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come to no real harm by disobeying him and joining the eagles’ convocation on the stone cliff. He was also dubious about Tamil’s honorable intentions regarding her, for she was an adept and no man of the valley of Trama ever willingly married a mutation. None, Shevil thought dourly, save Shevil Lar, and he remembered Shana’s mother; Shevaughn of the slotted, silver eyes and six fingers, whom he had taken to wife (in spite of all his father could do to discourage him) and loved deeply for the five warm years she lived. Did Tamil understand that women whose ancestors had stood in the light of the Falling Sun seldom lived to be old?
    But Shana was waiting and so were the others, and outside the hovel stood fully half of the half-hundred folk of the valley. They expected wisdom and a plan to keep them safe from the warmen the eagles had seen. Shevil frowned and drew a deep breath. What they actually wanted was for him to cut the throat of a prime weyr and lead them all up the moraine to seek the sorcerer who lived inside the deadly mountain, that was really what they wanted. The folk had become querulous and dependent on the Warlock, who had appeared three seasons back from within the belly of the mountain. They had lost their self-dependence, expecting always to be protected by the blind spirit-man’s magic.
    But that was exactly the point and the danger, Shevil argued with himself. The eagles had seen a Navigator with Vara’s warmen, and that meant that the ways of the folk were known, somehow, to the grim priests of the Inquisition. To turn to the Warlock in this extremity would be to damn the settlement and all who lived in it forever. The Navigator would know and the warmen would erect a burning stake in the meadow. Shevil imagined his daughters screaming in the fire and shivered. In truth it was Shana he saw in his mind’s eye, for she had always been his favorite child. Gytha, Marya, and Arietee were dull girls, very much creatures of the valley. But Shana was like dark quicksilver, and his love.
    Behind him, Quarlo the miller, cleared his throat and said tentatively, “Time is passing, Shevil. We listened to you three seasons ago and held back Lord Ulm’s weyr-tribute. Now that his warmen have come, you must tell us what you intend for us to do.”
    The resentment, though hidden, was discernible in his voice.
    It was true, Shevil thought, that he had counseled the folk to keep their weyr. He had heard from a traveler that Ulm was at war across the Narrow Sea and that year the winter had been bitter, so that the folk of Trama might have died of hunger had the tribute been sent. And then the second year and the third? Shevil asked himself. Well, once the old patterns had been broken, once Ulm’s rights had been denied, it seemed easier to withhold the tribute for another year, and then another. And there had been the appearance of the Warlock--yes, one had to consider that, too. To excuse himself and his counsel of rebellion, Shevil had declared that the appearance of the mad old spirit from the mountain had been an omen of approval from the Star--
    Lies, all lies, Shevil thought bitterly. Not the Star, but Sin and Cyb had sent the Warlock, and he, Shevil Lar, had known it in his heart from the beginning. Now the folk waited for him to save them from the results of his sinful folly.
    “You are certain the eagles saw a priest, Shana?”
    The girl answered with averted eyes as was proper when addressing the elders, even though the hetman was her father. “Yes, Shevil. A priest and, I think, one of the tiny men. I can’t be sure of that. The eagles do not know them. But I think I felt one near.”
    A Vulk, Shevil thought. Worse and worse. Long ago, in his young manhood, when he had dreamed of being a mercenary soldier, he had traveled to one of the outposts of the Lord Ulm’s warband. His journey had been a failure because the soldiers had laughed at him and beaten him with their sheathed swords, making sport of