They were eating cheese. Both started to back away when Bane and Snibril approached, and then relaxed.

The man wanted to talk. Words seemed to have piled up inside him.

"Camus Cadmes is my name," he said. "I was a hair-cutter for the sawmill in Marus there. I suppose I'm still a hair-cutter now, too, if anyone wants to employ me. Hmm? Oh. I was out marking hairs for cutting and Lydia here had brought out my dinner and then there was this sort of heavy feeling and then-"

And then he'd got to a point where words weren't enough, and had to be replaced by arm-waving and a look of extreme terror.

"When we got back I don't think there was a yard of wall left standing. The houses just fell in on themselves. We did what we could but ... well, anyone who could just left. You can't rebuild from something like that. Then I heard the wolf things, and ... we ran."

He took the piece of meat that Snibril gave him and they ate it hungrily.

"Did no-one else escape?" said Snibril.

"Escape? From that? Maybe, those outside the walls. There was Barlen Corronson with us until yesterday. But he went after the syrup of those humming things, and they got him. Now we're going east. I've got family that way. I hope."

They gave them new clothes and full packs, and sent them on their way. The couple hurried off, almost as fearful of the Munrungs as they were of the other sudden terrors of the Carpet.

"Everyone ran," said Snibril. "We're all running away."

"Yes," said Bane looking down the west path with an odd expression. "Even these." He pointed, and there coming slowly up the path, was a heavy wagon drawn by a line of bent, plodding figures.

CHAPTER 4

"Wights," said Bane. "Don't speak to them unless they speak first."

"I saw them last night in a dream ... " began Snibril.

Pismire showed no surprise. "You've got one of their belts. You know when you really work hard at something, you're really putting yourself into your work? They mean it."

Snibril slipped the belt from his tunic and, without quite knowing why he did it, slipped it into his pack.

Behind them the rest of the carts slowed down and drew to the side of the path.

The wight-drawn wagon rumbled on until it reached the cairn. Both parties looked across at the others. Then a small wight left the cart and walked across to Snibril and Bane. Close to, its robe could be seen to be, not just black, but covered in a crisscross of faint grey lines. The deep hood covered its face.

"Hello," said the wight.

"Hello," said Bane.

"Hello," nodded the wight again.

It stood there, and said nothing else.

"Do they understand language?" said Snibril.

"Probably," said Pismire. "They invented it."

Snibril felt its steady gaze from the hidden eyes. And he felt the hardness of the belt rubbing into his back, and shifted uneasily. The wight turned its gaze on Bane. "Tonight we eat the Feast of Bronze. You are invited. You will accept. Seven only. When the night-time fires are lit."

"We accept," said Bane, gravely.

The wight turned on his heel and strode back to the wagon. "Tonight?" said Pismire. "The Feast of Bronze? As if it was Feast of Sugar or Hair? Amazing. I thought they never invited strangers."

"Who's invited who?" growled someone from inside the cart. There was a stamping about, and Glurk's head poked through the curtains over the front.

"You know what I said about getting up ... " Pismire began, but since Glurk was already dressed there was very little he could do, except wink slyly at Bane and Snibril.

"Wights? I thought they were just a children's story," Glurk said, after it had been explained to him. "Still, it's a free meal. What's wrong with that? To tell the truth I don't know more'n a scrap about them, but I never heard of a bad wight."

"I'd hardly heard of wights at all until now," said Snibril.

"Ah, but you weren't alive when old Granddad was," said Glurk. "He told me he met one in the hairs once. He lent it his axe."

"Did he get it back?" said Pismire.

"No."

"That was a wight all right, then," said Pismire. "They tend to be too preoccupied to think about simple things."

"He said it was a good axe, too."

"There's no question of refusing to go," said Pismire.

"That's right," said Bane.

"But it's so easy to get things wrong. You know how sensitive they are. They've got all kinds of strange beliefs. You've got to know that, you two. Tell them, General."

"Well," said Bane, "seven's very important to them. Seven elements in the Carpet, seven colours-"

"Tell them about the Chays."

"I was coming to that ... seven Chays. They're like ... periods of time. But not regular ones. Sometimes they're short, sometimes they're long. Only the wights know how long. Remember the belt? Seven squares, and each represents a Chay. So the Chay of Salt, you see, is a time when people prosper and trade, and the Chay of Grit is when they build empires and walls ... am I going too fast?"

General? thought Snibril. That's what Pismire said. He wasn't thinking. And a general's a chief soldier ... and now they're all looking at me. None of them noticed!

"Hmm?" he said. He tried to recall what Bane had been saying. "Oh ... so tonight's Feast means we're in the Chay of Bronze, yes?"

"It means it's starting," said Pismire. "It's a time of war and destruction."

Glurk coughed. "How long does this last, then?"

"It'll last as long as the wights think it will. Don't ask me how they know. But tonight wights all over the Carpet will celebrate the Feast of Bronze. It's something to do with their memories."

"Sounds a bit unbelievable to me," said Glurk.

"Oh, yes. But that doesn't mean it isn't true."

"You certainly know a lot about them," said Snibril.

"I don't," said Pismire, simply. "You never know anything where wights are concerned. You remember tales, see things, pick up little bits of knowledge here and there, but you never know anything for certain."

"All right," said Glurk. He stood up on the driving-board of the cart. "We'll go. Don't see we can do nothing else, anyway. Bertha'll come, and Gurth, and, let's see ... yes, Damion Oddfoot. It strikes me that when a wight asks you to dinner you go, and that's it. In sevens."

They entered the wights' little camp sheepishly, keeping together.

Wights always travelled in numbers of seven, twenty-one or forty-nine. No-one knew what happened to any wights left over. Perhaps the other ones killed and ate them, suggested Glurk, who had taken a sort of ancestral dislike to axe-stealing wights. Pismire told him to shut up.

The oldest wight in the group was the Master. There were twenty-one in this group and Pismire, looking at their cart, pointed out the big varnish-boiler on top of it. Wights specialized in smelting the varnish that was mined at the Varnisholme, the giant pillar of red wood in the north known as achairleg in Dumii. Then they went from village to village, selling it. Varnish could be cast into a spear head, or a knife, or just about anything.

Snibril wondered how long would it be before anyone noticed he had shoved the belt back in his pack? But he wasn't going to give it up, he told himself. They'd be bound to want it back if they saw it.

There were seven fires, close together, and three wights around each. They looked identical. How do they tell one another apart, Snibril wondered?

"Oh, there's something else I forgot to tell you," said Pismire, as the wights busied themselves over their cooking pots. "They have perfect memories. Um. They remember everything. That's why they find it so hard to talk to ordinary people."

"I don't understand," said Snibril.