PART TWO

FUSING AND REFUSING

I

After half a score of days the storm was over. Weather-sense and a familiar, reassuring noise lured Skilluck back from the dreamness whither he had been driven by exposure, privation and sheer terror. Slackening his mantle, he relaxed his death-grip on the pole he had clung to while he was reduced to primitive reflexes, concerned only to escape the fury of the elements as his ancestors might have hidden from a predator larger than themselves.

The sound he had recognized was the unmistakable munch-and-slurp of Tempestamer feeding.

Weak exultation filled him. Surely she was the finest briq ever to set forth from Ushere! He had pithed her personally with all the expertise at his command, leaving untouched by his prong nerves which other Wego captains customarily severed. At first his rivals had derided him; then, however, they saw how docile she was, and how fast she grew, and in the end came begging a share of his knowledge, whereupon it was his turn to scoff. Now she had proved herself beyond doubt, for she had defied the worst weather in living memory and-he looked about him-brought her crew to a safe haven, in a bay landlocked among low hills and sunlit under the first cloudless sky he had seen in years.

But where that haven was, the stars alone could tell.

With agony stabbing through his every tubule, he forced himself more or less upright, though it would be long before he regained his usual height, and uttered a silent blessing for his name. Those of his companions who had been called by opposites-Padrag and Crooclaw-had been lost overside on the third day of the storm. But the rest, better omened, were in view, though still unaware: the boy Wellearn, whose first voyage had come so near to being his last, and Sharprong, and Strongrip, and Chaplain Blestar... Was the chaplain also alert? His voice could be heard mumbling, “Let each among us find his proper star and there add brightness to the heavens in measure with his merit in the world...”

But-no. His prayer was mere reflex. He was still lost between dream and imagination. And in a bad way physically, too; his mantle was bloated and discolored, a sure sign of cresh. The same was true of the others, and Skilluck himself.

For an instant the captain was afraid he might be dreaming after all, that he was so near death he could no longer distinguish reality from fantasy. But in a dream, surely, he would seem restored to health.

His pain was receding, although the areas where he had rubbed against the pole during the storm would remain sore for a long while. He forced himself to set out on a tour of inspection. One piece of essential equipment remained functional: the northfinder, tethered in its cage, responded weakly to his order and uncoiled itself in the correct direction. Also his precious spyglass had been so tightly lashed to a crossbar, all the gales and waves had not dislodged it. That apart, things looked grim. Most of Tempestamer's drink-bladders had burst, the trencher-plants had been so drenched with salt water they looked unlikely to recover, the vines had been torn bodily away leaving raw scars on the briq's bide, and-as he already knew-their reserves of fish and pickled weed had been used up.

He sipped a little water from an intact bladder, struggling to make plans. Food must come first, and more water. Were there edible plants on this strange shore? Was there any chance of trapping a game-animal? He needed the spyglass to find out. But his claws felt weak and clumsy, and the rope was swollen with wet; the knots defied him.

A shadow fell across him. He glanced round, expecting Sharprong or Strongrip. But it was young Wellearn who had joined him, hobbling along at barely half his normal height.

“Where are we, Captain?” he croaked.

“No idea, but I'd rather be here than in mid-ocean. Take a drink-but slowly! Don't try and put all your fluid back at one go, or you'll burst a tubule. Then help me untie the spyglass.”

Despite the warning, he had to stop Wellearn after several greedy gulps.

“There are three more of us, you know, and only three full bladders!”

Wellearn muttered an apology and turned his attention to the knots. After much difficulty they loosened, and Skilluck unwrapped the hide around the tube.

“Take drink to the others. But be careful. The state they're in, they may not know the difference between you and food. Or themselves, come to that. I guess you never saw anyone with cresh before, hm?”

“Is that what we've got?” Wellearn's eye widened in horror. “I heard about it, of course, but-well, what exactly is it?”

“Who knows? All I can say is, I've seen a lot of it at sea when our trencher-plants got salt-poisoned and our vines were blown away, same as now. Most people think it comes of trying to live off stale pickles. Makes you leak, drives you into dreamness, kills you in the end... Oh, curse the weight of this thing!” Skilluck abandoned his attempt to hold up the spyglass normally, and slumped forward in order to rest its end on the ridge of the briq's saddle. “I bet we'll be seeing cresh on land again one of these days, if the winters go on getting longer and harsher and seeds don't sprout and fish don't run... But you shouldn't worry too much about yourself. It always hits the biggest and strongest first and worst. Dole out a sip at a time and be specially wary of Blestar-he's delirious.”

Carefully filling a gowshell from the drink-bladder in use, Wellearn heard him continue, mainly to himself: “Not a trencher-plant to be seen. Don't recognize a single one of those trees, don't spot a single animal. No sign of a stream unless there's one behind that cape...”

The boy shivered, wondering whether his own mantle was as patched with creshmarks as the others', and the captain was speaking only to reassure him. All things considered, though, he felt remarkably well after his ordeal: weak and giddy, of course, so that he wondered how he would fare if he had to leap clear of a cresh-crazed crewman; thirsty in every fiber of his being; and hungry to the point where he wished he could browse off floating weed like Tempestamer. Yet he was still capable of being excited about their arrival in this unknown region, and that was an excellent sign.

So Skilluck must be telling the truth. Sharprong, on the other claw, was almost too ill to swallow, and neither he nor Strongrip had the energy to attack a helper. Ironically, Blestar was worst off of them all, his mantle cobbled with irregular bulges as though it were trying to strain outward through a badly patterned net. He was talking to himself in a garbled blend of half a dozen learned idioms. Wellearn recognized them all; it was his quickness at language that had earned him a place among the crew. Their mission was to trade hides for food-plant seeds in the hope of cross-breeding hybrids which would grow very quickly during the ever-shortening northern summer. Many briqs this year had scattered on the same quest. If it failed, the Wego might have to move south en masse, and the hope of finding habitable but unpopulated lands was dreadfully slim. So there would be fighting, and the weakened northerners might lose, and that would be the end of a once-great folk. At best they might leave behind a legend, like Forb or Geys or Ntah...

Tormented by the sun, Blestar was reflexively opening his mantle as though to roll over and cool his torso by evaporation. Wellearn had never been in such a hot climate before, but he knew enough to resist the same temptation; in their dehydrated state it could be fatal. Anxiously he wondered how he could provide shade for the sick men, and concluded there was no alternative but to untie one of their precious remaining bales of hides. The outer layers were probably spoiled, anyway.

He contrived to rig two or three into an awning; then he distributed the rest of the fresh water and returned to the captain, dismayed to find him slumped in exhaustion.

But he was alert enough to say, “Good thinking, young'un. Give me a little more water, will you? Even holding up the spyglass has worn me out. And I don't see very clearly right now. We'll have to wait until Tempestamer has finished feeding and see if we can make her beach herself.”

“Sharprong told me she hated that,” Wellearn ventured.

“Oh, she does, and I'd never try it normally, of course. But that's our only hope; we've got to get ashore! Maybe while she's digesting she'll be tractable. Otherwise I'll have to pith another of her command nerves, and if I miss my mark because she bucks and bolts, then the stars alone know how we'll find our way home-Did you give water to the northfinder?”

“I didn't think of that!” Wellearn exclaimed, and hastened to remedy his oversight.

Returning, he looked at the ruptured drink-bladders, wondering whether any were likely to heal. But they were past that, hanging in salt-encrusted rags. In time Tempestamer would grow new ones, but it might be a score of days before they were full enough to tap. There was only one thing to be done.

“I'm going to swim ashore,” he announced.

“You have got cresh! You'd never make it.” Skilluck brushed something aside. A strange kind of winget had settled on him; others, all equally unknown, were exploring the briq, paying special attention to the scars left by the uprooted vines. It was to be hoped they were not in breeding phase, for the last thing Tempestamer needed right now was an infestation of maggors.

It occurred to Wellearn that in these foreign waters there might be creatures as hostile as the northern voraq, but Tempestamer showed no sign of being pestered by any such. He answered boldly, “There's no alternative! If I don't find water I can at least bring tree-sap, or fruit, or- or something.”

“Then unlash a pole to help you float,” Skilluck sighed. “And take a prong in case a waterbeast attacks you.”

After that he seemed to lose interest in reality again.

The water was deliciously cool as Wellearn slid overside, but he was aware how dangerous salt could be to someone with a weakened integument, so he wasted no time in striking out for shore. His mantle moved reluctantly at first, but he pumped away with all his strength, and the distance to land shrank by a third, by half, by three-quarters... It was more than he could endure; he had to rest a little, gasping and clinging to the pole. To his horror, he almost at once realized he was being carried seaward again, by some unexpected current or the turn of the tide.

Although fatigue was loosening his grip on reality, he resumed swimming. The sunlight reflected on the ripples hurt his eye, and salty splashes stung it; countless tubules cried pain at being forced to this effort without sufficient fluid in his system; fragments of dream and all-toc vivid imaginings distracted him. He wanted to rest again, relying on the pole, and knew he must not. At last he let it go, and the prong with it, for they were hindering too much.

After what felt like a lifetime, smooth rock slanted up to a little beach, and he crawled the rest of the way as clumsily as a new-budded child. Cursing his bravado, he forced himself across gritty sand that rasped his torso, and collapsed into the shade of bushes unlike any he had ever seen before. Some sort of animal screamed in alarm and branches fluttered as it fled; he could not tell what it was.

In a little, he promised himself, just as soon as he recovered his pressure, he would move on in search of water or a recognizable plant, or risk sampling something at hazard, or...

But he did not. After his exertions, cresh had him in its deadly grip, and he departed into a world of dreams compound of memory, so that the solid ground under him seemed to rock and toss like the ocean at the climax of the storm. He did not even have the energy to moan.

From the briq Skilluck saw him fall, and let go the spyglass with a curse, and likewise slumped to his full length. The pitiless sun beat down and, all unheeding. Tempestamer went on gulping weed to cram her monstrous maw.

II

He was looking at himself.

Wellearn cried out. He had seen his reflection before, but only in still water, which meant he should be lying down on the bank of a pool. Every sense informed him he was in fact sitting up. Yet his image was confronting him. He was certain it must be confect of dreamness.

Suddenly it swerved aside and vanished. Struggling to accept he was not after all lost in sickness-spawned delirium, he discovered he was now seeing two people taller, slimmer, and with paler mantles than his own folk: a grave elderly man and a most attractive girl.

The former said something Wellearn did not quite grasp, though a tantalizing hint of meaning came across. Then, touching his mandibles with one claw, he said, “Shash!”

Imitating him, the girl said, “Embery!”

Clearly those were their names. Wellearn uttered his own, followed by greetings in his native speech. Meeting no reaction, he switched to others, and as soon as he tried Ancient Forbish Embery exclaimed in amazement.

“Why, you speak what we do!” she said, her accent strange but her words recognizable.

How then could Wellearn have failed to understand before? And now again, as she said something too rapid to follow?

“The language changes,” Shash said slowly and clearly. “It has been a score-of-score years since our ancestors settled here. Use only the oldest forms. Wellearn, you comprehend?”

“Very well!”

“Do you remember your voyage hither?”

“The greater part of it.” But where was here? Wellearn looked about him, realizing for the first time that he was in a noble house. Never had he seen such magnificent bravetrees-except they weren't exactly brave-trees-or such a marvelous array of secondary plants. Had he been hungry, which to his amazement he was not, he would at once have asked to sample the delicious-looking fruits and funqi which surrounded him.

Light slanted through gaps between the boles, which offered glimpses of what looked like a great city. The air was at high pressure and very warm, though not so oppressive as when he swam ashore, and the scents borne on it were absolutely unfamiliar. But one matter must take precedence over the curiosity that filled him.

“My companions! Did you save them too?”

