Marrow nodded.

"That was what I wanted to learn, or the principal thing. I wanted to find out what happened to her and Mucor, but he wouldn't tell me or even say why he wouldn't. You must know where they are, and he concedes that they're still alive."

"I've heard talk from the people I do business with, that's all. I don't keep track of everybody, no matter what people may think." Marrow folded both hands on his stick, and regarded me for a long moment before he spoke again. "I doubt I know as much as he does, but she wanted to help out here, teaching the children like she used to. That was why he made her a sibyl again, and she used to mop and dust and cook for him. Only he wouldn't let the crazy girl in the house."

I smiled to myself. It would not have been easy to keep Mucor out.

"There was some trouble about her anyhow. About the crazy granddaughter."

He waited for me to speak, so I nodded. Mucor had often thrown food and dishes at Netde and me when we had cared for her.

"They said she made other people crazy, too. I don't believe it and never did, but that's what they said. One day they were gone. If you ask me, the old Prolocutor gave them a shove. He's never admitted it that I've heard of, but I think probably he did. Maybe he gave them a little help moving, too. This is," Marrow rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, "five years ago. About that. Could be six."

He rocked back and forth in his big, solidly built chair, one hand on his stick and the other on the finale of the chair arm, where its grip had given the waxed wood a smoother finish as well as a darker tone. "I didn't put my nose in it, but somebody told me he'd found them a farm way out. To tell you the truth I thought some wild animal'd get the mad girl, the granddaughter, and Maytera'd come back."

I said, "I take it that didn't happen. I'm glad."

"That's right, you knew them both. I'd forgot. I went to the palaestra in my time, just like you, so I knew Maytera, too, way back then. I never did understand how she could have a granddaughter at all. Adopted, is what everybody says."

Clearly, Marrow had not read as much of our book as he pretended; I tried to make my nod noncommittal. "Are they still on the farm His Cognizance found for them? I'd like to see them while I'm here."

Once more, Marrow regarded me narrowly. "Island, just like you. I'm surprised you don't know."

When I did not comment, he added. "Just a rock, really. House looks like a haystack. That's what they say. Up in the air to keep the hay dry, you know how the farmers do, and made of sticks."

It seemed too bizarre to credit. I asked whether he had seen it himself, and he shook his head. "Driftwood I guess it is, really. Way down south. It'll take you all day, even with a good wind."

I slept aboard the sloop, as you may imagine, and so was able to get under way at shadeup. There is no better breakfast than one eaten on a boat with a breeze strong enough to make her heel a trifle. Most of Marrow's promised provisions had arrived before I finished refitting, and I had purchased a few things in addition; I dined on ham, fresh bread and butter, and apples, drank water mixed with wine, and told myself with perfect truth that I had never eaten a better meal.

He had been surprised that I knew nothing of Maytera Marble (as she was again, apparently) and Mucor, although they lived on an island two days' sail from mine. The truth, I thought, might well be that I did know something. Boats that put into Tail Bay to trade for paper had spoken sometimes of a witch to the south, a lean hag who camped upon a naked rock and would tell fortunes or compounded charms for food or cloth. When I had heard those tales, lt: had not occurred to me that this witch might be Mucor. I reviewed them as I sailed that day, and found various reasons to think she was-but several more to think that she was not. In the end, I decided to leave the matter open.

Evening came, and I still had not caught sight of the house of sticks that Marrow had described. I was afraid I might pass it in the dark, so I furled my sails and made a sea anchor, and spent the night upon the open water, very grateful for the calm, warm weather.

It was about midmorning of the second day out when I caught sight of the hut, not (as I had supposed it would be) near shore to port, but a half league and more to starboard upon a sheer black rock so lonely that it did not appear to be a separated part of the mainland at all, but the last standing fragment of some earlier continent, a land devoured by the sea not long after the Outsider built this whorl.

Rubbish, surely. Still, I have never been in any other place that felt quite so lonely, unless Seawrack sang.

