Yaltring woke with a feeling of peace, warm and rested. He lingered softly, eyes closed, a dark island in a sea of light.

After a while, it dawned on him that his room smelled odd. He opened his eyes and found himself in the house of Alkhartren, who was fast asleep on the rug. The little cottage was bright and peaceful in the morning light.

Yaltring leapt to his feet and soon was on his way home, munching an apple thoughtfully as he strode through the woods. The sun was already well up into the sky, and his parents must be wondering where he was. He had been tired the night before, not wanting to face this three mile walk in the dark, and must have fallen asleep on Alkhartren’s bed.

He passed swiftly through the trees, brightly lit along slender strands between shadows, thinking of the western seas, wondering how far he might have to sail to understand the mystery of the inscription. He knew he should hurry home, but couldn’t resist taking a detour to the dig site. As he neared the place, he threw away the core of Alkhartren’s apple, grateful to the man who’d risen from slumber to give it to him on his way out the door. It was Yaltring’s only breakfast, but it seemed enough. He felt giddy and light, wondering if there would be an apple tree nearby many years from now, or if the seeds would wither away in the mysterious ground, pregnant with secrets, and never again break out into the sun.

As soon as he passed into the small clearing around the dig, he saw that something was wrong. The hole was still open as he’d left it, but the piled dirt seemed rearranged. A closer look revealed many footprints, standing out like elephant tracks in the loose soil. His practiced eyes soon discerned that two pairs of feet had been there, coming and going, not counting his own. Two people had already shared his find--two snoops, or spies, or thieves.

Finally he had found something worth finding; but it was no longer his to pursue. Someone had sneaked up behind to steal his discovery, trampling his careful labors. His great secret, freshly torn from the oldest earth, would now spread like wildfire, entering the politics of the island, with consequences he could not foresee and hardly wished to think of. At best, every step he took from here on would be watched; at worst, they might order him to stay away from the chest while someone else solved the mystery. The Stone Circle itself might soon be riven by disrespectful feet, his last hiding place gone.

Yaltring sank to his knees and buried his face in his hands. He stayed there, motionless, for a long while. Finally he got up, stepping to the edge of the chest, and peered in. Even from the outside he could see a few of the letters, sharp and clear in the morning sun, dark scars amidst the grey. But now that he knew their meaning, they set his heart pounding: "Follow the sinking light till it’s gone, plunging the deeps till you merge with the one." He turned his gaze above. Was he, then, to be the lord of the noonday sun? Or would the message that had waited for him for thousands of years be snatched away in a day?

He looked back one last time at the letters. Something else was wrong. The old, grey dust was still there; but now it was spattered with bits of the dug brown dirt. He had been very careful to keep the dirt out of the chest, away from the ancient, precious dust, the nothingness the ages had wrought. Who could say what that dust might once have been?

He lowered himself into the chest and picked up a handful of dirt. When he turned it over in his hand, there was the dust on the bottom. He disgustedly let it fall back through his fingers. There was no way to separate the dust from the dirt that now lay scattered all over the chest, as if someone had carelessly kicked it down.

And this--more than having been watched without his knowledge, more even than the endangering of his quest--the cavalier marring of what was rare and precious, as if this ancient mystery could be kicked over like an abandoned sandcastle--drove Yaltring up from the dig and out of the clearing, following the footprints in a terrible anger. There had been a light rain five days earlier, and they were not hard to make out in the slightly soft ground.

He soon realized he was taking the same route he would have used to go home, and began to wonder how these people found his dig. Perhaps they’d followed him from Afa and crept in after he was gone. But when he’d last been here yesterday evening, he had come from Nuela, in the opposite direction, and the dirt and tracks had not been there. Then why did the prints point to Afa, coming and going?

He just could not believe that two people stumbled on his dig by chance in the few daylight hours since he’d left it. It was deep within the woods, far from any trail folks used to cross the island. In all the times he’d visited the nearby Stone Circle, he had never seen another human being nearby. In the early days, when he was eight, sometimes he used to heard footsteps, and suspected that Kazo or Wengo or Uggort might be nearby, since they’d been following him when he found the Circle; but they never came inside, and the footsteps had long since ceased. Kazo had run off to sea after gaining manhood; and though Wengo and Uggort still lived in Shaxa, they’d avoided him for years.

It was strange, very strange.

Suddenly, he was faced with a decision. At a spot in the woods not far from the forest edge, the footprints diverged. One trail continued north, towards Afa. The other led off to the west, in the direction of the Dunes, a dry area a little inland where a few people lived. Further on, the same path would pass along the edge of the village of Shoila before reaching the sea.

Staring at the two trails, Yaltring realized he was almost home. His house was at the edge of the woods, and the first pair of footprints led directly towards it. Was he being stupid, lacking ballast for his stomach and still half in dreams? Could they be his own? He stared at them long and carefully. They were not his. The feet were much too narrow, the stride too light. Also, they seemed somehow familiar; but he dropped that thought at once. He had to follow them.