“Oh, yes. They are sicker than you, but we hope to cure them soon.”

“But I had cresh...” Wellearn hesitated. In his people's knowledge there was no remedy for that affliction. Sometimes it went away of its own accord, no one knew why; more often its victims were permanently crippled.

“No longer. You saw for yourself. Where are the marks?”

“I saw,” Wellearn agreed slowly. “But I didn't understand.”

“Ah. Embery, show him again.”

This time he was able to make out how it happened. She held up a large disc, very shiny, which gave back his reflection. Touching it diffidently, he discerned a peculiar coolness.

“Metal?” he ventured.

“Of course. But your people understand metal and glass, surely? We found a telescope on your briq, as good as our own.”

“Captain Skilluck got it in trade,” Wellearn muttered. “I can't say where it was made.”

“Do you not know and use fire?” Shash demanded in surprise.

“Of course, but in our country there is little fuel and it's too precious to be used for melting rocks. Long ago the weather, they say, was warmer, but now in winter the sea freezes along our coasts, and then it's our only means of staying alive.”

“Whiter,” Embery repeated thoughtfully. “That must be what we read about in the scriptures, the time of great cold which happens once a year and lasts many score days.”

And yearly it grows longer... Wellearn suppressed a pang of envy. What a privilege to live in latitudes where winter never came! He had heard tales about such places from boastful old seafarers, but he had never expected to wind up in one on his maiden voyage.

Yet those same travelers always claimed that they found something grand in the country of their budding, something noble and challenging about its harsh landscape. He must not think of worse and better until he knew much more.

“May I see my companions?” he requested.

“Certainly, if you're fit enough,” Shash answered. “Can you stand?”

Wellearn concentrated on forcing himself upright. He managed it, though he could not regain his normal height. Even had he done so, he would still have been overtopped by these strangers, who must be as tall as mythical Jing-or maybe not quite, for he was said to have been taller than anybody.

“Let me help you,” Embery offered, moving to support him. Contact with her was very pleasant. He wondered what the local customs were concerning mating. The Wego themselves welcomed visitors in the hope that outcrossing would bring more and healthier children, for they were barely keeping up their numbers, and he had been told that many foreign peoples felt the same. But it was too soon to think of such matters.

In an adjacent bower Skilluck lay in a crotch made comfortable with masses of reddish purple mosh; he was still not alert but the creshmarks were fading from his mantle. Others beyond held Strongrip, Sharprong, and Blestar, who was visibly the worst affected.

“I've never seen such a severe case,” sighed Shash. “One could almost imagine he had weakened himself deliberately.”

Wellearn nearly admitted that in fact he had. It was the custom of chaplains, in face of danger, to fast in the hope of being sent a vision from the stars that would save them and their comrades. There was no recorded instance of it happening, but the habit endured.

These people, though, might have no faith in visions, and he did not wish them to mock the strangers who had fallen among them. Instead he voiced a question that was burning in his mind.

“What manner of place is this?”

“A healing-house,” Shash replied, and added wonderingly, “Do they not have such in your country?”

“A great house like this, solely for sick people? Oh, no! We're lucky to have enough for those who are well. Sometimes they die, and the occupants must take refuge in caves, or pile up rocks for shelter... I'm amazed! When we arrived in the bay, we thought this region was uninhabited!”

“Ah, you were the wrong side of the cape. People rarely visit that bay except for glassmakers needing sand or fisherfolk like the ones who spotted your briq.”

“Tempestamer!” Wellearn clenched his claws. “What of her?”

“We have small knowledge of matters of the sea, but we have guarded against her wandering off by fixing strong cables across the mouth of the bay. However, she's so huge... Will it be long before she needs to feed again? She's practically cleared the bay of weed.”

“I'm afraid you'll have to ask the captain. Usually she only feeds by night as she swims along, but she must have been half-starved after the storm that drove us here.”

“Hope then that the captain recovers shortly. We're doing our utmost for him. Look, here come curers with more creshban.”

Wellearn turned in the indicated direction, but almost literally while Shash was speaking, it grew dark. He gasped. Then festoons of luminous creepers reacted, faster than any gleamers he was used to, coming up to full brightness nearly before his vision adapted to the lower light level, and he saw two husky youths each bearing a round object like an immense nut. There was a sudden pungent smell, which reminded him of a taste that had haunted his long period of dreamness. Also he recalled terrible hunger, and having to be restrained for fear he might attack those who were holding him... But that belonged to the past, and in the present Shash was saying, “You must continue the medicine for several days yet. Drink some more now.”

Wellearn complied. The nuts were hollow, and contained a bitter liquid of which he managed a few gulps.

“If we could only plant such nut-trees on a briq!” he muttered.

“It's not their natural juice,” said the curer who had given him the drink. He spoke without Shash's deliberateness, but by this time Wellearn was adjusting to the local accent. “It's mixed with sap from half a score of plants.”

Visions of saving the lives of countless future mariners bloomed and wilted in Wellearn's imagination. He said grumpily, “And I suppose not one of them grows in the north?”

“Later we can show them to you and let you find out,” Shash promised. “But now I think you should return to rest.”

“I couldn't! I'm too eager to see the marvels of your city, and meet more of its people!”

“In two or three days' time, perhaps. Not right away.”

“May I not at least look out at the city, and question someone about it?”

“I'll oblige him, Father,” Embery said, and added self-mockingly, “That is, if he can understand me.”

“In my young days,” Shash sighed, “people your age were wise enough to know when their elders were giving them advice for their own good... Oh, very well! But remember, both of you, that the workings of cresh are insidious, and over-excitement is as fast a route as any into dreamness!”

Embery guided Wellearn to the top of the highest tree in the house, which offered a clear view in all directions. The moon was down and the sky was clouding over in a way that upset his weather-sense, but he was too eager to worry about the risk of a lightning-strike. From here the outline of the city was picked out by glowing creepers and funqi, and he was shaken by its huge extent. It even marched over the crest of a hill inland, beyond which faint redness could be seen.

“That's where the fireworkers live,” Embery explained. “They make glass and metal-they made the mirror you've seen. The area is sheltered, the wind almost always carries the smoke away from us, and it's easy to find fuel in that direction. They use vast quantities, you know. Some of their furnaces... But you have to see them.”

Over and over she said the same, when describing the outlying farms, the giant nets which fish-hunters hurled by means of weights and long poles far out to sea from the nearby capes and islands, the work of those who bred mounts and draftimals-”like your briq,” she added merrily, “only smaller and going on land!”-those who trained new houses to replace old ones or spread the city on fresh ground, and more and more until Wellearn could scarcely contain himself. How desperately he wanted to explore every nook of-

“I haven't asked your city's name!” he exclaimed.

“Hearthome.”

It was apt. “How many people live here, do you know?” he pursued, thinking perhaps not a great number, if each of five sick strangers could be allotted a separate bower, and then yes a great number, if so many extra houses had been sown.

“Nine score-of-scores, I think, though some say ten.”

It was unbelievable. The Wego numbered perhaps a fifth as many. Oh, this must be a better land to live in!

“But there are far larger cities inland and all along the coast,” Embery said. “Many have a score-of-score-of-scores. None is as rich as Hearthome, though.”

“Why is that?”

“Because we are the folk who work hardest at discovering new things. Travelers from a moonlong's journey away come to learn from people like my father, and my uncle who lives yonder”-she pointed in a direction diametrically opposite the furnace-glow-”and devotes his time to studying the stars.”

Among Wellearn's people the stars were of little save religious interest. During his entire life at home he had seen a clear sky so seldom he could almost count the total. Before the adoption of the northfinder-a creature which, properly pithed, would always seek out the pole-it was said mariners had been guided by the stars on outward voyages. The return, of course, was never a problem; briqs like Tempestamer could be relied on to retrace their course. Though after such a tremendous storm even she...

Dismissing such gloomy thoughts, albeit making a firm resolution to utter thanks, just in case, to the ancestors who-according to the chaplains-must have been watching over him during the voyage, he made shift to repeat a traditional Forbish compliment which Blestar had taught him when he was first apprenticed to the trade of interpreter, and of which mention of the stars reminded him.

“Ah!” he said. “Starbeams must shine on Hearthome even when the sky is cloudy!”

“Why not?” Embery returned. “After all, we are honest followers of Jing.”

Wellearn drew back, startled.

“But he was only a legend! Tales about him are compound of dream-stuff!”

“Oh, no!” She sounded scandalized. “True, there is a great dream in his scriptures, but even that is in perfect accord with reality. Have you never studied his teaching?”

At the same moment thunder rolled, but it was not the shock to his weather-sense which made Wellearn's mind reel.

“Your father was right after all about my need for rest,” he husked. “Kindly lead me back to my bower.”

Where he spent long lonely hours wondering what-after teaching and believing all his life that tales about folk who conjured secrets from the stars were mere superstition-Blestar was going to say when he discovered himself in a land where Jing was real.

III

Skilluck's shattered mind crawled back together out of pits of madness and he could see a figure that he recognized. It was Wellearn, addressing him anxiously: “Captain, you're alert again, aren't you?”

Beyond him, unfamiliar plants hanging on what were not exactly bravetrees, immensely tall strangers whose mantles were astonishingly pale... They coalesced into a reality, and he was himself and whole and able to reply.

“Tell me where we are, and how Tempestamer is, and how these people treat us.”

He was proud of being able to phrase that so soon after regaining normal awareness.

Wellearn complied, but half the time he was almost babbling, plainly having been cozened by the wonders of his first foreign landfall. Skilluck was a mite more cynical; he had spent half his life traveling, and more often than not he had been cheated by the outlanders he tried to deal with. The harsh existence led in northern lands was no school for subtleties of the kind practiced by those who dwelt in southern luxury... and it had been obvious, when Tempestamer came to harbor, that she had been driven further than any of the Wego had wandered before, perhaps to the equator itself.

So he merely registered, without reacting to, most of what Wellearn said, until a snatch of it seized his interest.

“-and they have a certain cure for cresh!”

At once Skilluck was totally attentive. Cautiously he said, “It works on everybody, without fail?”

Mantle-crumpled, Wellearn admitted, “Not on all. Blestar, they say, may well not survive. But for me and you, Sharprong and Strongrip, it's proved its worth!”

“Do they understand what we're saying to each other?”

“N-no! And that's something else amazing!” Wellearn blurted. “I have to speak to them in Ancient Forbish!”

Skilluck was unimpressed. His explorations had often brought him to places where relics of that once widespread speech survived. Blestar even maintained that many Forbish words had found their way into Wegan, but since they all had to do with fire and stars-things everybody knew about, but in which the chaplains claimed a special interest-sensible people dismissed such notions as mere religious propaganda. Wego seafarers took chaplains along much as they carried pickles: just in case. The best trips were those where they weren't needed.

Of course, their services as interpreters...

He forced himself to sound very polite when next he spoke to Wellearn.

“It seems we should behave to our hosts in the friendliest possible fashion. I guess at something we might do for their benefit. How goes it with Tempestamer?”

“That's what I'd just been asked to tell you! She has grazed the bay where we landed clean of weed, and the cables they've strung across its mouth won't hold her much longer, and they fear for their inshore fishing grounds.”

“Let the cables hold but one more day, and I'll put her to sea and feed her such a mawful as will content her for a week. And I'll come back, never fear. A cure for cresh-now that's something worth making a storm-tossed voyage for!”

“There's more,” Wellearn said after a pause.

“So tell me about it! Anything we can trade for, I want to hear!”

“I'm not sure it's the sort of thing one can trade,” Wellearn said. “But... Well, these people have shown me Jing's original scriptures. Or not exactly the originals, which might rot, but accurate copies. And they tell about how the stars are fire and our world will one day go for fuel to make the sun brighter and ourselves with it unless we-”

Skilluck had heard enough. He said as kindly as he could, “Boy, your brush with cresh has affected your perceptions. I counsel you to concentrate on growing up. A little worldly wisdom would do wonders for you.”

