SHADITH: Why should you? It was dead before you were born. The last of the Shallal were exiles depending on their talents to survive. And it’s a long long way from here.

  GERADA: (a quiet, heavy-faced woman, thick dark hair lightly streaked With gray, smoothed—into a meticulously neat knot at the back of her head; she ate with precise small movements, a delicacy almost absurd in the shift of large powerful hands; she interested Shadith because she did not seem to belong among the more flamboyant members of this inquisition; there had to be more to her than the silent uninteresting facade) What brought you here?

  SHADITH: I could say chance, but who’d believe that? I came for my own reasons. I came for the sweetamber like everyone else. I came because this is a wild world and a strange one and I collect strange worlds. I came because this is where the ship I was riding brought me. All of the above, or any, or none. Take your choice.

  MELOHAN: (small, slight, hardly taller than Shadith, with fragile bones that looked as if they’d break in a high wind, perhaps the youngest of the twelve, hair black as tar worn in a long braid that draped gracefully forward over her left shoulder) What will you do here?

  SHADITH: Sing, earn my way. Look about Keama Dusta for a while, visit other parts of the world, leave when I’ve seen all I care to.

  KULIT: (tall lean woman with a short nose and short hair that curled tight to her narrow head, large, rather prominent quite lovely hazel eyes, eyebrows thin but strongly marked, flaring like wings so she looked permanently alert, a voice like kaffeh smelled, deep, dark, rich) We have a rebellion trying to gather force out there, guerrillas in the hills.

  SHADITH: (giggle, flirt of her hand) Meaning, stay out of the back country?

  BERGEN: (small neat man, hairline mustache rather unfortunately emphasizing very full red lips that tended to pout, hairline brows to match, those wisps of hair dominating a soft-looking face) Unless you think you’d be amused by the Ajin’s antics.

  SHADITH: I don’t get any fun out of pain. If your Ajin is like other rebels I’ve run into from time to time, he’ll land hard on strangers in his territory. Too bad.

  PEROLAT: Quite like other rebels, young Shadith. You’d better stick to Keama Dusta until you leave us.

  Perolat touched Shadith’s arm. “Wait a little and share some belas with a few of us, you and Linfy.”

  Shadith nodded, amused and a little irritated; she’d gone beyond her second wind and was working on the third. Seventeen hours since a sleepless night. But begging off wasn’t an option. What was coming, like the dinner inquisition, would be a test, she had no illusions about that. For some reason, probably that enigmatic presence in the forest and its unexpected interest in her, she had a lot more attention focused on her than she wanted, maybe more interest than her story could stand. As most of the miners strolled out, clumped in small groups talking about minor events of the day, and a number of quiet girls came in to clear off the table, Perolat swept Shadith and Linfyar down a short hall and into a high-ceilinged room where three others sat about a hooded fire. The windows were cranked open to let in the cool night air. Trial by pollen, she thought, wearily amused. The dining room was air-conditioned so Perolat wouldn’t waste her work cooking for dreamers and the smells and flavors of her food would be appreciated without distraction. Perolat took her to a plump cushion, murmured welcome to Linfyar as he sank down beside her. The rustle of the vine leaves outside the windows, the stir of draperies, the crackle of the fire that was the room’s sole illumination, a snatch of music from a distant inn blown in on the night wind, shut off abruptly with the closing of a door—these unobtrusive sounds gave the room a dreamy unreality that Shadith found disastrously enticing, combining with her body’s more and more imperative demands for sleep to give the feeling that events were slipping rapidly out of control, even her own body was leaving her control. She tried to focus, but her mind felt like mush and the food she’d enjoyed so much so short a time before sat like a lump in her stomach, weighing down body and mind.

