"Soon, Yaltring, you will be a man. For a boy, life is a game, but for a man, it hangs in the balance. How will you use your power?"

Sila’s question caught him off guard. He’d been asked much the same thing by the old men training him for initiation. But he had seldom till now heard this distanced tone ringing in the swift-flowing music of his mother’s speech, always sharp and precise through the hint of an accent.

He felt a pang, cruel and faraway, begin to gnaw inside his belly. Standing beside her in the kitchen, he looked levelly into her eyes. At twelve, he was as tall as she. "You speak to me the way men do. Why?"

"I, too, am an initiate, you know," she said with a hint of mockery, "although in a different order."

Yaltring flushed. "Well, of course," he said, "but that’s not what I mean. You spoke to me as if you were not my mother."

"Well!--they say a boy no longer belongs to his mother once he’s a man. A father keeps his children, but a mother keeps only her husband--or so they say. If he goes, his kin still support her, but children run away not to return. And especially boys, as everyone knows." She looked hard at him, sighed, and went on after a time. "So, since I will soon no longer have a son, I am practicing to amend my speech. I would not want to speak wrongly to you, once you are no longer mine."

"Mother--" Yaltring said, "believe me, you will never offend me by speaking as a mother. You will always be my mother, even if I belong to no one."

"And what is it to be the mother of a grown child?" said Sila softly. "It is a name, certainly, but not much is attached; so let it fall. Let it fall, I say." But her face tightened and turned away.

"Look at me, mother," Yaltring said earnestly. She turned towards him, but did not meet his eyes. "I am the last of your children. Did you think I would abandon you, when the time came?"

"I did not think Rosa would abandon me," said Sila heavily. "Her marriage left you alone with me."

She looked at him, now. Her last remark was a hard one, for Yaltring. It was not only his mother who had been left alone by Rosa’s marriage to a man from Alozea, an island to the northwest.

"She is a good daughter," he said very quietly, his words squeezed by a heavy breath. "And I, too, try to be a good son. And I will keep trying."

"Now, Yaltring," she said, in a kinder voice, putting a light hand on his shoulder. "Come, now--I never said you would not be. You have always been a good son."

Yet it was less the words than her familiar tone that released the spreading pang. Without moving, he felt taken back into her arms. His body relaxed.

"Tell me," she went on, "what do you plan to do with your manhood?"

Had any male friend asked such a question, he would certainly have made a joke on its other possible meaning; but he was not in a laughing mood. There was still a faint weakness where the pang had been.

"I have not yet decided," he said shortly, then quoted a common Imme saying. "Manhood is for a long time, for one who uses it well. There is no hurry. I will still be living here, and helping Father with fishing and the boats."

"You are very good at that," and behind the admiration in her words was a curious mixture of hope and fear. "Very good indeed. You have your own boat already, and you use it better than most men. You could have a rich life as a fisherman of Imme--or even just a boatman. Others would pay you to help them and teach their children. You would not even have to catch your own fish."

Yaltring shrugged. "That is possible."

"It is more than possible. I have heard village elders say--they would not say it in your hearing!--that they have never seen a boy your age with such talent. The world is not denied you, Yaltring, if you stay here." Now the plea in her voice was undisguised.

"I have no plans to leave," he said, frowning and slipping into the formal speaking style common among adults in the Southeast, which he often liked to practice now, even with kin. "Nor do I plan to stay forever. I am young, I am trying to learn wisdom. Maybe I am better at sailing than making choices. I cannot see into the glass of my future. It is still dark inside. Perhaps I will come to understand better, or, perhaps someone will point me to the right path." His voice rose with his last statement, almost as if it was a question, a hopeful plea. "Please do not ask me to make a firm choice now. I cannot do this."

"I would not keep you from traveling," his mother went on. "Of course, as a boatman, you will travel wherever you choose. And especially since you have family on other islands. You should, you must travel, see the world! I would not seek to keep you from it. I would only hold open the door for your return." She smiled apprehensively, looking up into his grave, troubled face.