Wellburn bridled. “Captain, do you know Forbish?”

“I've never taken lessons, if that's what you mean!”

“I have! And the documents I've been shown while you were lying sick have satisfied me that Jing was real!”

Worse and worse... Skilluck forced himself to an upright position. He said as emphatically as he could, “Since you oblige me to prove that our people are not all crazy, tell our hosts that I shall at once reclaim command of Tempestamer!”

“But you're not fit!”

“Let me be the judge of that!” Skilluck was struggling to bring his pads under control. “I must-”

But his pressure failed him. He was compelled to slump back to a sitting position, whence he glared at Wellearn as though it were the boy's fault he was so weak.

There was a rapid exchange in Forbish, and Wellearn stated authoritatively, “Shash is the curer-in-chief here. He says you must drink creshban for at least another day before you leave this healing-house.”

With a trace of mischief in his tone, he added, “I didn't tell him that was how long you already estimated would be necessary.”

At home, mocking his briq-captain in that way would have led to punishment-perhaps lasting punishment, such as having one of his tubules punctured where it would never heal. Since arrival here, though, Wellearn had regretted his oath of fealty, and decided that if all else failed, he could put himself under the protection of the Hearthomers. What did he have to look forward to if he went back to Ushere? More and more hunger, more and more misery! He had never seen cresh on land, as he had told Skilluck, but he had seen old folk lose their minds, reduced to such a state that they scarcely reacted except when they were fed like hoverchicks or barqlings, or when some young'un was brought to them to be mated because a wise'un claimed there was still virtue in that line despite appearances. It had been happening to Wellearn since it became obvious that he was among the lucky bright few, and there were no memories so revolting in his short life as those which reminded him of the foul mindless gropings he had undergone with starvation-crazy ancients. Not one-praise the stars!-of his encounters had so far led to offspring, but if he went home he would certainly be compelled to do the same again, and once the smell and touch took over...

He shuddered. And wondered much about the nature of the stars which could dictate so cruel a doom for a person as well intentioned as himself, then pay him back-for it seemed to him to be a reward-with the gentle sweetness of Embery. She had received him twice already, and her father thoroughly approved, for as he said, “We too in this delicious land are plagued by forces we don't understand, and it has been nearly a score of years since one of our family bred true: myself with the lady who gave me Embery and died.”

What, on the other claw, they did understand had not yet ceased to astonish him.

Leaving Skilluck's bower, he was overcome by memory.

...Behind the inland hills, a valley lined with smoke-blackened rock; heaps of charcoal, even blacker, surrounding cone-shaped furnaces; piles of sand and unknown minerals, green and brown and white and red; sober folk all of whose names ended in -fire, claiming spiritual if not physical descent from Jing's legendary friend who lived underground yet brought the light of heaven forth from a cave- Wellearn knew all the stories, for he had been told them as a child, but later he had been taught to think them fabulous, whereas the Hearthomers took them literally, and by their guidance produced incredible ingots of metal and unbelievable quantities of pure glass. Beyond, a desolation as complete as though a hurricane had laid the vegetation low for a day's walk or more, which was being systematically replanted with oilsap trees that grew quickly and burned hotter than even the best charcoal.

...In a fine house overlooking the sea, an elderly couple possessed of tiny miracles in the shape of roundels of glass no larger than a raindrop, but perfectly shaped, through which they showed him the secret structure of plant-stems, funqi, his own skin, immensely magnified, as though a telescope were to look down to the small instead of upward to the large!

...In a grove just outside the city, folk who selectively bred meatimals, burrowers, diggets, mounts, draftimals, and a score of creatures he could put no name to, seeking to make them fatter or more docile or in some other way more useful. Their cleanlickers were said to be unique, capable of ridding any wound of its poison within days and making a swift recovery. To take a few of those home to the lands where so often a daring fish-hunter died for his temerity in defying a rasper or a voraq: that would be an achievement! But what to trade for breeding-stock? Did Embery know about northfinders? It seemed not; alas, though, Tempestamer carried only one, which wasn't in brood-phase this year. Besides, they seldom bred true, a problem that plagued the Hearthomer animal-breeders too.

...On the highest of the nearby hills, the one Embery had pointed to from the crown of the healing-house, her uncle Chard-older and fatter than his brother-complaining about the difficulty nowadays of studying the stars because the sky was cloudy so much more often than in his youth, and boasting about the knowledge of ice which he had acquired only a few days' journey from Hearthome. There was, apparently, a range of mountains whose peaks were snowcapped even in these latitudes, a fact which dismayed Wellearn, for if the mountains were closer to the sun, how could they be so much colder than the land below? Surrounded by telescopes which made Skilluck's look like a toy, Chard launched into a lengthy lecture concerning reflectivity and absorption, conduction and convection, aurorae and shooting stars and a score of other concepts which Wellearn failed to grasp but which filled him with tantalizing excitement: so much knowledge, so much to be found out!

...In a giant tree at the heart of the city, hollowed out deliberately and ornamented with the finest and handsomest secondary plants, a glass container sealed with wax, through which could be glimpsed the original of Jing's scripture. It was uncapped only once in a score of years, so that a fresh copy might be made, but even so it was starting to rot, and next time they planned to make two copies, of which one would be incised on rock instead of perishable wood. In any case, though, by this time the Hearthomers had added many new discoveries to those of Jing and Twig. Everything he was told fascinated Wellearn, and above all he was seized by the tales of the New Star which Chard and Shash and Embery recounted. And, over and over, he pondered the central teaching of Jing's followers: that the stars were fire, and one day the planets would go to feed them, as charcoal was added to a furnace, to make them blaze up anew.

“We do not believe,” Embery told him soberly, “that we are here solely to endure until the world falls into a dying sun. We believe it is our duty to escape that fate. Out there are countless worlds; until the end of time, some will remain for us to live on.”

“But how can one travel there?” was Wellearn's natural riposte.

“We don't know yet. We mean to find that out.”

Everywhere he went Wellearn had a sense of being watched and weighed and scrutinized. Until the captain regained his health, he was the Wego's sole ambassador; he did his best to behave accordingly.

And the day after Skilluck took Tempestamer to sea and brought her back content with what she had engulfed in open water, he found out that his conduct had impressed the citizens. For Shash came to tell the strangers they were invited to a gathering of the general council, to discuss a mutually advantageous proposition.

“What they mean,” was Skilluck's cynical comment, “is that they've figured out a way to rob us blind. Well, we have to go along with the deal; we have no choice.”

Wellearn bit back his urge to contradict. Time would tell.

IV

“It grieves us all to learn of the death of our visitor Blestar,” Chard said to the assembled council. The foreigners dipped in acknowledgment, although Strongrip and Sharprong were reluctant and only a glare from Skilluck compelled them. Wellearn was still recovering from the shock of having to conduct his first-ever funeral, and in a far-off land at that. But the ceremony had been decent and respectful, even though the Wego tradition of committal to the ocean was unknown here, so Blestar's corpse was fertilizing a stand of white shrubs.

Now it was his duty to interpret some of the most complex statements he had ever heard in any speech. Chard and Shash had given him a rough idea in advance; nonetheless...!

Still-he brightened-none of the others spoke Forbish, let alone this modern descendant of it, although he had the distinct impression that Skilluck often understood more than he let on.

At all events, he had the chance to trim the list of the debate. He was determined to do so. He wanted his people and the Hearthomers to be friends; he wanted, in particular, to spend the rest of his own life here... not that he would dare risk admitting it. What he hoped was to be appointed resident agent for the Wego, and oversee a regular trade between north and south. So many benefits would flow from that!

But he must concentrate, not rhapsodize. The discussion was likely to be a long one. The Hearthomers took refuge from the hottest part of the day, but the assembly had gathered in late afternoon, and might well continue throughout the succeeding night. He composed his mind and relayed Chard's next remarks.

“We have been told that winters grow colder and longer in your land. Since according to our observations the sun is growing brighter and hotter, we are faced with a paradox.”

(“What in the world is he on about?” grunted Sharprong. “It doesn't make sense!”)

But Wellearn was gripped by Chard's statement and anxiously awaiting what was to follow.

“We know this because we have carefully calibrated the way in which certain substances change after exposure to concentrated sunlight under identical conditions, that's to say, on a completely clear day. Cloudless days, of course, are growing fewer”-and several present glanced anxiously at the sky where yet more thunderheads were brewing-”but we keep up our experiments and we can be nineteen-twentieths sure of our conclusions.”

(“Is he ever going to come to a point?” was Strongrip's acid reaction.)

“We can only deduce that more solar heat causes more clouds to reflect it and more moisture to fall at the poles as snow, which in turn reflects still more light and heat. At my laboratory the possibility can be demonstrated using a burning-glass and a block of white rock half-covered with soot.”

Wellearn had seen that demonstration; he had not wholly understood what he was meant to learn from it, but suddenly a blinding insight dawned on his mind.

(“Come on, boy!” Skilluck rasped. “You're falling behind!”)

“At a time when mountains here in the equatorial zone can remain snowcapped throughout the year, this is clearly a worrisome situation. Those among us who have never experienced ice and snow may doubt what I say, but I have felt how cold can numb the pads, seen how it affects the plants we here take for granted!”

(“Why does he have to go on so?” growled Strongrip, but Skilluck silenced him with glare.)

“We must therefore anticipate a time when mariners from the far north will arrive, not driven hither by a fortunate storm, but because their home has become uninhabitable. Yet this need not be an unmitigated disaster. For if there is one thing we lack, then... But I'll leave the rest to Burney.”

(“I've been told about him!” Wellearn whispered in high excitement. “He's the one-who-answers-questions, their most distinguished administrator! But I never saw him before!”)

Burly, yet as tall as his compatriots, Burney expanded to full height as Chard lowered. He uttered a few platitudes about the visitors before picking up Chard's trail.

(“I know his sort,” Skilluck said contemptuously. “The politer they are, the more you need to brace yourself!”)

“What we lack, and in lacking neglect our duty, is access to the oceans!” Burney stated at the top of his resonant voice. “Oh, we've done well by our founders in spreading their teaching across this continent; travel a moonlong overland and you won't find a child of talking age who doesn't grasp at least the rudiments of what Jing bequeathed! But we know there's more to the globe than merely land, don't we? Proof of the fact is that our visitors came to us from a country which can't be reached from here dry-padded!”

(“You told them that?” Skilluck snapped at Wellearn. “Oh you threw away a keen prong there!”)

(“I did nothing of the sort!” Wellearn retorted, stung. “Listen and you'll find out!”)

“Suppose, though, we were to combine the knowledge we've garnered with the skills of these strangers,” Burney went on. “Suppose the brave seafarers of the Wego could voyage free from fear of cresh; suppose on every trip they carried the knowledge which Jing instructed us to share with everybody everywhere, so that every one of their briqs was equipped not just with a northfinder-I'm sure you've been told of their brilliant development of that creature which can always be relied on to point the same way? Though it does seem,” he added with a touch of condescension, “they don't realize that if they really had crossed the equator, as Wellearn appears to imagine, it would reverse itself.”

(Amid a ripple of knowing amusement Skilluck fumed, “It doesn't surprise me! After the flattery, the put-down!”)

Burney quieted the crowd. “Perhaps that remark was unworthy,” he resumed. “At all events, we know these are an adventurous people, who take the utmost care to ensure that when they set out on no matter how risky a voyage they can find their way home by one means or another. Suppose, as I was about to say, they carried not only telescopes useful for sighting a promising landfall, but better ones suitable for studying the sky, and the means to prove to anyone they contacted how right Jing was in what he wrote!”

