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to the home of Segrana, the colonists had been enthusiastic over-exploiters of natural resources and had scarcely practised any kind of wardenship. After the Accord of Friendship, the Uvovo were able to help the Humans to give up certain wasteful, destructive habits by showing them how to cultivate and use the many kinds of sifter root. This opened the way to the establishment of the seven daughter-forests, from which a change in cultural attitudes slowly percolated through the Humans' society. Wardenship of the natural world gradually became part of their custom and tradition.
    On the pebbly slope near the zep station, Chel was met by a young female Uvovo dressed in plain green garments and wearing a Benevolent amulet. She looked anxious surrounded by the taller, bulkier Humans, but her face brightened when she spotted Chel. She introduced herself as Giseru and led him up to a lohig pen where an elderly Human stocksman tethered out riding pair and lashed on the saddles with almost care less expertise. Moments later, Chel and his guide were heading out of town and along a broad, rutted track that led into a bushy gully and the wooded hills beyond.
    Chel had to suppress the urge to laugh as he gripped the reining rod and followed Giseru through the trees. Lohig were six-legged creatures whose segmented bodies were protected by bony plates, and whose large dark eyes were veiled by flickering inner eyelids. Beneath the canopies of Segrana, they usually grew no larger than hand-size, but such marked divergence was found in several strains of plants and animals common to Umara and its forest moon. Chel had spoken with a few Human ecologists and heard them speak excitedly of this or that theory which tried to account for these differences. While they acknowledged that once the Uvovo had inhabited both planet and moon, they failed to understand that Segrana too had once held sway on both worlds and that the loss of that blessed presence was the root cause. The Humans spoke of 'die-back' and 'extinction events', but Uvovo legends told of a vast and terrible conflict, the War of the Long Night, a struggle between the Ghost Gods and the Dreamless which led to the burning of the world that Humans now called Darien. Human record-keepers and teachers knew of the Uvovo's legends but did not understand them, just as they came to visit the high homes,of Segrana but did not hear her song.
    He smiled ruefully, knowing that was not strictly true. There were a few whose perceptions ran a little deeper, like Lyssa Devlin or Pavel Ivanov, who might one day glimpse the outlines of the greatness of Segrana. Yet there was one Human, a female scientist called Catriona Macreadie, whose qualities of intellect might one day allow her to comprehend it.
    The lohig he was riding ambled along with a steady, padding gait even as the track grew uneven and steep. The sun was high enough to be midday in a mainly cloudless sky, sending bright spears down through the layers of foliage. Insects buzzed and spun in the warm forest air, feathered hizio trilled in the high branches, and ubakil hooted mournfully to each other off in the distance. He smiled to hear these mingled sounds, the patchwork melody of the forest's denizens, while off at its edge he detected a calm, persevering voice, faint but unmistakable, the voice of Ibsenskog, Segrana's daughter-forest.
    His guide, Giseru, said little as they wound their way through bushy undergrowth, ascending a trail that ran alongside a small stream. The trickling sounds of water over stones were a restful whisper merging with the susurrus of the wooded hills but the voice of the daughter-forest was strengthening with each passing moment. After a while Chel heard a hissing, splashing sound and before long the trail came out on a grassy bank near the foot of a waterfall. Narrow but smoothly made steps led up the sheer rock face, which the lohig managed without difficulty. Insects wove patterns in the warm air, and at the