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ordinary brown ones: green for holidays, yellow and orange for parties, red-trimmed white for weddings and births. On this particular day there was no festival, and the village, deserted by everyone who had harvesting to begin, looked empty as well as drab.
    Noren reached it just ahead of the scheduled rain. The first four mornings of each week, except during the final week of harvest season, it rained for exactly one hour, stopping at noon. In school he’d been taught that the Scholars arranged this; but lately he had wondered, for if there were no rain, would not all wild plants have perished before there were any Scholars?
    Rain did not bother him; it was a pleasant contrast to the parching air. He walked down the street as the first drops spattered the sand, entering the inn less for cover than to talk to Arnil, the innkeeper.
    “A trader?” Arnil said when Noren explained his purpose. “That’s too bad, Noren. There was one here only last night looking for an extra driver. He planned to ask again in Prosperity.”
    Noren cursed inwardly; the village was not on the main route and there might not be another for days. “Could I catch up, do you think?” he inquired.
    “Perhaps,” Arnil told him. “He got a late start this morning and his two sledges were hitched together. Besides, the road’s past due for sanding.”
    “I’ll try, I guess,” Noren said. Work-beasts did not walk much faster than men, certainly not when hitched as a team—which they stubbornly resisted—and pulling laden sledges over a road that hadn’t enough sand to make the runners slide smoothly. If he pushed himself, he could reach the next village, Prosperity, before the trader had time to find anyone there.
    “If you miss him, come back,” said Arnil. “You can work in the kitchen until my regular girl’s child arrives; I can’t afford to pay you, but I’ll give you bed and board.”
    “Thanks,” Noren said, “but I hope I won’t have to.”
    He went on through the center, passing a row of craftsworker’s shops: the potter’s, the wickermonger’s, the shoemaker’s and the stonecutter’s. Beyond was the shop that sold common City goods—fabric, thread, paper, matches; the powder one used to keep cistern water clear; utensils of glass and of the opaque material that resembled polished bone—as well as rarer products like colored glass necklaces and books. Books… Noren could never go by that shop without wishing that he had the money for just one book of his own. Maybe he’d been foolish not to have worked on the farm for wages at least until the harvest was finished; that should have given him plenty, though books, aside from the Book of the Prophecy, were even higher priced than the love-beads he’d bought Talyra. It was because so few people cared about them, the shopkeeper had told him. Books were heavy, and when there wasn’t much demand, a trader wouldn’t bring them all the way from the City unless he could be sure that they’d sell for enough to make the trouble worthwhile. Most families did little reading; they sent their children to school only because it was considered a religious duty. Why was it? Noren wondered suddenly. Why did the High Law encourage learning, and then withhold knowledge from people who did care? No book, at any price, would tell the things he wanted to know… .
    Chagrined, he turned away from the shop and headed quickly for the outbound road. He’d been daydreaming again; there was, he realized, some truth to his brothers’ accusations. On the farm it might not matter, but if he wanted to catch up with that trader he must hurry!
    He did not catch up. Some three hours later, thoroughly exhausted from a grueling trip during which he’d alternately walked and jogged without pausing, he arrived in Prosperity only to find that the trader had just left, having hired a driver without difficulty. Harvest season was already over in Prosperity; the main radial on which that village was