(Applause... but Wellearn had to cede a point to Skilluck when he mused, “So they want to overload our briqs with chaplains worse than Blestar?”)

“We therefore offer an exchange!” Burney roared. “I hope Captain Skilluck will accept it! We will share with his folk everything we know- yes, everything!-if the Wego will put their fleet at our disposal every summer for a score of years, to return laden with southern foods and southern seeds and southern tools, after carrying our message to lands as yet unknown! Now this is a grand scheme”-his voice dropped-”and there are countless details to thrash out. But we must first know whether the principle is acceptable.”

(Skilluck looked worried. Wellearn whispered, “They do things differently here!”)

(“That's obvious! He never tried to preside at a captains' meeting!”)

“I see there are doubts,” Burney said after a pause. “Let me add one thing, therefore. Assuming they accept our offer, then-if the winters at Ushere do become intolerable, as we may apparently fear according to what Chard has said-their people can remove hither and settle around the bay where their briq first made landfall. We would welcome them. Are we agreed?”

A roar of enthusiasm went up, and among those who shouted loudest Wellearn was proud to notice Embery. But Skilluck gave a brusque order.

“Tell him we need time to discuss this idea. Say we will be ready no sooner than tomorrow night!”

Perforce, Wellearn translated, and the assembly dispersed with many sighs.

“It's a trap,” said Strongrip for the latest of a score of times. “There must be some snag in it we don't see!”

“I've been everywhere in the city and met many of the most prominent of these people!” Wellearn declared. “They take Jing's teaching seriously-they really do want to spread his knowledge around the globe!”

“That's what frightens me most,” grunted Skilluck. “Blestar was bad enough; embriqing with a stranger who has absolute rule over what course I choose is out of the question!”

“That isn't what they have in mind!” Wellearn argued. “These people never travel the oceans-they want to hook on to someone who does, and that could be us!”

“Budlings!” Strongrip said, and turned away in disgust.

That was too much for Wellearn. Rising to his maximum height- which, since arriving here, imbibing vast quantities of creshban, and eating the best diet he had ever enjoyed, had noticeably increased-he blasted, “I invoke the judgment of my ancestors in the stars!”

And bared his mandibles, which normally he kept shrouded out of ordinary politeness.

Skilluck said hastily, “Now just a moment, boy-”

“Boy?” Wellearn cut in. “Boy? I haven't forgotten my oath of fealty to my captain, but if you can't recognize a man who's just become a man I'll consider it void!”

Following which he opened his claws to full extent, and waited, recklessly exuding combat-stink.

At long last Skilluck said heavily, “It was time, I guess. You're not a young'un anymore. But do you still want to challenge Strongrip?”

“I'd rather we were comrades. But I must. Unless he accepts me for what I am, with all my power of judgment. I did,” Wellearn added, “invoke the honor of my ancestors.”

There were still creshmarks on Strongrip's mantle, but Wellearn's was clear. Skilluck studied each of them in turn and said finally, “I forbid the challenge. Your ancestors, young man, are honored sufficiently by your willingness to utter it. Strongrip, deny what you last said.”

He clenched his body into battle posture, mandibles exposed, and concluded, “Or it must be me, not Wellearn, you take on!”

The stench of aggression which had filled the air since Wellearn rose to overtop his opponent provoked reflexes beyond most people's control. Only someone as sober and weather-wise as Skilluck could master his response to it.

Strongrip said gruffly, “He speaks this foreign noise. I admit he knows things I can't.”

“Well said, but is he adult, worthy to be our comrade?”

The answer was grumpy and belated, but it came: “I guess so!”

“Then lock claws!”

And evening breeze carried the combat-stink away.

“Captain!” Wellearn whispered as the general council of the Hearthomers reassembled.

“Yes?”

“Did you know I was going to be driven to challenge-?”

“Silence, or I'll call you 'boy' again!” But Skilluck was curling with amusement even as he uttered the harsh words. “You haven't finished growing up, you know!”

“I'm doing my best!”

“I noticed. That's why I didn't let Strongrip shred your mantle. He could have, creshmarks or no! So you just bear in mind your talent is for reasoning, not fighting. Leave that sort of thing to us seafarers, because at pith you're a landlubber, aren't you?”

“I-I suppose I am,” Wellearn confessed.

“Very well, then. We understand each other. Now translate this. It's exactly what Burney most wants to hear. Begin: 'We can't of course speak for all the briq-captains of the Wego, but we will promote with maximum goodwill the advantages of the agreement you suggest, provided that at the end of summer we may take home with us tokens of what benefits may accrue therefrom, such as creshban, better cleanlickers, useful food-seeds, spyglasses and so on. Next spring we'll return with our captains' joint verdict. In the event that it's favorable'-don't look so smug or I'll pray the stars to curse you for being smarter than I thought but not half as smart as you think you are!-'we shall appoint Wellearn to REside here as our agent and spokesman. Thank you!'“

V

At every summer's end the Wego captains came together for a bragmeet where the wise'uns too old to put to sea might judge whose briq had ventured furthest, who fetched the finest load of fish ashore, who brought the rarest newest goods traded with chance-met strangers. It was the high point not only of their year, but the chaplains' also. For generations the latter's influence had been shrinking, particularly since too many stars fell from the sky for most people to look forward to inhabiting one after death. But when it came to matters of ancient tradition, naturally they were called on to preside.

This meet, though, was different. Now there was no boasting, only mourning. On land things had been bad enough, what with crop-failure, floods and landslips, but at sea they were infinitely worse. Braverrant had not returned albeit her master was Boldare, wily in weather-ways. No more had Governature with Gallantrue and Drymantle, nor-next most envied after Tempestamer-Stormock, whose commander had been Cleverule, sole among them to make two-score voyages.

Nor Wavictor, nor Knowater, nor Billowise... and even Tempestamer herself had not reported back.

Yet weather-sense warned them: the summer was done. The customary congress must convene.

Frost on every tree, snow on the beach above the tide-line, even icefloes-but it was too soon! As Tempestamer closed the last day's gap between her and the waters where she had been broken, uncertainly as though aware something was amiss, Wellearn gazed in horror at the shoreline through drifting mist.

“Captain!” he cried. “Have you ever seen so much ice at this season, or so much fog?”

“Never,” answered Skilluck sternly. “Maybe what your friends at Hearthome spoke of is coming true.”

“I thought-our friends...?”

“Those who have knowledge sometimes batten on it to gain power,” Skilluck said.

“They spoke of partnership, not mastery!”

“What difference, when we are weak and they are strong? Count me the briqs you see at Ushere wharf and argue then!”

Indeed, the fleet numbered half its usual total, and the houses were white with rime and some were tilted owing to landslips, and the sky was dense and gray and the wind bit chill into the inmost tubules of those who lately had enjoyed the warmth of Hearthome.

“What's more, there's nobody to welcome us!” Skilluck blasted, having surveyed the city with his spyglass. “They must have called the bragmeet, giving us up for lost!”

Seizing his goad, he forced Tempestamer to give of her utmost on the final stretch towards her mooring.

Shivering in the branchways, more of the Wego attended the bragmeet than ever in history, and while the wise'uns tried to present the summer's achievements in a flattering light, kept interrupting to ask, “What use is that to us? Can we eat it? Does it help to keep us warm?”

In vain the senior chaplain, by name Knowelkin, strove to maintain formality. The folk mocked the claims of those who had survived the unprecedented summer storms by staying close to home, like Senshower whose Riskall had belied her name by scurrying from inlet to sheltered inlet, like Conqueright who had pledged the reputation of his Catchordes on the chance of garnering vast quantities of fish only to find the schools weren't running where they did. Almost as though they were hungry for news of doom the assembly listened in silence to Toughide and Shrewdesign, who told of icebergs sighted all season long further south than ever known before, fisherfolk driven into mid-ocean clinging to barqs unfit for any but fresh-water work, great trees torn loose by gales and set to drifting with the current, some bearing signs of habitation as though they had formed part of a house, a town or even a city. And when eventually they did make landfall, they reported, they found long tracts of coast abandoned to the dirq and fosq, the icefaw and snowbelong, whose normal range was half-a-score days' journey poleward.

“What we brought home from our voyage,” Toughide concluded soberly, “was no better than what we'd have got had we made due north.”

The company shifted uneasily, but the chaplains preened. Now the meeting had settled down, they could remind themselves how hunger and anxiety invariably drove folk back to the faith and customs of their ancestors.

But suddenly a roar cut through the soughing of icy wind among the boughs.

“Who dared to summon a bragmeet without Skilluck? What misbudded moron told you Tempestamer would not ride out the worst of storms? Let him stand forth who called the meet before I came!”

And the furious captain stomped into the center of the gathering, healthy-tall-taller than any Wego mariner in living memory-followed by Strongrip and Sharprong and someone whom the company had difficulty in recognizing: Wellearn. But a Wellearn transformed, bigger, huskier, and infinitely more self-confident than the callow youth who had set forth in spring.

Knowelkin shrank reflexively at Skilluck's intrusion, all the more because he and his companions were so obviously in good fettle. The captain fixed him with a glare.

“You!” he said accusingly. “You took it on yourself to say I must be given up for lost!”

“Not I!” the chaplain babbled, casting around for a way of escape, for combat-stink from Skilluck filled the air and he was weakened by fasting.

“Liar!” hurled Toughide. “You insisted on the meet being held when we captains said to wait a while! You understand the calendar-you know the normal end of summer!”

“But summer this year ended early! Surely a skilled seafarer-”

“We've been in latitudes where there is no winter!” Wellearn shouted.

“That's right!” Skilluck set himself back on his pads, claws poised. “Nor any hunger, either! Look at us! Think we're sick-weak-crazy- dreamlost? See any creshmarks on us? But I see one on you!” Reaching out quicker than Knowelkin could dodge, he nipped the chaplain's mantle and provoked a squeal of pain.

“Thought so,” the captain said with satisfaction. “Always the way, isn't it? When things get hard, instead of reasoning and working, you prefer to retreat into dreamness! Strongrip, make him drink a dose of creshban and see sense!”

“Best thing any briq from Ushere ever carried home,” the seaman grunted, holding aloft a Hearthomer nutshell. “A certain remedy for cresh!”

That provoked a stir of excitement among the crowd.

“But,” Strongrip continued, “do you think we should waste it on this idiot? After all, he's been starving himself like Blestar-deliberately- and Blestar was the only one of us it didn't save!”

“That's a point,” said Skilluck ruminatively. “Very well, let them be the ones to go without. It'd be a fit punishment for the way they've insulted us.”

“You have a cure for cresh?” Knowelkin whispered, voicing what all present wanted to hear.

“Not we, but allies that we've made in the far south. They've offered us as much as we need-they have plenty!-in return for letting some of their wise'uns travel on our briqs to spread their knowledge. And don't think creshban is the only trick they have under their mantles! Oh no! We've brought back marvels which... But move over, you! Senior chaplain or not, you're a dreamsick fool and it's your own fault and Wellearn is worth a score like you! Move, before I rip your mantle into tatters!”

For an instant it seemed that Knowelkin would defy the captain out of pride; then he humbly crumpled to half normal height and padded aside. Wellearn found himself at a loss. Was he really meant to take over and preside at a bragmeet, youth that he was?

“Well, go on!” Skilluck rasped. “Or I'll start thinking you're as silly as Knowelkin! Speak out!”

“What shall I tell them?”

“Everything! Everything! I never imagined things would come to so grievous a pass this year. Next year maybe, or the year after... but it's upon us, and the land is in the claw of ice, and if another summer comes it could be our last chance to move to friendly country. The briqs which survive may already not be enough to shift us all! Hadn't you thought of that?”

