Valdyis galsin

We slept very well in the hay-loft, close together under the rough blankets. When we woke up our seal was still there! We said our prayers and repaired the holes in our heads — I still couldn’t see what Vurian did but I could see that it worked.

“If I’m going to die,” Rhinla said to Vurian, “you have to kiss me as if I’m a woman. Before I die I want to be kissed.”

“I don’t,” I said. Because kissing is stupid!

We went down the ladder and into the kitchen and we got porridge. Rhinla didn’t even wait until she got a spoon but crammed the porridge into her mouth with both hands. “The faster you eat, the less chance someone comes and takes it away before you’re finished!” she said. But there was nobody here who wanted to take our food away, and there was enough for everybody!

Then we offered to do the dishes (well, I offered, and I got Vurian and Rhinla to join in) and we talked about how you can be sure that something exists: if you’ve seen it? if you’ve heard of it? if you’ve made it? if you’ve made it up? You can make up things that don’t exist, like the bird Rhinla had painted, but perhaps that makes things exist, perhaps there are such birds now in the world somewhere far away in Iss-Peran! Making something up at least means that it can exist.

We went to buy the horse! There were two horses in the meadow but we wanted the large one, because all three of us had to ride it together. We called it and it came to see what was up. I was making friends with it when the man whose horse it was came, and said “Oh, you’re the youngsters who want to buy my horse.” We didn’t know what a horse cost but he said it was eighteen riders, and we had more than that in the purse, and he’d give us a blanket and reins and straps and horse food. Not a saddle, because saddles are more expensive than horses, and we wouldn’t fit on a saddle anyway, not all three at the same time!

The way to the west was on the top of the cliff, close to the sea, past lots of fruit trees and fields with vegetables. Most fruit were the round kind we’d eaten, and other kinds as well, but we didn’t stop to taste them. There weren’t any people on the road this time, with or without goats (we did see some goats or sheep in the distance, but there was no person with them that we could see). But when Rhinla looked ahead with her mind she could see some people!

It took us more than a day to get there, though. On the way we made pictures with light. Vurian had never tried it and said he couldn’t, but Rhinla bullied him and he made a fish with two little legs. “It’s a land-fish!” he said. That figured, there are sea-fishes and river-fishes, why not land-fishes? And we made up a whole story about the land-fish, that it’s so large that there can be a village on its back (Rhinla drew the village on Vurian’s drawing) and when there’s a fire the fish jumps and thrashes (Vurian made the fish go up and down, and jiggle its legs). Then I put out the fire with a great big cloud full of rain, so much rain that the land-fish became a water-fish! “It needs paddling feet,” Vurian said, and gave it four more feet like a duck has (well, a duck has only two, but that sort of feet).

We wanted to make the horse go faster, and I remembered what Lady Rava had taught me with the reins and did that, but it helped only a little and not for long, it wanted to walk at its own pace. But that didn’t matter, because we came to the place where we’d seen the people, a big house with little houses all around it built against the walls. In the big house a man lived on his own, called Ervan.

“Are you the king?” Vurian asked, because the house was like a palace!

“The king of my house,” Ervan said.

“And do you have a queen, too?” I asked.

“My queen died,” Ervan said, and he looked so sad that it made us sad too. But he was glad to have us for company, and he didn’t want any money for food and a place to sleep, but instead he wanted to hear stories of our adventures! And we could tell those!

Then we talked about the gods, because we had to explain about all the Namelesses. “Gods are just like grown-ups,” Rhinla said, “they tell you what to do, and when you do it they tell you to do something else! Gods are STUPID!”

Then Rhinla felt a hand on her shoulder, a girl a bit older than us, who said “Gods are hard to understand, but not stupid!” She was the priestess of Naigha! But she wasn’t wearing a long grey dress, and her hair was pinned to her head, not in a long braid, she only dressed like that when she was doing priestess work. “Oh,” Rhinla said, “that’s because you want to have a man more often than only once a year?”

“That’s not it,” Selle said, but she blushed anyway. We talked a bit about Naigha, and that there even were priests of Naigha abroad, and with the Khas! We’d heard that at school, but Selle didn’t know it yet.

“Naigha is the only one who isn’t stupid!” Rhinla said. “All the Namelesses are stupid! If they’d just taken each other’s hands then I could have gone back to Turenay and done other things!”

“Would you like to be with Naigha for a while?” Selle asked, but Rhinla didn’t want that, it was just like being with Jerna in Essle, she didn’t want to go because she was afraid she wouldn’t want to leave. She was still convinced that she was going to die! “There isn’t any ‘for a while’ any more,” she said.

In the morning Ervan gave us food to eat on the way, bread and cheese, and even pancakes when we asked for those! Ervan made them himself. A stack in a linen cloth, without any syrup or honey because that would have been much too sticky in the cloth, but they were very nice anyway. And we got food for the horse, too, it had eaten all the food from the other village.

Now we weren’t right on the edge of the cliff any more but we could still see the sea if we craned our necks. Between here and Dol-Rayen there weren’t many villages, none at all on the road we were on, and it was so dark in the night that we took turns keeping watch. There were more stars than I could count (but that’s not difficult, I can’t count to as much as I’d like yet). Rhinla’s turn was before mine, and sometimes she left drawings of light in the air.

And one night she told me that she’d seen the bad people’s ship and set it on fire! “With all the sailors who aren’t bad people?” I asked. Because I don’t mind killing crooks, but I do mind killing innocent people who are only sailing the ship with the crooks on it because that’s their work! I could see the ship when I looked closely with my mind (like craning the neck of my mind), and it was smouldering but not sinking. I hoped the sailors could swim and get away! Rhinla or I could have swum that distance, but I think most sailors can’t.

We woke Vurian up with talking about the ship, and it was almost morning anyway so we ate some of our bread and cheese, and I took care of the horse while he and Rhinla talked about the ship some more. “I don’t want you to die!” I heard him say to Rhinla, and I called to them “Me neither!”

“Gods don’t die, people do, that’s the difference,” one of them said, I couldn’t tell which.

Rhinla was all exhausted from the firestarting, and I didn’t mind giving her some of my anea but not if she used it to set fire to people who didn’t deserve it! (People who did deserve it, that was something else.) She was making me angry, first at her because she was talking about dying all the time, then at myself because I didn’t know how to do the right thing.

Another day of riding to the west. No drawing this time, we were all too grim to make up stories! And now we could see something in the distance that looked like a great big dark cloud of anger, and that didn’t make it any better.

We tied the horse to a tree and held hands to see it better with our minds, but then I was suddenly alone! But then Arin was next to me and said he’d help me find the others. “No!” I said. “I don’t want help from any Namelesses, not even the one who does have a name! If I’m going to find them I can do that myself.” And that made me find them at once, just like in a dream only I was sure I wasn’t asleep.

We could all see the place that Rhinla had been drawing on the walls, a sort of basin with bits of ruin and fighting people. Everybody was of the Nameless, but different kinds of Namelesses, one bunch of the ordinary one and the other bunch of the extra special scary one. And there was a kind of pillar of power that went up to the cloud where all the Namelesses were. No, not all, only the two without a name, Arin was with us! And then Anshen was with us too and put a hand on each of our shoulders, but Rhinla shook it off, “i can do it on my own!” But I knew that I couldn’t and I was glad of Anshen’s help.

And now we knew what we had to do: join all the Namelesses together so there would be only one again. “You have to do that,” Arin said to me, “you’re the one who makes things whole!” (Rhinla and Vurian were doing things too, but I was too busy to see what exactly.)

