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she said.
    A tall, silver-haired man was leaving a building with a dog on a leash. He looked perfectly unremarkable as he stopped to chat with a woman leaning out a window across the way. “What is it?” Nathaway asked.
    “They’re Grey Folk, both of them,” Spaeth said. “They can live in the open here, as if they were free people.”
    The farther they climbed, the more grey faces they saw. Spaeth stared at them, entranced and hopeful, but she herself drew few answering stares. Nathaway was another matter. He was aware of eyes following him with puzzled frowns, and suspicious glances from passers-by. It made him feel as if they had passed one of those invisible boundaries that exist in cities, into a protected enclave where he was an intruder.
    The Stonepath came to an end in a broad, deserted square. Facing them was a tall building of white marble, friezed with ancient Altan symbols. To Nathaway’s eyes it looked like a court, or a college building. The main entrance was between tall, fluted pillars where the copper gates still stood open on the square. Hand in hand, Nathaway and Spaeth walked forward. No one was there to challenge them.
    Inside the gateway was an open lawn planted with trees and shrubs, and lined on all four sides with a covered walkway set back behind airy arches. The little enclosed park was very quiet, and had a contemplative air, far removed from the world and its concerns.
    At the very centre of the lawn was a marble plinth, and on it stood an ordinary boulder of granite. As they approached, Nathaway saw that its face was pocked where it had been battered in the past by blows from a sledgehammer that stood cradled in a wrought iron stand next to the stone. Some of the spalls were so worn by rain and time that they were just dips in the stone surface. But there was a fresher scar on the left side.
    “Perhaps that is Ison Orin’s,” Spaeth said in a low voice. It seemed irreverent to talk loudly, here.
    “How long ago was that?”
    “I don’t know,” she said.
    “Sixty-two years,” a voice answered. They turned around to find an elderly Grey Man watching them from under the shadow of one of the arches. He was dressed in an ancient, traditional style: a long tabard and leggings, with a short mantle around his shoulders. It reminded Nathaway of the legal robes worn by advocates in court. The man came forward, studying them curiously. He had a short fringe of white hair around his bald head, and was carrying a book.
    “Is this the Isonstone?” Nathaway asked.
    “Indeed it is,” the Grey Man said. He turned to look at it. “Those scars on the stone go back six centuries. They all stood here, the leaders willing to forfeit their self-will for the sake of the Isles. And out in that square is where the Heirs of Gilgen bled to erase all harm from those leaders’ hearts.”
    They regarded it in silence for a while.
    “I’m surprised it’s not guarded,” Nathaway said. “Aren’t you afraid someone might seize it? Considering its importance.”
    The Grey Man frowned piercingly at Nathaway. “There are safeguards you cannot see. Still, I thank you for the warning.”
    “I didn’t mean—”
    “We don’t get many Inning visitors,” the Grey Man observed.
    “Really? I should have thought . . . Is it all right? No one told me—”
    “Don’t worry, it’s perfectly all right, if your intentions are good. I am just curious what brings you here.”
    Nathaway looked to Spaeth, but she seemed shy to answer, so he said, “We were told to come here, by her . . . father, Goth.”
    “They call him Goran now,” she said faintly. “Goran, son of Listor.”
    There was a short silence. Then the Grey Man said slowly, “Goran is your father?”
    Spaeth hesitated. “Not really. He created me.”
    The man absorbed this a moment, then turned sharp eyes on Nathaway. “And you?”
    “I’m . . .” he groped for some explanation of who he was that had any relevance here. “I’m her