Wellearn hadn't, but he pretended, and gave a grave nod of acquiescence as he took over the spot vacated by Knowelkin. After so long among the Hearthomers he felt like a giant compared to his own people... as tall as Jing!

And that gave him his opening. Maintaining his maximum height, trying to imitate in Wegan the style and manner of Burney and others who addressed council meetings at Hearthome, he began.

“Teachers like Knowelkin-and even my late mentor Blestar who has gone, let's hope, to make a star shine brighter!-told us to believe there never was a real person called Jing! They've encouraged us to be obedient and small-minded by saying there never was a man who understood the stars and made their nature manifest by transforming dull rock into marvelous new substances! With the evidence of spyglasses and metal blades to contradict it, we chose to accept this nonsense!

“But we have met followers of Jing who actually possess his scriptures, and I've read them and copied extracts for our use! Thanks to what Jing taught, the city of Hearthome is the richest on its continent! By studying Jing's principles the folk there have arrived at creshban and other medicines-they've bred mounts that go on land as our briqs swim the sea” (thank you, Embery! he added silently) “-they live in houses which make ours look like hovels-they have such wealth that a bunch of sick seafarers stranded there by accident might each repose in his own bower, recovering with the aid of a cure their own folk might not need in fivescore years of which they yet keep stock for chance-come travelers...”

Gradually, as he talked, Wellearn let himself be taken over by imagination, such that in his present state of vitality it would not shade into mere dreamness. He painted a picture of a glorious future to grow from the joint seed of the Hearthomers and the Wego. Some of his audience, he noted with dismay, had ceased to listen the moment he spoke of Jing as a real person; others, however, less parched by cold and shrunken by privation, were clinging with their remaining strength to wisps of hope.

Concentrating on the latter, he concluded with a splendid peroration that sent echoes ringing among the rigid branches and ice-stiffened foliage.

Yet only a few of his hearers clacked their claws, and after a pause Toughide said, “So you're asking us to pile aboard our remaining briqs and set forth now?”

“Of course not!” Skilluck roared. “But next year could see our last and only chance to move to a warm and welcoming land! If you won't hark to the boy-excuse me, Wellearn!-if you won't hark to the young man, then trust in me who came home after Knowelkin told you I was dead!”

For a moment Wellearn thought his forcefulness had won the crowd over, but the idea of quitting the land where the Wego had lived since time immemorial was too great to be digested all at once, and the assembly dispersed without reaching a decision. Vastly disappointed, Wellearn slumped to four-fifths height while watching them depart.

“Excellently done,” said Skilluck softly at his side.

“I thought I'd failed!” Wellearn countered. “At any rate I don't see them clustering around us to vote Tempestamer the wise'uns' prize for the past summer!”

“Oh-prizes!” Skilluck said contemptuously. “To be remembered in a score-of-score years: that's something else. Until I saw how few briqs had made it back to Ushere, all I could think of was how the Hearthomers might cheat us. Now I've felt in my tubules how right they are about the grip of ice. It's time for a heroic gesture, and since someone's got to make one, it might as well be us. If we can get enough of the folk to emigrate next spring, one day they'll talk of us as we do of Jing. I felt this as truth. I couldn't have expressed it. You did. That's why I say you made a great success of it.”

“Captain,” Wellearn muttered, “I never respected anything so much before as your present honesty. I'm glad to find I guessed right after all but what you've just said-”

“Save it,” Skilluck broke in. “And don't worry about persuading the rest of the folk around to our course. A few score days of cold and hunger will take care of that.”

“I wish I could share your optimism,” Wellearn sighed. “Yet I greatly fear that some of those who refused to listen did so not because they suspected us of lying, but because misery has already taken them past the reach of reason.”

VI

“Uncle,” Embery said musingly to Chard, “do you think Wellearn will come back?”

Grousing at the annual need to adjust the mountings of his telescopes because the branches they rested on had swollen in the rainy season, her fat and fussy uncle finally pronounced himself satisfied with the work of his apprentices. Since it was again too cloudy at the zenith for serious star-study, he ordered the instruments to be trained on the skyline.

“Hush, girl,” he said absently. “In a little I can show you moon-rise like you never saw it before.”

“But do you?” Embery persisted.

“With all the joint advantages that will flow from our alliance with his folk, why not?”

“Father says he doesn't think the captain trusted us.”

“Just as long as that briq carried them home safely-and who's to say she couldn't if she lived out the awful storm which drove her here?-then you may rely on the powers of persuasion displayed by your young friend to bring more of their fleet here, and, if nothing else, the captain's greed... Ah, thank you!”-to the senior apprentice for advising him that the first telescope was properly set. “Now, my dear, come here. Before moon-rise, because this direction is fairly clear, I'd like to show you what they used to call the New Star. Ever since, more than a score-of-score years ago-”

Embery stamped her pad. “Uncle, I'm not some ignorant youngling from the city school, you know!”

He blinked at her. “No need to be offensive, niece! Of course I know you've looked at it before, but I want to share a new discovery with you, and I don't believe you've understood half the implications of what I've tried to teach you.”

“I have so!”

“Then tell me how the world can grow cooler even though the sun seems to be getting warmer-and I've worked out why!”

“For the same reason it's better in full sunlight to have a light mantle than a dark one! Reflection!”

But Embery's mood changed even before he could compliment her on a lesson well remembered, and she said, “You think you've worked out why? You never told me that! Go on!”

And she cuddled up alongside him much as she used to do when she was barely strong enough to stand upright, so that he had to lift her to the ocular of his telescopes.

Chuckling, Chard said, “That's more like my Baby Rainbow! I used to call you that, you know, until you took offense and said it was ridiculous to use the name of Jing's lady-”

“I still think so!” she interrupted. “Come to the sharp end of the prong!”

“Very well.” Chard settled back comfortably. “My line of reasoning goes this way. We have seen, in the place of the so-called New Star, nothing but a cloud of bright gas for many generations. Yet every now and then we have recorded a sort of wave passing through it, and comparison of notes made recently with those made just after the first proper telescopes were constructed allows us to hypothesize that the sudden addition of a large amount of new fuel to the fire of a star causes an outburst of colossal proportions, as when one drops a boulder into shallow water. There are splashes!”

“You've told me this before!” Embery complained.

“Ah-but what about the matter that gets splashed?”

She thought about that for a little. Eventually she said, frowning with concentration, “It must spread out, over huge distances. And it must get thinner as it goes.”

“Correct! Even so...?”

“Even so, when it reaches another star-Oh!” She stared upright in excitement. “You think a splash from the New Star has got this far?”

“It would explain a lot of things,” Chard murmured, looking smugger than an astronomer of his age and distinction had any right to. “Above all, it would explain very well indeed why there are more and more stars falling from heaven-which of course aren't actually stars-at the same time as the sun is growing warmer.”

“But this could be terrible!” Embery exclaimed. “Because the matter must have spread out very thin on its way here, so if it's only the first bit that's got to us, then-”

“There may be more to come,” Chard confirmed. “And we have no way of telling whether there will be so much that it screens out sunlight, or enough to heat up the sun so that ice will melt again, or as much as we've had already with nothing to follow. Whatever happens, though, the Wego are due for the most appalling trouble. So could we be if the ice melted after forming, all at once. We'd need their help to rescue us if the level of the sea rose. Who knows how much water has already been frozen up? But we keep hearing from the fisherfolk that they have to go further and further every year to cast their nets deep... Oh, every way it makes sense to ally ourselves with the Wego! Whether they agree is another matter. I mean, they may be as ignorant of the effects of a polar melting as most of our own folk are of the effects of freezing! When I climbed the Snowcap Range...”

Embery sighed. Her uncle was about to launch into one of his self-congratulatory reminiscences. There was no hope of hearing more, as yet, about his new theory, so it would be best to distract him.

“Isn't it time for me to look through the telescope?” she offered.

“Of course! Of course! And I want you particularly to take note of-”

He bustled about, issuing orders to the apprentices, but they were superfluous; all her life, Embery had been accustomed to sighting and using a telescope. She applied her eye.

And tensed. The tropical night had not yet fallen; the sun, behind a patch of western cloud, still turned the sky to blue. In a few moments it would vanish, but for the time being its rays slanted across the ocean.

“That's not the New Star rising, or the moon either!” she exclaimed.

“Patience, my dear!” said Chard indulgently. “Wait for nightfall. Then, just above the horizon-”

“Not above! On!”

“Are you sure?”

“Oh, don't be so silly! Look, quickly!”

Sliding aside, she almost dragged him into position behind the eyepiece.

After a long pause he said, “My dear, I owe you an apology.”

Upside-down in his field of vision was something like a giant fang, neither white nor blue nor green but a shade between all three.

“I wish them well in the far north,” he muttered. “That's all I can say.”

“Why?” Embery was almost crying.

“I never saw one before, but I recognize it from the descriptions I've read and heard.” Chard glanced at his niece. “I think you must have done the same.”

“Yes, but I was so much hoping you would say I'm wrong!” Embery clenched her claws. “Is it-”

“I'm very much afraid it must be. Further south than anybody has ever met one: that's an iceberg.”

“You mocked me publicly before the folk!” charged Knowelkin.

A sky full of racing black clouds leaned over Ushere; a bitter gale lashed the wharf, the harbor; snow turning to hail battered land and water like a forestful of spongids uttering their pellets of spawn in an evil season. Behind him ranged the muster of surviving chaplains: those who sacrificed bulk to tallness, who had been infuriated when Skilluck and his companions overtopped them. And all of them were exuding combat-stink of such loathsomeness that even the frigid blast of the wind did not suffice to protect those nearby.

What could protect anybody in the clutch of this terrible winter, when not even seaqs or dugonqs were to be trapped beneath the ice because there were no floes thin enough to stab through, when icefaws and snowbelongs rampaged into the middle of Ushere?

The chaplains said: the stars. But nobody had seen a star in four-score days...

Somewhat reduced from the great height they had attained at Hearthome, Skilluck and his comrades confronted them. The crew were at the wharf perforce, for Tempestamer had to be taken to sea once in a while to eat, there being no pickled weed or fish to spare from feeding folk. To the surprise and satisfaction of his captain, Wellearn too had volunteered to turn out, regarding himself now as a full member of the company.

More than one briq was unlikely to live until spring, being already too weak to face open water thanks to the neglect of her captain, but Tempestamer remained fat and energetic, and they meant to ensure she stayed that way.

“Who did the insulting?” Skilluck rumbled, rising to the bait. “Who declared that Tempestamer was too weak to swim through storms? Who said I was too bad a navigator to find a way home?”

“Who said we were crazy to trust to visions sent by the stars?” Knowelkin countered. “Who brought a benefit for all the folk and now is keeping it himself?”

“We're doling out our creshban to those most in need!” roared Sharprong, clenching into fighting posture. “Those who have nothing to offer the folk may mock-like you!-and we shan't care!”

“Scores will! Scores-of-scores! You're traitors to the Wego!” Knowelkin shrieked.

Standing a little apart, Wellearn suddenly realized what made the chaplains' stink so harsh: fanaticism. They were so far into the maw of dreamness, reason would not convince them. And already they had deranged Skilluck, normally so self-controlled...

“Captain!” he shouted. “They've taken the windward of us! Shift round-shift round or they will make us mad!”

Startled, Skilluck shook himself as though emerging on land after a swim. “You're right, by Jing!” he exclaimed. “Sharprong! Strongrip! Quickly! Follow Wellearn!”

And with short but menacing strides they marched into the snap of the gale before turning and confronting the chaplains anew.

That put a very different color on the mantle of the situation. The exudate of righteous anger was accessible to those not breathing their own wafts of madness. It made the chaplains think again.

“How fragile is our sanity!” Wellearn whispered, not meaning anyone to hear.