In a few minutes, still on the same track, he saw the open light burst through the pine trees before him. There was the house where he’d lived all his life. He parted the last curtain of branches. The footprints led on, but they did not swerve off to the village paths. They led straight into the land his parents kept free of weeds, through the vines where he’d helped his father plant squash that very spring. Perhaps someone was telling his parents about his dig. But he knew by a tightness in his throat and a clutch in his chest that the truth was worse. Stopping for a moment, he tried to understand why he felt so sad and angry. Then he realized that the prints did not look out of place any more, that prints like that were always in the yard of his house.

He drew himself up to his full height and resumed stride. He found the door pulled open in front of him, and Sila’s face behind it. "Yaltring!" she cried, and there was no mistaking the change in her voice.

"Mother," he said, and a dark cloud was upon his face, "where have you been?"

"You’re asking me that?" she started.

"Yes, I am asking you!" His words, though felted with sadness, pounded like hammer blows, and Sila retreated in shock. "I had come to beg your pardon for my lateness. I would still like to excuse myself before my father. But I will ask no forgiveness from a huntswoman who stalks me unseen. I am no longer a boy, and my paths are not for you to follow!"

"Yaltring, Yaltring," Sila cried out, "why do you speak to me this way?"

"I saw your footprints, mother!"

She did not speak for a moment. She seemed to be regaining her breath. "Can you know a full story from footprints? I was not spying on you. I was trying to find you, and I missed you!"

"Evidently," said Yaltring, his anger unabated. He strode inside the kitchen, brushing past her--then turned towards her again, his face like a high wave about to crash upon a crumbling shoreline.

"Yaltring!" cried Sila and threw up her hands, as if to defend herself. "Why do you condemn me without a hearing? Do you know what I have done, these last two days--other than to worry about you, and hope for your safety? I have tried--tried--to find you."

"When?" Yaltring asked, his tone and face softening. "I am sorry if you went looking for me by torchlight because I didn’t come home."

Sila hesitated, as if holding on to the softness--but Yaltring’s look hardened when he saw her reluctance to answer. "No," she said--"not by torchlight. Please, Yaltring--"

"But I’m often home late," he raged. "You don’t search me out when I’m mending a boat, even though you know where I am. In this case, I told no one where I was and what I was doing, yet after me you came, looking at something not meant for your eyes--and bringing another, who no doubt will spread the news all over the island. Why? And who is this person, and how did you know I was there?"

Sila hesitated again. "Yaltring, do not be angry with me. I am not your enemy--there’s no need to shout. You’re probably hungry. Sit down--I’ll make you some lunch."

"Answer my questions!" he bellowed, enraged and anguished. He had never before seen Sila unwilling to give plain answers. How could his own mother be evasive with him when it mattered the most?

She stared at him, still silent. "Why don’t you answer me?" he yelled.

"My son," and her voice came thick through tears, "why do you speak to me this way?" She sank into a crouch on the kitchen floor, hiding her face in her hands.

Yaltring stood above her, saying nothing for a while, then repeated in a much gentler tone, "How did you know I was there?"

"Someone told me, Yaltring. Someone told me." Sila cradled her face in her arms, rocking from side to side.

"Someone from Shoila? Or the Dunes?"

She looked up at him, her wet face stunned and disbelieving. "I have raised a son with powers of perception I do not understand. How you know this I have no idea--"

"Well, I saw where the other pair of footprints was going."

"Ah yes," said Sila, giving him a strange look. Such skills ran in his father’s family, not in hers, nor were they part of the common wisdom of the Southeast Islands, and their precision came as a shock to her. Sounding still in disbelief, as if she half fancied he had learned the truth by conspiracy or magic, she continued, "Well, yes, Yaltring--yes--it was a man of--a man of Shoila--I dare not tell you his name--"

"What?" Yaltring burst out in a fresh rage.

"Yaltring, I can’t--not while you’re like this--it’s not his fault--I don’t know what you might do--"

"Do? Do? Do you take me for a murderer, then, because I’ve called your bluff?" Yaltring could feel his face burning, like his empty stomach. "I wish the truth, not revenge. Who is he, and what did he tell you?"

"Two days ago," Sila burst out, "on your birthday, this man saw beads, or bright stones, lit in sunlight, in the middle of the forest. Then he saw you there."

"But why did he come to you?"

"Because I am your mother!" cried Sila, but even in outburst her words did not ring true. She gazed at him fixedly, as if imploring him to believe her.

"Mother," said Yaltring quietly, sinking down wearily upon a stool, "I know there’s more to it than that. You won’t even tell me the name of this man, and now, you want me to believe there’s nothing more to explain? Come now, I am no longer small, and will not be played with. There is more. I sense it in the facts, and I hear it in your voice.

