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tethered the horse, a dark brown gelding. "And you?"
    "From the east ..."
    He finished with the animal and stepped up the two stone steps. "Young for a myskid to be traveling, aren't you?"
    For some reason, his tone bothered me, and I stepped back, ready to pick up the staff. "Some might say that."
    "Never seen a place like Recluce. Nobody travels."
    "Not many."
    "You're about as friendly as the rest, aren't you? Don't think much of the rest of the world, I guess."
    "Really don't know much about it," I admitted.
    "First one I've seen who's willing to admit that there is a world off this overgrown island."
    I didn't say much to that. What was there to say?
    "Strange place. The women won't look at you unless you take a bath at least three times a week, and they don't talk to you anyway, except to buy or sell. Those characters in black, they have everyone scared, I guess. Even the empire doesn't mess with them."
    "Empire?"
    "Haven't you heard of Hamor? The Empire of the East?" By now, the trader had put one foot up on the other end of the bench.
    He was just like all the other traders. Boring. He'd seen something I had not, and that made him feel better.
    "You don't like me, boy? Just like everyone else? If you want my jewels, or you want to sell something-Tira! You don't have anything worth selling, except maybe that staff. Good work, there."
    He reached for it, as if I weren't standing there.
    The staff was somehow in my hands, although I didn't remember grabbing it, and I had brought it down on the back of his extended wrist.
    Crack. Hsssss.
    "Another damned devil-spawn! . . ." He backed away, his unhurt hand on a knife.
    I could tell he was deciding whether to throw it, and I could feel my guts tighten. I hadn't meant to hit him, or do whatever the staff had done.
    "The masters wouldn't like it if you did." It was a struggle to keep my words even, but I managed it.
    "Devils take your masters . . ." he gasped. But he didn't use the knife. He took another long look at me.
    I brought the staff down. It felt warm to me, as though it had been in the sun or next to the fire.
    "So you're another one of them . . ." He was slowly backing away from me, although I had not moved. "I'm nothing . . . yet."
    "Damned isle . . ." He was next to his horse.
    I swung the pack onto my back and started toward the near steps, the ones closest to Nylan.
    "You can stay. You need the rest."
    He watched me, but said nothing else.
    I could feel his eyes on me, and the hate, deep as the North River in flood, and almost as wild. But I put one sore foot in front of the other, wanting to get as far from the waystation and the trader as possible.
    Were all traders like that, underneath, when they thought people were helpless? And why had the staff burned his wrist? I knew woods, and some about metal, and the staff was just that-lorken and steel . . . wood and forged metal. Almost a work of art, and that was why the trader had wanted it, but no more than wood and steel, certainly.
    I knew some staff-play, just because my father had insisted on it as an exercise. That had been years ago, before I had been Uncle Sardit's apprentice. I guess you don't forget some things, but even remembered practice and fear wouldn't make a staff burn someone.
    Could it be that the trader was a devil? I couldn't believe that, much as the old legends spoke of devils that burned at the touch of cold iron.
    I shivered as I walked, despite the sunshine, the heat, and the dust. Did all the reaction of the woman on the road and the trader have something to do with me? Or with the staff?
    But there was no magic in Recluce, and I was certainly no magician.
    I shivered again and kept walking.
     
     
    VI
     
    NYLAN HAS ALWAYS been the Black City, just like forgotten Frven was once the White City. It doesn't matter that Nylan has little more than a village's population, or that it is a seaport used only by the Brotherhood. Or that it is a fortress that has never been taken, and tested but