"I will see what the future brings," said Yaltring, vaguely, bluntly, stubbornly. Sila turned, gazing through the open window, where, away in the distance, there was the sea.

"He will be carried on strange storms," she said, too quietly for him to be sure what he had heard; and then she strode out of the room.

Though spent in inward darkness, Yaltring’s days were filled with the high seas. He no longer had much time for his friends, or for his three brothers, who now lived together on the Stone Shoulder, a rocky area in the southwestern part of Imme, between the villages of Shaxa and Nuela. Instead, he passed his time in hidden groves within the inner woods, with grizzled old men, with stern looks and spiny words. They spoke of the Open Road down which a man must travel, a way that did not run straight and could not be chosen, yet belonged to him alone. They spoke of the Summons that called him to it, and the Circling Path of he who refused its call. They spoke at length, and tediously, of duty, honor, obligations. Yet the pathways to them always seemed to pass through the sea, the great, regnant, unforgiving sea, where manhood was won. And then, there was the land beyond.

Yaltring had often gone many miles from shore; but there were no islands in these parts, nothing but little Imme. He had yet to visit other ground, save two tiny spits of storm-drenched rock, one fifteen miles northwest of Imme, the other a dozen miles south. He’d seen whales longer than either one. "Landing" there--he’d actually swum ashore--had been hard practice.

But these men were not speaking of little lands, nor of the nearby seas. They told him tales of distant wind and weather, of far traveling to faraway countries, great voyages of men and women seeking their fortunes on the open waves, or fleeing homes never to return, leaving everything they knew to escape the fear or fate or debt that would otherwise have claimed them. There were people from all corners of the world, with strange riches and stranger ways--kingdoms stretching past hill and river, beautiful queens with ropes of pearl, fortresses and palaces and old walled cities, with armies to defend them: mighty warriors housed in iron suits, rectangular swaths of marching men, filling the city squares. There were landscapes described of which Yaltring knew nothing, forests and marshes themselves as vast as kingdoms, endless coastlines, arid inlands, and roads that wound from country to country, on to unknown ends. With schemes and quests the old men filled them, with wars and plunders, with treasures lost and won. Some of the tales had passed on for untold generations, some they had learned from traders, a few they had lived themselves.

Yaltring had always known Imme as a small land within a great world. Yet it had seemed, always, to be all the world he needed, the rest a bright promise, a distant gift meant for another. Now men, grizzled men with scars on their cheeks grown tight with age, scars that shone white in dark faces amidst wrinkles and stubbly hairs, were telling him the key truth of life in the small, scattered isles of the Southeast: all the great roads run through the sea.

He would be made a man according to custom, on the first full moon of summer. He would be barely thirteen. Many other Imme boys would also become men that night. Already, they were planning and boasting, speaking of whales and work and women. Most would be fourteen, and could take brides right away; some would be even older. A few would be thirteen, like him too young for marriage. But none were as young as Yaltring. All the other boys who had turned thirteen since winter had to wait at least another year.

Some boys his age were envious. They spoke with malice, saying he was only being made a man because his father threatened to kill the village elders; while others predicted he’d abandon his father and sail away once the ceremony was done. But Yaltring also had admirers, and the slanderers were mocked in turn: "Just sail as good as he does, and you won’t have to wait either."

But Yaltring wasn’t thinking about not waiting. He felt suddenly rushed. At night, he dreamed of being alone in a great boat; a whale was speeding toward him from a long way off, its head aimed right at the side of the boat, and the boat would not move, nor could Yaltring.

He awoke in a cold sweat, thinking of the white spray made by the whale, and the white scars on the faces of the men. He looked out the window at the morning. The days were starting to lengthen towards summer. Outside all was bright, although he felt groggy and underslept. It had been some weeks since Yaltring had spoken with his mother about the passage that loomed before him. He decided they must speak again.

He confronted her after breakfast, with Drengo already out doing business in the village. "The scar I will bear on my cheek--none of the men will tell me anything about it, not even how I am to be hurt. Even Father won’t say anything. Will you tell me?" He looked at her, and the little boy’s appeal was still in his eyes.

