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long after he had told us this, my brother’s friend disappeared—and the tale that came back was that he and another man had gotten angry at one another, gotten into a fight, and finally my brother’s friend had used the powergun to kill him. He disappeared the next day, and we never saw him again.”
    “To
kill
…?” Rahm asked.
    “Yes, there have been stories of such things before.” Ienbar nodded.
    “To frighten a Winged One, yes. But why to kill—and another man? Human beings do not kill each other. Thou killesta goat to roast it, an ox to butcher it. But not a human being …”
    “If they come by here,” Ienbar said, “we must keep out of their way—”
    “But this did not seem to be a brutal man that I met—not a man who would kill. He frightened away the Winged One. He spoke to me as to a friend.”
    “That is a good sign, I suppose. Perhaps there’s nothing to fear.” Ienbar shrugged, clinking, to pick up his bowl and stare across it at the flames that, because of the open window, were so diminished by the Çironian sun. “Perhaps… after all, it is only a single soldier wandering through the country—”
    “I think that’s what he was,” Rahm said, and raised his bowl to drink. “Yes,” he said between sips. “That is what he was.”
    “I hope you’re right,” Naä said, less confidently. Then she swung the harp to her lap to pluck a run on the lower strings.

CHAPTER III
     
    R AHM slept deeply,one hand low onhis belly. His lids showed white crescents between black lashes. Outside the shack the air cooled. For a while, despite the warmth, it seemed a light rain might come; but at last, without a drop’s falling, the moon’s curve came out, as thin as what showed of Rahm’s eyes.
    The clouds moved away, and the night air dried in the new moon light as if it had been full sun.
    Then sound jabbed into sleep.
    It grew till it ripped sleep apart—and Rahm sat upright, to smash his hands’ heels against his head, then again, trying to find his ears to cover them… against something he could not, for this moment, distinguish between pain and sound.
    Ienbar leaned against the fireplace, shaking, his mouth opening, closing. His arm flailed about—but the clinking of hisbracelets was lost in the wailing that filled Rahm’s ears with pressure enough to burst them.
    Rahm lurched to his feet and staggered to the door, pulling it open. The sound—because it
was
a sound—came from across the village. As Rahm stepped outside, it became a booming voice:
    SURRENDER, PEOPLE OF ÇIRON!
SURRENDER TO THE FORCES OF MYETRA!
    Then silence.
    The absence of sound stung Rahm’s ears.
    He tried to blink the water out of his eyes.
    The wailing began again. Anticipating pain, Rahm stepped back into the doorway as the voice churned through the darkness:
    PEOPLE OF ÇIRON!
SURRENDER TO THE FORCES OF MYETRA!
    Behind him, Ienbar was crying.
    Rahm sprinted out onto the path, shaking his head to clear it while he ran, to throw off the pain and the steady high hum, loud as any roaring, that covered all else. Leaves pulled away, and the village lights flickered. As he passed the first houses, he heard distraught voices. Certainly, no villager still slept!
    To the east, light flared. Then another flare. Another. Three lights fanned the dark, lowering, till they struck—blindingly—among the huts.
    Rahm’s first panicked thought was that the shacks would burst into fire under the glare. But apparently the lights werefor illumination—or for the terror such illumination in the midst of darkness might bring.
    Rahm’s hearing had almost returned to normal.
    Somewhere drums thudded.
    Naä dreamed she had stumbled into her harp. Only it was huge. And as she tried to fight through the strings, they began to ring and sing and siren—they were all around her, her arms and head and legs, till the harp itself broke—and she woke, pulling herself out of her sleeping blankets and scrambling from under the lean-to’s