I took Arin by his wrist and dragged him along, “come on, you’re one of them too!” I got him as far as where the other two were standing, perhaps in the pillar, or in front of it, and I put Arin’s left hand in one of the Namelesses’ right hand, and his right hand in the other one’s left hand, and reached around them to join the other two hands. I don’t know how my arms could be that long! Because the gods were larger than ordinary people, taller and broader! But it worked! And I sort of squeezed them together and they melted into each other and there was only one. And then I was so exhausted that I fell down where I stood and woke up on the rim of the basin where we’d tied up the horse, because of course we’d only been out there in our minds, not in our bodies.

Vurian was sitting up looking dazed, and I could see he still had the (or at least a) Nameless in his head. “You can tell him to fuck off,” I said. and he did that, and was very surprised, “he fucked off!”

Rhinla was still asleep but she woke up a bit later. Something was strange about her, and she looked at me as if there was something strange about me, and when we thought a little we knew what it was: no holes in our heads any more! Only Vurian had still got the weak place even though there wasn’t a god in his head, not even one.

Then Rhinla told me that she’d seen the man from Veray and fought him and killed him! Serves him right, I say. Now he can’t put his nasty hooks in Vurian any more.

Now I still wanted to go to Dol-Rayen on my two feet, not only with my mind! Because it would be silly if we could only tell the story of almost going to Dol-Rayen when we’d been sent there. But we were still all too tired, so we went back to sleep. It was dark anyway, only in the basin there was light as if there were lamps or fires.

I dreamed of standing between the bits of ruin and Arin came towards me, but I told him “You don’t exist any more, now go away!” and he went away.

When we got down in the basin the next morning the bits of ruin were just as I’d dreamed them. and as I’d seen them in my mind. There was nobody fighting now, but there was someone lying on the ground who I knew, it was our brother Arin the crook! “What are doing here?” we asked, and he said “Fighting, for the boss, he took us along.” He was wounded in all kinds of places, so I bandaged him with strips that Rhinla tore off her shirt and while I did that he told us more. He’d been with one Nameless, and the man from Veray who Rhinla had (seen? fought?) with the other. Those were the ‘rivals’ that Vurian had talked about! Arin didn’t know what they were actually fighting for. but I thought it was just to see who was the boss. “We’ll take you home,” we said, and he thought Essle but we meant Turenay, to doctor Cora, who could really make people whole!

“I can’t fight any more,” Arin said, and we said he didn’t have to fight any more, he could just go and do something else! And I don’t know exactly how it went then, but he said he wanted to become a smith and Rhinla gave him the purse with the rest of Lord Vurian’s money to become a smith with.

Then Rhinla went away to do something she really had to do, and when I found her she was squatting above the fountain of anea and shitting on it. “That’s what it deserves!” she said, “shit!”. And the fountain really looked a bit clogged then, but it sprang up again.

We hoisted Arin on the horse and took him back to Selday. That sounds easier than it was, because he was still very weak and broken, but everybody on the way helped us and gave us food and whatever else we needed so it didn’t matter that we’d given the purse of money to Arin! And in Selday there was Cynla and the ship and we could go back to Essle. We convinced Arin to come to Turenay with us so Doctor Cora could look at him and he could become a smith there or wherever else he liked, not in Essle where all those thieves would probably make him join them again.

When I told Cynla about joining the Namelesses together she asked “Were you afraid?” and I said “No, but only because I was so angry!”

And now we’re back in Turenay, and it’s all just like a very strange dream. I’m back at school, and people tell me I’m a journeyman now, that what I did to the Namelesses did that, and I do feel different but I have to find out exactly how. And Rhinla is a journeyman too, but all she wants is to get better at drawing with light and drawing with paint. Nobody can teach her to draw with light, she has to teach herself, but she’s really Master Jeran’s apprentice now with paint, not only in his class at school like I am. I’m not much good at drawing, but I stay in the class anyway because I like to do it. And Vurian came along too and he’s at school like it’s never been different.

It’s strange, now we’re back and learning things nobody asks us what we want to do, or tells us what to do! (Well, except lessons at school. But not what to do with our lives.) Perhaps I’ll go and be in the Order like Cynla! In Essle or Veray or even Valdis where I’ve never been yet so I don’t know what it’s like.

After a couple of days I felt better. At least I didn’t feel sick all the time any more, only when there was a bit more wind than at other times, and when I ate anything and forgot to look at the sea for a while afterwards. Rhinla was high up in the mast most of the time being lookout, lucky girl! And even Vurian was climbing up now though he wasn’t nearly as good at climbing as us. But there it went up and down, and back and forth, much more than on deck so I didn’t even try. It wouldn’t do to puke from the mast and hit someone below!

But at least I felt a bit like myself again and Cynla saw that and wanted to practice with us. Rhinla still got a headache if she used her mind too much, but Cynla said we’d only practice a little. “I expect there will be fighting,” she said, “so I want to teach you how to defend yourselves!” We’d already made the shield when the man in Veray threw the knife at us, but that was only on one side, now we were going to make something on all sides. “You protect yourselves, and I’m going to hit you, if I get through you’ll feel it. Can you make a cloak of spirit?” We all could. “Now pull it as close to yourself as you can, and make it as hard as possible.”

“Are you going to punch or stab?” Rhinla asked. “Because if you’re punching I need a cloak of leather or cork, but if you’re stabbing it needs to be of stone or iron.”

“I’ll stab,” Cynla said, and Rhinla covered herself with stone, and I made a copper kettle to sit in, and we didn’t know what Vurian did but he did look protected. Then Cynla stabbed with a knife made of ryst! And my kettle went “poinggg” like copper kettles do but she got through Rhinla’s cover a bit and the knife stuck in it so Rhinla could grab it and try to pull it out, but Cynla made it disappear.

“I see,” I said, “you’ve imagined it so you can unimagine it too!”

“Now I’m going to lie in my hammock below,” Cynla said, “and then you touch me with your mind! But if I spot you, I’ll attack.”

“Can we work together?”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t,” Cynla said. And down the ladder she went.

When she was out of sight we put our heads together and decided that two of us would protect all of us while the third went down to get Cynla. Rhinla was first, and she made a lot of spirit gnats, but they couldn’t get through Cynla’s protection until she kicked her in the mind-butt to startle her.

Then it was my turn, and I imagined a fork — first a pitchfork, but that was too big to handle, so it became one of those large forks that cooks prick meat with to see if it’s done — and went down the ladder with it. That frightened Rhinla and Vurian! Because my spirit went down but my body stayed with them, without the spirit in it.

When I got down I couldn’t see Cynla at all, however hard I looked! But she’d said she’d be in the hammock so I stabbed the fork into the hammock from below and she yelped and became visible. Then I went up the ladder again before she could catch me.

“You were gone!” Rhinla said. “You were out of your body!” But I was in my body now, and my hands and feet were very cold and my legs were stiff so I had to stretch before I could help protect Vurian as he went down.

Vurian didn’t send his whole spirit down, only a sword he’d imagined, and after a while we heard Cynla yelp. Well done, all of you, she said in our heads.

Later, I complained that she’d been invisible, and she said “well, I thought I shouldn’t make it too easy for you!”

“Next time you could go somewhere else when you’re being invisible,” I said, “because it was easy, you said you’d be in your hammock so I pricked the hammock!” “Yes,” she said with a grin, “you were cleverer than me.”

Then Rhinla, who was in the top of the mast again, called out “There’s a ship in front of us!” And so there was! “May we look for people?” we asked, but Cynla said no, she’d look herself, and then told us to make ourselves as invisible as possible. The ship was full of people of the Nameless! “What are they doing there?” I asked. “Do you think they want to catch us? Or Vurian?”

“I don’t know,” Cynla said, “but better be careful, we want as little as possible to do with them.”

Rhinla curled up on a rolled-up rope and went to sleep, like a cat, and after a while the real cat joined her, while I went and helped the cook cut up carrots and turnips for the stew. The carrots were much nicer raw, and I nibbled on one while working, the cook didn’t mind.

