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see it.” Harshly that came, as if to deny her claim.
    “I have not eyes, that is the truth. But my fingers have been taught to serve me in their place. I, too, weave, but only after the manner of my own people.”
    Silence, then a touch on the back of her hand, so light and fleeting Dairine was not even sure she had really felt it. The girl waited, for she understood this was a place with its own manner of barriers, and she might continue only if those here allowed it.
    Again a touch on her hand, but this time it lingered. Dairine made no attempt to grasp, though she tried to read through that contact. And saw only bright whirls.
    “Female, you may play with threads after the crude fashion of your kind. But call yourself not a weaver!” There was arrogance in that.
    “Can one such as I learn the craft as your people know it?”
    “With hands as clumsy as this?” There came a hard rap across her knuckles. “Not possible. Still, you may come, see with your fingers what you cannot hope to equal.”
    The touch slid across her hand, became a sinewy band about her wrist as tight as the cuff of a slave chain. Dairine knew now there was no escape. She was being drawn forward. Oddly, though she could not read the nature of the creature who guided her, there flowed from its contact a sharp mental picture of the way ahead.
    This was a twisted path. Sometimes she brushed against the trunks of trees: again she sensed they crossed clear areas—until she was no longer sure in what direction the beach now lay.
    At last they came into an open space where there was some protection other than branches and leaves overhead to ward off the sun. Her ears picked up small, scuttling sounds.
    “Put out your hand!” commanded her guide. “Describe what you find before you.”
    Dairine obeyed, moving slowly and with caution. Her finges found a solid substance, not unlike the barked tree trunk. Only, looped about it, warp lines of thread were stretched taut. She transferred her touch to those lines, tracing them to another bar. Then she knelt, fingering the length of cloth. This was smooth as the ribband. A single thread led away—that must be fastened to the shuttle of the weaver.
    “So beautiful!”
    For the first time since Ingvarna had trained her, Dairine longed for actual sight. The need to see burned in her. Color—somehow as she touched the woven strip, the fact of color came to her. Yet all she could “read” of the weaver was a blur of narrow, nonhuman hands.
    “Can you do such, you who claim to be a weaver?”
    “Not this fine.” Dairine answered with the truth. “This is beyond anything I have ever touched.”
    “Hold out your hands!” This time Dairine sensed that the order had not come from her guide, but another.
    The girl spread out her fingers, palms up. There followed a feather-light tracing on her skin along each finger, gliding across her palm.
    “It is true. You are a weaver—after a fashion. Why do you come to us, female?”
    “Because I would learn.” Dairine drew a deep breath. What did Vidruth's idea of trade matter now? This was of greater importance. “I would learn from those who can do this.”
    She continued to kneel, waiting. There was communication going on about her, but none she could catch and hold with either eye or mind. If these weavers would shelter her, what need had she to return to Vidruth? Rothar's plans? Those were too uncertain. If she won the good will of these, she had shelter against the evil of her own kind.
    “Your hands are clumsy, you have no eyes.” That was like a whiplash. “Let us see what you can do, female.”
    A shuttle was thrust into her hand. She examined it carefully by touch. Its shape was slightly different from those she had always known, but she could use it. Then she surveyed, the same way, the web on the loom. The threads of both warp and woof were very fine, but she concentrated until she could indeed “see” what hung there. Slowly she began to weave,