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runes—every scrap of information her new friend gave her. It was the beginning of a long apprenticeship, and one that would change her world picture forever.
             
    Now, Maddy’s folk believed in a universe of Nine Worlds.
    Above them was the Firmament, the Sky City of Perfect Order.
    Beneath them was the Fundament, or World Below, which led to the three lands of Death, Dream, and Damnation, which gave way to World Beyond, the Pan-daemonium, the home of all Chaos and all things profane.
    And between them, so Maddy was taught, lay the Middle Worlds: Inland, Outland, and the One Sea, with Malbry and the valley of the Strond right at the center, like a bull’s-eye on a shooting target. From which you might have concluded that the folk of Malbry had no small opinion of themselves.
    But now Maddy learned of a world beyond the map’s edge, a world of many parts and contradictions, a world in which Nat Parson or Adam Scattergood, for instance, might be driven to madness by as small a thing as a glimpse of ocean or an unfamiliar star.
    In such a world, Maddy understood, one man’s religion might be another’s heresy, magic and science might overlap, houses might be built on rivers or underground or high in the air; even the Laws of the Order at World’s End, which she had always assumed were universal, might warp and bend to suit the customs of this new, expanded world.
    Of course only a child or an idiot believed that World’s End actually
was
the end of the world. There
were
other lands, everyone knew that. Once there had even been trade with these lands—trade, and sometimes even war. But it was widely held that these Outlands had suffered so badly from Tribulation that their folk had long since fallen into savagery, and no one—no one
civilized
—went there anymore.
    But, of course, One-Eye had. Beyond the One Sea, or so he said, there were men and women as brown as peat, with hair curled tight as bramble-crisp, and these people had never known Tribulation or read the Good Book, but instead worshiped gods of their own—wild brown gods with animal heads—and performed their own kind of magic, and all this was to them every bit as respectable and as everyday as Nat Parson’s Sunday sermons on the far side of the Middle World.
    “Nat Parson says magic’s the devil’s work,” said Maddy.
    “But I daresay he’d turn a blind eye if it suited him?”
    Maddy nodded, hardly daring to smile.
    “Understand, Maddy, that Good and Evil are not as firmly rooted as your churchman would have you believe. The Good Book preaches Order above all things; therefore Order is good. Glam works from Chaos; therefore magic is the devil’s work. But a tool is only as good or bad as the one working it. And what is good today may be evil again tomorrow.”
    Maddy frowned. “I don’t understand.”
    “Listen,” said the Outlander. “Since the world began—and it has begun many times, and many times ended, and been remade—the laws of Order and Chaos have opposed each other, advancing and retreating in turn across the Nine Worlds, to contain or disrupt according to their nature. Good and Evil have nothing to do with it. Everything lives—and dies—according to the laws of Order and Chaos, the twin forces that even gods cannot hope to withstand.”
    He looked at Maddy, who was still frowning. She was very young for this lesson, he thought, and yet it was essential that she should learn it now. Even next year might be too late—the Order was already spreading its wings, sending more and more Examiners out of World’s End…
    He swallowed his impatience and started again. “Here’s a tale of the Æsir that will show you my drift. Their general was called Odin Allfather. You may have heard his name, I daresay.”
    She nodded. “He of the spear and the eight-legged horse.”
    “Aye. Well, he was among those who remade the world in the early days, at the dawn of the Elder Age. And he brought together all his