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Before them stood the tallest dune they had yet seen, a great hill of sand crowned with sea oats and brush.
    “When we reach the summit you must move only as I do,” said Hercól. “Flat as snakes we must crawl, and slowly, slowly through the underbrush.”
    It was a long, awkward climb. Halfway to the top, Hercól stopped for a moment and pointed silently to the south. Pazel turned, and felt a thrill of wonder: low on the horizon hung a pale blue light, smaller than the moon, but larger than any star.
    “What is it?” he whispered.
    “A legend of the South proved true,” said Hercól. “The Polar Candle, the Little Moon of Alifros. North of the Ruling Sea it cannot be glimpsed, not ever. Bolutu tells me that many in the South think it has power over their lives and fates. Come, we are almost there.”
    At the dune’s flat summit, the roots of shrubs and sea oats bound the sand into a fibrous mat. Hercól wriggled forward, keeping his head well below the height of the grass. Pazel imitated him, cursing inwardly as burrs and thorns began to pierce his skin. There were crawling, biting insects too, and many small burrows from which came scurrying sounds. He would have been miserable, Pazel thought, even fully clothed.
    The dune was wide, but they crossed it at last. And suddenly they were lying, side by side, looking down upon a wide sand basin. It was about the size of the village square across the inlet, and ringed on all sides by dunes, except for a narrow gap on the north side leading down to the sea.
    In the center of the basin a fire was crackling, somewhat larger and brighter than their own. And beside the fire three figures crouched.
    “They’re human!” Pazel whispered.
    “Yes,” said Hercól.
    “Not, not the—”
    “Not
tol-chenni
, no. Be very still, Pazel, and watch.”
    They were roasting a small animal on a spit. They wore tattered clothes—but they
were
clothes, not scraps and rags like the
tol-chenni
. Indeed the three figures had an encampment of sorts: crates stacked up like building blocks, a makeshift tent of rough fabric, jugs and amphorae squatting in the sand. And the figures were armed: swords, daggers, some kind of club. All three looked strong and capable.
    Two were men. The figure on the left, turning the spit, might have been forty: he had a severe face and black hair streaked with gray that fell in curls to his shoulders. Across from him crouched a younger and much larger man, big as any Turach. His eyes were shut and his hands folded before him; he might well have been speaking a prayer. The third figure, whose back was to them, was a young woman.
    “Then it’s not true,” Pazel hissed. “The mind-plague, it
hasn’t
wiped everyone out! Hercól, maybe it never struck anywhere but the village. And if they’re wrong about the plague, they could be wrong about the two hundred years!”
    “Gently, lad,” said Hercól.
    But Pazel, clutching suddenly at hope, was not to be calmed. “Maybe the village was quarantined—way off the mainland, see?—because everyone there went mad together, dlömu and humans alike.”
    “Come,” said Hercól. “The humans become idiots, and the dlömu
at the same time
fall victim to a shared delusion about the cause?”
    “Why not? It’s more likely than what they claim, isn’t it?”
    “Watch the girl, Pazel.”
    Pazel looked: she was lifting a blackened kettle from the embers. Turning, she filled three cups beside her with steaming drink. Pazel saw her silhouette against the fire, and thought his heart would stop.
    “Neda,” he said.
    “Ah,” said Hercól.
    “Aya Rin,”
said Pazel. “Hercól, she looks
exactly
like my sister Neda.”
    “Perhaps she is.”
    Pazel gazed helplessly at the swordsman. He could not speak for fear. It wasn’t the villagers, or Thasha, or half the human race who had gone mad. It was just him, Pazel. Actually mad: he would shut his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again he’d be in sickbay,