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stretching out from the West. I tell you as a friend—give up this foolish idea for a journey.”
    Scandal studied Ayuvah. The Neanderthal’s face was pale with fear, a strange expression on such a powerful young man. Yet Scandal knew that for the Neanderthals, Craal was a place of tremendously evil kwea, filled with legendary terrors. Scandal looked into Ayuvah’s face, and saw that he could not tempt the Pwi into Craal with three steel eagles a day. The only way he’d get them there would be to drag them in chains. Tull and Ayuvah were no cowards, but they wouldn’t go to Craal.
    A powerful cold whirlwind whipped through the room, making Scandal’s hair stand on end. It was such a startling change from the sweltering summer heat that Scandal sat back in his chair, thinking that the wind might knock the plates from the table. But when he looked, even the feathers on Ayuvah’s necklace hadn’t stirred.
    Scandal felt a pillar of cold off to his right. He reached out and touched it. It stood a few inches in front of him, and Scandal felt it as plainly as if it were the bole of a tree. A green nimbus, roughly shaped like a man, formed in the air beside Tull.
    Scandal jutted his chin, pointing beside Tull. “Spirit Walker,” he said, in equal parts surprise and wonder.
    Tull turned to his left, looked at the green figure.
    Scandal spoke to the Spirit Walker, “Chaa, get back to your body! You’ve been gone for days. For God’s sake, the Pwi are getting scared!”
    The green nimbus stretched out, touched Tull. The young man grabbed his stomach, and his eyes opened wide. For a second Tull seemed frozen, an expression of shock on his face.
    “I can feel him, inside me,” Tull said, holding his belly.
    Scandal watched Tull. “In another five minutes he’ll know more about you than you do,” Scandal said. “He’ll know the moment you’re destined to die … how it will come … whether you’ll ever marry.”
    Scandal could not hide the awe in his voice. The Pwi Spirit Walkers never walked the paths of tomorrow for humans. Scandal had never even heard of a Spirit Walker who’d walked the future for a halfbreed like Tull.
    The Pwi had a word for halfbreeds: Tcho-Pwi , the un-family, the no-people. It was not a word used maliciously as an epithet; it was merely descriptive. Halfbreed Neanderthals did not belong—not with humans, not with Pwi. The biological differences between the descendants of the human Starfarers and the Neanderthals were too great to be bridged in a generation, and children born to such a marriage seldom survived through infancy.
    Tull held his stomach, and Ayuvah said, “This is bad! This is bad! If my father has resorted to walking the future for no-people, he must not have seen a good future for the Pwi.”
    Scandal considered a moment. I ’ ll never get them to come with me to Craal, he thought . But I have one chance—Chaa could send them. For the Spirit Walker, they’d ride a scimitar cat into hell .

Chapter 4: The Spirit Walker
    Tull and Ayuvah got up from the table in Scandal’s inn and went to the door, where circling flies glittered, emerald and sapphire. Tull looked out into the sunlight. Down the street, old Caree Tech stood in her yard, stirring a stone cooking pot full of lye and lard as she made a batch of soap. Her eyes were red from the fumes, and the acrid greasy scent carried on the wind.
    “I can feel your father’s spirit in me,” Tull told Ayuvah. “He’s moving from place to place, as if my body were filled with rooms, and he is flinging open forgotten doors. He is so cold. There—he has opened a door to my left lung.”
    Ayuvah chuckled. “I think he is making Connection with you. He cannot walk the paths of your future until he becomes you.”
    “He’s moving up, toward my head.” Tull gasped and as the cold touched his sinuses, he staggered a bit.
    “He is taking his time, learning you.” Ayuvah said. “He would not do this for a human, they are