I said, "I've been assuming that you were chosen by your people in some fashion, Your Grandeur."

"They'd gotten used to having a Duko back on the Whorl, the Duko of Grandecitta. They were glad to get out from under his thumb here, or said they were. The facts were that they didn't know how to run things for themselves, or even how to try. I didn't like being called Rigoglio, so I started calling myself Duko. A man objected, and I knocked him down. In a day or so, I had half a dozen young fellows hanging around me, anxious to do the knocking down for me."

"I see."

"After that I settled quarrels. If you were a friend of mine, you won. If you weren't, I gave the nod to the weaker party, and chopped off your head if I could find an excuse. A couple of months of that, and everybody in town was a loyal supporter."

I nodded while making a mental note.

"I remembered Pas, or whatever his name was. It was pretty much what he'd done, only on a larger scale. He came in on the side of his friends, and when there was a war with one country stronger than the other, he was generally for the weak one, and you only lost a war to him once."

The Duko rubbed his eyes. "What did you put in your wine, Master Incanto?"

"Nothing, Your Grandeur," I said, "and I've been drinking it myself."

"It's not down in the fire-"

"Watch out!" Oreb spread his wings in alarm.

"It's up over it."

I looked where he had indicated, and saw Mucor's shadowy figure coalesce there as if seated upon the smoke. "Babbie's come back," she told me matter-of-factly. "I wondered if you still wanted him."

"Why, yes. Yes, I do, if I may have him."

"That's good, he misses you. I'll send him."

The smoke swirled as she vanished; and just as it had been in the old days beneath the Long Sun, I thought-too late-of a dozen things I ought to have asked her.

"Girl gone?" Oreb inquired. He clacked his bill and rustled his feathers. "Ghost girl?"

I told him she was, and made the mistake of adding that I wished she would come back.

"Bird gone!" He took wing and vanished into the night.

"He's a night chough," I explained to the Duko. "Don't worry about him, He can see in the dark much better than you and I can at noon."

"I wasn't worried about him," the Duko muttered.

19

Say Father

I wrote late last night (too late, to admit the truth) and still did not set down everything I had intended. Now here I sit, writing once more while everyone else is asleep; and even though I have not gotten to make my little experiment, I have far more to write about than patience to write it.

Or paper, for that matter.

Oreb came back this morning, and remembering how I had boasted to the Duko about his acuity of vision I told him to find me a stone table.

Soon he was back, quite elated by his success.

"Big table! Stone table. White table. Bird find! On hill. Watch bird!" With much more. I promised to watch, and off he flew due north.

I told Duko Sfido that I was going to retrace our journey for an hour's ride or about that, and instructed him to continue toward Blanko. "This is a good horse," I said, "and I should be able to catch up to you tonight."

Certainly there was nothing to worry about; but whether he was really worried or not, he seemed very worried indeed. "If this is absolutely necessary, I'd like to send a couple of troopers with you."

Oreb returned, flying in circles overhead and calling, "See god! Watch bird! See god!"

I said, "Its necessity is not the question, Your Grandeur. I am going to do it. It is a private matter, a matter of my private devotions, and I am not going to take away two of the troopers Inclito gave us to help guard his prisoners. Or one, or any other number." With that, I turned and rode away before Sfido could stop me.

I had said an hour's ride, because I had told

Oreb that I was interested only in tables not far from us. To give him his due, the altar he found for me would have been less than an hour distant if the ride had been over level ground. In the event, my horse was forced to pick his way across rocky little gullies and up and down the barren, windswept hills, which made my ride closer to three hours than one. With Hyacinth's azoth virtually out of reach under my greatcoat, robe, and tunic, my mind dwelt apprehensively on wild beasts and stragglers from the Horde of Soldo, without my actually seeing the smallest sign of either.

The cold and the wind were more immediate enemies. I pulled my looted greatcoat tight about me and muffled my face against the wind, just as I had when I rode with Sfido, but it seemed colder than it had ever been before, perhaps merely because I was facing into the wind, or perhaps merely because winter had advanced another step that morning. Those who live largely in houses or in warm climates, as I have, do not know cold. On my long, lonely ride today, cold and I at last shook hands- mine, of course-and exchanged unpleasantries that left me with the cough that is keeping me awake tonight. When I rode, my feet froze. Dismounting and leading my horse warmed me somewhat, but slowed our progress.

The altar Oreb had found was on a hilltop, as I expected, and the climb was difficult: up the side of a flat-topped hill whose gentlest slope was practically straight up, until at last, perspiring in spite of the cold, I was able to pull myself over the edge, and stand upright on smooth rock more level than your kitchen floor.

I had expected that the altar would be a mere flat stone not much different from the one beneath which I had laid Fava to rest, a rough slab of fire-blacked slate resting on three or four boulders. What I found instead was a wide rectangle of some white mineral so fine in grain it might almost have been a kind of glass, supported by twelve graceful pillars of a metal that I am going to call bronze until we can speak face-to-face. The Neighbors had danced around it once; I knew that as soon as I saw it and the floor of living rock that they had leveled and smoothed with so much care. They had danced, and their watching gods, with their feet upon the stars, had smiled and bent in honest friendship to accept a morsel from a table fit for gods.

Sinew had found an altar of the Vanished People in a wood, and had tried to persuade me to visit it without exposing himself to the humiliation of my refusal. Now I wonder what wonders I missed by my surly rejection of his implied invitation. Was it an altar like the one to which Oreb guided me today? If not, in what respects did it differ, and why? Did Sinew himself worship there? If he did, did he experience what I experienced today, or anything of the kind? Have you visited the place, Nettle? I am eager to talk to you about all this.

Sinew is still on Green, assuming that he is (unlike his father) still alive. On Green and so unreachable, as Sfido's friend Gagliardo would doubtless tell us. But I and others will visit Green's jungles tomorrow night if my experiment succeeds. If I can locate Sinew, I will ask him about the altar he found in order that we can find it ourselves, assuming that Hide and I succeed in returning to the Lizard; if it is as remarkable as the altar to which Oreb led me, it will be well worth visiting more than once.

Ever since my boyhood, it has seemed to me that it is a species of insult to the immortal gods to pray at their altars without sacrificing, provided that sacrifice is possible. If I still had the long, straight, single-edged knife I used to carry when I was Rajan of Gaon, I would have thought seriously about sacrificing Oreb. I do not believe that I could have nerved myself to do it, but I cannot help wondering what the result would have been. My horse would have made a sacrifice worthy of the Grand Manteion, to be sure; but I could not spare him, and I had no knife other than the azoth (as I said), and no means of getting him onto the hilltop.