After we’d eaten the stew we were all so tired that we really wanted to turn in, even Rhinla who’d been asleep for a couple of hours. When we were in our hammocks I noticed that Vurian was dreaming, a little uneasy but not very much, so I brushed him a little from where I lay but soon fell asleep myself.

Then Rhinla shook me awake! She’d got up in the middle of the night and went on deck to help Cynla keep watch, and now someone was trying to set fire to the ship with their mind! I scrambled up the ladder, and Vurian too, and we spent half the night throwing buckets of water at the sail and several other places that someone on the other ship was making hot enough to catch fire.

“Now I can look!” Rhinla said, “they know where we are anyway!” And she did, from behind a shield she made, just peeking past, and she saw three people of the Nameless on the other ship. One of them was the woman I’d hit with the oar when she and her friends were trying to kill us, and Rhinla drowned one after she’d bitten his ear off!

They stopped after a while, but we stayed on deck to keep watch with the sailors, Vurian down in the hold, Cynla on one side, I on the other side and Rhinla in front. None of the sailors could keep watch with their minds, but they could see if the other ship sent a boat with people with grappling hooks and knives and swords. They didn’t, though. Only Vurian came to get us because someone had tried to make a fire where he was. And now the other ship had put its lights out so we couldn’t see it any more except with our minds.

“Can people see it when you look at them?” I asked Cynla.

“Sometimes. We’ll practice that,” she said.

Then Cynla said she’d ask the captain to make our ship go slower so there would be more room between the other ship and us and it would be harder for them to do things. But Rhinla wanted us to overtake them, and fight! Cynla didn’t think that was a good idea, but she’d have to speak with the captain anyway and the captain was asleep so they didn’t argue about it right then.

Rhinla and Vurian went to bed then, because they were both too tired to fight or even stay awake, but I stayed to keep watch with Cynla. We talked, mostly so we wouldn’t fall asleep. “What do you think of the whole thing?” Cynla asked me, and I thought for a bit and I said “they don’t have to be killed, they just have to be somewhere else than we are! It would be bad to fight on a ship with a lot of sailors who don’t have anything to do with what the fight is about. Better wait until you’re on land and fight only the people you have a quarrel with!”

“But the people of the Nameless would think it’s all right if other people die too,” Cynla said. Well, duh! That’s why I’m not with the Nameless.

When it was day again Cynla talked to the captain and he ordered the sailors to take in some of the sail so the ship went slower. The cook grumbled about that, perhaps he’d run out of food if it took too long to get to Selday! Then Rhinla hung a fishing-line from the railing, with a worm from the hard-tack on the hook. She forgot it for half a day! But when we remembered it was there, it had caught a great big fish and we ate it.

The other ship was now so far ahead that we couldn’t see it with our eyes any more, except the people who climbed into the mast (Rhinla was one). We could still see it with our mind if we wanted but Cynla said to be very careful because if we could see them, they could see us.

The cook still grumbled, fish or no fish, and made porridge from hard-tack with some worms in it for flavour.

We passed Selday (where the other ship had gone), and Rhinla and I asked to put us and Vurian ashore and not take us to Selday, because we needed to go to the west over land anyway! And if the people on the other ship couldn’t find us, they wouldn’t be able to catch us. So we got a little boat with a sailor in it (to take it back to the ship, we could have handled a boat between us, I think even on the sea) to put us on the shore, on a little bit of beach between the sheer white cliffs. You could see how high the water came, even in the dark, because there was a lot of seaweed lying there, so we could sleep between the cliff and the seaweed and not get wet by surprise.

In the morning we caught crabs and mussels and picked up some seaweed and dry driftwood, and found a place where water came down the cliff that was only a little salty, so we could wash the salt off ourselves. And we made a delicious stew with the crabs and mussles and seaweed (Seaweed is like salty cabbage, very nice). Where the water came down there was also a place where we could climb up, not really easily, but Rhinla and I could give Vurian a hand up in the places were it was too hard for him. And I had the cat in the front of my shirt for a while, but she escaped and found her own way up.

Now we were on top of the white cliff! It was almost completely flat there, with a line of trees further inland, round yellow fruit growing on them. We tried one, and the rind was tough and bitter but it was sweet and juicy inside, so we picked some more and sucked the pulp out and threw the rinds into the sea. Perhaps some fish will like it!

We stopped to look around with our minds, we hadn’t done that yet, and we saw a lot of people behind us, the way we weren’t going, and fewer people in front of us, and one person quite close by, also in the right direction.

That person came closer! And it turned out to be a man with very dark skin, and a herd of goats with him. “Hi!” Rhinla said. “Is your name Tao?”

“Why, yes,” the man said, “how do you know?”

“We know someone in Essle who looks like you and his name is Tao. You’re Ishey, right?” And that was also right.

The man called Tao was looking from side to side as if he was searching for something, and when we asked he said he’d lost one of his little goats. So we offered to watch the rest of the goats while he looked in the bushes! Then we learned that none of us were cut out to be goatherds, and that the cat wasn’t cut out to be a dog (but Tao’s dog stayed, and did most of the work). It was fun, though, to run after the goats when they tried to escape! And Tao came back carrying the little goat that he’d found down a crack in the cliff, and pointed the way to the nearest village.

That was tiny! Only five houses, I could count them on one hand! And nobody in the houses was gifted, a good thing, or perhaps they wouldn’t want Vurian with the Nameless still in his head.

The people were surprised that we were there (“where have you come from? From the sea?”) but they gave us soup and bread and let us sleep in the hayloft. We wanted to buy horses from them, but the village had only two and they couldn’t sell them both. Well, one horse would perhaps be enough for a while. But first, sleep!

After all the hard work we put ashore and made a small fire and sat there eating some more of the pancakes. Not all, so we’d have some left for breakfast, but a lot, because we were all very hungry.

Rhinla thought of making fireworks! She took a willow-twig, lit it in the fire and threw it up and towards the water so it made an arc of sparks first and then hit the water with a psssh! and a splash. Vurian and I joined her, until we were so tired that we couldn’t help falling asleep.

In the morning we caught fish first, and then we swam (and taught Vurian to swim a bit) and then ate the fish. And the last pancakes, too. I rinsed the barrel in the water, we’d find a use for it! We took turns poling, that was another thing we taught Vurian. He was strong in the shoulders, so when he got the hang of it he did well enough.

We went on like that for a couple of days, stopping at dusk, fishing in the shallows. catching crayfish and sharing them with the cat. (The cat was catching water-rats too, but we all liked fish much better than rat!) And when it was my or Vurian’s turn to pole Rhinla used the slate to draw pictures of everything, and when it was her turn I used it to practice letters and do sums. Sums with money! I counted everything in the purse and there were ten and ten and ten and another four big silver riders in it, thirty-four! And at least as many of the smaller silver coins that were shillings, and little silver half-shillings, and copper pennies.

Then it became dark before it was evening. A huge storm-cloud! Rain, too, and thunder. We dragged the boat to high ground — we were in the wetlands now, not much ground at all, but some parts were so high that they stood above the water like islands — and turned it so we could sit under it. Rhinla played with light, making garlands, and little pigs that ran around us. “Can you do rats and mice?” I asked, but she didn’t want to do that because she thought the cat would chase them. She made kittens, though, but the cat didn’t even seem to see them!

We taught Vurian a lot of words on the way, and also when we were waiting out the storm. He was sort of all right now he didn’t have the hole in his head any more, except that it’s hard to be friends if you can’t understand each other properly. And of course he still had the Namelesses in his head, and that made it hard to be friends too.

