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"How high are your walls, Father?" Ivar asked with a laugh, although he didn’t

"Faith keeps then of irony He frowned at his refugees Their tight group was spreading out into a straggle, the faster like a rope tugging on those who lagged behind "Faith is all we have"

6

OF course it made perfect sense to Liath that, at the heart of the world, she would find a library, a repository of knowledge

Of course she settled by the entrance, in a quiet spot, and sat and watched the to e After all, if there was a book, she would so the wall beside one of the holes and, after co a set of tests at various compass points around the hole, would withdraw the scroll and carefully unroll it into a flat sheet The copper ar to unveil by e was read by touch; she sih their eyes or by speaking words aloud

At length, after napping and eating, she wandered again aroup, perhaps, as she could only tell them apart with difficulty The tone of their skins, like those of the Eika, had substantial variation; in addition, each had a distinctive pattern of growths crusting its skin Whether male or female she could not tell

What riches did they peruse?

Theology? Mathematics? Physics? It seemed unlikely that the science of astronoeometry surely held their interest, for she had seen the proportioned chah which their e in appearance, clothed only in barbaric orna, so surely the ed them All sciences are matters of use before they become matters of art How far they had come in matters of art she could not know, because she had no way to coic? Ethics? Physics? Did they search out and consider the causes of things as found in their effects? Had they recorded sos that afflict the Earth? Was it true that the collapse of buried mountains deep within the Earth caused tre winds in subterranean caverns tilted the ground and caused it to swing briefly this way and then that? What of the rivers of fire that flowed in the bowels of the Earth? Surely, living underground, they had wondered why gold is soft and iron is hard Out of what arises the color of a ges through annihilation, but only broke up their constituent components into new combinations?

So oblins formed? Was there metal mixed within them? Had they any kinship to the Eika? All this remained a mystery That these creatures existed at all astounded her Of course she had heard the stories, tales told by grandmothers and old uncles at the hearthside in the cold of winter when folk ainst the bitter cold Back in those days, she had diss cannot be created out of nothing nor, once born, be su from empty vessels So the philosopher wrote

Here walked the ancient ones, the crawlers in the deep, fabled oblins

Theyout while others shuffled in, all seen by her within that faint pulsing glow e from the pool The substance in the pool was not air, not liquid, not flame, and certainly not earth

Cautiously, she slipped down into the hollow and crept up to the lip of the pool She knelt A cool, sweet current flowed upward out of the pool’s depths, pouring over her She felt it through her clothes, through her skin, all the way into her heart

Reaching, she brushed a hand down and touched the surface

Like lightning, it struck, and she fell

The river that is aether links the farthest reach of heaven to the deepest pit within the Earth It runs shallow, denuded by the great cataclysh the tributaries of Earth It runs upward and outward, thin as a thread, and she rises with it, on it, seeing as with Eagle’s Sight

There are Ashioi,a road They are fitted out in bronze armor and feathered shields None of them have human faces; they all arrior masks Behind them lies a stone crown and before theuards patrolling the walls

There is Ivar, riding alongside a raggle-taggle co so ees