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"We have been holding on to the idea of the city too long. It's time to go. We have to disperse in small groups and go back to the villages to work. Then when the time comes the priests won't be able to stop us. Not a rising but a welling up. They'll be surrounded and swept along."

"In the spring--" Tiyar began.

"No, now." Fuego was leaning toward him, his knees crunching in the stones. "You know that Akiva is ready to walk off into the forest with his students and die. He knows we can't keep ourselves through winter. And as a group of this size gets hungrier, it gets fractious. Your squads are already terrorizing people. We know that. They've got to be broken up, and we can't keep even the order we have now without them."

"They will not go! Can't you get that into your head, old man? We may tell them to disperse, but they will not do it." Tiyar squatted down to bring his face near Fuego's.

Fuego's round eyes shone with the water gathered in them. He laid his palms on Tiyar's wrists. Like Rani and the god of fate they stared at one another in horrified understanding. Finally he said, "Oh, Tiyar, then we're lost."

Once again Tiyar felt the laugh press near to the surface. He sprang up, the sunlight piercing almost through him so he saw the blood vessels in his eyeball superimposed on the sky, and shouted, almost singing, "No, we are not lost yet, Fuego. We are suffering the first pangs of victory." At that moment a cluster of sparrows on the one the distant hills took wing. The coincidence frightened him. Squads were assembling, so he hurried down to train.

The next day at evening, he asked Fuego casually, in Akiva's hearing, "Are you going with him to the forest, then?"

Fuego was adjusting the cooking stones to heat some water. "Me? No, I--I'm not ready for that yet. Berthe and I will go back to the Middle Plains. We'll live at Ma Zauber's and teach. They want to recover their history. A number of the families can remember back to the Eyimalian Conquest, and I think we may be able to gather stories from before that, maybe back to the time of the Rediscovery or farther. It's possible that at one time this planet was part of the old Federated System."

"I see why the problems of this winter rest so light upon you," Tiyar said quietly. "When do you go?"

Tiyar looked at Akiva, who rose to chant the earth's farewell to the sun. Other voices joined his, but when he finished he did not make a sermon as usual but sat down. Most of the others strolled thoughtfully away.

"I saw the weeping moon a few nights ago. Klyne stood beneath it, sharpening a knife," Akiva said.

Fuego returned to the stones. "Where's she gone?" he asked.

"I don't know. She may come back again."

"Are you waiting--?"

"For the impulse that comes from where things are true. Seeing her was a sign, but without direction. I was still hungry then and too concerned with that to feel."

"But now?" Fuego asked, sitting down beside him.

"I stopped eating then and have not been hungry since. Unless--"

"Start again. We've got enough to last a little longer."

"Unless this is hunger, this life, and I never felt it." Staring ahead, he fainted. Fuego caught him and gently pushed a lump of Restorose from the medical kits between Akiva's lips where it would dissolve against the inner cheek and flow directly to the blood. As soon as Akiva opened his eyes, Fuego popped the sticky bolus out of his mouth, wrapped a leaf around it and put it away in his pocket. He has kept it by him all this time, Tiyar reflected, and while crossing the fast mountain stream with a bowl to fetch some wood-molasses he envied Fuego the love, like a bright drop plunging through moonlight to darkness, that made him keep the sugar tablet while everyone, Akiva with them, starved. Fuego would have sat stolid and cheerful though a hundred murder images came before his eyes, while he, Tiyar, went ranting and trembling each time a ghost began to weep.

On the other side of the brook, Meta sprang out of the brush at his shoulder. Berthe took his hands. There were others behind them. He almost swung at the women, but then he collected himself and said, "What is it?"

"My daughter. Come on."

He followed, down to the marsh where they had started to build a city. Most of the buildings had been rendered down so they stumbled around in ruins until someone said, "Here," and they stopped by what was to have been a schoolhouse. Now Berthe lectured in a cave to old women while the children scoured the hills.

Tiyar activated the hormone sensor. There were people inside. Berthe's friends surrounded the building. He saw knife-blades shining.

They must have used a hidden entrance, because the door was swollen shut. He kicked it open quickly and shone a light inside. Erkomt's gang sat and lay among a heap of dirty grass as if they had been dropped there, limbs propped up or hanging down for no reason except that something happened to be or not be underneath them. They watched him, though not very closely. He noticed a smoky lamp, and that two of them were naked. They must have been doing something together, whatever it was, and that gave him hope. Orgies bespoke life, energy that most come from food and the prospect of more food later.

Erkomt came grinning out of the shadows to meet him. "Look what we found," he said.

Tiyar eyed him carefully before he moved the light to see where he pointed. The squad leader kept still. Now others were coming in with torches and he knew what Erkomt had "found" by Meta's scream of joy.

"Still living!" Tiyar said in Eyimalian.

The other man imitated him, "Still living."

"Where is it?" Meta demanded. "I have my girl now. Where are the other mules we brought with us?"

People were tearing apart the mat walls and digging at the floor. It was like Eyimalia on the Feast of the Blessed Child, when children ransacked the Pravelany graveyards looking for hidden toys and candy all the winter afternoon until their greed was sated or overcome by fear of the gaining darkness and they came back one by one to the temple. They found cornmeal, barley, bean paste, dried fruit, cheeses and vegetables and even a mound of sprouting potatoes. The squadron had stolen part of every gift that every pilgrim, student or more fortunate refugee brought in, and they had robbed whole towns in the Middle Plains. There was more than the gang could have eaten. They had been planning to sustain the whole camp on a march.