“Once more you're ahead of the rest of us,” Skilluck muttered. “But most of them are well and truly dreamlost!”

“Dreamlost?” Wellearn cried, straining to make himself heard against the howling of the wind. “No! They're frightened! And I'll tell you why! It's because if we steer the only sensible course and remove to Hearthome, they'll meet people who can contradict their lies about Jing!”

Skilluck clutched at his mantle. “If you provoke them any more-”

“They outnumber us,” Wellearn returned softly. “Surely our best hope is to make them quarrel among themselves?”

Skilluck's eye widened. “Neat!” he approved, and went on at the top of his voice.

“That's right! Now suppose instead of Knowelkin, someone like you, Lovirtue, or you, Grandirection, had been in charge of the bragmeet: you'd not have insulted me, would you? You wouldn't be so afraid of meeting strangers, either, I'm sure!”

“Of course not!” they both exclaimed.

“Nonsense!” Knowelkin roared, turning on them. It very probably was nonsense, but all their tempers were set to snap like saplings in the path of a gigant.

Grandirection, whom Skilluck had picked on because he was visibly near breaking-point, immediately raised his claws and bared his mandibles and began to pad around Knowelkin seeking an opening for attack. In the meantime, several people had emerged from nearby houses and were gazing in wide-eyed astonishment at these chaplains making ready to disgrace their calling.

“Now's our chance,” Skilluck whispered. “And-and thank you, Wellearn! Much more of this, and I'll come to think you are as smart as you imagine!”

A few moments later, the crew were able to pry Tempestamer's cold-stiff tentacles free of their mooring and goad her towards open water. Such was the violence of the wind, she was already tossing before she quit the harbor-mouth.

“What a disgusting spectacle that was!” shouted Wellearn against the blast.

“There's nothing wrong with them that a mawful of decent food wouldn't cure,” Skilluck replied. “If only more of the Hearthomer seeds had taken...!”

“How could they,” Wellearn sighed, “in a year when even the pumptrees are chill?”

They stood in a grove at the center of Ushere; it had been because of them that the Wego made their original decision to settle here, rather than the harbor, which was like half a score others nearby. Their taproots were known to reach an underwater spring, far below the level where a storm could stir the sea, which brought heat from deep-lying rocks. Carefully pierced and plugged, they furnished a year-round supply of warm fresh water. It was said that in the old days the chaplains denied that heat could come from any source except the sun, holding the stars to be cool because the spirits of the righteous dead departed thither after separating from the unrighteous in the moon-whose phases showed the division taking place-and that it had been the start of their decline when brave divers wearing capsutes under their mantles for a store of air reported that the sea-bed was warmer than the surface at this spot... a fact for which they had no explanation.

Accordingly the seeds and spawn from Hearthome, all of secondary and parasitic or symbiotic plants, had been carefully planted in crevices of pumptree bark, not because that was the species most resembling their usual hosts but because they were the only trees likely to remain sapswollen.

However, the diet didn't suit the strangers; some died off completely, some seemed to be lying dormant, and of those which had sprouted, none yielded the harvest that could be relied on at Hearthome.

Still, any extra nourishment was welcome...

Already, though, as the chaplains bore witness, voices were being raised against Skilluck and his crew, blaming them for what was not in their control: bringing the wrong sort of seeds, not insisting on being given more creshban, wasting space on spyglasses and articles of metal instead of food. It would be hard to keep their tempers in face of such taunting. Nonetheless it must be done. No other plan made sense than removal to Hearthome; no briq but Tempestamer could lead the fleet thither. There were no charts for her storm-distorted course.

So she must be fit and lively four-score days from now. Or they were doomed.

VII

For a while longer the fact that Skilluck and his comrades-surviving on what they had stored during their season of good eating but otherwise, save mentally, in little better shape than anyone else-struggled along the frost-rimed branchways to deliver doses of creshban, together with what scraps of fruit or leaf or funqi-pulp their exotic plantings on the pumptrees yielded, counted heavily in their favor, while the chaplains, who had disgraced themselves by their affray on the wharf, lost countenance.

Then the creshban started to run out, while the number of victims multiplied, and even some who had declared support for the idea of emigration took to accusing Skilluck of lavishing the medicine on himself at others' expense. By that stage it was useless to argue. People were taking leave of rationality and slumping into stupor from which a few at least would never revive.

The sole consolation was that, undernourished and sickly as they were, none of the Wego any longer had the energy for fighting. But that meant, of course, they would have none to prepare for a mass exodus when the weather broke, either.

“Why did we come home?” Wellearn mourned more than once. But Skilluck strictly reprimanded him.

“We had no way of knowing how bad this winter was to be! Nor would we have felt easy in our minds had we abandoned our folk to face it without help!”

“At least we needn't have found out until next summer,” Sharprong grumbled.

“By which time our kindred and our young'uns could have been dead! As things are, we stand some slender hope of keeping a clawful of the folk alive.”

“Slender...” Strongrip muttered, gazing at the drifts which blizzard after day-long blizzard had piled against the bravetrees. Many upper branches and almost all their fronds had frozen so hard the wind could snap them off, and every gust was greeted with their brittle tinkling.

“Next time we take Tempestamer to sea we'll hang a net while she feeds,” Skilluck sighed. “Even a load of sour weed could save another briq or two.”

“Captain, you can't keep our fleet in being singleclawed!” Strongrip began. Skilluck silenced him with a glare.

“Name me another captain who's fit enough to help?”

There was a dismal pause. At length Wellearn ventured, “Maybe Toughide?”

“One might well try him, sure. Wait on him and ask if he will join us. If he won't, I'll still do what I can to feed his briq, or anyone's!” Skilluck stamped his pad. “How many summers to catch and pith and train the briqs we need to replace Stormock and Billowise and the rest? For all we know, there may not be another summer!”

So it was done, and Toughide goaded his weak and weary Watereign forth in Tempestamer's wake the next clear day, and though she was less elegantly pithed, a lucky mawful of fish revived her and he was able to make it back to shore with a mass of weed caught on curved prongs, lacking nets such as Skilluck had preserved.

When it was noised abroad that those briqs too feeble to risk the winter ocean were nonetheless receiving fodder, a few score folk made their way to the wharf and watched the spectacle in silence. It was unprecedented. Never in history had any captain of the Wego acted to aid his rivals; rather, he should frustrate them so they would not win the wise'uns' prize.

It was a new strange thing. The onlookers dispersed and reported it. Next time the weather cleared not two but seven briqs put out: Riskall came, and Catchordes, and Shrewdesign's Neverest, and two more so young their captains had not named them, which seemed barely strong enough to quit the harbor.

Towards these last Tempestamer behaved most strangely, for she slowed her pace instead of exulting in the water, and kept them in her lee as though they were of her own budding. By now Wellearn was informed concerning the manner of pithing and breaking a briq, and therefore he exclaimed in amazement.

“Captain, had I known when I first joined your crew that you'd left Tempestamer with those nerves intact...!”

He left the rest unsaid. There was no need to explain he meant the nerves governing a briq's response to briqlings. It was generally held to be a recipe for disaster to do as Skilluck had done, for such a briq might fall in with a wild herd and become ungovernable.

Dryly Skilluck made reply, “Most likely my Tempestamer would cut younglings out of the herd without orders and drive them home with her! It's something I've always wanted to try. Is she not huger, even now, than any wild'un?”

It was true. There was no record, not even any legend, of a briq's surpassing her, and she was still growing despite the dreadful winter.

“We'll find a wild herd off the coast near Hearthome,” said Skilluck dreamily. “We'll let her pick the young'uns she personally likes. We'll raise such a fleet as will conquer any ocean, any season. Before my time expires, I hope to see the Wego travel round the globe!”

“Captain!” said Strongrip with a sharp reproof. “We have to live until the summer first!”

“Agreed, agreed,” the captain sighed, and raised his spyglass to search for weed among the random floes.

They returned with not only weed but plumpfish, for Tempestamer sensed a school of them and patiently circled until they had to approach the surface again where she and her companions could feed and nets haul up what was left. The other captains were loud in admiration, and Skilluck seized his chance to exact a pledge: were spring to be delayed, were the fields to lie under frost a moonlong past usual, they would take aboard whomever of the Wego wished to come and head south, following Tempestamer.

Hearing the vow taken, Wellearn almost collapsed from relief.

“Captain, we're saved!” he whispered.

“Didn't I tell you? A few score days of hunger and cold, and then a mawful of good food... But we aren't on course yet. So many of us are too lost in dreamness to work out what's best for our salvation.”

For at least a while, though, it seemed Welleam's prediction was assured of fulfillment. Revived by the gift of fish, half the Wego came to watch the next departure of the fleet-and help carve up the carcass of a briq that had died at her moorings, a tragedy for her captain but valuable food to the folk-and among them were Knowelkin and Grandirection, who had composed their quarrel. They made shift to chant a star-blessing on the departing briqs, and the crowd settled into familiar responses even though a few budlings, too young to have seen a clear sky, were heard to ask fretfully what stars might be.

Two calm days followed, and the nets were quickly filled, suggesting that warm water was working up from the south in earnest of springtime and bringing bounty with it.

But on the fleet's last night before returning home a fiery prong stabbed out of heaven and exploded on a berg, raising a wall of water high enough to swamp the smallest briq. There was a thunderclap, followed by a cascade of ice-chips, but this was not hail and that had not been lightning.

Tempestamer gave forth a cry such as no tame briq had ever been heard to utter, and for hours ran out of control, seeking the lost young'un. Although Skilluck finally mastered her again, and set course for Ushere well before dawn, it was obvious that some captains were regretting their pledge. After all, if despite the chaplains' blessing the sky signaled its enmity, what hope was there of carrying out Skilluck's plan?

“That was an omen!” was his retort. “If we don't move south, that's what we can look forward to more of! Wellearn, do the skies hurl such missiles at Hearthome?”

“Not that I was ever told!” Wellearn asserted.

“But you said the stars look down on Hearthome more than us! Maybe we should stay here, cowering under cloud!”

Wellearn was taken aback until he saw what Skilluck was steering towards. Then he roared, “Safe? Did that prong strike from clear air? More likely the stars are warning us to move where we can see them and be seen, instead of hiding from them all the tune!” The force of his logic told to some extent, but what counted most was that their weather-sense had given no warning of that blow from heaven. Had it been a lightning-strike, it would have been preceded by a sense of uncomfortable tightness and uncertainty. As things were, the discomfort had succeeded the impact. The sensation was weirdly disturbing.

Shortly thereafter the chaplains, whose duties included keeping track of the calendar, marked the usual date of spring. Weather-sense contradicted that, too. Traces of a thaw did occur; many beaches were cleared of ice as warm water washed against them. But uplands to the north which ordinarily caught the early sun-heat remained capped with snow, and even in low-lying valleys there were places where the drifts endured. As for the ground where new crops should be planted, it was stiff as stone a moonlong later.

“I hold you to your vow,” Skilluck said when that day dawned, and the other captains shuffled their pads noisily. “But for me, would your briqs be even as healthy as they are?”

“Ask the storm-lost,” someone muttered.

“They're not here-we are!” Skilluck snapped. “So are what's left of the Wego. Must they stay and starve because the bravetrees are frosted and nothing grows on them, because the fields are hard as rock and all seeds die at the sowing?”

“To risk cresh on a crazy course to nowhere?” another cried.

“To suffer cresh right here, when creshban is to be had at Hearthome and Tempestamer can guide us thither?” Wellearn countered.

Of all the various arguments advanced, that struck deepest in his listeners' tubules. Even those who had best planned to cope with the winter were showing creshmarks now, and saw little hope of escape before the sickness claimed their powers of reason.

“We'll follow you,” said Toughide finally. “With all the family and friends our briqs can carry. And let those who choose the other way be cast upon the mercy of the stars.”