Three days since I wrote that last. Not because I have been too busy (although I have been busy) and not because I did not wish to write, but because there was no more ink. Ink, it seems, is not made here, or I should say was not. It was an article of trade that you bought in the market when it appeared there if you wanted it, and hoarded against the coming shortage. It had not appeared in the market for a long time, my clerks had very little and most other people-people who wrote, that is to say, or kept accounts-none. Nettle and I had made our own, being unable to find any in New Viron, and I saw no reason why ink should not be made here.

Several trials were needed; but guided as I was by past experience, we soon had this very satisfactory ink. Glue is made here by boiling bones, hoofs, and horns, as I suppose it must be everywhere. We mixed it with the oil pressed from flax seed and soot, and then (it was this that we had to learn) boiled everything again with a little water. It dries a trifle faster, I believe, than the ink you and I made with sap, and so may be a step nearer the inks my father cornpounded in the back of our shop. At any rate it is a good dark black and satisfactory in every other way, as you see.

My father, Smoothbone, made colored inks as well. There is no reason we should not have them, too. It is clearly just a matter of finding the right colored powders to put in instead of soot. I have a bright young man looking into that. My clerks say that they have never seen colored inks in our market here, or in this big pink and blue house we call my palace for that matter. I imagine they would trade very well-which means, I suppose, that I am starting to think like Marrow. Since our positions are somewhat similar, that is not surprising.

Here I am tempted to write about the market in New Viron, and compare it, perhaps, to the one here; but I will save that for some other opening of the pen case.

Now back to the sloop.

There was a tiny inlet on the southeast side of Mucor's Rock that gave excellent shelter. I tied up there and climbed the steep path to the top carrying a side of bacon and a sack of cornmeal. She did not recognize me, as far as I could judge. To set down the truth, I did not know her either until I looked into her eyes, the same dead, dull eyes that I recalled. The witch had been described to me as being very thin. She was, but not as thin as she had been in the Calde's Palace and on the lander afterward-not as thin as the truly skeletal young woman I recalled.

She was said to be tall, too. The truth is that she is not, although her thinness and erect carriage, and her short, ragged skirt, combine to make her appear so.

The Mucor I had known would never have spoken to me first. This one whom I had heard called the witch and the sorceress did, but seemed at first to be recalling an almost forgotten language as she licked her cracked lips. "What... Do... You... Want...?"

I said, "I must speak with you, Mucor." I showed her the bacon, then patted the sack of cornmeal I was carrying on my shoulder "I brought you these, thinking you might need them. I hope you like them."

Without another word, she turned and went into the hut, which was larger than I had expected. When I saw that its rough door remained open, I followed her.

The only light came through the open doorway and a god-gate in the middle of the conical roof. For half a minute, perhaps, I stood just inside the door, blinking. A motionless figure in black sat with its back to me, facing the ashes of a small fire that had burned itself out in a circle of blackened stones some time before. Its aged hands clasped a long peeled stick of some light-colored wood. Mucor stood beside it, one hand upon its shoulder, regarding me silently. Beyond them, on the other side of the circle of stones, something stirred; in that near darkness, I heard rather than saw it.

Pointing at the figure in black, I asked, "Is that Maytera Marble?" and her head pivoted until it seemed to regard a place somewhat to my left. The metal face thus revealed was the smooth oval that I recalled so well, yet it appeared somehow misshapen, as if it were diseased.

After a pause that I considered much too long, Mucor said, "This is my grandmother. She knows the future."

I put down my sack and laid the bacon on it. "Then she should be able to tell me a great many things I want to know. First I have a question for you, however. Do you know who I am?"

"Horn."

"Yes, I am. Do you remember Nettle?"

Mucor only stared.

"Nettle and I used to bring you your food sometimes when you lived in the Calde's Palace." She did not reply, so I added, "Silk's palace."

Maytera Marble whispered, "Horn? Horn?"

"Yes," I said, and went to her and knelt before her. "It's me, Maytera."

"You're a good, good boy to come to see us, Horn."

"Thank you." I found it hard to speak, impossible when I looked at her. "Thank you, Maytera. Maytera, I said I used to take your granddaughter's food up for you. I want you to know that I've brought her some now. It's only bacon and a sack of cornmeal, but there's more food on my boat. She can have anything there she wants. Or that you want for her. What about apples? I have a barrel of them, good ones."

