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bitterly cold, and he shook with the chill, his face bitten by the bitter wind.
    They sat around the fire out of the wind, and after murmuring a brief formula, Gwynn began handingfood around. Barron accepted the plate he was given, which held some sweet boiled grain covered witha splash of acrid sauce, a large lump of meat and a small bowl of thick bittersweet stuff vaguely likechocolate. It was all good, although it was hard to manage the tough meat which the others sliced intopaper-thin slices with the knives in their belts; it had been salted and dried in some manner and wasalmost like leather. Barron pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pockets and lighted one, drawing thesmoke gratefully into his mouth; it tasted ambrosial.

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    Gwynn scowled at him and said in an undertone to Colryn, “First the sandals and now this—” lookingwith direct rudeness at Barron, he asked a question of which Barron could make out only the unfamiliarword   embredin   . Lerrys raised his head from his plate, saw Barron’s cigarette and shook his headslightly, then said “   Chaireth ” again, rather deprecatingly, to Gwynn and got up to drop down beside Barron.
    “I wouldn’t smoke here if I were you,” he said. “I know it is your custom, but it is offensive among the
    men of the Domains.”
    “What was he saying?”
    Lerrys flushed. “He was asking, to put it in the simplest possible terms, if you were an—an effeminate. Itwas partly those damned sandals of yours, and partly—well, as I say, men do not smoke here. It isreserved for women.”
    With an irritable gesture Barron ground out his cigarette. This was going to be worse than he thought.
    “What’s that word you used—   chaireth ?”
    “Stranger,” Lerrys said. Barron picked up a lump of meat again, and Lerrys said, almost apologizing, “I
    should have provided you with a knife.”
    “No matter,” Barron said, “I wouldn’t know how to use it anyway.”
    “Nevertheless—” Lerrys began again, but Barron did not hear him. The fire before them slid away—or
    rather, flared up, and in the midst of the flames, tall, bluish, and glowing, he saw—
    A woman.
    A woman again, standing in the midst of flames. He thought he cried out in the moment before the figurechanged, grew and was, again, the great chained Being, regal, burning, searing her beauty into his heartand brain.
    Barron gripped his hands until the nails bit into the palms.
    The apparition was gone.
    Lerrys was staring at him, white and shaken.
    “Sharra,” he breathed, “Sharra, the golden-chained—”
    Barron reached out and grabbed him. He said, hoarsely, disregarding the men at the fire, which wasonce again the tiny, cooking fire, “You saw it?   You   saw it?”
    Lerrys nodded without speaking. His face was so white that small freckles stood out. He said at last witha gasp, “Yes, I saw. What I can’t understand is—how   you   saw! What in the Devil’s name are you?”
    Barron, almost too shaken to speak, said, “I don’t know. That keeps happening. I have no idea why.
    I’d like to know why you can see it, too.”
    Struggling for composure, Lerrys said, “What you saw—it is a Darkovan archetype, a Goddess form. Idon’t completely understand. I know that many Terrans have some telepathic power. Someone must be

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    broadcasting these images and somehow you have the power to pick them up. I—” He hesitated. “I must
    speak to my foster father before I tell you more.” He fell silent, then said with sudden resolution; “Tell
    me, what would you rather be called?”
    “Dan will do,” Barron said.
    “Dan then. You are going to have trouble in the mountains; I thought you would be an ordinary Terran, and not aware—” He stopped, biting his lip. “I am under a pledge,” he said at last, “and I cannot break it even for this. But you are going to have trouble and you will need a friend. Do you know why no one would lend you a knife?”
    Barron shook