Sila raised her eyebrows. "I do not know," she said, and smiled. "Women are never told such things. We have secrets of our own, of course. There are groves in this island that men never enter, though they may pass through."

"I cannot believe," said Yaltring, "that women never hear secrets they are not meant to be told--especially from husbands."

There was a twinkle in her eyes as she saw the boy’s shrewdness. "But Drengo is an honorable man, even with his wife. Although his roots do not lie in the Southeast, he respects our ways--more, even, than others whose families go back generations beyond count."

"But surely," Yaltring persisted, "you must have heard things from your mother. Did none of her husbands tell her?"

Sila laughed. "A good thing you speak of these things in private and not at a village meeting! Some of our newly-wed men do not like to hear about them. Though it is said there was once a time when Imme women, too, took as many husbands as they fancied."

Sila’s saucy smile faded, and she grew thoughtful. "My mother, Augaza, no longer has any husbands," she went on, "but at one time she had three. My youngest father was also the least enduring. I remember him, when I was but a girl of six, not long before he divorced my mother. Handsome he was, but never a good provider, though he usually paid his share, at least before he left. But I seldom saw him later. He was short and slippery, bright-eyed, always going somewhere, and no one could find him.

"But I remember him coming in one time, empty-handed, and asking me not to tell my mother, because he was supposed to have been fishing but hadn’t caught anything. "It’s a secret!" he said. He gave me a kiss on the cheek, and I smelled his strong breath, and felt the tickle of his beard against my skin. And then I saw on his cheek the scar I had seen so often, only now it was big, and close enough to touch. It glowed with a ghostly white on that mahogany face, like an emanation from the Deep. ‘What is that scar?’ I asked him.

"‘This one?’ he asked, touching it lightly. ‘Why, don’t you know that all men have it?’

"‘I want to know where yours comes from!’ I said. I had the wild, relentless charm that only a six year old girl can.

"‘Well,’ he said, ‘it came to me the same way it comes to others. It is a secret I am not supposed to tell you, and you would be disappointed, because it is a secret of all men, not just me.’ He smiled, then, and his dark, bristly face shone directly into mine.

"‘Tell me,’ I yipped, ‘and I will keep your other secret too!’

"He smiled even more. I think he wanted to laugh, but just caught himself. ‘Well, my girl,’ he said, ‘I was attacked by a wild beast, a speaking beast, and I had to make a promise to uphold his laws. Including, to tell no one about this, except men!’ He did laugh then. I just watched him, enraptured, as he sped out again, bearing with him some fine shells he grabbed from a hiding place under the bed, which I suppose he traded later for the fish he wasn’t catching. He never told me any more, and I never told my mother he had been there.

"So, Yaltring," and her eyes twinkled, "you see, I do know more than I am supposed to--only, I’m not sure it’s much comfort, or even much good!"

Yaltring thought for a while. "So, this is a wild beast that attacks all men, killing none. That would be an extraordinary animal, even without the gift of speech. Speaking beasts once lived Below, but I did not know that any had emerged into the Middle World." He had shifted to the formal speech style, and his gaze was quizzical; but only his mother, or someone with an unusual gift of hearing, could have discerned the faint irony in his voice.

"The King of Indeh," Sila said, "when he came into the Middle World, brought with him a speaking beast, Shallea, or so our forefathers and mothers tell us. It is true that she left no descendants, and few on this island remember her; but you, my child, soon to be a child no longer, should not forget her name. It was through Shallea’s help that the King found the Prophet Stone, that led him to foresee the coming of Day, and command that the dead be buried. It was for his prophetic knowledge of these things that he was made king."

"I have heard mention of this Prophet Stone before," said Yaltring with a sudden interest, wishing it could predict his clouded future for him. "Where is it now?"

"That, I do not know," Sila replied. "The King, on his deathbed, gave it to his youngest son, for his older ones had betrayed him. The Stone passed down within the son’s princely line, and many stories are told of its power, and the good done by its prophecies. But it vanished out of knowledge long ago. It was a gift of the Sun, and of the Sun-Star, the Brief Giver Aklea, who laid it upon the land of Indeh before the first people came out into its fertile hills. But it was four-legged Shallea who helped the King to find it."

