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"Once I told the priests in a temple they would do better to tear it down and worship in mud with the pigs," Akiva said. "But if you want to destroy this temple, you would do better to spend your life weaving tapestry for its altars. If you think good and bad are buildings, you should do the opposite of every impulse, because you will always be wrong."

Clark tried to repeat this in Eyimalian, but after a few stammered words he lost the chain of reasoning and gave up. The crowd made a low sound. They were breathing in unison.

"I am a body. The world is a place. People suffer," Tiyar replied.

Klyne moved into the space between Greyesar, still looking at no one, and Huey. "We have too many dying already," she said. Clark translated, and Huey turned to her with a look as though he began to remember a different time. At that moment Greyesar's two hands came down on Hugh's shoulders in a precise fall, turned his body and guided him out of the cave.

They ran, first aiming for the landing field across the river and then simply downhill and finally anywhere away from the fire as they grew increasingly lost. The crash of the firebombs stopped, and either the stones were no longer flying or they went out of their range. Thick groundfog betrayed the morning, but they could make out no sun.

As the fog lifted, it began to rain. Clark was almost convinced they had wandered out of the Lir Valley altogether, following one of its tributaries, when they came to a camp on the shore.

Whose? They leaned against trees. Huts had been erected by the paling water now dappled with little rings around the raindrops, smooth at a distance, full of light. Swollen black rainclouds sank into the middle sky below the white upper cover shining with dawn.

Two figures came down from the huts to a long-needled tree at the riverside. The first, Clark decided, must be Akiva or Pahid. The second, clad in a rough-looking tunic, was too big for a native but small for an Eyimalian. A local hero? Fuego? Too thin.

Greyesar and Huey sat down. Clark edged out onto the mucky plain. He heard singing. That was the voice that had startled them in the dining hall by invoking Marlow Maxwell's name.

The rain stopped. The first man doffed his cloak, uncovering skin the color of granite, plunged waist-deep into the icy river, singing the while, and moved away upstream lest the water warm around him. Clark walked nearer. The clouds broke. The tree swayed, still dripping in the sunlight. Raising its head to the sky, the second figure shed its tunic. Bright droplets from the now-golden tree dropped thickly. Clark rushed forward and the figure spread its arms. It was Sevit Uchide.

"Clarkwell!" he shouted, dropping to his knees to embrace him. "Clarkwell, my intrepid darling, I so hoped you would be among them. And the other two of you? Not hurt?"

"No, no," he said quickly. "Resting. I mean--who? Or--Come on, let's switch clothes. I'll let Pahid catch me and you keep running. Friends will be right behind you. That is--"

Sevit was laughing. "How can you still be alive? You give yourself so freely. No, no, I understand. I thank you. My gratitude is inadequate to your generosity and your courage--really, Clarkwell, no joking. I'm serious. I know what he did to Paula, what you mean when you offer yourself in my place. He told me all that. But I don't need to escape him now." Standing up again, he called, "Pahid! They are here!" in high Paffir.

Pahid came back. "How did you get loose?" he demanded without any greeting.

Clark looked down, trying not to smile. "We overpowered the guard." Sevit laughed outright. He felt himself blushing.

Pahid clicked his tongue in disgust. "Babies. I should have sent more of them."

Sevit said, "No, this is fine. They have come here, freely and in good earnest, ready to deal with you as equals rather than vexing and trying to outwit you as they would if you tried to imprison them. Why are you worried? Everything has happened as I said, hasn't it?"

Pahid looked at him with the grudging agreement Clark recalled from university speeches, when Sevit used to field questions from the audience and win over the planted hecklers. Looking beyond him at the forest, Clark saw the other two creeping forward. He beckoned them.

"My cousin Greyesar!" Sevit cried in Eyimalian. "He has been getting me out of scrapes since I was a little boy. I'm flattered that you came looking for me, cousin."

Greyesar said, "Hi, Shortie," but evidently could think of nothing else.

Sevit extended his palm to Hugh. "And of course I recognize you, sir. My name is Sevit Uchide. I'm deeply honored that you have come."

Huey touched and smiled. "Actually, it was involuntary."

"You must all be hungry. I am Pahid's prisoner, of course, so my claim upon his hospitality is unquestionable, but if you will consent to be his guests for an hour he will gladly have food brought us," Sevit said.

"What we need is medicine for my other cousin, Tiyar Kituman," Greyesar told him. "We're going up to the landing field to see if we can signal any kind of ship."

"The equipment is taken," Sevit answered thoughtfully. "There was a small clinic there, but no longer...In any case, I understand it is a full day's climb, so you ought to have breakfast if you go." He translated his offer to Pahid, who nodded curtly and called to one of the men emerging from the huts with fishnets, baskets, axes and other tools for daily work.

Clark was trying to forge a question that would bring sense from all this, particularly the strange cordiality between Sevit and Pahid, at once shocking and eminently sensible. "How long have you known him?" he asked.

"Just a few weeks. I believe Marlow Maxwell was responsible for my being transferred to his care."

Old men were approaching with bread. Huey thanked them in Eyimalian, for lack of a better language. Greyesar quietly bit off a chunk the size of his palm and crammed it into his mouth. Clark watched him, wondering how he would chew it. Turning to the guards, Greyesar asked in high Paffir for water.

Clark burst out laughing. The old men studied him gravely, shaking their heads. They called a woman old enough to be their mother, who leaned close to him, smirked and went away. It must have been like this at the boundary of the two mansions in Eyimalia City, where between fights and expeditions and surrounded, like all children, by the inexplicable, the little Uchides picked up a few words of the Viyato tongue. "Were you surprised that you could understand Pahid?" he asked Sevit.

"I thought it was a dream. And he is a remarkable man, very courageous."

"He's a murderer, too. Has he told you how he restored order up north? He killed everyone who didn't have a house to hide in."

"Yes. We have been explaining things to one another. But you can tell me what has happened on Eyimalia. The Dagrov are gone now, I take it. So the Uchide and the Viyato come head to head?"

"He knew about that?"

"No. It was a guess. And this planet?"

Clark began to speak quickly. "If we can find a planetary representative, the commission might give Paffir Haretz autonomy, but your family and the Viyato are both trying to get protectorship--"

"Commission? An Eyimalian committee must be convinced to grant autonomy to this world?" Sevit waved his hand toward the muddy field and the river. "Nonsense. This is a planet. Eyimalia's opinion on that fact does not matter."

"Well, of course, but--"

"What? They demand a representative of a world that does not even know itself as a world yet, to satisfy laws they have no authority to make. Nonsense. Besides, who could negotiate on this planet's behalf? Pahid would think he was speaking to gods."

"We have someone named Akiva--" Clark hesitated, trying to imagine how he would explain the situation to him. It seemed incredible now that he had ever expected it to be simple.

Greyesar said, "He spoke to us just now about destroying temples, I believe." Clark nodded, and Greyesar repeated Akiva's speech, in high Paffir. So he understood.

Huey was looking up at the hills across the river. "I suppose your plans require some means of transport, hm?"

They all looked up at the mesa where the field must be, now bright in the sun against a clearing sky. The clouds separated in firm clusters, white on the crests and pink on the rolling under-surface. "My ship is doubtless elsewhere. Still, we'll go up and have a look, shall we, Grey?"

Greyesar also changed the subject abruptly, not in annoyance but as one returning a bow. "Guess who's running the family these days, Shortie. Adelaide and Malenyk."

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

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