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By Root 1184 0

wrench, wondering for the thousandth time if she were doing the right thing, if indeed she had enough knowledge to do the right thing for this strange race, trapped in a backwash, a killing eddy of the river of Time. Unthinkably long ago, in the morning light of the universe when they were struck, sparks from immortal fire as all souls are, they’d been meant to take up the burden of incarnation, to ride with all other souls the turning wheels of Life and Death, but somehow, in some way that not even they could remember, they had, as they put it, “stayed behind.” Without the discipline of the worlds of form, they were doomed, but after so long in the magical lands they’d found—or created, she couldn’t be sure which—the stinking, aching, grieving inertia called life seemed hateful to them. One by one, they would wink out and die, sparks flown too far from the fire, unless someone led them down into the world. I’m too ignorant, Dalla thought. I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t have enough power, I’m doing this for the wrong reasons, I can’t, I’ll fail, I’ll never be able to save them.

Unfortunately, there was no one but her to so much as try.

The vendor had spread his wares out in the shade near a public fountain. An old man, with pale brown skin and lank white hair, he sat on his heels behind a small red rug and stared out at the crowd unblinking, unmoving, as if he cared not at all if anyone bought his wares. Neatly arrayed in front of him were three different kinds of fortune-telling sets, ranging from a stack of flimsy beaten bark packets filled with cheap wooden tiles to a single beautifully painted bone set in a carved wooden box with bronze hinges. Marka counted her coins out twice, but still, she didn’t have enough money for even the cheapest version. As she reluctantly hid her pouch again inside her tunic, the old man deigned to look her way.

“If you’re meant to have them, the coin will come,” he remarked. “They have the power to pick out their true owners.”

“Really, good sir?”

“Really.” He leaned forward and ran a gnarled hand over the lid of the bronze-fitted box. “I’ve sold these sets for years, traveling round Orystinna, and I’ve come to know all about them. Now, the cheap things, they have no power whatsoever. A man I know up in Orysat brings them in from Bardektinna by the crateful. They’re slave-made, I suppose. And those there in the cloth sacks, well, they’re good enough, especially for a beginner. But every now and then a really fine set comes my way, like these. You can just feel, somehow, that they’re different.”

He picked out a tile and held it faceup in his palm. It was the prince of birds, exquisitely carved with a flare of wing and a long beak; into the graved lines the craftsman had rubbed some sort of blue and green dye, staining the bone beyond the power of fingers to rub it away. As she looked at it, Marka felt a peculiar sensation, that somehow she recognized that tile, that in fact she recognized the whole set and particularly its box.

“There’s a wine stain on the bottom,” she said, and then was horrified to realize she’d spoken aloud.

“Well, so there is.” The vendor made the admission unwillingly. “But it’s just a little one, and it’s faded, too. It hasn’t hurt the tiles any.”

In the hot summer day Marka turned icy-cold. She managed to smile, then stood up. All she could think of was running away from the box of tiles. When someone touched her shoulder from behind, she screamed.

“Well, a thousand apologies!” It was Ebañy, half laughing, half concerned. “I thought you’d seen me come up. Didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Oh, well, I was just, uh, well, talking with this man. He, uh, has these interesting things for sale.”

Ebañy glanced down and went as wide-eyed as a child. When he knelt down for a better look, she wanted to scream at him and beg him to come away. Yet, when he gestured at her to join him, she knelt beside him, as close as she dared. He picked the knave of flowers out of the box and held it up to let the golden blossoms catch the light. With an eye for Ebañy’s expensively