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culmination been delayed?
    He judges, however, that he cannot afford to search farther. Unseen events are accumulating. Incomprehensible purposes gather against Settle’s Crossways, or against the kingdom itself. He must try to forestall them.
    With as much haste as his horse can manage, he returns to the road. Then he gallops back toward the town like a man with hounds and desperation on his heels.
    But he does not reenter Settle’s Crossways on the road. He is unwilling to be delayed by the guards, and he has no wish to silence them with sterner persuasions than he used the previous evening. Leaving the road, he returns to the glade where Tamlin Marker is buried, then re-crosses the plague-midden to reach Jon Marker’s house by its neglected street.
    There he does not pause to trouble the wounded father again. He loops his horse’s reins around one of the roof-posts of the porch, knowing that his mount will remain until he needs it. Unaffected by the mud underfoot, he strides by streets and alleys toward the town’s center.
    At the crossroads where the temples of Bright Eternal andDark Enduring face each other, comfortable in their proximity, Black finds good fortune. A modest caravan is dragging its clogged wheels toward the town square from the west, and already the streets teem with merchants and townsfolk, hawkers and mountebanks, some surely hoping to buy what they lack, others intending to both buy and sell, still others striving to gull the unwary. Also the caravan will have its own needs for resupply. Therefore Black is sure that the wagons, their owners, their drivers, and their guards will remain in the square for some time. Since noon is near, they will likely remain until the morrow. He will have opportunities to speak with the caravan-master later.
    Rubbing his left forearm, he sways a distracted matron to direct him to Father Whorry’s dwelling. She is a milliner, avid to purchase fine fabrics and threads from one wagon or another before her competitors acquire them, but she forgets her hurry briefly in order to answer Black. Then she rejoins the surge of the crowd.
    Black separates himself from the townsfolk, touching his hat to everyone who gazes at him directly. Then he follows the matron’s instructions.
    The priest’s residence is a mansion compared to Jon Marker’s house, yet it is humble enough to suit the servant of a god. Like every other dwelling that Black has seen here, it has a wide porch linked to its neighbors’ to provide passage safe from the sludge and traffic of the streets. The door has only an emblazoned yellow symbol, a stylized sun, to indicate that this is the home of aBright priest. Black knocks politely, though he senses that the house is empty.
    But Father Whorry is already hastening homeward after a night in his preferred common house. He is a small man, rotund, with an anxious smile on his round face and a few long wisps of hair on his pate. He wears the brown cassock and yellow chasuble of his office, and might therefore be expected to walk with dignity. However, he clings to the notion that all Settle’s Crossways does not know of his pleasure with women, and so his movements have an air of furtiveness as he attempts to pass unnoticed.
    When he gains the privacy of his residence, he closes the door quickly, then sighs and slumps before turning to discover a stranger waiting for him in the gloom of the unlighted lamps.
    Father Whorry aspires to a priest’s imperturbable calm, but he cannot stifle a startled gasp as he regards the stranger. For a moment, his legs threaten to fail him.
    â€œFather Whorry?” Black’s tone is pitched to reassure this servant of Bright Eternal. “I must speak with you.”
    At once, the priest begins to babble, an incoherent spate of words to fill the silence while he struggles to recapture his wits. However, the stranger rubs his left forearm, and Father Whorry’s alarm fades. When the