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thousand years ago, three other human species had come to Santhenar in the hunt for the golden flute. The mostly tall and mostly dark Aachim, like her father, were native to the world of Aachan. The Charon, also big dark people, were few but incredibly powerful, masters of the Secret Art and of machines too. The third species were the Faellem, a small, rose-skinned and golden-eyed people from the other of the Three Worlds, Tallallame. They were not physically strong, but skilled at deception and illusion. The three off-world species were much longer-livedthan humans, and they had turned Santhenar upside down, but that time was past. Now only old humans were numerous on Santhenar. The Charon were all gone, one way or another, while the surviving Aachim and Faellem had long hidden themselves and concealed their differences.
    Matings between the different species seldom resulted in children, and when they did, such blendings were often mad. But mad or not, they could have unusual talents.
    Karan had not found
her
talents to be much use though, for they were not at all reliable. She could often sense people before she could see them, even sense what they were going to do or say before they did it, especially if she was in danger. She could sometimes make a sending to another person, though just a mish-mash of feelings and images, and it hardly ever worked when she wanted it to. Rarely, Karan could make a link to someone else and actually speak to them, mind to mind. She had only done that a few times in her lifetime. That was what was so shocking about the link to Llian; it had happened without her even thinking about it. Some expression of her innermost longings, she supposed.
    But her talents had disadvantages too—she felt things more strongly than other people; sometimes so strongly that her emotions overwhelmed and paralyzed her. And using her talents always resulted in aftersickness, as little as a vague feeling of nausea or as much as a devastating migraine that could last all day. So Karan was normally careful.
    Then why, at the end of Llian’s telling, had she cried into his mind, “Who killed her?” Karan knew the answer to that. Because she was completely captivated by the tale and the teller.
    She had heard Llian tell before; people came from all over Meldorin to hear the tales at the Festival of Chanthed. Llian had become well-known four years ago, after his very first public telling, and Karan had never forgotten it. Thatwas part of the reason she had sneaked into the Graduation Telling, using the pass of a distant cousin who was a student at the college. Already she was planning her trip back for the autumn festival. It would be the highlight of her year, a whole fortnight of tales great and small.
    Well, time to be going. Put away your foolish dreams, she told herself. What use is a teller to you? There is nothing for him at Gothryme. Karan took a swig from her water bottle, pulled her broad-brimmed felt hat down over her face and jumped up. She was anxious to get home now, where she had worries aplenty. If she traveled hard enough she might cut the journey by a day. Luckily Santhenar’s huge moon was near full, its luminous yellow face lighting her way so that she could walk well into the evening.
    But as the days passed the other, darker face of the moon rotated further into view, the yellow pocked with seas and craters of red and purple and black. The moon turned to its own more sluggish cycle, and the time when the dark face was showing was generally accounted to be unlucky; a time when decisions should be postponed and journeys put off. Thankfully she would be home by the time the waning moon was all dark.
    On the fourth morning she passed through the tiny mountain hamlet of Tullin. It was just a straggle of houses and an inn, the only one between Chanthed and her home. She quenched her thirst at a well, then continued on—camping was free, and pleasant at this time of year. Behind the inn Karan saw an