"And yet, I have never heard of her before. For that matter," Yaltring, slipping back into familiarity, scratched his head, "I don’t even know that much about the King. Where did he rule, anyway?"

"In lands now far beneath the sea, no one knows where," Sila said solemnly, "though many say east of Umba. Some say Karahasa was once a great land, stretching even as far as the Mainland of today. But others say Indeh lay much further east. There are even those who think these very islands on which we live are what is left of the First King’s land. Who knows? Thousands of years have passed since the rising of the seas. I know only that we in the Southeast remember him."

"But people seldom speak of him," Yaltring said, "even in the tales I’m learning now. They talk about the Scepter, yes, but that’s the story of the giants. They don’t say much about the King himself."

"On Tizrach," said Sila, "where I was born, the First King is much better remembered. He had no successor, for his crown was broken by his two oldest sons as they wrestled for power, splitting it between them, and the kingdom was divided with it. But they say, Yaltring, that someday there will be another King of Indeh. No one knows when. But it is as sure as the return of rainfall when dry weather comes, even as the return of the Sun from his night-paths on the edge of the seas."

Yaltring looked awed. He could not take her words lightly. The ancient tales were sunk deep in his gut now, weighted down by words of old men. They spoke of a great power inside each of us that wells from a pool of force hovering invisibly over all the world. It enters you when you’re born, and then get lost. A little trickle drives you through daily routine--getting dressed, walking about, going nowhere. A far more massive strength lies locked and hidden. Somewhere, always within reach, hard to grasp and harder to hold, there hangs an invisible key.

The key, they told him, is made of where you come from. The fine markings at its tip are the shapings of your own life. The bolder designs further down are the work of your forebears, without whom you would not have been born. At the very haft are stories of the Deep Realm, how people were bred out of those strange, bright beings that ran or flew or crawled up from Below. To use the key, you had to know your past--and claim it for your own.

Yaltring could feel the power, but he could not yet make out the contours of his key. Yet he did not doubt it held a cleft shaped by the King of old.

Yaltring was alone with the power inside him, the key still obscure and vaguely shaped, as he made his way through the woods a few weeks later. And no one knew where he was.

Earlier that morning, he had been gahuaked for the last time. Only the oldest children, almost men or women themselves, could say, "You are joining us." But even they knew that Yaltring was really leaving them.

And now, he had left everyone. For this one day, he was spared from instruction, allowed to romp and ramble as he had of old. He was weary of gravity, weary of admonitions; weary of purposes. He looked up gratefully at the beaming, almost-summer sun. It shone as bright as it had upon the King of Indeh on the first morning, this day he was thirteen. There was not a cloud in the sky.

He came to the rocky wall.

Not for many weeks had he found the time to come here, to enter the little world first discovered on his eighth birthday, five years before. It was a secret he told no one about, not even his closest friends, a remnant of his early habit of running off without warning to places others seldom visited. It was a hideout where none would disturb him, and no one would know where he was. He had spent many a lazy afternoon within its tight confines. It was his place.

A heavy rain three days before had made the dirt wet beneath the archway. Automatic was his feel for the opening within the wall, the push-through of the little passageway under stone, staining his clothes with the damp. A strand of ivy cascaded wildly down the outside wall, burrowing under, brushing his face. He pushed past, and his head popped out within the Stone Circle.

He saw, anew, what was always there. He had never gotten used to it, this place where he felt most at home. Excited, his body pulled over weeds, across the bumpy ground. He found himself wholly within. His intense eyes drank the inner scene, looking up at the passing morning, then closed as he dozed, caressed by the balmy breeze of a swiftly ebbing spring. His hands rubbed the wall and the ground, absorbing by touch while his eyes rested. When he opened them, the dirt, grass, and stones stretched out unfathomably into the tiny distance. Each blade, each clod, every pebble, written out with inner markings, was a monument to the shape that life had taken.

