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enough for anyone—but not for you.” The bonevoice grated louder and the green flames in Haron River’s eyes burned brighter. “Though you keep your b’dabba and honor us as you should, and though your husband brings incense for us on the sacred days, your husband is not Hoos. Do you think the eternal valleys of Yarwalla wait for one of his kind? A worshiper of a pantheon of petty, squabbling godlets who has never ridden into single combat—who is unblooded? But that is not all—not even that. Always, we wait and wait for the children. Where are the children who will honor us in the next generation? Why don’t you bring them to us?”
    Medwind looked into the cold angry glitters in her grandfather’s father’s eyesockets, and tensed. “I still have no child to bring.”
    The bones hissed. “Our shame… our shame…” and Grandmother Song asked angrily, “How is this, then? Are we to be abandoned, barren one? Left without honor at your death? Who will light candles and incense for us when you are gone?”
    Medwind grew angry. “I’m trying to get pregnant! I just haven’t yet.”
    Around her, the hissing grew louder. “Get a younger husband,” some of the voices demanded. “Kill that old makcjek,” Troggar Raveneye urged. A small drum, a shempi, suddenly leapt off the hanging rack and flew past her, almost hitting her.
    “Stop that!” she yelled.
    The hissing stopped. The vha’attaye glared at Medwind.
    “Don’t throw things at me,” the mage said.
    Inndra Song whispered, “Then honor us as you should. Destroy your unworthy vha’attaye. She shames you and shames us. She has not earned the long passage of vha’atta. And bring a child for us to teach, a child who can honor us when you are gone.”
    “And if I cannot do these things?” Medwind asked.
    The bonevoices rose again in grating wails—soft, horrible echoes that mimicked living voices—but stripped of all humanness. Teeth clacked and gnashed, eyesockets blazed bright, ghostflesh contorted in shapes of remembered rage. The vha’attaye did not answer her.
    Medwind asked again, “If I cannot do these things?”
    Inndra Song spoke over the rest of the voices of the dead. “Then we will not know you—and when you ride to the gates of Yarwalla, you will be turned away. Living, you will have no people—and dying, you will have no home. That shall be our curse.”

Chapter 2
     
    ROBA Morgasdotte shivered on the cold stone seat in the damp, draft-ridden subbasement and pulled her cloak tighter around her. Her mask was wood and heavy, with a featureless circle with slits for her eyes and a very minor and uncomfortable depression for her nose. It slipped a bit, and she shoved it impatiently into place. Around her, on rows of equally awful stone benches, about thirty other scholars huddled, rubbing their hands or fidgeting with their masks. A few of them scratched on wax tablets with tiny stone styluses, then passed their notes around.
    So this
, she thought,
is the mighty and blasphemous Delmuirie Society, huh? For this I got up before the crack of dawn? Without even a nice hot cup of coffee? Bleh! I had better secret meetings than this when I was eight.
    It was funny that her boss had made such a big deal about the Society. She grinned beneath her mask. That was Thirk Huddsonne all over though, once she thought about it. He made fusses about the oddest things. She leaned over and patted him companionably on the shoulder. “So when does this meeting get going?” she whispered.
    He threw his finger over the blank mouth-region of his mask in a melodramatic fashion and bent down to scrabble around under the bench. He came up with another wax tablet and stylus. In big letters, he wrote, “It’s already underway. Haven’t you been reading?!”
    Oh, please
, Roba thought.
They get up before dawn on a workday morning so they can wear stupid costumes and sit in a cold dark room passing notes? I’d rather do the university’s seasonal