“Then get to work!” Skilluck rose to what was left of his former height, and despite his shrunken mantle still overtopped the rest. “Tomorrow's dawn will see the Ushere fleet at sea, and our landfall will be in a kind and gracious country where we shall be helped by allies-helped by friends!”

“Uncle!” Embery cried, rushing up the slope that led to Chard's observatory. “Uncle, great news!”

Worried, absent-minded, owing to old age and the problems of the past few months which had so much interfered with his study of the stars, the old man nonetheless had time to spare for his brother's daughter. He beamed on her indulgently.

“Good news is always welcome! What have you to tell me?”

“Strangers are coming over the northern hills! It must be Wellearn's people at last! Did you not calculate that their spring must have begun by now?”

“Yes, at least a moonlong ago!” Suddenly as enthused as she was, Chard ordered one of his telescopes trained on the high ground to the north, and exercised an old man's privilege by taking first turn at its ocular.

And then he slumped. He said in a voice that struck winter-chill, “My dear, were you not expecting the Wego to arrive by sea?”

“Well, sure! But given how many of them there are, perhaps they had to ferry their folk to the nearest landfall and...”

She could hear as she spoke how hollow her words rang.

“This is no question of perhaps,” her uncle said. “This is a fact. The fireworkers' district is being attacked. If that's the Wego's doing, neither you nor I want any truck with them!”

VIII

Heavier-laden than ever before, yet seeming utterly tireless, and with her back sprouting trencher-plants and vines as luxuriant as though this were an ordinary summer voyage, Tempestamer beat steadily southward on the trail which only a briq could follow through the currents of the ocean. Some said it was a question of smell; some, a matter of warmer or colder water; others yet, that briqs could memorize the pattern of the stars though they were invisible by day or cloud-covered at night. After all, maintained these last, a northfinder could be carried anywhere, even in darkness, and always turn the same unfailing way.

But most were content to accept a mystery and exploit it.

Certainly Tempestamer had learned from last year's storm. Now, if clouds gathered threateningly, she altered course and skirted them without Skilluck needing to use his goad, or when it was unavoidable hove to and showed her companions the way of it, even to locating masses of weed shaken loose by gales from coastal shallows. This gave much food for thought to both Skilluck and Wellearn, who served this trip in guise of chaplain because the passengers they had aboard would not have set forth without one. The former wondered, “Perhaps one shouldn't pith a briq at all. Perhaps there's a way of taming them intact. Could we be partners?”

While Wellearn mused, “The directions she chooses when she meets a storm: they imply something, as though the storm may have a pattern. At Hearthome I must study the globe that Chard offered to explain to me, because watching the sky...”

The other captains, though, grew afraid on learning how much of Tempestamer's weather-sense had been left intact. All of them had had the frustrating experience of trying to drive a briq direct for home when bad weather lay across her path, but rations had run so low that only a desperate charge in a straight line would serve the purpose of survival.

So too had Skilluck, as he said, and he preferred to come home late with vines and trencher-plants intact. What then of last year?-countered the others, and he could give no answer, except to say the fortune of the stars must have been shining on him.

Knowing him for a skeptic, they dismissed that and went on worrying.

Still, the weather continued fair. Despite the fact that they had met icebergs further south than even Toughide and Shrewdesign last summer, there had been whole long cloud-free days and nights, and the children had exclaimed in wonder at the marvels thereby revealed, especially the great arc of heaven composed of such a multitude of stars it never dwindled regardless of how many fell away in long bright streaks. Those riding Tempestamer kept begging for a peek through Skilluck's spyglass, and Wellearn amused them with fantasies based on something Embery had said, about the time when folk would travel to not just another continent, but another world.

One, though, acuter than the rest, demanded seriously, “Where do we find the kind of briq that swims thither?”

“If we can't find one,” Wellearn answered confidently, “then we'll have to breed one-won't we?”

“She's slowing,” Skilluck murmured. “That means landfall, if I'm any judge.” Keeping his spyglass trained on the horizon, he swung it from side to side.

And checked.

“Wellearn, did the Hearthomers mention a people around here who consign their dead to the sea?”

Startled, Wellearn said, “That's a custom of seafaring folk like us! They said there were none on this whole coast! That's why when Blestar died we-”

“Oh, I remember,” Skilluck interrupted. “But there are bodies floating towards us. Five of them.”

It was in Wellearn's mind to ask whether he was mistaking some unfamiliar sea-creature, when his own eye spotted the first of them. No chance of error. Here came five light-mantled people of the Hearthome stock, and none was making the least attempt to swim...

“Stop Tempestamer eating them at all costs!” Skilluck roared to Strongrip. “It could be one of them is still alive!”

His guess was right. The last they hauled out of the water, while the passengers gazed in awe and terror, was still able to speak, though salt-perished and on the verge of death. Wellearn's mantle crumpled as he translated.

“We thought they were your people!” the stranger husked. “Even though they came to us by land! We thought maybe you were short of briqs to carry everyone...”He retched and choked up salt water.

“Go on!” Skilluck urged, aware how all the other captains were closing their briqs with his to find out what was wrong. Wellearn continued his translation.

“Beyond the mountains, land won't thaw this year! Except along the coasts, snow is still lying and the ground is hard as rock! That's what we found out from a prisoner we took. Never expecting an attack, we met the strangers with courtesy, but they were dreamlost and frantic and wrecked half of Hearthome before we managed to stop them. I never thought to see such slaughter, but they had started to eat us-yes, eat us!” A sound between a moan and a laugh. “And some of them were worse! They tried to eat themselves!”

“What of Hearthome now?” Wellearn cried, clenching his claws.

“I-we...”

The effort was too much. Salt-weakened, one of his lower tubules ruptured, and the victim saved from the sea leaked out his life on Tempestamer's back.

After a long dread pause Skilluck straightened. He said grayly, “We must go on. We can't go back. From what he said it's clear that if Ushere isn't doomed already it will be by next year. We've come south across a fifth of the world, and if even here we find that people have been driven off their lands by cold and hunger...”

There was no need to finish the statement. Those around him nodded grave assent.

“But if we can't settle here after all-” Wellearn began.

“Then we'll survive at sea!” Skilluck exploded. “The way the wild briqs do!”

“Not even Tempestamer can bear a load like this indefinitely!” Sharprong objected, indicating the puzzled and frightened passengers. “We've had an easy voyage compared with last year, but if there are going to be more storms-”

“Are there not uninhabited islands with springs of fresh water we can put into when our drink-bladders won't suffice? Aren't there capes and coves to offer shelter? And don't we have more seafaring skill in this fleet than ever was assembled outside Ushere?”

Wellearn shivered despite the warmth of the day. Here was a vision more grandiose than his-indeed, than any save Embery's, which pictured travel through the sky.

But what about the rest? Would they agree?

Strongrip said heavily, “We must at least make landfall, Captain. If our companions don't see with their own eyes what you and I might take on trust, there'll be recriminations.”

“Those will follow anyway, the first time we run short of food,” said Skilluck. “But you're right. We go ashore with all prongs sharp, if only for the chance to rescue wise'uns who know the secret of creshban. All else from Hearthome may go smash-who's going to light a fire in mid-ocean, let alone carry sand or stone to melt for glass and metal? Burn my Tempestamer's back? Never! Safer to use the stuff of life than the stuff of death! But I want creshban!”

Breathing heavily, he turned to Wellearn. “You stay here and keep the passengers soothed. The rest of us-”

“No,” said Wellearn firmly. “I'm going ashore, too. If Embery still lives, I want her with me.”

“Now you listen to me-” Skilluck began, but Wellearn cut in.

“Here come the other captains! We'd best present a united front.”

“Stars curse it, of course! But you can't expect us to load up with every single survivor-”

“Then take her, if I find her, and I'll stay!” Wellearn flared.

“You're being unreasonable-”

“No, Captain. Much more reasonable than you. I've thought this through. If we do take to a nomad life at sea, what are we to do about keeping up our numbers? Already people from Ushere and Hearthome are overbred. We shall have to copy what roving tribes do on land: leave part of our company at the places where we stop in exchange for strangers who want to learn the arts of the sea. It had been in my mind to propose such a policy anyhow, because of a talk I had with Shash. But if we do as you suggest...”

Skilluck clattered his mandibles glumly. He said after a pause, “Well, perhaps there will be some among the passengers who want to take their chances on land, even so far from home, rather than carry on at sea. Salt water isn't in the ichor of us all the way it is in yours and mine.”

Wellearn wanted to preen. How short a time ago it seemed that Skilluck had called him a landlubber at pith!

Yet he still was, and it required all his self-control to accept that his hopes of settling at Hearthome had been shattered the way the prong from heaven shattered that berg. Maybe after seeing the city in nuns the idea would come real for him. Until then, he must compose himself. Here came Toughide and Shrewdesign to demand what was happening.

“You expect us, in our condition, to plod ashore and win back Hearthome from its invaders?” Toughide snapped.

So much was to be expected. After the long voyage, few of the briqs were as fit and flourishing as Tempestamer.

“Not at all,” was Skilluck's wheedling response. “We only expect the combined talents of the Wego to salvage something from the landlubbers, and above all what's going to be most valuable to ourselves: creshban, of course, but also...” He paused impressively. “Wouldn't you like spyglasses, all of you, better than this one of mine? The Hearthomers have them by the score! I never admitted it, but I craved one myself! Only they wouldn't part with the one I wanted until we'd concluded our alliance... Still, that's water past the prow. But the observatory where the glasses are kept is nearest the ocean and stands the best chance of having been defended! If we can only attain that hill before we're forced to retreat, and hold a bridgehead long enough to gather provisions, we shall retire with the finest treasure any Wegan could imagine!”

Rearing up to his full remaining height, though that strained his voice to shrillness, he brandished his beloved spyglass for all to see.

“If we don't come back with something better for us all, then you may cast lots for who's to have this!”

Uncertain at the prospect of a battle, for the Wego had never been collectively a fighting folk, Shrewdesign said, “We shan't try to retake the city by force?”

“It would be dreamness to attempt it! But what's of use to us, that the invaders would simply smash because they're starved insane-we must take that!”

Unheeded while the debate was raging, the sun had slanted towards the horizon. Suddenly the tropic night closed down, and there were moans from passengers who had not yet adjusted to the speed of its arrival.

During their last day's travel the fleet had broached a latitude further south than any on their course, and it was now for the first time they saw, at the western rim of the world just above the thin red clouds of evening, a great green curving light, edged like a shuddermaker's rasp.

Silence fell as they turned to gaze at it, bar the slop of water against the briqs' sides and the crying of frightened children. The redness faded; the green grew even brighter.

“What is it?” Skilluck whispered to Wellearn.

“I heard of such things before, and never saw one,” was the fault answer. “There are tales about the Blade of Heaven which comes to cut off the lives of the unrighteous-”

“Tales!” Skilluck broke in. “We can do better without those! How about some facts?”

“It's said at Hearthome that when a star flares up-”

“Oh, forget it! Leave it to me!” And Skilluck marched towards Tempestamer's prow, where he could be heard on all the prow-together briqs.

“Chaplains! Stand forth! Tell me if that's not the Blade of Heaven!”

A ragged chorus told him, yes it was.

“Tell me further! Is it poised to cut off the lives of the unrighteous? And is it not unrighteous to leave those who offered to ally with us to suffer at the claws of crazy folk?”

The instant he heard any hint of an answer, he roared, “Well, there's our sign, then! Captains, prepare to moor your briqs! Against that cape there's a shelf of slanting rock where one may bring in even so large a briq as Tempestamer and not make her beach herself! And it's exactly below the observatory we're making for!”