It was comfortable beneath the high rock, warm but shady. But as the morning moved on, the sun climbed ever higher, pushing him back to the eastern wall, where shadow lingered. Finally, the whole place was flooded in light, and the heat was a constant force.

It was hard to keep his eyes open, and he dozed again, leaning against the wall in the harsh morning glare. He felt his head bump a stony outcrop, and turned his neck to find himself a comfortable position, opening his eyes a crack. And there it was!

Five years it had been since he’d seen the piercing light. For five years, from that first day of his visits, its memory had bored into him, until it sank to such a young and distant corner of his mind he had grown to doubt it had been real.

Now, the only doubt was if he’d seen the same thing then, or only some pale foreshadowing--for the brilliance he’d glimpsed through the woods that day was no match for the liquid flame now spurting from a few yards away.

Piercing it was to the point of pain. He leapt to his feet, shielding his eyes with his hand, and ran towards the danger, towards the place on the rocky wall from which the light’s stab came. The wall beneath the light was not sheer. Great stony outcrops, almost like giant steps, allowed him to quickly scale it.

However, Yaltring was not being made a man early only for his sailing prowess, but for a potent mixture of boldness and prudence his father had observed, and the old men after him. Boys without prudence, it was said, did not become men. The old men no doubt had their reasons to enforce this. At any rate, Yaltring, for all his eagerness, moved very cautiously on top of the wall, trying to get his bearings while shielding his eyes.

When they had adjusted a bit to the unaccustomed brightness, he saw that he was next to a slender stone tube, almost as high as his forearm, affixed to the great rock wall on which he sat. It was a rugged bump, of the same stock as everything around it, undistinguished in color, and so rough and unadorned on the outside that he’d never noticed it in all the years, all the times he’d been here. But directly below it was the light.

His heart was pounding fast as he looked down for a moment to that small patch of brilliance, before turning away. It was almost like looking into the sun itself; his eyes clouded and smarted. He brushed a trembling finger over the spot. It was hot enough to burn, yet smooth as silk, a tiny patch of golden-gleaming metal, set seamlessly within the stone wall just below the middle of the tube. The bottom of the tube cut away on one side. The other side connected to the wall, bounding a fist-sized hollow between the tube on top and the gold-specked wall beneath, before the wall continued, sloping downwards, towards the insides of the Stone Circle.

His curiosity burning like his fingertip, eyes covered tightly, he climbed forward and positioned his head above the tube. He removed his hands cautiously, slowly--then realized there was no longer any light.

Puzzled, he opened his eyes, and what he saw amazed him so much that he forgot about the sudden dimness. The insides of the tube were almost solid--not quite. There was a tiny opening in the center, too narrow for a baby’s finger. But it went all the way down, cylindrical, and was perfectly straight and smooth. Some sort of clear glassy stuff seemed to be inside it, visible only as a slight distortion of the air. Directly underneath was the place where the light had been, now shaded and dull, but definitely gold. The gold patch was not flat, but slanted sharply downwards towards the ground within the walls.

He moved his head aside to look underneath at the gold--and there was the light again! Involuntarily, he looked up, and laughed at his own stupidity.

Straight above, the sun was shining down upon him. It was full noon.

His head had been blocking the sun. Of course the light had disappeared! He glanced down, and up, and down again. The sun shone straight through the tube, and the light reflected onto the patch of gold. It was very simple. But what was it all for?

Carefully, he turned himself around on the wall, hoping he could make out where the reflected light went. It should probably go back across the Stone Circle and beyond the lower wall on the other side, where there was an opening amongst the trees, and another ridge of stone. And--yes--another light! It seemed to hang, golden and still, in the middle of the air.

How to get there? If he jumped outside, he might not be able to find it, but the wall’s rim was too narrow to walk on. Dropping instead inside the Stone Circle, he walked across, seeking a way up the wall on the other side. He finally found a few footholds and clambered and scratched his way up, cursing ebulliently as his fingernails broke against the rock. Pulling himself onto the wall’s narrow top, Yaltring turned his gaze into the woods beyond, thinking he knew where the second light should be. After a few moments’ fruitless searching, he turned around.

