Tallal bowed hid head gravely. "Eat," he said, indicating a silver platter no bigger than Raif's hand that was neatly laid with spiced nuts.

Recognizing the formality of a long-practiced custom, Raif slipped a nut into his mouth. It was sharp and salty, like the sea. After he swallowed, he surprised himself by asking, "Why did you butcher the mule?"

'Ten is an unlucky number for my people."

Raif thought back to his first conversation with Tallal when the lamb brother told him there were eleven in the party. His headcount had included the animals. So they were nine now.

"It is the number of the Dark One's children," Tallal continued. "Whenever ten are gathered it draws His eye."

But we are ten, Raif thought. Including me.

Tallal watched as the implications of his statement finally dawned on Raif.

"You knew I would leave today?"

"We hoped."

Raif took a breath and held it. The smoke from the lamps burned his throat. Of course they wanted him to go: they had seen what he was.

Tm sorry about your brother."

Tallal did not blink. "So are we."

Raif stood. Pouch things swung wildly around his head.

"You cannot leave," Tallal said. "You do not know how."

He was right.

Rising, the lamb brother removed his hood from the stool and offered the seat to Raif.

He hadn't brushed against a single pouch, Raif noticed, sitting. "What's in them?" he asked, jerking his head toward the roof.

"Souls."

Raif closed his mouth, looked up at the plain brown-and-tan pouches and then looked away.

Tallal smiled softly, with understanding. "This lamb brother asks to be forgiven. He did not mean to surprise you. The sacs are our way of keeping count. Each one represents a soul we have reclaimed for God. When we return to our people they are opened with great ceremony and the morah is released."

The pouches were the size of plums. "The morah is in there?"

The lamb brother shrugged. "Some believe so. This lamb brother thinks perhaps the flesh of God is too powerful and impatient to be J contained in such small things."

"When will you return?"

There was no shrug this time. Tallal's gaze lengthened as he looked beyond the walls of the tent. "I think perhaps not for a very long time" The lamb brother turned his head a fraction and looked straight at Raif. Understanding passed between them. "Sometimes a purpose must be a man's home."

Raif inhaled the smoke; funny how it no longer burned. "What if you are unsure of your purpose?"

"You ask yourself. You ask others." Tallal indicated the Want with a slight movement of his wrist. "You search."

"Until last night I believed I could help you. It seemed as if our purposes were close." Raif stopped, fearing he had said too much.

Yet Tallal simply nodded. "The Book of Trials speaks of the raven. It tells us that when we see one we should follow it, for ravens feed on opened carcasses. They find the dead."

Raif could think of no reply.

"The lamb brothers believe you need a new sword." Tallal's dark eyes glinted. "Last night it was noted that the wrall was brought down with a bow. Our elder brother thinks perhaps this is not good. He believes some things are too powerful to be killed in such a manner. He says there are creatures so far removed from the world of flesh that no blade forged by man can kill them." Tallal frowned. "Our elder brother worries about such things."

A stray draft set the smudge lamps jittering, suddenly brightening, then darkening the tent. Smoke funneled around the walls, its scent strengthening as if something within it had reacted to the wind. Raif felt his mind circling with the smoke. Tallal was leading him somewhere as surely as if he had attached guide lines to Raifs belt. Almost against his will, Raid's hand sought out the weapon holstered at his waist. Did you really think this would be the sword that makes you? The Listener's words, spoken all those months ago in his hut by the sea, suddenly seemed dangerous. Like a curse.

Tallal continued; Raif knew he would. "It is written that thirty hundred years ago our people nearly died. A drought was visited upon the Sands and no man felt rain upon his back for thirteen years. When the rains came they brought no relief for the sky had grown too dark and the rain was full of ash. In the charcoal years that followed it was sung that wralls walked the sand and claimed us. We were simple people, without weapons to best them, and we had grown weak. When the Outlanders came and offered us the chance to meet the wralls in battle as their allies, ten thousand of our people marched north with the Outlander horde. They were never seen again.

"After the charcoal years ended the barren years began. We do not know much about those times for there was no one to sing the histories. Gradually my people revived. Daughters were born. Water holes were replenished. Dates and lambs grew and we were fed. Finally one was born to us who was named Meesa, Needs To Know. The buffalo women tried to claim Meesa for they knew she was strong and would save many living souls, but she denied them and went in search of the ten thousand missing men. Meesa left the Sands as a girl and returned bent and gray. Some say a hundred years had passed while she searched. The lamb brothers ran out to meet her. "Tell us what you know, they pleaded. And Meesa told them and the lamb brothers sang her knowledge into the histories, and many generations later those histories were written down."

Tallal paused, took a nut from the tray and ate it. He was confident now, Raif saw, sure that the end of his story was being anticipated. It was. Even though he knew he was being manipulated, Raif still needed to hear it.

"Meesa traveled north during those hundred years and talked with many people in many lands. Piece by piece she learned what had become of the men. The Outlanders had driven them far north, promising that tomorrow the battle would be met, yet when the next day came there was no sign of the enemy horde and the Outlanders lied again. Wralls took many on the long journey, claiming the morah, stealing from God. My people feared to return to the Sands without fulfilling their promise of ending the plague of wralls. They believed that by staying away there would be more food and water for those who were left behind.

"Finally they arrived at the Valley of Cold Mists. 'Here; the Outlanders said, 'is where their armies will rise. My people had heard those words many times before and did not believe them. My people made a mistake. The wralls rose that night in vast hordes. Their armies spread across the horizon like the sea. My people were caught unawares in their sleep. As quickly as they took up their bows and spears they were ridden down, run through with blades as dark as the night. The histories tell of many dread beasts that could not be killed by men. Even the Outlanders with their forged steel could not match the wrall kings. My people were slaughtered. The Outlanders were decimated, down to their last thousand when the raven lord rode through. The raven lord was not one of us and our histories do not record his name or his people. We know he wielded a sword that was as black as well water, and that he used it to slay a wrall king.

"After the battle ended the raven lord was dead. He had driven back the wrall hordes but his body was broken, ravaged by many cuts. The few Outlanders who still lived walked to high ground and slept, and in the morning when they awoke they found the valley below had been flooded and frozen. A lake of red ice now lay in place of the battlefield, and every man and every beast who had died there was now frozen beneath the ice."

Raif shivered. As Tallal had been speaking, a gusting wind had set the leather pouches rocking overhead. They rocked now, out of time with each other, swinging like pendulums back and forth. I need to think, but Tallal didn't plan on giving him time.