Slowly her metal head bobbed up and down. "The apples. Bring us three apples."

"I'll be right back," I told her.

Mucor's hand scarcely moved, but it brought me to a halt as I went through the doorway. "You will eat with us?"

"Certainly," I said, "if you can spare the food."

"There is a flat rock. Down there. You stepped on it."

At first I supposed that she intended one of the flat stones that made up the floor of their hut; then I recalled the stone she meant and nodded. "When I tied up the sloop. Is that the one?"

"There will be fish on it. Bring them up, too."

I told her that I would be happy to, and discovered that it was easy as well as pleasant to step out of that hut and into the sunlight.

The steep path from the more or less level top of the island to the little inlet in which I had moored gave me a good view of it (and indeed of the entire inlet) at one point, and there were no fish on the rock she had indicated. I continued my descent, however, thinking I would bring up the apples with something else in lieu of the fish. When I reached the rock, three fish flopped and struggled there so vigorously that it seemed certain that all three were about to escape. I dove for them and caught two, but the third slipped from between my fingers and vanished with a splash.

A moment afterward, it leaped from the water and back onto the rock, where I was able to catch it. I dropped all three into an empty sack I happened to have on board, and hung it in the water while I got three apples from Marrow's barrel and tied them up in a scrap of sailcloth. As an afterthought, I put a small bottle of cooking oil into one pocket, and a bottle of drinking water into another.

When I returned to the hut, there was a fire blazing in the circle of stones. After giving Maytera Marble the apples, I filleted the fish with Sinew's hunting knife, and Mucor and I cooked them in a most satisfactory fashion by impaling fillets wrapped in bacon on sticks of driftwood. I also mixed some of the cornmeal with my oil (I had forgotten to bring salt), made cakes, and put them into the ashes at the edge of the fire to bake.

"How is dear Nettle?" Maytera Marble asked.

I said that she had been well when I left her; and I went on to explain that I had been chosen to return to the Long Sun Whorl and bring Silk here, and that I was about to set out for a foreign town called Pajarocu where there was said to be a lander capable of making the return trip, as none of ours were. I went into considerably more detail than I have here, and she and Mucor listened to all of it in silence.

When I had finished, I said, "You will have guessed already how you can help me, if you will. Mucor, will you locate Silk for me, and tell me where he is?"

There was no reply.

When no one had spoken for some time, I raked one of the cornmeal cakes out of the fire and ate it. Maytera Marble asked what I was eating; that was the first time, I believe, that I realized she had gone blind, although I should have known it an hour before.

I said, "One of the little cakes I made, Maytera. I'll give your granddaughter one, if she'll eat it."

"Give me one," Maytera Marble said; and I raked out another cake and put it into her hand.

"Here is an apple for you." She rubbed it against her torn and dirty habit, and groped for me. I thanked her and accepted it.

"Will you put this one in my granddaughter's lap, please, Horn? She can eat it after she's found Patera for you."

I took the second apple, and did as she asked.

She whistled shrilly then, startling me; at the sound, a young hus emerged from the shadows on the other side of the fire, at once greedy and wary. "Babbie, come here!" she called, and whistled again. "Here, Babbie!"

It advanced, the thick, short claws some people call hooves loud on the stone floor, its attention divided between me and the food Maytera Marble held out to it. I found its fierce eyes disconcerting, although I felt reasonably sure it would not charge. After hesitating for some while, it accepted the food, the apple in one stubby-toed forepaw and the cornmeal cake in its mouth, giving me a better look than I wanted at the sharp yellow tusks that were only just beginning to separate its lips.

As it retreated on seven legs to the other side of the fire, Maytera Marble said, "Isn't Babbie cute? The captain of some foreign boat gave him to my granddaughter."

I may have made some suitable reply, although I am afraid I only grunted like a hus.

"It's practically like having a child with us," Maytera Marble declared. "One of those children one's heart goes out to, because the gods have refrained from providing it with an acute intellect, for their own good and holy reasons. Babbie tries so very hard to please us and make us happy. You simply can't imagine."

That was perfectly true.