The first light was gone, too!

Dumbstruck, he jumped down and went back to the stone tube. This time, the light really was gone.

Yaltring looked above. The sun had shifted just a step beyond the zenith towards the west. The light beat down within the tiny opening of the stone tube, but it did not pass all the way through. Spring was over. The afternoon had begun.

"Well," Drengo said later to the puzzled boy, "this day, which happens to be your birthday, is the longest of the year, and also the day when the sun is highest in the sky. Around here, that’s the only day when it gets clear overhead. Now, in other parts, it’s different. I grew up in the Northern Group, of course, in the cooler reaches of the Southeast Islands, and I never once saw the sun straight above until I came here! As for the islands further south, you’d have to ask your mother about that. As far as I know, it happens there too.

"But what was this thing you saw?"

"Well," said Yaltring, and stopped for a moment. It was not easy to talk about his secret place, still less the unexpected mystery found within it. But he was burning with curiosity. "It seemed to be some sort of device to focus the sunlight. But it would only work when the sun was straight overhead."

"Are you sure it was built?" asked Drengo. "There’s some mighty strange rock formations around here."

"It was drilled straighter and smoother than an arrow," said Yaltring. "What’s more, it had some clear stuff inside, and there was gold underneath."

"Gold?" bellowed Drengo. "Well, boy, I’m glad you found something valuable!"

"I don’t think there was much of it," said Yaltring quickly, not liking the thought of anyone taking the gold from the secret device. "But it was polished as smooth as anything, and reflected the light so bright, I’m surprised I can still see."

"Now, isn’t that strange?" said his father. "Isn’t that just strange?" He shook his head in wonderment, staring into Yaltring’s face. In that gaze was a surprised admiration, as though he thought, "I didn’t know you would prove me right about you so quickly." But all he said was:

"I’ve never heard of such a thing, and I can only guess it’s been here a long time. If anyone on the island’s seen it, they sure don’t go around letting others in on the exciting news. If they did, I’d know of it for sure. I hear a lot of little secrets and don’t let on, but I don’t forget, either. I’m guessing this has been here so long everyone’s forgotten all about it, and you’re the first one to discover it since.

"There are tales told of older times and older ways, on Imme, and in the Southern Group generally, but I’m not expert, not having had the benefit of growing up here. Your mother would know more. If you want to get to the bottom of this, I suggest you ask her. If she doesn’t know, you might have to go a long way to find someone who does."

So Yaltring, even more reluctantly, repeated the story for the anxious woman in the kitchen. She responded kindly to the query about the overhead sun.

"Yes," she said, smiling warmly at him, "it is only on your birthday that the sun does that here. You were born in the fullness of the year--the solstice, as people call it. But on Tizrach, the sun comes overhead twice a year, before and after the solstice. The same is true on other islands to the south."

But by the time he had finished, her gaze was darker, and her smile had vanished.

"You have discovered something, I think, that was once of great importance," she said carefully. "It no longer means anything to the living. But it may still bear danger."

"Danger?" he said. "But, there was nothing there. It was only a device for shining light. Danger there is, perhaps, of blindness, for anyone foolish enough to stare at it. What other danger could there be?"

"My dear Yaltring," said his mother, looking straight into his eyes, "I do not take you for a fool. I know that this device, in itself, is not dangerous, and that you are careful enough to protect your eyes. But do you think it is there merely to baffle and entertain you?" She paused, but he said nothing.

"It has a meaning, Yaltring, and a reason to be there. I have heard of such things, in stories of older times. I’m afraid I know nothing specific about what you found. But I know that in this part of the Southeast Islands, the Southern Group, lands farthest south and east of any in the world, they used to make pointing devices that worked only on certain days. That was a long time ago. No one knows their secrets now. Whoever made this did not know it would be your birthday, or that you would even exist. Did not care, either.

"But they did mean someone to find it. I don’t know who they thought it would be. Certainly not you. Did they mean to help the finder, or to hurt them? That you cannot know, unless you find out what it is. And by then, it will be too late.

