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Fai Teraer-Moyhe, and before that, across the western sea.” Deilcrit could not suppress his shudder.
    The dark man had something in his hands. Deilcrit could just make it out as it flew through the air: the spear, suddenly launched at him, sideways.
    Automatic, was the reaching. Then Deilcrit leaned upon the spear he had caught, like an old man on his staff. He was relieved that they were not of Fai Teraer-Moyhe. But all knew that there was nothing of man across the western sea. Ever more man-seeming, they were. But man could not have entered Benegua through the Spirit Gate. At least, he did not think so. What, then? The night hovered heavy, misting. No stars could be seen, just the dully glowing clouds. He shivered. If Parpis leaned upon this spear, he thought, what? The shade of Parpis, this time, remained silent.
    His eyes fell upon the ptaissling. He would have to find milk for it. Where? He shook his head, and leaned it against the cool bronze of the spear’s head. His cheek itched with the nagging pulse of the jicekak poison, and he angled the metal out of contact with his scratches.
    The one called Sereth spoke: “How long were you watching us, and why?”
    His voice snapped Deilcrit’s head around. His body followed. Disoriented, he almost fell. Grasping the spear in both hands, he regarded his inquisitor. If it had not been somehow useless against them, he was sure that they would not have given it back. The act magnified his helplessness. As a man rousted out of bed in the middle of the night, hustled off by taciturn soldiers, might desperately construct excuses for some misdeed unknown to him, so did Deilcrit seek some answer that might please these who had entered through the Spirit Gate. But he found none.
    “I tend the ptaiss,” he mumbled at last. “And spit the guerm.”
    But the spirit Sereth was not sated.
    Writhing as if in physical pain, he fought the impulse to bolt: he could not leave the ptaissling.
    Sereth fastened him still with eyes that pulled the words from his mouth: “The ptaiss ... what you did ... I saw it all,” he blurted out. “I did not know what to do. Aama was great with child. This was her first bearing.” The words, slow starting, poured out of him, uncheckable. “I was long at her side, soothing her ill temper. I was late to the Gate ....”
    “Listen, you can hear them. They mourn. All of Wehrdom mourns, by now.”
    At his words the woman spun around, regarding him across the slain ptaiss. From the forest’s depths, even from the far shore, came the wails of grieving ptaiss. He stared at her openly. And slowly, feeling with his spear behind him, he backed away.
    Sereth stood unmoving, silent, hands at his hips as Deilcrit retreated.
    The shifting wind brought their scents clear to him; their flesh smelled of strange food and sweat.
    “Kreeshkree, kreesh; breet iylbreet,” came the cry from above their heads, intrusive. The woman looked anxiously above, then down, then sought Sereth and touched his arm. It was hard to think of her as a spirit; her life flowed too full. Her presence made Sereth loom larger, if possible more forbidding. “Let him be until morning,” she said.
    “He might not be here in the morning.”
    “Let me try,” she spoke again, softly. She was naked to the waist. Sereth grunted, and shrugged. Then retreated, ever so slightly.
    “Deilcrit, will you stay the night with us?”
    Deilcrit laid down the spear and looked at it. Then he crouched beside it in the grass, swallowed hard, and said: “Command me, Most High,” while thinking how unfair it was of them to use Woman’s Word to imprison him. Something many-legged crawled up his hand. He shook it off without notice, his eyes fastened on her as she approached. In some unfathomable way, she brought the flames’ light with her. He pondered this, for she stood with the fire at her back, and he could imagine no other source whence light might be reflected by her skin. Thus he neglected suitable