"This man, did he salute me? Did he bid me good day, or ask what I was up to? No! he said nothing. He snuck off like a thief into the woods, so that I neither saw nor heard him, and came to you, my mother, the mother of a grown man, and told you. And yet, you said nothing to me, no more than he did--"

Sila waved her hand wildly. "Yaltring, he saw you two days ago, but he only came to me yesterday, after you left. You have only just come back. Do you think I would not have spoken to you? My son, my son..."

Yaltring stared at her searchingly, thinking back to her demeanor of the past two days. He remembered, too, his puzzlement over the footprints. If the man had watched him from outside the clearing, then returned to Shoila rather than Afa, it would explain why he had not seen extra tracks. "All right," he said. "I believe you. Nevertheless, though he waited a day, still he came to you. This I do not understand. I am not a violent man to be shirked, nor a child to be coddled. I am in readying as a Receiver for the Feast of Passing. Soon, boys will pass into my arms and the arms of my brethren as we accept them into manhood. I am a guardian of others now. You have my love, but your days as my keeper have ended. It is not for you to protect me from harm--and still less for this man. Why did he come to you with news of me?"

Sila looked helplessly at him for a while. "Yaltring, it is very hard to talk to you. I do not know what I should say."

"I did not ask what you should say, or how you might answer to your best advantage. I asked you, as your son, to give me a plain answer. Do you refuse?" His face had a wry look, and he spoke quietly, but a threat of rage could be heard creeping back into his voice.

"All right," Sila said. "Give me a moment." Her hands trembled, and her eyes were unnaturally wide. "Yaltring, you must forgive me if I have not been candid. You caught me with a rage I never expected, that tore my heart. I am sorry if I answered foolishly. But do not ever speak to me that way again." The imploring in her voice gave way to an iron dignity, as if, losing her indecision, she no longer was cowed by his probing words.

He made no reply.

She spoke now very steadily and slowly. "I remember what you told me a year ago." She turned and gazed searchingly in his eyes, nodding faintly. Still he did not stir. "Though I have not seen it, I remembered the Sun-Pointer you found. I thought of it often, all this past year.

"As you may recall, I worried about what it might lead you to find." He finally moved, one long, slow nod. "I knew the light of the thing would return again when the sun was overhead, on the solstice. On your birthday.

"There are only a few people to whom I spoke my fears. This man was one of them."

Yaltring broke in, "I thought you had decided to be candid."

She hesitated before replying. "To tell his name, you mean? Yaltring, why do you wish to know it?"

Yaltring sighed. "I do not seek revenge, and that should be enough. If someone has been caught spying on me, and you, my mother, know of it from his own lips, is it not your duty to tell me?"

Sila drew a sharp breath. "This is hard, hard, you do not know how hard! I am caught between my sworn word, and loyalty to my own son. Harder still, because it is as you say: not only love and loyalty, but duty, too, calls me to break my pledge."

"You have sworn to the man not to tell me who he is?" Yaltring demanded incredulously.

Sila nodded. "I am bound," she said. "I cannot say more."

"Why would you swear such a thing?" Yaltring shouted. "It is as much as to betray me!"

A twitch came into her face. She looked down, then up at Yaltring. "I told you not to speak to me that way again," she said quietly.

"Mother, you tell me," said Yaltring, in a softer tone, but hardly gentler, "that another man has spied on me for your sake, and that you swore not to reveal his name to me. Now you cry over the hardness of choosing between your word and loyalty to me. But the hardness is all your own doing. Why did you give your word in a way that was bound to lead to this contradiction?"

"He came to me in urgency," Sila said in a trembling voice. "He said he had news of you, strange news, grave news, which he thought I should hear. What would you do, Yaltring, in such a pass, if your son’s life was at stake?"

"I think I, and not you, should judge when it is that my life is at stake, and how it may be risked," said Yaltring, touching his left cheek, where a pink scar was slowly fading. "I have undergone a pass, at the cost of much pain. I am no longer the one you protected, for that one died. He who has risen in his place remembers your protection and is grateful. He loves you much, honors you still, and never has sought to turn away from you. But your protection ended when I entered the law. You can no longer watch over me as a child, and you wrong me by trying.

"Much I learned from men before I became one myself. I cannot tell you their secret lore; but I can reveal this much. No one, however strong or brave or proud, becomes a man without the help of others; nor is he a real man who lives only for his own sake. But the Open Road is such that the finder is suddenly alone. He breaks upon it when his help forsakes him; and if he is always helped, he misses his way, and walks the Circling Path all his life, going nowhere.

"I am at a pass, mother, when the Summons falls upon me. All paths are dark and lead beyond life. I will speak no more of it, since you have ill earned my trust." He stopped and bowed, and for just a moment Sila thought she saw the trace of a tear come out his eye. She stared at him, stricken.

