across the estuary on their pilgrimage to the ancient shrine of
Tala, the Earth-mother at Silverspring, where Siron was priestess. Tala had been greatest of the
Old Gods, just as Awod was greatest of the New. So there was enmity between them. Iril took no
side in this contest. He served Manaw, the Sea God, who was both Old and New. The sea does
not change.
Mel took another bracelet from his arm and dropped it beside the first. Then a third. All watched
in silence, the men of Iril’s kin to his right, the women to his left, and Mel’s own followers
behind him.
There was a half-built hut behind Iril’s men. Mel gestured and they moved aside. He considered
the hut. Between a breath and a breath it burst into flames, not shadows of flame as the stone had
been shadow. The hut burnt and became embers and did not remake itself.
Iril nodded. He had heard of Mel.
“No man can find the path to Silverspring,” he said.
“I will open the path,” said Mel. “If I fail, you will keep one bracelet. But I shall not fail. Those
times are over.”
Iril looked to his left, at his eldest son’s first wife. She met his gaze but gave him no sign. He
looked back to Mel.
“No,” he said.
Mel turned and studied the men of Iril’s kin. He beckoned one forward. Jarro came like a
sleepwalker. He was Iril’s third son, ten and five years old only, barely a man, but he could
dream the wave. Iril’s two elder sons, Farn and Arco, were expert raftmen. They could take a raft
north on the ebb, even in rough weather, and then bring it smoothly back, riding the flood-wave.
But neither of them, as children, had ever shown the signs. Neither of them now, however much
leaf they chewed, could fall into a half trance and then dream the wave, become part of the
moving water, know it as a man knows where his own limbs are in the dark. Almost as soon as
he could talk, Jarro had prattled on waking about the wash of the tides along the estuary. Then he
had lost the gift, as growing children did. But one day, when he was a man, he would chew leaf
and dream the wave again. If he had been a distant cousin, he would still have been more
precious to Iril than any of his own sons. Mel had never seen him before.
“Shall I show you what he will become if you refuse me?” he said. “Now in shadow, as I showed
you the stone? But if I choose, in truth, as I burnt the hut?”
Iril did not look at Jarro, nor at the women. He dragged one bracelet towards him and put it on
his arm.
“My terms are these,” he said. “When the stones float, I will take the second. When they leave
my care, the third. Furthermore, we bear no weapons. We take no side between tribe and tribe.
We carry and deliver. All that has to do with water is in my charge and at my command. All that
is on land is in yours.”
“So it shall be,” said Mel. “My terms are these. You will float the stones to this shore, and then
up our river as far as may be, so that I may have them in place by Seed-in. They have powers
that I will lay asleep, but for this they must travel all together.”
“That will take thought,” said Iril.
“It must be done.”
“These stones weigh many, many men. Are you able to make them less?”
“They are what they are. They will weigh their own weight.”
“The river from Silverspring. How wide? How deep?”
Mel considered. The air around him wavered as if heat were rising through it, and then he was
standing on untrodden grass beside a small river running along a mountain valley. Iril could see
the shapes of huts through the left-hand mountain. The slopes of the valley were clothed with
ancient woods. He nodded and the scene vanished.
“We will cut timber for the rafts there,” he said. “Cable and thongs we will need more than we
have, and also twenty and twenty and ten float-skins for each stone.”
Mel considered.
“I have sent for this stuff,” he said. “Do we cross to-day?”
“I have one raft waiting,
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