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unbidden shadow fell, Merred-delfin, the principal witcherer, and the king and queen sat in the Room of Secret Counsel.
    Said the queen, “What news?”
    Said the king, “What help?”
    Said the sage, “Much news, little help.”
    In his mind he said,
Little news, no help
. But one did not say such dire words, doom words, to the king. “Slayer of Spear Teeth, the Painted Men report a spy in the forest. I have no fear; the spy is dead.”
    Said the king, “Why dead? Why dead? From a dead spy no news can be gotten.”
    Said the queen, “Why not dead? A dead spy betrays no secrets.”
    Said the sage, “Great Dire Wolf, a dream has been dreamed of All-Caller, the great fey horn. No doubt this portends great good and who better to enjoy great good than thee, Great Dire Wolf?”
    Said the king, “Ah.”
    Said the queen, “Oh.”
    Said the sage, “Woe.”
    Said the king and queen,
“What?”
    Said the sage quite swiftly, “Woe to the enemies of the King of Thule, the Slayer of Bull Mammonts, the Great Dire Wolf.”
    Said the sage quite slowly, “Wearing my Cloak of Night, I crept to the mines; there I heard the nain-thralls chanting in the Old Language, singing in the Magic Tongue. Lord and Lady, they intoned a tale of Fireborn, a thing of witchery of which they said it will cut good iron.
Good Iron!
— Lord and Lady! And if the nainfolk make words about a good iron, is this not a sign that the nains know that iron will soon be as good as iron was before?”
    Said the sage quite steadily, “Lady, you must use all your ways and wiles. Lady, you must prepare for many journeyings. Lady, you must wear many masks.”
    Then they set their heads even closer together and they whispered and nodded and bit their lips. The mandrakes muttered. And the shadows danced.
    • • •
    The breadth of the cavern was one nain wide and the height of the cavern was one nain high. Soldier guards, kingsmen, were obliged to stoop. More than once when the nain-thralls had been ordered to make the roof higher they expressed a gruff unwillingness to do so, saying that the roof would fall. So the guards were obliged to swing sideways the cudgels with which they struck the nain-thralls if the nains did not hack their stone-mattocks into the crumbly ironrock swiftly enough or if they lingered or stumbled while carrying the baskets of ore up the long incline and up the risky ladders set in shallow steps — up, up, and up to the open sky inside the grim stockade.
    Not long ago the notion of nain-thralls had only belonged to the past — a subject for winter tales or summer-night songs — how, in the days of bronze, when no king reigned, the nain-thralls dug the brazen-ore* and forged the brazen-tools; how the green-sickness came upon Thule and all bronze died and Chaos was king; how the nains discovered the secret witchery of iron and were free men at all times after, only paying the nainfee to the man king who in subduing the chiefs succeeded them as Power.
    Thralldom was still — or rather, again — the subject of song and story.
    But who cared what dirges the nains sang as they toiled or what accounts they told as they lay on their beds of bracken in their imprisoned nights?
    The swans fly overhead
    And the nains see them
.
    The moles tunnel through the earth
    And the nains see them
.
    Stockades do not wall the swans
    And the nains see them
.
    Fetters do not bind the moles
    And the nains see them
.
    The baskets of ore were emptied into hand barrows and the thralls carried the barrows to the forge.
    Once the nains were free as swans
    And the nains see them
.
    Once the nains were free as moles
    And the nains see them
.
    The forge was a flat rock rising from deep under the ground. The fire burned upon a hearth of other flat rocks, raised to a platform of the same height as the forge. The lumps of ironstone (and the articles of sick iron) were placed in the fire and burned. Although the kingsmen walked to and fro in violation of the ancient