But we could show each other things! We showed him Essle, the places we knew best, and he showed us something like a city only it was inside, with a roof over it, and a large place like a square (only with a roof) where people about our age were fighting with swords and sticks, it looked like practicing. Perhaps they were practicing for fighting the rivals!

Then the rain stopped, and I caught a big fish, and we wanted to roast it because the rain had made us cold as well as wet! But all the wood we could find was too wet to burn. “Wait, I can do that,” Rhinla said, and she got so angry at the wood for being wet that it became hotter and hotter and it dried itself out and caught fire! There was still a lot of smoke because some of the wood had stayed wet and not caught fire and it smouldered, but smoked fish is just as nice! After we’d eaten the fish Rhinla put the rest of the fire in the empty barrel, and we caught a lot of eels and put those on top so they’d get smoked too.

We’d looked around with our minds to see if we could find other people, and we did find some: a woman with two children who had passed us earlier. The children weren’t much younger than us but I didn’t think they got to pole or row or scull, they’d probably get very bored! And when we caught up with them it was clear that they were, because they were fighting and their mother was yelling at them. We joined them on their boat (it was lying near the bank) and I pushed the boy into the water. The girl jumped after him, and when they’d cooled off a bit we all swam and talked. They were going to Essle to bring stuff in their boat — we forgot to ask what kind of stuff, but it was all under oiled cloths. We all left at the same time, but their boat went faster, perhaps because the mother was taller than us and could scull faster!

When it started to get dark we could see Tilis, so we went on, and we were there when it was completely dark but Rhinla had made a light that she held up like a lamp so we could see where we were. We put the boat under the big house where a lot of other boats were too, and Rhinla gave me the purse to get something to eat. “Soup!” she said, and gave me the bucket. “And bread!” I said.

There was someone on the bridge to the big house, with a poleaxe, so I asked him if he was a bridge guard. “Sort of,” he said, “do you want to go in?”

“No, I only want to ask where to get soup and bread.”

“There’s the White Swan right across that square,” he said, “they’ll still have some.”

The White Swan was a large inn, on stilts like the big house, but there were horses under it, not boats, because the stilts stood on land instead of water. I climbed the stairs to the main room and found it full of people eating soup, that was encouraging! And they filled my bucket in the kitchen for a couple of pennies, and gave me some bread for another couple of pennies. There were little white beans in the soup and pieces of all kinds of vegetables and some kind of meat, and it smelt so yummy that it was hard not to start eating right away! But I got the whole bucket to the boat and we shared it out in the bowls and there was enough to fill the bowls again when they were empty.

In the morning we asked the guard (it was a different guard now) if he could watch the boat, and yes, he would, that was his job! So he was a boat guard, not a bridge guard. We told him we were going to see if the White Swan had any pancakes, and he said “could you bring one for me too?” But in the White Swan everybody else was eating porridge or bread-and-cheese. Rhinla was bold, though, and just asked for them. “How many would you like?” the cook asked, and Rhinla said “Ten! Ten each!”

And we got them! We were so full of pancakes! And we got another one for the boat guard and rolled it up with treacle on it. It didn’t cost much, all those pancakes for one half-shilling, and we got a cup of milk each and the cook said we didn’t have to pay for that. Perhaps the people in Tilis like kids who like their pancakes that much!

Then it was not very far to Essle, but it still took us longer than from Essle to Tilis because then Arin had been pushing us! And now even if he’d been there to push we’d say no to him because now we know he’s some sort of the Nameless.

We were kind of scared to come back to Essle because we didn’t know who had died of the sickness, perhaps everybody! But the priestess was in her temple. And once she’d seen us she asked her neighbour to watch the boat and took us inside and we told her everything.

“Hm,” she said, “there is something wrong with you. You’re sick in your spirit.” Now we did have a hole in our spirit, Rhinla and I both, but that didn’t make me feel sick! But we’d go and find a doctor who knew about spirits. Or Cynla, because she also knew about spirits. Or someone else in the house where Cynla belonged, the house of the Order.

“Stupid gods,” Rhinla said. “You can’t trust them! Well, except Naigha, she is honest at least.” The priestess could only agree with that, of course. She stroked our heads, and that felt good, as if something that had been too hot before was now nice and cool.

Now we asked what he hadn’t dared ask before. “Are Jerna and Faran and Rovan still alive?” They were! And even Arin was still alive. We didn’t ask about the witch, and especially Rhinla didn’t want to go and see her.

Then we went to our own island! Faran was there, mending something. “Hey! It’s you! We thought you were gone but now you’re back!”

“Yes,” we said, “but we’re not staying long, we’ve got a job to do!” And we told Faran everything too, though I don’t think he understood everything. That wasn’t so bad because after all we didn’t understand everything either. “Where’s Rovan? And Jerna?”

“Jerna went fishing, she’ll be back soon. Rovan went into town.”

“By himself? But he’s only six!” (But then we’d been going into town when we were that small, too!)

“He didn’t go far, I think.” And then Faran called him, and soon enough he came swimming through the reed field and hugged us. He wanted to hear everything too, of course. And he said a couple of things that sounded very wise for someone who is only six (but I don’t know what the things were now, only that he sounded wise when he said them).

“Things have changed in town,” Faran said. “You should watch out for the people in the black boats.”

“Do they try to shoot you dead?” Rhinla asked.

“Sometimes,” Faran said. “Mostly they’re nasty to other people in boats.”

Then Jerna came back and we hugged her like anything. “Are you staying?” she asked. “At least tonight?” We weren’t; we had to find the doctor! But I’d picked wild garlic and mint and fennel to eat with the fish, and we did stay to eat it.

We went south then, past Master Jeran’s house (and we didn’t stop to talk to him), past the boat-house, to the under-king’s palace. We did see a couple of black boats! The first had one person sculling and two people sitting in it, the other two no passengers at all but the people sculling it each had a bow at their side. I hid our boat a little and they didn’t seem to notice us. When Vurian noticed what I was doing he helped me, he had a lot of strength to hide things!

Once we were at the palace we asked a palace guard where the house of the Order was, because if Cynla was there at all that was the place to find her! He told us a lot of complicated things but it ended with “and ask again there” so we’d probably find it. Then I hid the boat again, and we went the right way while Rhinla searched for Cynla. And she found her!

The house was on the other end of a wooden bridge that we could tie the boat to. There was a guard on the bridge, a young man, who wasn’t sure that he could let us in but when we asked for Cynla he called her. And then she wasn’t sure that she could let us in, because Vurian had at least three Namelesses in his head, she said! “Is he a friend of yours?” she asked, and we said “yes” and “we’re taking care of him” and “Anshen said that we should”.

Well, we got over the bridge at least. And we told everything to Cynla. Then Cynla said “excuse me” and disappeared into the temple that was in the middle of the house (it wasn’t one house really, but houses all around the edge of the island, with a large space in the middle that had the temple on it and room for people to train with weapons). And when she came back she said that Anshen had told her, without words, that it was none of her business. When she’d just decided she wanted to come with us!

“You can’t anyway,” we said, “Anshen said he wanted us to go because we haven’t learned too much, people who know everything you know can’t do it.” But we still didn’t know exactly why so we couldn’t tell Cynla exactly why either.

Now I wanted to be in the temple too! It was just like the one in Turenay only really big. Rhinla and I sat by the fire (I think Rhinla was glaring at Anshen) and then Vurian came in too, very shy. He still had the Namelesses in his head, the ordinary one and Arin, not the really scary one. And Anshen was in his head too, arguing with them. I thought of the squabbling kids at the boat and pushed the Nameless (the ordinary one) into the water — I had to imagine some water for that first, but that was easy. He didn’t go away or anything, but he was startled enough to stop arguing. Now only Anshen was arguing with Arin, and Rhinla tried to cover the ears of Vurian’s spirit so he could think for himself for once. She took him out of the temple, too.

