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Sainnites. But you do not see that fearing the Sainnites would endanger them even more certainly.”
    On a day as warm as summer, Zanja and Ransel went climbing to a place they knew, a high meadow not too far from the groaning edge of a glacier. From there, it seemed they could see to the end of the world. Ransel entertained her with accounts of his many love affairs, and then advised her at length about which of the women katrim might be amenable to her advances this winter. She listened carefully, for he was a good matchmaker. Eventually, their conversation trailed off, and they lay a long time in silence, half asleep in the warm sunshine.
    “You are like an umbilical cord,” she said to him after a while.
    Ransel had a sweet tooth, and she had surreptitiously brought him a tin of sweetmeats from Shaftal. “An umbilical cord!” he exclaimed stickily. “What kind of compliment is that for a katrim ?”
    “I didn’t mean to compliment you. You’re conceited enough already. I meant to say that the Speaker had no friend like you, and I’m thinking that he must have dreaded coming home much more than I do. Even with your help, it’s a painful passage.”
    Ransel unwrapped the stiff waxed paper from another sweetmeat. “He never was contented,” he said. “But then, neither are you.”
    “I’ll always think I am his student.” Zanja rolled over in the warm grass, startling a couple of tiny rabbits back into their holes. “An umbilical cord,” she repeated. “You connect and nourish me, and I do nothing but kick you in the stomach.”
    Ransel gestured with the sweetmeats tin, his mouth too busy for talking.
    “I corrupt you,” she interpreted, “with forbidden luxuries. That is no gift.”
    “Mmm,” he said. “Good thing your grim moods always pass, for they are very tiresome. I love you out of self-interest, as you know full well. Even though you whisper not a word to me of all you see and know, people still think that I am privy to your secrets, which gives me an excuse to act self-important. Not only that,” he continued, while she uttered a snort of laughter, “But since you are a presciant, you can save me from my own idiocy, if you care enough to do it.”
    “So long as I’m beside you.”
    “Well, your lengthy absences are a drawback. But when matters go badly, you surely are the one I want guarding my back. Whoever’s with you will survive just as you will. Won’t your prescience send you running home when I most need you here? If it does, I swear I’ll do whatever you command, for I’d rather be alive and humble than dead and proud.”
    Zanja closed her eyes and pretended to doze in the sunshine. She felt so tired after her summer with the Sainnites that she wondered whether an entire winter’s rest would revive her. But she had not slept well since her homecoming, which was one of many things she could not tell Ransel, lest she do him a worse disservice than she did by smuggling in comfits for him. Only the elders of the people were judged mature and experienced enough that they could safely know of the world beyond the mountains without being changed or corrupted by the knowledge.
    “Why do you sigh?” Ransel asked.
    “I suppose I do have talent,” Zanja said. “But it never seems talent enough.”
    Ransel nodded, and said sententiously, “The na’Tarweins are never satisfied.”

Chapter 3

    Much that Zanja admired about the Shaftali people began to disappear. She saw hospitality replaced by suspicion, and open-handedness replaced by closed fists. When once strangers had been happy to sit down with her and talk about their lives, she now could not enter a tavern unless she was willing to sit in solitude with a circle of silence surrounding her. Meanwhile, in the Asha Valley, her people looked after their croplands and hunted in the forest, herded their goats and spun the goatswool. Children respected and learned from their elders. Katrim visited other scattered peoples that