Cookfires sprang up as by magic. Erkomt retreated to a corner, still grinning. "You know how I got this," Tiyar thought he said. "It's yours now, but you know how I got it. I murdered for you." And Tiyar was ashamed in his gratitude.

People continued to haul out sacks and barrels. Tiyar was walled in by the provender. Watching people eat, he felt their happiness, a force like steam, seeking direction. Fuego appeared beside him. Tiyar said, "Now I have something with which to send you off!"

He scarcely knew whether he meant it or not, but suddenly it seemed that their comradeship, cemented by hunger and despair, could not survive the advent of sustenance and hope. They must part either now or after a quarrel. Fuego began packing that night and Tiyar said goodbye the next evening.

"While I'm gone, eat bread together," he told Tiyar and Akiva.

Then he went up the pass to the Middle Plains in a line of women following Berthe, their long shadows blue on the glistening frost. Tiyar turned to Akiva, thinking, he is alone as he was with Berthe and Fuego beside him, alone as Fuego has never been. There was no one left to speak Eyimalian. His tongue made silent words in his mouth. "Fuego is right," he said aloud. "We must eat together daily to remain friends of one another's friends."

Akiva nodded. They had a supper of cooked barley in public brotherhood, but Tiyar received no word of the prophet's acclaimed wisdom and Akiva gained no courage from Tiyar. They would probably never argue, but the peace they kept in each other's presence was really solitude. Akiva seemed content. He ate a full bowlful and instructed his followers to consider that they took food from the other creatures of light as they were themselves earth creatures and forms of the sun.

Pimel came to stand between Tiyar and the fire. Its heat carried her smell to him, at once revolting and sweet. She stood close enough to singe her bare legs and he smelled that, too.

"Did you eat? I ate something that burned inside," she said. "Look." A knife was tied to her forearm. "I made this for you."

"Very good. A strong blade. Sharp." He feinted at her. She avoided him, giggling. He flipped the knife to her, handle outward, and drew his own.

They were still playing when the greater moon rose. Akiva paused on the way to his cave and watched them, illuminated at first by the blue twilight. The sky, lit brighter than the moon, appeared to shimmer behind it, almost overwhelming the more distant body. In places where lunar valleys still lay in darkness, the vivid sky appeared as if it shone right through the moon. Tyiar and Pimel danced and feinted, their faces glowing softly, too, in light from so near the gound it seemed to emanate from things instead of falling on them. Night deepened, the transparent moon drew off the sky's light until it shone like a minor sun in the blackness and kept the stars at bay, and the two at their game occasionally stumbled, ashine with sweat.

Tiyar, his attention captured by his opponent, had the impression a crowd was gathering, but when he stepped in the fire and jumped out, causing Pimel to laugh, he took the opportunity to glance away and realized that no one was watching them. A few hden trees and the tall grasses, bending where the slope down to the marsh before them crested, made the sounds he had thought were whispers. Far away, voices were calling. Birds cawed in the marsh. Now Akiva, losing interest, turned his gaze downhill toward the black swamp. Tiyar was abandoned to the battle, still in play but the struggle to keep at it earnest. He was dancing in his sleep.

More voices called. A child ran past, shouting, "We're back!" Akiva turned back to face him, then looked away.

"Pahid stopped my blade with a look," came a woman's voice.

Tiyar dropped his knife. Pimel snatched it, fingered the edge and gave it back. That was all. The game was over. He sat down to shudder out his weariness, ashamed and grateful, and looked up for the first time at his deliverer.

Klyne smiled on him, bright in the full double light. The second moon had risen. He must have been hours fighting. And now she smiled above him like the third, the mythical weeper--he dashed his cheeks with the back of his hand and made himself sneeze. Luckily her boys, having raced around, returned to their mother, still shouting, "We're back! We're back!"

"I brought this for you," she said, unslinging a leather bag from her shoulder.

Neither of them moved. Akiva stared at the ground, plucking his sleeves, as she had on the night the ghosts came. He had no more idea now than then what she would say, well though he understood her.

She took his hand. "He lives. I held the blade right against his throat. I pricked the skin. I even stabbed him, on the arm, but he never bled. He said, give me the knife. And do you know, Father Akiva, I gave it to him? Then he cut off his own finger above the knuckle and handed the knife back. And do you know what else? Only a little drop of blood came out, then nothing."

Akiva's palm caressed her cheek. "And so you let him live?"

"Yes. I let him," she answered slowly. "He was like me."

Tiyar examined the finger she took from Pahid's leather bag with some amusement, although he could not have said why, and passed the trophy round to be admired by the Verloringers. Next she produced a thick scroll tied in silk ribbon, explaining, "He gave me this, too. Is it magic?"

It was the best map of Paffir Haretz he had ever seen. Even by moonlight he could trace their path from the Lir to the Middle Plains, every detail correct, and the route to the capital and Lir Temple there. He had the provisions and the map. What he had told Erkomt was no promise but only the truth; they must go. Turning to the crowd, he shouted, "The time has come! Tomorrow we march on the chief temple of the Lir!"

He had no choice and no hope, and so there was no temptation. Power had closed his fist around itself. The laugh surged up and tore free, rebounding from the icy hillsides, echoing in the mouths before him.

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CONTINUE.....................

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