I stayed, and Anshen filled me, all of me, the hole in my spirit too (but it was just filled up, not closed, it was still a hole). Cynla saw that later, but I said to her “I don’t want to join the Order! At least not now!”

We wanted to know if Vurian really wanted the Nameless out of his head, and we thought it would be best to do that in a dream, so we could at least understand each other! Cynla thought that was a good idea and offered us a room as close to the temple as possible. “Would you like me to stay with you?” she asked, and I asked her to stand outside and keep watch.

Then the doctor came back! He had brown skin, and we asked if he was from Iss-Peran, and he was! And he could talk to Vurian in a language that he understood! He told us that Vurian was from Ashas, far in the south of Iss-Peran, and his name was really Vurian, it wasn’t a name he was using because he was in Valdyas, some people from Ashas do have Valdyan names.

The doctor took us into his room and looked at the holes in our spirit. “Can you fix it?” I asked, but he said no, people can’t fix that, only the gods can. But he’d teach us a way to stop spirit leaking out of us. We had to think of our own way to do that, because then it would work best. Rhinla made something like very hard eggshell, and I made something like the poultice that Rovan had put on the dog, and Vurian made something like a very straight and flat bit of wall, and they all worked.

“You do that every day when you get up,” the doctor said, “when you’re saying your morning prayers. And in the evening too, twice a day.”

“For the rest of our lives?” I asked, and the doctor said “yes, unless the gods fix it.” “Perhaps the rest of our lives won’t be long,” Rhinla said, “we might all die in Dol-Rayen!”

Then we asked for headache tea, and got some, and a bunch of mint when I said I liked the tea (the doctor didn’t) but with mint it was even better.

We set out on the reed boat as soon as everything was ready. Rhinla had made a special thick piece of boat to hide the purse full of money in! We put Vurian between us and taught him to paddle, but he was too tired to paddle so we wedged him more securely so he could sleep. And I put my head on his butt and slept too, because I hadn’t had much sleep last night.

When I woke up we were already almost in Veray! It really went a lot faster downstream. We put the boat ashore in a reed-field so it wouldn’t stand out, and hid ourselves as well as we could, and went to Maile’s house where Master Jeran had had a room. We couldn’t have that room but we could have a room, for a day and a night, and we could pay for it, too, we had the money-purse for that kind of thing! Now Rhinla wanted to sleep because she’d been paddling the boat to Veray all night long, and she locked herself in the room with Vurian and I went into town with the purse to buy a boat. Not that I knew where or how to buy a boat! But I decided to go to the harbour because that was full of boats.

When I passed the house where the fighting had been, there was a boy about my age with the people repairing it. “Hey,” I said, “looks good, last time I saw this house it was on fire!” We talked about that for a bit while he worked, but I don’t think he knew anything about the fight. “Would you know where I can buy a boat?” I finally asked him, because he lived in Veray and he just might know people I didn’t know existed.

“I don’t buy a lot of boats!” he said, “How big does it have to be?”

“For three people to go to Tilis in,” I said. And yes, he thought his uncle might want to sell his boat, because the uncle was too old to go fishing! He could take me there but he’d be working all day, of course, so I promised to be back at sunset if I wanted the boat and not come back if I found another one before then.

Then I went to the harbour and saw boats being made, and boats being painted, and boats being repaired, and boats being broken into pieces, and boats being loaded and unloaded. And I looked where boats were going from the harbour and how to get out of the harbour without standing out because of doing something different than everybody else.

I was so full of boats then that I started back, but it was through different streets because I’d walked quite a long way along the harbour. Near a large white building I saw a cat that looked familiar! I thought we’d left that cat with Master Jeran in Turenay! The cat went into the building, and I followed her, it looked like a place where you could just go in like a temple of Naigha, only not of Naigha. I found the cat sitting at the feet of a huge statue of a woman with a child on her arm, looking as if she was at home there (the cat, not the woman, though the woman was at home too, I could see that). I sat there for a long time, stroking the cat. I really was the cat! She smelt a little like oil paint!

A girl with skin about as brown as mine, and hair about as curly as Rhinla’s, asked “Can I help you? You look like you need something from Dayati.”

“I don’t think you can help,” I said, “my sister is angry but not with me.”

“Can you tell me why?”

“No,” I said, “it’s not mine to tell.” But I could say that this place felt very good and safe, and she said that it was the temple of Dayati and that Dayati was Timoine. I didn’t know Timoine was a grown-up lady with a baby! The priestess in Essle had never told us that when she was teaching us about the gods. But it was the Síthi people who had built the temple because there were so many of them living in Veray, the girl told me (and also that her name was Prithi) so perhaps people from different countries see different parts of the gods.

I went to get Rhinla to look at the cat, and I wanted to get Vurian too but Rhinla locked him into the room. That was a pity because I thought it would be good for Vurian to be in the temple! And Rhinla wasn’t convinced it really was the same cat, but she (the cat) wanted to come with us, Prithi said so too.

Then the sun was almost setting so we went back to the boy mending the house. He took us to a bit of harbour where there were little huts and fishing-boats. His uncle was sitting in front of his hut, mending a net. He was called Ervan and his nephew was Erian. The boat was just the right size! And everything that needs to be in a boat was in the boat, except the oars, they were lying in a rack next to it.

Rhinla said that she wasn’t going to pay more than twelve silver riders for it because that was what a boat cost! But I thought boats didn’t usually cost that much, the twelve riders had just been because Master Jeran wanted the bad people to pay us enough money to go to school with.

“You know what,” Uncle Ervan said, “I’ll sell you the boat for twelve new-minted riders or six old tarnished riders.”

I found six old tarnished riders in the purse! Five with the head of the king on it, and one with the head of a queen who Rhinla said wasn’t the real queen because the queen was thin and the head was of a chubby woman. But Uncle Ervan said that this was the old queen, the king’s mother.

We paid him the six riders and now we had a boat! And on the way back to our room we passed a butcher and bought a little barrel of salt pork and a hard sausage. Rhinla wanted to take a barrel of pancakes too! “I don’t think pancakes come in barrels,” I said, but we bought an empty barrel for a couple of pennies.

And Maile promised to bake pancakes if we gave her two shillings extra for the flour and milk and eggs! She started at once because, she said, filling the barrel would take a lot of pancakes! But first she took a pie out of the oven and cut it into eight pieces. “Is there anyone else living in the house?” we asked, but the people who were didn’t eat in the kitchen, we could have two pieces each, and that felt like twice as much pie. There was chicken and turnip and carrot and eggs in the pie!

But Rhinla was still angry and I didn’t know what to do about that. And we were up half the night again because Vurian was dreaming bad dreams about sitting on a cart in a cage that he only just fitted in.

In the morning we had a barrel full of pancakes! With honey and butter between the layers. I carried it, and we made Vurian carry the barrel of pork, and Rhinla carried the sausage and the bucket with cups and bowls and spoons.

When we got to Uncle Ervan’s house he’d put the boat ready for us, so we were away at once, and that was a good thing because there was a scary person looking at us! With their mind, we couldn’t see who it was, but it felt like a man. Vurian was very scared, and I knew it had something to do with his dream, perhaps he’d dreamed of the scary man, but he still didn’t speak anything we could understand and I hadn’t been in his dream this time.

Getting away from the scary man didn’t make Vurian less scared, he looked as if he got more scared! So I brushed him some more with the imaginary brush, but this time it snagged on something when I did that, and I found a kind of thread that was fixed to his head and it went somewhere, it looked like all the way to Veray! Now that was really scary! We wondered whether to cut it because it looked as if someone was sucking something out of him through it. I tried to reel it in like fishing-line, and got a bit of it bunched up in my hand, but when I let it go it was back where it had been.