"I never sought your help onto the Open Road," he continued. "I only wanted you to understand, and not get in the way. I always thought that I would meet you on the other side, that I would greet you there and tell you where I’d been, and you would be glad to hear. But now it is too late. It is too late." He stopped again, breathing hard, his eyes on the floor, fingers twitching. Sila fixed him with brimming eyes.

"Yaltring, I know it is hard to be young. But do not be so swift to blame! This man had already seen you before I knew anything about it. I do not think I was even the first person he told."

"But how did he know to look there? Did you tell him where it was?"

"No, Yaltring, I never saw you there! I had not even been to that place until yesterday at sunset, and you were gone."

"You did not miss me by long," Yaltring said heavily. "Well, what did you think of my little find? Did it live up to your fears?"

"What you say about the Open Road is true, Yaltring. It is harder to enter than to tread. Easy the treading may be, yes, and deadly, if the Road leads toward death. And there is no turning back."

"I, at least, respected what is ancient," said Yaltring, in a voice both quiet and stern, "an heirloom of our forebears. You, or your companion, spilled dirt inside the chest, where none but the dust of ages was ever strewn. That is kharoiz." He used a word common to Ezrain and the Imme dialect of Eastern, meaning defilement or desecration, a ruining of purity.

Sila was silent a while. "I did not know," she said. "I did not realize; we were hurried, and I was upset. Forgive our carelessness, son. I seek no ill will of the ancients. Next Full Moon Day is the Feast of Passing, but a month after I will go there and make an offering."

"It is too late," said Yaltring again. "If the day were dimmed, would our only loss be the wrath of the sun?"

His mother stared at him strangely, seeing a light of discovery and a shadow of loss in his eyes that had never been there before, that she did not recognize.

"I understand," said Yaltring, "that the freedom I had to unveil the mystery of this ancient stonework, to find my own way to discovery as befits a man of my age, is gone past recall, for as long as I live on Imme. I understand that though I found it alone, I cannot go there again without my steps being hounded, and that others will claim the dig site for their own. But I still don’t understand how all this happened, why this man followed me and watched me. Is that what you asked of him and the others you spoke to?"

"No! I did not and would not suggest that anyone spy on you. I only asked them to keep a lookout for my sake. I never tried to stop you from doing as you would, Yaltring. But I didn’t want to be in the dark! I knew I had warned you too strongly, that you would tell me nothing." Tears began rolling slowly from Sila’s great brown eyes, but her voice continued, only a little higher.

"I told him I feared the solstice, but I don’t know if this man followed you. If he did, it was without my consent. Yaltring, it’s a small island. You didn’t think you could dig for hours in the middle of the woods without some chance of being seen? Or that the sight would arouse no curiosity or gossip?" Her gaze was fierce and tender.

"Indeed, I feared to be seen. But I thought at least to hear from the onlooker. I never imagined he would hide, and that my own mother would conceal his name."

Sila wept now openly, burying her face in her hands. "You are right," she said in a high moan. "I have acted wrongly. But what, now, am I to do? What should I do, Yaltring, this bright and terrible day?

"It is worse than you realize. If only I could tell you! Alas, I am forsworn."

Yaltring rose in a sudden gesture, his stool groaning harshly against the floor. He stalked the house with heavy footfalls. No one was there. This place where he’d lived all his life suddenly didn’t feel like home.

His feet carried him into the room where he slept. A ceiling of rough-hewn wood reminded him, as always, of the woods outside. But the floor of his little forest was polished and finished and filled with the things of daily life. A fishing pole was propped in a corner, and a pair of breeches lay carelessly heaped on the floor, next to his bed. It was under a small wooden stand on which stood a dark statue, his father’s gift. He took it in his hands, gazing at the carved giants; then, pushed by an unexplained prompting, stowed it away inside his pack. His eyes wandered around a room that seemed strangely empty, wondering when he would be here again.

"Where is my father?" he asked, returning to the kitchen.

"He’s gone fishing. He went out with Hezak early this morning. They are heading for deeper waters, and will not be back till tomorrow evening, if the weather holds fair. Believe me, he had nothing to do with this! It is all your mother’s fault--or yours, if a young man can be blamed for being impetuous and bold."

At last Yaltring yielded before her beseeching stare. He smiled briefly, a sweet smile she remembered from before he knew his own face. "I do not know when I will be back," he said gently, and stooped to kiss her forehead. "I am going to Shoila, to see what I can learn."

For just a moment, there was a stammer in her eyes. She nodded, but with a queer, nervous, stricken look.

His eyes narrowed and flashed, holding her for a moment in a vise. He bored them into her; then turned, throwing the front door wide, and headed straight for the Dunes.