Kurt climbed, fingers and sandaled toes seeking purchase in the crevices of the rocks, sending stones cascading down the hillside. He cleared the crest, found a level, brushy ground and ran, desperate, trusting pursuit would be at least delayed.

But word would go back to Nephane and to Djan, and she would be sure now the way he had fled. Ships could outrace him down the coast.

If he did not reach his own abandoned ship and secure the means to live, he was finished in this land. Djan would have guessed it already, and now she could lay her ambush with assurance.

If she knew the precise location of his ship, he could not hope to avoid it.

The sun rose over the same grassy rangeland that had surrounded him for the last several days, dry grass and wind and dust.

Kurt leaned on his staff, a twisted branch from which he had stripped the twigs, and looked toward the south. There was not a sign of the ship. Nothing. Another day of walking, of the tormenting heat and the infection’s throbbing fever in his wound. He started moving again, relying on the staff, every step a jarring and constant pain, his mouth so dry that swallowing hurt.

Sometimes he rested, and thought of lying down and ceasing to struggle against the thirst; sometimes he would do that, but eventually misery and the habit of life would bring him to his feet and set him walking.

Phan was a terrible presence in these lands, wrathfully blinding in the day, deserting the land at night to a biting cold. Kurt rubbed blistered skin from his nose, his hands. His bare legs and especially his knees were swollen with sunburn, tiny blisters which many times formed and burst, making a crack-line that oozed and bled.

The thirst was beyond bearing as the sun reached its zenith. There was no water, had been none since the small stream the day before—or the day before that. Time blurred since he had entered this land. He began to wonder if he had already missed the ship, bypassing it over one of the gently rolling hills. That would be irony: to live by the skills of pinpointing a ship from one star to another and to die by missing a point over a hill.

He turned west finally, toward the sea, thinking that he could not fail at least to find that, hoping that the lower country would have fresh water. The changing of the seasons had confused him. He remembered green around the ship, green in winter. Had it been so far south? The sailing—he could not remember how many days it had taken.

By afternoon he ceased to care what direction he was moving in and knew that he was killing himself, and did not care. He started down a hillside, too tired to take the safer slope, and slipped on the dusty grass. He slid, opening the lacerations on his hands and knees, grass and stone stripping sunburned skin and blisters from his exposed flesh as he rolled down the slope.

The pain grew less finally, or he adjusted to it, he knew not which. He found himself walking and did not remember getting to his feet. It was not important any more, the ship, the sea, life or death. He moved and so lived, and therefore moved.

The sun dipped horizonward into dusk, a beacon that lit the sky with red, and Kurt locked onto it, a reference point, a guidance star in this void of grass. It led him downcountry, where there were trees and the land looked more familiar.

Night fell, and he stood on the broad shoulder of a hill, leaning on his staff, fearing if he sat down now he would not have the strength in his burn-swollen legs to get up again. He started the long descent toward the dark of the woods.

A light gleamed off across the wide valley, a light like a campfire. Kurt paused, rubbed his eyes to be sure it was there. It was a pinpoint like a very faint star, that flickered, but stayed discernible in all that distance and desolation.

He headed for it, driven now by feverish hope, nerved to kill if need be to obtain food and water.

It gleamed nearer, just when he feared he had lost it in his descent. He saw it through the brush. Men’s voices—nemet voices—were audible, soft, quiet in conversation.

Then silence. Brush moved. The fire continued to gleam. He hesitated, feeling momentary panic, a sense of being stalked in turn.

Brush crashed near him and strong arm took him from behind about the throat, bent him back. He fell, pulled down by two mean, weighted with a knee on his right arm, another hand pinning his left. A knife whispered from its sheath and rested across his throat.

The man on his left checked the other hand on his wrist. Kurt ceased to struggle, trying only to breathe.

“It is t’Morgan,” said a whisper. Gentle hands searched his belt for weapons, found nothing, tugged his arms free of those who held him and drew him up, those who had been lately threatening him handling him carefully, lifting him to his feet, aiding him to stand.

“Are you alone?” one asked of him.

“Yes,” Kurt tried to say. They almost had to carry him, bringing him into the circle of firelight. Other nemet joined them from the shadows.

Kta was among them. Kurt saw his face among the others and felt his sanity had left him. He tried to go toward him, shaking free of the others.

He fell. When he managed to get his arms beneath him and tried again to sit up, Kta was beside him. The nemet washed his burning face from a waterskin, offered it to his lips and took it away before he could make himself sick with it.

“How did you come here?” Kurt found his own voice unrecognizable.

“Looking for you,” said Kta. “I thought you might understand a beacon fire, which drew me once to you. And you did see it, thank the gods. I planned to reach your ship and wait for you there, but I have not been able to find it. But gods, no one walks cross-country. You are mad.”

“It was a hard walk,” Kurt agreed. Kta smoothed his filthy hair aside, woman-tender, his fingers careful of burned skin, pouring water to cool his face.

“Your skin,” said Kta, “is cooked. Merciful spirits of heaven, look at you.”

Kurt rubbed at the stubble that protected his lower face, aware how bestial he must be in the eyes of the nemet, for the nemet had very little facial hair, very little elsewhere. He struggled to sit, and bending his legs made it feel like the sunburned skin of his knees would split. “Food,” he pleaded, and someone gave him a bit of cheese. He could not eat much of it, but he washed it down with a welcome swallow of telisefrom Kta’s flask.

Then it was as if the strength that was left poured out of him. He lay down again and the nemet made him as comfortable as they could with their cloaks, washed the ugly wound across his ribs with water and then—which made him cry aloud—with fiery telise.

“Forgive me, forgive me,” Kta murmured through the haze of his delirium. “My poor friend, it is done, it will mend.”

He slept then, conscious of nothing.

The camp began to stir again toward dawn, and Kurt wakened as one of the men added wood to the fire. Kta was already sitting up, watching him anxiously.

Kurt groaned and sat up, dragging himself to a cross-legged posture despite his knees. “A drink, please, Kta.”

Kta nodded to the boy Pan, who hastened to bring Kurt a waterskin and stas,which had been baked last night. It was cold, but with salt it went very well, washed down with telise.He ate it to the last, but dared not force the second one offered on his shrunken stomach.

“Are you feeling better?” asked Kta.

“I am all right,” he said. “You should not have come after me.”

And then a second, terrible thought hit him: “Or did Djan send you to bring me back?”

Kta’s face went thin-lipped, a killing anger that turned Kurt cold. “No,” he said. “I am outlawed. The Methi has killed my father and mother.”

“No.” Kurt shook his head furiously, as if that could unsay the truth of it. “Oh, no, Kta.” But it was true. The nemet’s face was calm and terrible. “ Icaused it,” Kurt said. “ Icaused it.”