And I think my pulling alerted someone because there was something rushing at us! Rhinla and I made a shield at the same time, like we’d learned from Lord Vurian! And the something hit it with a loud crash (at least in my head it was loud), and stuck in it trembling, and it was a black knife made of power, of mind-stuff. Rhinla pulled it out and looked at it with a disgusted look on her face. “Perhaps I can cut the line with this,” she said, but she threw it back where it had come from instead. She couldn’t throw it all the way to Veray but it gave her an idea. “Hey, cat,” she said, “make yourself useful, will you, and catch me a live rat!”

Catching live rats isn’t hard for a cat but bringing them back still alive is, and the rat wasn’t very alive when the cat brought it back but alive enough. So Rhinla smeared a lot of power on the rat and put the rat on the line and gave it a push. It ran along the line for a bit and then fell off, but the power went on and on and we knew it was hitting the scary man!

All that time we were going farther and farther away from Veray, and the thread pulled thinner and thinner, and I saw us arriving in Tilis or even in Dol-Rayen with Vurian on a thread that was too thin to even see! There must be a way to get it off him. “Let’s take him to the doctor in Essle,” I said, “or to the witch, or the woman from the Order!” But Rhinla wanted us to try before then, and she saw that there was something missing in Vurian’s head, a bit of his spirit, and she tried to give him a bit of her own spirit to fill the hole. And that worked! The hole was still there but it was a lot smaller. I could see that Rhinla now had a hole in her spirit too, and I couldn’t fix it like we’d fixed the holes in people’s light, so it took me some time to decide to give Vurian a bit of me as well. But I did. And when the hole in his spirit was patched we could cut the line with an ordinary knife. Though i think there was a bit of anea on the knife, too.

The first thing Rhinla did then was check if she could still paint, if she hadn’t given that piece of herself away! But she could. We couldn’t see which pieces we’d given away at all, but it really was what Vurian needed.

And then we were all so hungry that we ate a lot of pancakes from the barrel, nice sticky ones!

I slept through most of the feast! But Rhinla (and everybody else) told me I’d been almost dead after I fell off the horse. Or perhaps I fell off the horse because I was almost dead. Someone had hit me inside of my head!

I think I woke up a little because Anshen was poking me but I told him I was too tired to listen, so I only got to the bonfire when it was almost out. And Lady Rava told me not to do anything with my mind for a week, but I could swim and practice stick-fighting and climb trees, no problem! So I swam and practiced stick-fighting (there’s a farm boy about my size only fatter, and he’s really good at it, so I practiced a lot with him) and climbed the trees. Apple trees are easy! And willow trees are fun, they’re in the water and they’re very bendy so you can pick a branch that can just carry you and swing and then drop, or pick a branch that bends over so far that you can swing in and out of the water. Rhinla made drawings of everything!

But after a few days Lord Vurian said we were going back to Turenay. That was a bummer! Because we’d wanted to stay all summer. But we convinced them that everybody would at least stay another couple of days so we could teach Halla and Radan to swim properly, instead of Halla like a scared kitten and Radan like a baby otter, on his back and very splashy.

And Master Rovan promised to teach me some horse-doctoring. (People keep asking me if I don’t want to be a people-doctor instead, but I like animals! And I want to help them when they’re hurt or sick or sad or scared.) There wasn’t any horse-doctoring to be done, though, all the horses were healthy. But I talked to the horses a lot and got to know them. Those are huge horses! They have to be so they can pull the really big wagon with really big barrels of beer on it. There are only four horses that belong to the brewery, two for each wagon, but all the village people who have horses bring them to Master Rovan too so he can make the horseshoes. They need to wear shoes because otherwise their feet get hurt from the stones in the road. Master Rovan let me hold the horses he was putting shoes on and keep them calm, and that was a nice easy job that I didn’t need to use my mind for, only my hands and voice. And my shoulder, to lean against the big mare when she was frightened of the stink when the hot horseshoe hit her hoof. Rhinla thought nailing iron shoes to the horses’ feet would hurt them, but the feet are made of something that looks a bit like wood but Master Rovan says it’s more like your nail, only thicker, and they don’t feel a thing.

Before we’d finished with the horseshoes a man from the village came running, without a horse! “Rovan,” he said, “can you come over, my dog’s not well.” And I asked if I could come along, and Rhinla trailed along because nobody said she shouldn’t. The dog was lying on its side in a field full of goats, it was probably the goat-herding dog. It looked very unhappy. It hadn’t eaten or drunk water since last night, the man said. Rovan (he didn’t want me to call him ‘master’ any more) let me look at the dog first. I wasn’t supposed to look with my mind yet, but I tried anyway, and all I got was a headache. I’d wanted to see if the dog had eaten something wrong that was now in his stomach bothering him! But Rovan pushed the dog’s stomach and said it felt normal, only empty.

Then I saw that there was a bloody spot behind one of the dog’s ears, as if someone had hit him with something hard! It could be a goat’s horn, or a person with a shovel or even a knife. It was all red and angry-hot. It must hurt him so much that he couldn’t even drink! I pointed it out to Rovan and he poured something from a flask on the skin, probably brandy-and-water, then dried it and poured on brandy without water (while I kept the dog quiet by stroking his muzzle and paws) and put some ointment on it and a bandage.

“Won’t he scratch it off?” I asked, and then Rhinla tried to stick it on with light and she couldn’t, so she called to Lord Vurian to come and help her. And he came! And helped her stick the bandage on firmly. Rhinla didn’t want to come close to the dog when he growled, but I held his jaws so he couldn’t bite even if they hurt him by mistake.

When everything was in place the dog seemed to feel a bit better and I could make him drink some water. Rovan went back to the horses, but now Rhinla was teasing Vurian and play-fighting with him and I wanted to see that! Such a pity that I couldn’t join in yet. She stuck herself to him with light and drew a smiling sunflower on the bald spot on his head. Then they tripped each other a few times, until Rhinla got really tired, and we all went back to the brewery. The horses were all done but I found the farm boy and we practiced some stick-fighting. That at least didn’t give me a headache. We weren’t hitting each other on the head! if it had been a real fight it would be allowed, but not when you’re just playing.

“Do you think someone cut the dog with a knife?” Rhinla asked me later when we were eating.

“Yes, or hit him with a shovel or something,” I said. “Oh! I know! Perhaps it was someone who wanted to steal the goats.”

“Let’s go and keep watch.” And we did, as soon as it was dark enough that goat thieves wouldn’t see us. We found a place between some bushes and made ourselves comfortable there. I really had to lie down and sleep, I must have been working with my mind even if I’d tried not to, but Rhinla stayed awake and made finger-traps along the fence.

And she caught someone in one! She woke me up and we went to look who it was. A boy! No bigger than us, and probably not much older, darker brown than Rhinla, with hair like dirty pondweed. All he had on was a sort of leather skirt and that was dirty too. He couldn’t understand us at all! Rhinla put her forehead against his forehead and tried to think right into his head but that didn’t work either because his thoughts were as scrambled as his hair. So I stroked his hair just like I’d calmed the dog and it worked a little, then I thought up a brush like the one I’d been brushing horses with and used that, and it worked even better. We could see in his thoughts that he was running away from something, and also trying to go somewhere, and something else that we couldn’t understand. I brushed all the ruffles one way, in the direction of ‘trying to go somewhere’.

When the boy was almost untangled he fell asleep. He had a knife and I took it away, I didn’t want him to cut up any more dogs, or us! Because there was a lot of the Nameless inside his head. And outside his head too, the ordinary Nameless and the other one who he’d been fighting with in Veray and also that pesky Arin. And Anshen was there too! I made my safe place to be inside of to keep the Nameless out, but of course the boy was inside it with us full of the Nameless. But at least I could keep the three Namelesses out who were standing around. I said to Anshen, “you can come in if you like!” and he did, and it was very crowded with three children and one god in my safe place because it was really only big enough for me and Rhinla to sit very close together.

