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were prepared to die horribly for the right to paint your face. Now it doesn’t matter?”
    Of course it didn’t! But Prat’han was not accustomed to thinking why , and he had to rummage frantically in unfrequented corners of his mind before he could say, “You offer me a choice. Joalians tell me. Quite different.”
    D’ward laughed. “I see! But the next problem is that you and the brothers seem to have a revolution of your own under way. What I’m planning has nothing whatsoever to do with throwing the Joalians out of Nagvale.”
    Prat’han shrugged to hide his chagrin. “I only fight Joalians from boredom. Whatever your cause, I will support it. Your gods are mine.”
    “It will involve long travel and grave danger.”
    “Good!”
    “But you said you were married. As I recall, married warriors are reserved for defense.”
    Why had Prat’han been such a fool as to admit to Uuluu? “I am only very slightly married—a matter of a couple of fortnights.” Or thereabouts. “No children! My wife can go back to her father unchanged.”
    D’ward raised his eyebrows in disbelief. “That she may go back I will believe, but unchanged? This I doubt, you big male animal, you!”
    “Not much changed.” Feeling as if he had been counting every hour in three long years for this moment, Prat’han fell to his knees. “Liberator, I would kneel to no other man. I would not plead with any other, either, but I swear that if you leave me behind, then I shall die of shame and despair. Take me, Liberator! I am yours to command, as I always was. I will follow you wherever you lead.”
    “Don’t you even want to know what I’m planning?”
    “You are going to bring death to Death, as is foretold in the Filoby Testament ?”
    “Well, yes. If I can.”
    “I wish to help. And all the others will, too! Gopaenum Butcher, Tielan Trader, Doggan…”
    D’ward grimaced. “I let them all get flogged today. I dared not intercede for them, Prat’han, because I wasn’t sure I had enough…had enough power to rescue you. It was a damned close thing, there, you know! A couple of times I really thought you and I would be gracing adjoining fence posts. How long until they’ll be well enough to travel?”
    “They are well now! I’ve had those beatings. Nagians shrug them off. We have thick skins.”
    “You have thick heads, certainly.” D’ward ran his fingers through his hair—curly, bushy, shiny black. He pulled a face. “What is your wife going to say? I warn you, this will be bloody. Many who go with me will not return. Perhaps none of us will.”
    Prat’han rose. He put his heels together and laid his spear against his shoulder, as D’ward himself had taught him, long ago. Staring fixedly at the far wall, he said, “Lead and I follow.”
    D’ward rose also. They were of a height, the two of them, both tall men, although Prat’han was thicker.
    “I can’t dissuade you, can I? Never thought I would, actually.” He took Prat’han’s shoulder in the grip that brother gave to brother in the group. “You have been a shaper of clay, Prat’han Potter. Follow me, and I will make you a shaper of men.”

II
    And he is the guardian of the world, he is the king of the world, he is lord of the universe—and he is myself, thus let it be known, yea, thus let it be known!
    Kaushitaki-Upanishad,
III Adhyava, 8

2
    Ripples raised by that encounter in Sonalby were to spread throughout the Vales in the fortnights that followed and give rise to major waves. Before the green moon had eclipsed twice, they disturbed the normal calm of a certain small side valley between Narshvale, Randorvale, and Thovale, whose only claim to distinction was that the little settlement near its north end was home to the largest assembly of strangers on Nextdoor. They called it Olympus.
     
    The Pinkney Residence was not as grand as the palaces of the monarchs or high priests of the vales, but it was spacious and luxurious by local standards, having