locate the Döckálf magi who are destroying the capital, and the ruling body orders the city's evacuation.  
—The Döckálfs send an army of humans from their vassal nation of Ceretesia south into Atlan's Eastern Reach.  
—In Sergi the ruling body orders the destruction by fire of their own evacuated capital.  This unusual tactic kills the Döckálf magi laying siege to the city.  
—In Thalarar the Döckálfs assemble an army of NaHrouz soldiers and send them north in ships toward Sergi and Atlan.  A freak storm, possibly caused by Great Master Luritsuran of Atlan, and an attack by the Sergian Air Corps destroys the fleet.  
Year the Second—20,484 S.C.
—The Döckálfs send an army of humans from their vassal nation of Irsmin south into Atlan's Eastern Reach.  The Eastern Reach falls, and the armies of Ceretesia and Irsmin move into central and southern Atlan.
—In Sergi, Döckálf priestesses begin spreading diseases to weaken the populace.
—In Atlan, the Ceretesian and Irsminian armies reach Blackstone.  Siege of Blackstone begins.
—Sergi sends an army into southern Atlan break the siege forces.  
—Luricania, Atlan’s ally, sends an army to aid Sergi's forces in southern Atlan.  

Year the Third—20,485 S.C.
—In Atlan, the Blackstone siege forces split.  The Ceretesian army stays at Blackstone, and the Irsminian army moves south to engage the advancing armies of Sergi and Luricania.  The fighting between these three armies will last a year and will end with half a million dead.
—In Luricania, Döckálf magi destroy the capital city of Hexalon; advance warning provided by human wizards gives most of the city's inhabitants time to evacuate.
—The NaHrouz of the Little Nations field an army and conquer the humans of those lands.
—Decadurinis, Varin, Andbar and Pamandari formally declare neutrality.
—Pamandari begins sending clandestine aid to Luricania, Atlan and Sergi.
—In Sergi, farmers rise against the priestesses who are spreading diseases in the agricultural areas.  Over a two-month period they kill more than sixty priestesses.
—The siege of Blackstone continues.

Year the Fourth—20,486 S.C.
—In Seligar, the home island of the Döckálfs, a Sergian airship destroys itself over the capital city of RéAmora, causing major damage and loss of life.
—The Döckálf queen with a large retinue of magi and priestesses travels to Blackstone and creates a spell which breaks that city.  Atlan falls.
—In southern Atlan, the combined armies of Sergi and Luricania defeat the Irsminian army.
—In Thalarar, the Döckálfs assemble an army of NaHrouz.  Luricania sends a force to defeat this army before it can be moved to the northern arena.  
—NaHrouz from the Little Nations sail northward and attack Decadurinis. 
—In Thalarar, the Luricanian 9th Division battles the NaHrouz army, and both are destroyed.
—The Döckálf queen and her entourage travels to Luricania and casts the spell which will devastate that nation.

Year the Fifth—20,487 S.C.
—In the Little Nations, volcanic eruptions (perhaps induced by Great Master Luritsuran of Atlan) force the NaHrouz army in Decadurinis to retreat to their homeland.
—In Atlan, Sergi's air ships destroy Blackstone and the bulk of the Ceretesian army in a single morning, with a powerful technological weapon.  Sergian and Luricanian military forces rout the surviving Ceretesian soldiers.
—In Seligar, Great Master Luritsuran of Atlan attacks and kills the Döckálf queen in magical combat.  He dies during this battle.  
—Sergi's air ships attack RéAmora and other cities on Seligar.  The Döckálfs surrender, and the War officially ends.  Sergi establishes a strong military presence in Seligar, and, aided by international peace keepers, begins continual watch over the surviving Döckálfs.  
—Sergi annexes Atlan and Thalarar as "protectorates."
Epilogue to War—20,488 S.C.—20,495 S.C.  

The War has directly and indirectly caused the deaths of over four million humans and a quarter million NaHrouz, the virtual annihilation of the Döckálfs and vast changes in the sizes of and relationships among the human nations of Crassia.  The Little Nations now belong to the NaHrouz, and Luricania continues to suffer lingering diseases caused by the Döckálf queen's final spell.  Decadurinis is severely damaged and will be many years in rebuilding.  Perdia, a former vassal nation of Ceretesia, has broken free of Ceretesian control and is sending pirates south to raid the inner nations.  Tocencia, a former Luricanian territory, has also declared its independence.   The suffering of Thalarar has not ceased with the end of hostilities but has only changed form, and it is in this nation that the greatest challenges to healing will be found.  Blackstone, the oldest of human cities, is gone, and the lands of Atlan have become Sergian territory.  Sergi itself has been transformed from a quiet nation to the new regional power, and its influence is spreading across Crassia.  And while thousands of War refugees have settled the coasts of Balon, its native people are as resistant as ever to outsiders, and the future of the colonies is uncertain.  
These are the costs and aftereffects of the War.  In return for the suffering and losses we have won our freedom; after more than five hundred years of Döckálf domination we humans have finally taken from them the right to determine our own destiny.  Rebuilding what was lost and creating ways to resolve our own disputes will be the work of the next generation.  
Blessings of Utu upon us all.