IX

Among the many stories Wellearn had been told when he was a young'un, then taught to disbelieve as he grew up, was a description of what went on in the moon when the righteous and unrighteous were separating. Gradually dividing themselves according to whether they found dark or light more alluring, folk were said to yowl and yammer in imaginary speech; those following star-blessed visions pursued a straight path towards the light, those who doubted kept changing their minds, while only those who had arrived at righteousness by reason were able not to collide with others and be beaten or tripped up and so delayed on their way to the glory of full moon. It was a child's impression of the adult world, perhaps, not stressing what the wicked must have done to deserve the dark.

Skilluck would have been deemed wicked by all the chaplains Wellearn had known, including Blestar, inasmuch as he often mocked and occasionally defied them.

But he was glad to be beside the captain when they went ashore, for what they found was like an actualization of that terrifying childhood story.

No concerted attempt was made to drive off the Wegans who landed; there was neither rationality nor shared insanity to generate resistance. Wild-eyed, stinking, often with their mantles leaking, a horde of starvation-maddened victims ran hither and thither, some sufficiently aware to try and alarm their fellows, many more so distraught that they reacted only to the scent of oozing ichor and under the impression “here's food” began to clap their mandibles excitedly before attacking those who meant to warn them.

It might have been different had the newcomers been exuding combat-stink, but none of them was. They were serious, determined, and-most of all-afraid.

Wellearn was too calm to pretend otherwise. Wherever he glanced, he saw new horrors. One image in particular sank barbs in his memory. There was an elderly man who must have walked, he thought, as far as Tempestamer had swum to get here. For his pads were completely worn away, and he was hobbling along on the under-edge of his mantle with vast and painful effort, no taller than a new-budded child, leaving a broad wet trail like a giant sluq...

For the first time Wellearn realized: there were some dooms far worse than death.

Beating back those who got in their way, using poles from their briqs' saddles in preference to prongs, Skilluck's party breasted the slope below the observatory and obtained their first view of the entire city. Wellearn repressed a cry. The trails of luminous vines which he had seen in Embery's company were being torn loose and waved madly around until they died, as though the bravetrees of all the houses had suddenly developed palsy. Northward, in the quarter of the fireworkers, there was a vast glare on the underside of a pall of smoke, suggesting that all the stored fuel had been set ablaze at once. And the night breeze carried not just fumes but the sound of screaming.

“Looks to me as if they're even crazier over yonder!” Skilluck muttered. “So who's going to want to quit the briqs and settle here? If we can't carry all the sane survivors... That's the spyglass-house, is it?”

His answer came in the shape of a well-aimed throwing prong, which missed Strongrip by a claw's-breadth. At once they dropped to the ground, prepared to crawl the rest of the way.

“The defenders are still on guard,” Wellearn whispered. “I must let them know who we are!”

“But-”

“I know what I'm doing!” And he began to work his way uphill, soilover-style, using his claws and the edges of his mantle instead of his pads.

Sharpening his hearing to its utmost, he caught fault cries up ahead.

“Looks like a well-organized attack! Stand to!”

Another few moments, and a half-score of prongs flew over him. Somewhere behind was a strangled moan.

Moving as fast as he could, he closed the distance to the side of the observatory: that great complex of bravetrees and countless other plants where he had been shown marvels beyond belief. At every gap between their boles protruded a cruel spike instead of the former telescopes, and from roots to crown prongsmen waited to deliver death like a blow from the sky.

He gathered all his force and shouted, “Embery!”

And instantly doubled over, offering the toughest part of his mantle to any missile.

It came-but he felt only a blow, not a stab. The throwing prong skidded away into the undergrowth.

“Someone called my name!” he heard... or did he? Had tension allowed him to mistake imagination for reality? Straining perception to the utmost, he waited.

And almost rushed to dreamness with relief. No doubt of what he heard this time.

“No, daughter, it isn't possible. The stress has been too much for you-”

“Embery! Shash! Chard!”

Wellearn had to straighten out again to deliver his words with maximum force, and for an instant could imagine the prong that was going to lodge in his mantle. But he went on, “The Wego are here! The Wego are here! Don't-!”

One of the defenders high in the observatory's treetops heard the warning too late. He had taken aim and let go. Wellearn screamed.

But the prong sank into soft ground... so close, he could feel the quivering impact. After a little, he was able to recover himself and return to normal pressure as Shash and Embery and half a score of their friends rushed to meet him.

Shamelessly embracing Embery under his mantle, as though they were about to mate in public-but she was showing his bud, his bud!-and anyway nobody would have cared if they had, Wellearn translated the conversation going on softly among the trees of the observatory, trying to make himself believe in his own heroism. That was what they were all calling it, Skilluck too... but it wasn't, it was just that he had done what the situation called for, and anyway most so-called heroes turned out to have been temporarily crazy, living a dream instead of reality.

He forced aside the relics of the chaplains' teachings about reliance on visions, and composed himself to concentrate on his duties as interpreter.

“We saw no signs of organization on the way here,” the captain was saying. “Does it break down at night, or is it always the same?”

“At the beginning there was some semblance of order among the invaders,” Shash said. He was tired but coherent; his older brother Chard was slumped to the point where he looked as though he needed a sitting-pit, and paying scant attention. “They were able to confront us and- well, that was how we lost Burney. We were fit and rational, and thought they would be too. We now believe they must have been the first of their folk to work out what was happening, to decide that they must leave home and take over someone else's territory. And we assume that others fell in behind them when they realized this was their only hope, but by then they were-well-disturbed. And on the way I guess they infected others with their craziness.”

“That fits,” Skilluck muttered. “Any idea how far north they came from?”

“What few people we've been able to capture and feed up to the stage where they can talk normally-and there aren't many of those-all agree that the cold weather reaches down to the very pith of this continent. If my brother were better he could tell you more. But he's exhausted.” Shash spread his claws helplessly. “The further from the sea, it seems, the worse the cold! We know that water retains heat longer than dry land, but even so, this is terrifying! Are we due for frost and snow here in Hearthome? We've never seen such things! One could imagine the whole world turning into a frozen ball!”

“I don't think we have to fear that,” Wellearn said, a little surprised at himself. He parted from Embery and leaned forward. “The way Chard explained it to me, warmth at the equator turns water into vapor, so clouds turn into ice at the poles. But if the sun goes on getting warmer-”

“Quite right!” said Chard unexpectedly, and lapsed back into distraction.

“Forget the theories!” Skilluck snapped. “We need to decide on a plan of action! I have one. We should simply-”

“But what about the Blade of Heaven?”-from Toughide.

“Oh, that!” Chard roused himself completely. “We know about such phenomena. When a star-like the famous New Star-explodes, it throws off gobbets which cool down in the interstellar void. If one approaches another sun, it warms up and boils off part of itself. All this follows from the teaching Jing bequeathed.”

“Is this going to save our lives?” Skilluck shouted, erupting to full height. “Are you coining with us? Are you prepared to give us what you want to preserve from Hearthome? Make your minds up now!”

He was so patently correct, Wellearn found himself upright alongside him.

“Yes! And whatever else you give us, we must have the whole of Jing's scriptures!”

“Creshban!” Skilluck shouted, and the other captains echoed him. “If nothing else, we must have the secret of creshban!”

The wind had shifted; there was something menacing in the air that affected their weather-sense, making tempers raw, and it wasn't just smoke.

After a pause filled only by the noise of the crazy folk smashing and ripping through the city, Shash said heavily, “There's no secret to creshban. We don't know why, but fresh sour juices of new-budded fruits or even new-sprouted leaves will do the job so long as they have no animal matter at the roots. Nothing from a briq's back-nothing from a cemetery-only shoots that spring from new bare ground. I'll give you seeds that produce the most suitable plants, but... Well, essentially it's like eating a proper diet at home, instead of wandering across a desert or an ocean and living on stored food.”

“That simple?” Skilluck whispered. “If we'd known-”

“If you'd known you'd never have come back,” said Chard unexpectedly. “You said that in Forbish, didn't you?”

There was a thunderstruck pause, while Wellearn registered the fact that he had not actually translated the last statement, and the rest of the Wego captains were looking blank.

“When you first came here, I thought you were better informed than you pretended,” said the fat old astronomer. He squeezed himself upright, and even though the effort slurred his speech he overtopped luck, for his was the taller folk. “Did you wonder on the way home last year why we didn't give you all of everything at once? Did you wonder whether we realized your intention was to cheat us if you could?”

Skilluck cowered back in a way Wellearn had never imagined he would see, not in his wildest fantasies. Chard blasted on.

“But it doesn't matter anymore, does it? You kept your pledge to return, and you didn't know you were going to find us in these straits! You've met your honorable obligation, and it remains for us to match the bargain! Take what you can-everything you can, including people!-from this doomed city! Take telescopes and microscopes, take vines and blades and seeds and tools and medicines, and flee at once! Until dawn the attackers will be sluggish, but if you delay past then-! Leave us, the old ones! Leave everything except what your briqs can carry without sulking! And above all, take Jing's scriptures! Wellearn, here!” He bowed himself to a dark corner and pulled out a glass jar.

“Take the originals! We salvaged them first of all, of course, and here they are. Now they're yours. Use them as best you can. If you must, leave them where they will freeze. But don't destroy them! As for us, of course...”

“No! No!” Embery cried, hastening to his side. “I won't leave you, I won't leave father!”

“You'll have to leave me,” Chard said gently. “But you'll go, won't you, Shash?”

“They've turned our healing-house into a jungle,” the chief curer said. “They've rooted out our medicinal plants. If I stay, the stars alone know what use I could be to our folk.”

“Go, then. Me, I'm much too old.” Chard settled back comfortably where he had been. “Besides, I'm fat and I'd probably sink even a handsome briq like Tempestamer. Take your leave and let me be. And dream of me kindly, if you will.”

Soberly, the visitors prepared to depart. As they were clasping claws with him, he added, “Oh, captain, one more thing, which might be useful to you in your navigation-that is, if you haven't already noticed it. The end of the comet which you call the Blade of Heaven always points directly away from the sun. It might amuse you, Wellearn, when you have nothing better to occupy your mind, to devise a theory which will account for that.”

“I'll try,” Wellearn said doubtfully. “But without the means to conduct experiments-”

“There are always means to conduct experiments. And aren't you part of the greatest experiment of all?”

X

During the hours of darkness some of the briqs' passengers had indeed decided they would rather settle on shore and take their chances. As dawn broke they were heading south, together with several score refugees from Hearthome, in search of a site that would be easier to defend.

Meantime Skilluck's party was working out what of their loads-hastily collected in the city-would be least useful, and ruthlessly discarding whatever they did not regard as indispensable. Before the day's heat had fully roused the crazy invaders, the booty had been distributed and so had the two-score Hearthomers who were prepared to risk the ocean.

Skilluck prodded Tempestamer with his goad, and she withdrew her mooring tentacles and made for open water.

“What did uncle mean when he called us an experiment?” Embery asked her father.

“We're mixing like different metals, to see what alloy will result,” Shash answered, clinging anxiously to the briq's saddle as they felt the first waves. “It's the start of a new age, whatever the outcome.”

“I liked the old one,” Wellearn muttered. “And I've been cheated of my share in it.”

“Don't think like that!” admonished the old man. “Even the stars can change! And what are we compared to them?”

“We don't yet know,” said Embery. “But one day we shall go there and find out.”

Overhearing as he issued orders to his crew, Skilluck gave a roar of sardonic laughter.

“Bring me the briq you want to swim to heaven on, and I will personally pith her! Me, with a northfinder I can trust and Tempestamer under me, I'll be content. Now let's go find a herd of wild briqs and start recruiting our new fleet. It's going to be the grandest ever seen!”

But despite the hotness of his words and the bright rays of the morning sun, the wind struck chill from the north.