"The captain was afraid that ill-intentioned persons might land here and fall upon us while we slept. It's active mostly at night. From what I have been given to understand, they all are, just like that bird dear Patera Silk had."

I said that while I had never hunted hus, according to what my son had told me, that was correct.

"So dear little Babbie's always active for me." She sighed, the weary hish hish of a mop cleaning a floor of tiles. "Because it's always night for me." Another sigh. "I know that it must be the gods' will for me, and I try to accept it. But I've never wanted to see again quite as much as I do today with you come to visit us, Horn." of a mop cleaning a floor of tiles. "Because it's always night for me." Another sigh. "I know that it must be the gods' will for me, and I try to accept it. But I've never wanted to see again quite as much as I do today with you come to visit us, Horn."

I tried to express my sympathy, embarrassing both myself and her.

"No. No, it's all right. The gods' will for me, I'm sure. And yet-and yet..." Her old woman's hands clasped the white stick as if to break it, then let it fall to wrestle each other in her lap.

I said that in my opinion there were evil gods as well as benevolent ones, and recounted my experience the week before with the leatherskin, ending by saying, "I had prayed for company, Maytera, and for a wind, to whatever gods might hear me. I got both, but I don't believe the same god can have sent both."

"I-you know that I've become a sibyl again, Horn? You must because you've been calling me Maytera."

I explained that Marrow had told me.

"With my husband and I separated, and no doubt separated permanently-well, you understand, I'm sure."

I said I did.

"We had begun a child, a daughter." She sighed again. "It was hard, dreadfully hard, to find parts, or even things we could make them from. We never got far with her, and I don't suppose she'll ever be born unless my husband takes a new wife, poor little thing."

I tried to be sympathetic.

"So there wasn't any reason not to. I couldn't have my own child anymore, the child that had been my dream for all those empty years. Since I could not, I thought it might be nice to teach bio children like you again, the way I used to when I was younger. The ordinances of the Chapter let married women become sibyls, His Cognizance said, under special circumstances like mine, provided that the Prolocutor consents. He did, and I took the oath all over again. Very few of us have ever taken it more than once."

I nodded, I believe. I was paying more attention to Mucor, who sat silently with the apple untouched in her lap.

"Are you listening, Horn?"

"Yes," I said. "Yes, of course."

"I taught there in New Viron for a good many years. And I kept house for His Cognizance, which was a very great honor. People are so intolerant, though."

"Some are, at least."

"The Chapter has fought that intolerance for as long as I've been alive, and it has achieved a great deal. But I doubt that intolerance will ever be rooted out altogether."

I agreed.

"There are children, Horn, who are very much like little Babbie. Not verbal, but capable of love, and very grateful for whatever love they may receive. You would think every heart would go out to them, but many don't."

I asked her then about Mucor, saying that I had not realized it would take her so long to find Silk.

"She has to travel all the way to the whorl in which we used to live, Horn. It's a very long way, and even though her spirit flies so fast, it must fly over every bit of it. When she arrives, she'll have to look for him, and when she finds him, she'll have to return to us."

I explained that it was quite possible that Silk was here on Blue, or even on Green.

Maytera Marble shook her head, saying that only made things worse. "Poor little Babbie's quite upset. He always is, every time she goes away. He understands simple things, but you can't explain something like that to him."

Privately, I wished that someone would explain it to me.

"He's really her pet. Aren't you, Babbie?" Her hands, the thin old-woman hands she had taken from Maytera Rose's body, groped for the hus, although he was far beyond her reach. "He loves her, and I really think that she loves him, just as she loves me. But it's hard, very hard for them both here, because of the water."

For a moment I thought she meant the sea; then I said, "I assumed you had a spring here, Maytera."

She shook her head. "Only rainwater from the rocks. It makes little pools and so on, here and there, you know. My dear granddaughter says there are deep crevices, too, where it lingers for a long time. I've had no experience with thirst, myself. Oh, ordinary thirst in hot weather. But not severe thirst. I'm told it's terrible."

I explained that a spring high up on the Tor gave us the stream that turned my mill, and acknowledged that I had never been thirsty as she meant it either.