Anshen wanted to talk to us! I thought he was a god who never talked. But he did, lots! He said that he needed our help to decide something, and for that we had to go somewhere and take the boy with us because he knew exactly where to go. He wouldn’t tell us anything precise, bummer! Not what he needed to decide and why he was asking us, anyway. Only that the boy was called Vurian (“he can’t help it”) and that the place was called Dol-Rayen. And that it was the place that Rhinla had been drawing on the walls in her sleep.

I’d heard about Dol-Rayen! “Isn’t that the place where the king threw the whole town on the town?” I asked, but Anshen said he’d kept the town from falling until everybody could get out, but it was that place all right.

“Shouldn’t we take someone who knows more than we do?” Rhinla asked. “Like the king?”

“No, the king absolutely mustn’t go to Dol-Rayen,” Anshen said. “This isn’t work for people who have learned a lot of things already so they can’t invent new things any more, like you can.”

“Isn’t it good to learn things?” I asked.

“Learning in itself is good,” Anshen said, “and you’ll learn a lot on the way. But the grown people have learned too much in set ways, and they’ll only see what they already know.”

“Well, I do want to learn everything!” I said. Rhinla wanted to learn things too, but not what other people told her to learn, “I’ll decide for myself!” she said. Well, I don’t mind people telling me what to learn if that’s meant to teach me something! Except when it’s something I think is stupid.

I don’t remember all the other things that Anshen said, but when we asked if the boy was dangerous he said yes, but we were dangerous too. And he wouldn’t chase the Nameless away that was inside the boy because that was part of why he could take us to the place where we wanted to go, or something like that. I saw myself brushing him with the imaginary brush all the time, every day and night, while we travelled, and that wasn’t how I’d imagined my life! I’d imagined going to school and learning sums with money and reading and writing and different languages and maps and stars and stick-fighting and doing things with light power! (Well, I think brushing with the imaginary brush is doing things with power. But you know what I mean.)

Then Anshen went away, and all the Namelesses outside my safe place went away too, and only the bit of the Nameless inside the boy Vurian was still there (but I’d expected that). And he woke up and he was tangled again but not so much, so we could take him back to the brewery with us. Rhinla tried to talk to him but she knew only words to say to sailors, and it was clear that the boy wasn’t a sailor because he didn’t understand anything.

It was almost morning now, getting light already though we were back before anyone else got up.

We filled a tub with water and Rhinla made it warm with her mind! I didn’t know she could do that! (She didn’t know she could do it either, and I certainly can’t do it.) When we washed Vurian his hair became a sort of watery light brown but his skin stayed darker than ours. I found a linen cloth to put on his hips instead of the dirty leather, and we could get a shirt for him later.

Then people started to come down and we each got a bowl of porridge with pieces of dried apple in, Vurian too, and he ate it without saying anything. Then we went to tell Lord Vurian what had happened in the night because we’d seen him looking at us and not knowing who that strange boy was. And he talked to the boy and he could speak his language a little. He said the boy was from Iss-Peran, as we’d thought, but he spoke a different Iss-Peran language than the sailors so that’s why he hadn’t understood Rhinla.

We were so tired from being up all night that we went to our room to sleep, with the boy between us. And I had such a strange dream! I was somewhere in a field where I could see dark buildings, and everybody was wearing dark clothes, me too, and the boy Vurian, and Rhinla, and a lot of other people. We were all going to the dark buildings. We and Vurian could understand each other now! We talked a bit and then Rhinla said “this is a stupid dream, I want to wake up!” and she was gone, but I wanted to talk to him more now I could understand him and I asked where we were going. “There,” he said, and pointed to the buildings, “but we’ll have to fight, it’s full of rivals.” And yes, other people came and I suddenly had my stick and I fought two people at once who wanted to catch Vurian and knocked one out and chased the other away. I heard someone calling whose voice I knew but I was too busy fighting. Then Vurian came and cut their throats, and I was so angry about that that I didn’t know what to do, but I heard the calling again, and it was Lady Rava who called me out of the dream.

Vurian was still dreaming but it was very hard to wake him up. I told Lady Rava and Lord Vurian about the dream, and about the rivals (“aren’t those people who want the same as you want and you fight over it?” I asked, and that was a good way to say it, Lord Vurian said). And then we got to sleep in another room so we wouldn’t be next to Vurian and catch his dream.

But the next morning we knew that we’d really have to go or we’d be worrying about it forever. When we said to Lord Vurian that we wouldn’t be going to school any time soon he didn’t try to tell us what to do! He didn’t even ask what we wanted to do like everybody else, he only asked us what we needed, and we said we needed a boat to go to Tilis so we could find a way to go to Dol-Rayen, and money to pay for food and things with, and a bucket made of wood so it would float, and three bowls and three spoons.

Rhinla started to make a reed boat at once, and I got things together for the journey, the bucket and bowls and spoons and a change of clothes for all three of us. And I showed Lord Vurian how I’d made an imaginary brush to brush the boy Vurian’s thoughts with, and he said “not everybody can do that.” Perhaps that’s because nobody ever taught me to do it, like Anshen said!

We went to Master Jeran’s house to ask him if he’d be lonely on the feast. He was painting something with the blue paint we’d helped him make from the blue stone! “That’s pretty,” I said, and we said some more things like that (“you have to do a lot of talk first,” Rhinla said) before we asked him what we’d come to ask.

“No,” he said, “I won’t be lonely, I’m celebrating the feast with a lot of people.”

“But are they nice people?” I asked.

“Of course they are! Or I wouldn’t want to celebrate with them.”

Rhinla went to get the painting of the fish with all the teeth that she thought would be too scary for the little kids in hospital, and Master Jeran agreed. Not only the fish, but also the person looking at it, which was me from the back, but you couldn’t see that, you could only see a dark scary figure like a thing from a nightmare. “I’d better paint a big pie then,” she said.

“Yes!” I said, “then all the kids will get hungry, and they have to eat a lot to get better!”

We went to tell Lord Vurian that we were coming. “I’ll organise some horses,” he said.

“Do we have to go on top of a horse?” I asked.

“Yes, we’re not taking a wagon, only horses.”

Horses! They’re so big! Well, we could make friends with the horses first. Rhinla got some apples from the kitchen, in her shirt, but there weren’t any horses yet, they’d come tomorrow. So she hung up the shirt with the apples in it from a hook in the stable.

Everybody was preparing things! But there was nothing we could do. Rhinla went to paint the pie, and I first got water from the fountain on the corner of the street and then I sat on the fence of the herb garden with Radan, who couldn’t do anything either. He told me a lot about Gralen! That there were a lot of his cousins and other kids to play with (I wondered whether they’d be nice or throw stones at us, but if they were Radan’s cousins they’d probably be nice) and that you could swim and fish, and that there were otters. I’d seen otters before in the river, they’re so cute!

Later, Lord Vurian asked us what we used to fish. “Our hands!” we said. “And a reed spear. And a bucket.”

“Not a net?”

“It’s much easier to make a spear than a net!” we said.

We’d leave the day after tomorrow, so we had a day to make friends with the horses, and I promised Venla to help her clean the little temple because it was full of mud from people who had walked there with their muddy feet, and I knew I was one of those people! And it was nice to be in the temple, with Anshen in the fire.

There still weren’t any horses the next morning so I went to the temple, and Rhinla started to paint the pig and her piglets. (Later I heard that when she’d finished she was hungry and she washed herself because you wash before eating, so after washing you eat! But it wasn’t time to eat yet, so she washed herself some more, and got very very clean.)

