"That was my first point, and I have made it. The second concerns my identity, about which certain foolish rumors have circulated. I was born in the Whorl, more often called the Long Sun Whorl. My mother was not Inclito's as well, nor was my father his father. I would have thought that our faces would have ended the speculations of that kind before they began, but they have not, and so I wish to end them now. I will not presume by saying that Inclito and I are brothers in our regard for each other-but we regard each other highly.

"Though I was born in the Long Sun Whorl, my home is in a coastal town to the west called New Viron. Here you think that holy men should not marry, and you may well be right; but I am not a holy man, and I have a wife there, a woman I've loved since we were children. We have been separated, for reasons that are of small importance to you. It should be sufficient for me to say that we have been separated for years, though I have been striving to rejoin her. When I am well enough to travel again-in a very few days, I hope – Cuoio and I will set out for New Viron."

Hide began to protest, but my voice overpowered his. "He is recently come from there, and should be able to guide me. He can continue the errand that brought him to Blanko afterward, if he chooses to and his mother agrees. Cuoio, you see, is my son, the youngest son of three."

I spoke to Mora. "I'm sorry that my wife and I were not blessed with daughters. I have envied my brother Inclito his ever since I met-"

Terzo exclaimed, "She's singing!"

"I know," I told him. "I've been trying to speak in spite of it. I suggest that you try to keep silent in spite of it, for the present at least."

Jahlee asked, "Who is?"

"Someone only Colonel Terzo and I can hear. It doesn't really concern him, and it certainly doesn't concern the rest of you." I fell silent for a moment to listen to Seawrack's song, the beating waves and the cries of the seabirds.

Duko Rigoglio said, "I told you once that you had no magic powers."

"Did you? It's certainly true."

"I know better now. You've put some sort of spell on Terzo here, and I saw the witch sitting in the smoke."

"I know you did."

"Terzo says that you had a baletiger carry your meat, and that he put it down and went away when you told him to. The man who was on guard then says the same thing."

Inclito's coachman nodded.

"Private Cuoio wouldn't tell us anything. I understand that now better than I did the last time I spoke to him. This seems to be the last chance I'll get to talk to either of you, so I'd like to ask you something. Not whether you have those powers, because I know the answer. But how you got them, and what you set out to do with them."

When I said nothing, Mora declared, "The gods favor him. If you had been a better man, they might have favored you, too."

Jahlee added, "He's on good terms with the Vanished People, they say, and-"

Her voice was lost in a babble of others, including Duko Rigoglio's. I shut my eyes (I was very tired, which may have helped) and while attempting to fix her tones in my memory, I tried to recall Green's jungles and Sinew. Sleep rushed upon me, sending me spinning through an endless night.

21

The Red Sun

I tried to sleep after writing those words about sleep, telling myself that it was an appropriate place to do so, and that I could push this account ahead a bit more in the morning. With everyone gone, the house is so quiet! Its silence should lend itself to sleep, but it does not; I am apprehensive, and grateful for the least sound from Oreb, for the small noises Jahlee and Cuoio make.

I want very much to describe the Red Sun Whorl in such a way that you can see it, Nettle-to do it so well that whoever reads this can. Have I made you see Green's jungles? The swamps and their dire inhabitants? The immense trees and the lianas clinging to them like brides? Or the City of the Inhumi, a grove of disintegrating towers like a noble face rotting in the grave?

No, I have given only scattered hints in spite of all my efforts.

What will be the use of trying, in that case?

We stood in an empty street, Nettle. Empty, I say, although it knew a certain traffic of broken stones, which fell from the crumbling houses lining it, rolled into the street, and lay where they had ceased to roll, attended by a guard of rank weeds.

"Look." Mora pointed.

I looked up and saw a shining crimson disk, so large a sun that when I stretched forth my arm, my hand could not cover it all. Stars gleamed all around it, and I felt that the Outsider was trying to convey some message to me by it and them, that this great ember of sun I saw had tumbled from a ruin as the stones had, and that the stars I saw by day here had sprung up around it like the weeds. But I cannot depict the vast city of ruins for you. If I were an artist, I might draw it here, a sketch in my friend the stationer's good black ink upon his thin gray paper. Imagine that I have, and and tell me what would you see in it? What could you? A few hundred ruinous houses, a few hundred dots in a gray sky that is in fact a dreaming purple, and the black sun (for it would have to be black in such a drawing) overlooking everything and seeing nothing.

To understand, you must visualize its sky and hold the vision above you. Not my words. Not my words. Not the smears of ink upon this paper. The sky, a sky purple or blue-black rather than blue, a sky whose skylands were always as visible as those at home, though vastly more remote and colder. It was warm there in the deserted, ruined street; but the dark sky made it seem cold, and I felt sure that it would be cold soon, would turn cold, in fact, before the actual setting of the crimson sun.

"How did we get here?" Hide demanded.

And Mora, "Where are we, Incanto?"

I shook my head and kept my silence.

Inclito's coachman snapped, "Don't do that!" and I turned to see to whom he was speaking. It was to Jahlee, and she was taking off her clothing. "Look!" she exclaimed. "Look at me!" The last worn garment dropped around her feet. She pirouetted, displaying hemispherical breasts, a slender waist, and narrow hips.

Mora muttered, "Is there some madness here?"

"Yes." It was Duko Rigoglio. As he spoke, he fell upon his knees before me. "Free my hands. That's all I ask, free my hands, please, as you love the Increate."

It was a new term to me. I could only peer into his eyes and try to guess what he meant by it.

"I'm a proud man. You know that. I'm begging now. Have I begged you for my life?"

"Your Grandeur-" Morello began.

"I'm begging, Incanto. This is more than life to me. Whoever you are, whatever you are, have pity on me!"

I motioned to Hide. "Cut his bonds."

Sfido exclaimed, "No!"

"Are you afraid he may escape, and remain here?" I asked him. Without waiting for an answer, I told Hide, "Free him, and the others, too. For their sake, I hope they do."

Hide tore his eyes from Jahlee, drew a knife smaller than Sinew's, and cut the cords that had held Rigoglio's hands behind him; Rigoglio rubbed his wrists, muttering thanks.

"You know this street," I told him. "You recognized it at once. You're a proud man, just as you say-too proud to enjoy feeling gratitude for anything. Share your knowledge with me, and I will acknowledge that you have settled any debt."

"I can't be sure," he said, and stared about him with wide eyes. After a moment, a trickle of blood ran from his mouth, so that I wondered if it were possible that he was an inhumu, and had deceived me; but he had merely bitten his lip.

"It's so quiet here," Mora said. Her hand was on the hilt of her sword.