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Rosse was bold enough to speak "It seeency to require the er to continue with the task hi look He obviously regarded ra in droves as inappropriate topics for discussion at table with his wife and young daughters Quite possibly he considered it a htly discussed until King Troven had decided how best to deal with it I was surprised when he actually replied to Rosse’s observation "The medical officer for Gettys is, I fear, a superstitious man He has sent a separate report to the queen, full of his usual speculations about ion, stipulating that it not leave the er’s hand until he delivered it to her Our queen, it is said, has an interest in matters of the supernatural, and rewards those who send her neledge She has promised a lordship to anyone who can offer her proof of life beyond the grave"

My mother made bold to speak, I think for the benefit of ard such topics as appropriate for a lady to pursue I am not alone in this I have had letters fro the discomfort they felt when the queen insisted they join her for a spirit-su it is all a trick by the so-called mediums who hold these sessions, but Lady Wrohe wrote that she witnessed things she could not explain and it gave her nightmares for a month" She looked from Elisi, who appeared properly scandalized, to Yaril, whose blue eyes were round with interest To Yaril, she added the conorant creatures I would be shaht up in such unnatural pursuits If one wishes to studyone should do is read the holy texts of the good god In the Writ is all we need to know of the afterlife To demand proof of it is presumptuous and an affront to the deity"

That seeer brother Vanze reported that he had worked on reading a difficult passage in the holy texts in the original Varnian and then meditated for two hours on it When my father asked how Yaril had e three new butterflies in her collection and of tatting enough lace to tri at her plate, she tiuard the cemetery at Gettys?"

My father narrowed his eyes at her circling back to a topic he had dismissed He answered curtly, "Because the Specks do not respect our burial customs and have been known to profane the dead"

Yaril’s little intake of breath was so slight that I am sure I was the only one who heard it My interest was more piqued than satisfied by my father’s reply, but as he iressed, I kneas hopeless even to wonder

And so that dinner came to a close, with coffee and a sweet, as all our dinners did I wondered ue None of us could know then that the plague was not a onetiht of disease, but would return to the outposts, suradually strike deeper and deeper into the western Plains country

During that first suue slowly seeped into my life and colored my concept of the borderlands I had known that the farthest outposts of the king’s cavalry were now at the foothills of the Barrier Mountains I knew that his a built across the Plains pushed ever closer to the mountains, but that it was expected to take four more years before it was completed Since I was small I had heard tales of the mysterious and elusive Specks, the dappled people who could only live happily in the shadows of their native forest Tales of them were, to my childish ears, little different from the tales of pixies and sprites that my sisters so loved The very nae as a synonym for inattentive: to do a Speck’s day of workover ht ask rown up in the belief that the distant Specks were a harlens and vales of the thickly forested ination, were almost as fantastic as the dappled folk elt there

But in that sued They caue that caht fro one of the decorative fans they wove frorew in their forest I wondered what they did to our graveyards, how they "profaned" the dead Instead of elusive, I now thought of them as furtive Their , their lifestyle grubby and pest-ridden rather than priht or two of fever for a Speck child devastated our outposts and outlying settle men in the prime of their youth