Venla was already at the temple with buckets and brooms and brushes. We swept and scrubbed, and then we saw there was a crack in the wall! There had been so much dirt on it that we couldn’t see it before. I got some soft clay from the river to fix it, so Venla could paint it white again when it was dry. I would probably still be in Gralen then so she’d have to do it.

Then we saw that the wall was full of anea and it went through the stone but not through the clay! I took the clay out again to see if it made a difference but it didn’t go through the gap either. “Perhaps there should be anea in the clay,” Venla said, and we tried to knead some in but it didn’t stick.

“I can do water, I think,” I said, “can you do sand? Clay is just sand with water in.” And we tried to do it together and that worked, sort of, when we filled the gap with the clay full of anea the power in the wall did go through but very slowly.

“Perhaps it’ll be better when it’s dry,” I said, and Venla promised to check every day while it was drying. Or else we’d have to get the people who built it, the Ishey, neither of us are builders.

Then I noticed that I was tired. And hungry! But at the school fresh bread was just coming out of the oven and I ate a lot of it.

When I came back to Lord Vurian’s house Rhinla told me about the ceiling in Lord Vurian and Lady Rava’s bedroom. It was all painted with lots of naked people who liked each other a lot! Lord Vurian and Lady Rava had found her there when she was lying on her back on the floor so she could see it better. But they weren’t angry, they’d only sent her away because they wanted to be in the bedroom on their own. And they weren’t at dinner either, perhaps they were in the bedroom liking each other a lot.

Now there were horses! We made friends with the one that looked nicest, brown with white feet, not too large. We climbed on the horse with the climbing things that hang from the leather chair-thing on a horse’s back, just as the stableman came back from what he’d been doing, and he told us that the climbing things were called stirrups and the chair-thing a saddle, and that we could ride this horse if we liked, it was the quietest one. We were small enough to fit in the saddle together! The stableman showed us how to pull very softly on the reins, those are the leather straps that go to the horse’s head, to make it go to one side, but we wouldn’t need that, he said, this horse would just go with the other horses when we were all riding.

The next morning we put all of our things in the saddle-bag and climbed on the horse. Rhinla was in front. Two of the horses had only packs, and all the others had people on them, one person on most but Halla was sharing with Radan because they were even smaller than us. (Well, Halla is taller though she’s younger, but Radan is smaller.) Then the front horses started to go and it was true, our horse went with them without us having to do anything.

It didn’t look as if we were going very fast, but it was faster than walking, because we arrived at the Halfway Inn with the white dog in the middle of the day. We were so stiff from sitting on the horse! But we petted the dog and splashed in the creek. No fishing, because we had food with us that we ate, we only got drinks from the inn, beer for the people who liked that and water with fruit juice for us. And then we were in the saddle again, because Lord Vurian wanted to reach Veray on the same day.

It was almost dark when we reached Veray, and there was nobody fighting, at least not that we could see. I’d thought we might sleep in the big stone house, because that’s for lords and ladies, but we went to an inn. All of us children got a place to sleep in the hayloft: us two, and Radan, and Halla, and Radan and Halla’s sister Riei who is a bit older than me, and Seran, the cook’s son, who is a bit younger than Rhinla.

Rhinla made clouds of light! And I made a couple of stars but they didn’t make it more light than the clouds already did, they were just pretty. Then I closed the window and the hatch in the floor. The bats could still get through, but people and the Nameless couldn’t!

We talked a bit, and promised to tell each other scary stories, but not in Veray, we’re saving them for the feast. I’m going to tell all about the time we went into the house to count people and saw the man with one hand and the other man who looked like a rat, that was really scary!

In the night I woke up and saw Rhinla drawing in her sleep again! And Radan woke up too and he could see it. She was drawing the same thing that she’d done before, but it looked as if we were closer to it. Radan asked if that was a real mountain, but I didn’t know.

The next morning someone knocked at my seal, it was still there! We had to eat fast because we were leaving: porridge and bread and, when Rhinla insisted, fried eggs with salt pork.

Then we were on the horse again. I was almost too stiff to sit! We wanted to tell Lady Rava about the sleep-drawing, but she was in front of us and we didn’t know how to make the horse go faster. Then we called her, and she made her horse go slower to get next to us. “You push with your heels, like this,” she said, and showed us (and then of course her horse went faster and she had to make it go slower again). And to make it walk normally with all the other horses, you let the reins drop so it doesn’t feel them any more. That’s easy! If I ever learn how to sit on a horse without getting as stiff as wood I want to ride horses a lot more.

I don’t think Lady Rava was very worried about the sleep-drawing, but she said it was a good thing that I’d closed the loft so nobody could get in. Or out!

In the middle of the day we found a place at the riverside to eat. And swim! Rhinla went into deep water at once, but she’d forgotten how to swim under water! She came up snorting and spitting. But she learned to do it again quickly. I swam with her for a bit and then I went back to where the others were in the shallows, throwing water at each other.

Later, we saw Riei and Halla and their sister Alyse brushing the horses, and we wanted to do that too. They showed us how, and we brushed our own horse, each on a side. It’s easy once you get the hang of it, and horses like it a lot.

When we were on the way again we suddenly came to a place where the road was full of rocks. A whole pile of rocks, most of them too big to lift, as if a whole chunk of the mountain had fallen down. People could climb over, but horses can’t climb, they’re not goats! And it was hard to go around because on one side was the river and on the other side it was much too steep.

We tried to think of different ways to move the stones, but they were too heavy for horses to pull away, and the ground was too hard to dig a hole in, and we didn’t have pickaxes to break them with, and fire or water would take too long to work, the feast was in a couple of days already. “Can’t we go through the water?” I asked, because there was reed growing in it so it couldn’t be too deep to wade.

“Let’s camp here and decide what we’ll do tomorrow,” Lady Rava said. We left the horses on the road and climbed up the mountain to a large flat space where someone made a kind of shelter of a big cloth. Rhinla and I and Radan and Seran went down to the river again to catch fish for dinner and came back with two big fishes each, enough that everybody could have a piece with their bread.

In the morning we put the saddles on the horses again and decided to go through the water after all. Some horses were okay with it, others didn’t like it one bit, like ours, and I tried to calm it down, I sort of brushed its thoughts so it wouldn’t panic. That went well, we reached the other side of the pile of rocks and it only had to shake itself a bit when it was back on dry land. But Halla and Radan’s horse, right behind us, stumbled. Rhinla and I went to rescue Halla and Radan –Halla could swim a bit but she was wearing a long skirt, and Radan couldn’t swim at all, we’d promised to teach him in Gralen– while the stableman got the horse out of the water. I tried to calm down this horse as well, but that wasn’t as easy because it had broken or torn something in its leg which hurt a lot.

Someone rode ahead on the fastest horse to fetch the horse-doctor from Gralen. That was someone from Lady Rava’s family’s house. That meant Riei and Alyse had to share a horse, and Halla and Radan got our horse, and Rhinla and I walked with the stableman and the hurt horse while the rest rode on. “If you’re not in Gralen tomorrow night you’ll miss the feast!” Lady Rava said, but we both thought the horse was more important, especiallly because I was still trying to help it.

We had to stop after a while because the horse’s leg really hurt it too much to walk. We gave it water in a bucket, and it lay down after it had drunk it, panting like a dog (except that its tongue didn’t stick out).

Then I thought: isn’t pain a kind of anea? I’d seen Doctor Cora take pain away, and perhaps I could do that, too, like I’d put anea from the temple in a bucket to move it. I put my hand on the horse’s leg and tried to draw the pain out, and something that I could almost see did come out, but I couldn’t let it flow into the ground, I had to put it in the empty water bucket. When the bucket felt full I went to rinse it in the river, and when I came back I was so tired that I fell asleep in the middle of the day. (No problem, we had to wait for the horse-doctor anyway!)