"I have heard stories, Yaltring, many stories. The people of the ancient times were violent. The princes had vicious quarrels and terrible wars. They hid things, they left gifts, they left traps. Who can know what is a gift and what is a trap? The wise do not seek to find out. They leave danger to the unwary."

"But why on Imme?" asked Yaltring. "This island is small and out of the way. Were there wars here, once?"

"I do not know," said Sila. "It is strange...strange. It may be that this island once was greater, when the seas were lower."

"But why make something so hard to find, if it’s a trap intended to harm?" Yaltring persisted. "It seems as though it was meant for someone who knew when and where to look."

Sila stopped, considering, standing still for a time, looking all the while into the boy’s dark eyes. "Yaltring, you are very clever. Too clever, perhaps, for your own good. To the questions you ask, I can venture no more than guesses. I know nothing of why or when this was built, or how it works. I know only this. Whoever built it was greater than me, greater than you. They possessed arts that have long been lost. And no one knows what was in their hearts.

"Well hidden, do you think? Yes, it is well hidden, as a wildcat in the grass. People do not hide things for nothing. They do not hide what is safe. If it is hidden, rest assured it has led to bloodshed, somewhere in the course of time."

She shuddered. "Stories, old stories. Some are merry tales for young ones. Many are horrible. I have heard tales, Yaltring, of treasure maps that pointed instead to hidden graves. I have heard of babies impaled on wooden stakes because they wandered too near to something precious, not knowing what it was any more than you. I have heard, too, of people who gained objects of great power or value, and were killed for having them. And then, the ones who killed them were killed in turn.

"Even your moonbox comes with such a story. Yes, Yaltring! Many generations ago, a wooden room washed up on a beach in Tizrach. It was rectangular in shape, not like a cabin from a ship, and entirely sealed except for a small hole in the ceiling. Inside were two dead, rotten bodies, some seawater, and some odds and ends, including your moonbox. Those poor people must have made the hole to breathe, before dying of thirst or hunger in the end. Who can say how long they sailed, and suffered, inside that closed room--or how it came to sea--or why they were locked inside? Perhaps there was a flood, but then the room would not have been sealed. More likely it was chosen as a slow, cruel form of murder.

"Yes, I have heard many stories. Imme is quiet now. Yet who knows what sleeping powers rest here, far beyond our means to resist? Our island life is peaceful. Would you have disturbed the sleep of Essin, had you lived Below?

"My heart tells me that if such mysteries lure you, and you pursue them far enough, it will lead, in the end, to your death. Now, you may think you can pull back before it gets to such a pass. But I tell you this: you do not know down which path you may be led. When you meddle with great powers, at a certain point, you can no longer turn. You can no longer be what you once were, nor stop the chain of happenings you have begun. Nor can you escape them. They will overtake you.

"Whatever this thing is, it was not meant for you. It was put there long ago--perhaps to ensnare the unready, in revenge for a feud ended hundreds or thousands of years ago--or perhaps, to lead them on. A safekeeping, it might be. Yet even then, is it something your tender hands can wield?

"Your life is easy here. Soon, you will be a man. You will have freedom, Yaltring, freedom of all the islands. You are not bound here. Neither I nor your father would hold you. A life of the sea is yours for the taking, with kin both north and south. You will be a master of the ocean, and everyone will know it. You will have the honor of men, and the love of women. Why risk all this for something you cannot control, something that has no name?"

Yaltring’s head was bowed. He nodded it slowly. "There is much to think on," he said at last, meeting his mother’s eyes. Quietly, almost ponderously, he paced out of the room.

He went outside and looked up at the sky. There was a faint day-moon, just past full and beginning to wane. Today was Dorsaw First Flattening, the beginning of the third week of the seventh month of the year. In four weeks more, he would be a man.

He was sobered by his mother’s words. Yet he thought, "I will be careful."

Sila stared at the door for a long while. "Strange storms," she said softly, "and a strange compass. Oh Augaza, what did you read in his baby brow?"