  Perolat wheeled a serving table from one corner of the room, on it a large glass pitcher and big-bellied glasses whose flatly rounded bottoms fit comfortably in the hollow of a palm, a solid weight to them; good to sit by that fire holding those heavy elegant glasses. The belas she poured out for her guests was a lightly fermented fruit juice, heated and spiced with something local that was tart with a pleasant afterbite. Shadith sipped at hers and felt the fog draining from her head, some of the lethargy slipping out of her body. This part of the test was going to be harder than dinner. She’d had a lot of practice keeping her lies consistent. Now all she could do was be herself and hope they liked that self well enough to accept her as an amiable acquaintance so they’d leave her loose enough to go nosing after the Ajin. Her mind drifted to Taggert. Wonder if he’s made his way here yet … have to be in position to spring him if he hit the trap and tripped … wary, wily man … but so was Grey … Grey was angry, maybe that’s what did him in … but it swallowed Ticutt, he wasn’t blinded by anger … calm, deliberate, precise … cautious as a coyote around poison bait … Taggert coming in at some kind of slant … good luck to him …. She sipped at the hot belas, watched Perolat finish passing out the glasses and take her own back to a chair, her mechanical leg making it difficult to get down to the floor.

  The silence filled with night sounds stretched on and on. Linfyar fidgeted awhile, finished his drink, curled up beside Shadith, his head on her thigh, and went to sleep.

  After a while Perolat stumped around refilling the glasses. She settled back in her chair, her half-leg propped on a small hassock. “Know any Pajungg music?”

  Shadith yawned, blinked. “Never been to Pajungg.”

  “Ah.”

  More silence.

  Ticha groped beside her pillow, brought up three curved, crooked pieces of hard wood like fossilized rib bones, began slapping them against her thigh.

  Derek took up a long pipe made of a wood like Ticha’s sticks. It had six holes cut into it and no valves. He tried a few notes, then began playing a simple tune, repeating it over and over, winding through the separate but related music from the sticks.

  Awas left the room and came back with a huge gourd, strings stretched across a hole cut in the belly. She settled herself and began slapping a thrumming boom from the gourd, at the same time plucking the strings, producing a third tune, different from the other two but blending with them to produce a complex polyphonic music.

  Shadith listened for a while, then began improvising a wordless song, like and not like her ancient croons, feeling her way into the music.

  A flow passed around the circle, lapping her inside it. The music went on and on, expanding, developing, returning to earlier themes, the gourd player the leader if there was any real leader, the first to turn into new lines; Shadith was content to follow where she led, singing softly in her middle ranges most of the time, highs and lows when she was sure of herself.

  Eventually Perolat began to sing, a rough untrained contralto that seemed to hold all the pain and wanting in the world, and joy, but a fleeting joy that touched a moment and went away, laughter in it too, the kind that celebrated but had a hint of pain in it like the drop of black that made white paint whiter.

  Shadith stopped caring anymore if she passed the test, whatever it was; she forgot there was a test. Never mind age, culture, species; these were her kind.

  Derek’s pipe went up and up and up, ending in a high screech.

  They collapsed in laughter, then sat up wiping eyes, while Perolat went around again with the hot spiced juice, adding this time small saucers with cheese-filled pastries and candied fruits that Shadith found a, bit too sweet. Startled out of sleep by the pipe’s shriek and the jolting of Shadith’s thigh, Linfyar sat up muttering, rubbed his nose. “What …” He sniffed, his ears pricked forward.

  Shadith chuckled, handed him the saucer. “Here, I expect you’ll like these.”

  Awas leaned forward, arms clasped loosely about the gourd. “I was there. At the k’shun this afternoon.”

  “Ummm?”

  “You and Linfyar shaped our visions so we all shared the same one. Did you know that?”

  Shadith straightened her back, rubbed at the nape of her neck, wishing she felt a bit more alert. “You saw the same thing?”

  “No …” The word was a drawn out whisper. “That’s not exactly what I said. Each person I talked to saw something that might be an interpretation of a single theme. As you intended?”

  “I didn’t know.” She moved her shoulders impatiently, pressed the back of her hand against her mouth, pulled it down. The lie was harder to get out than she’d expected; she liked them too well, these Avosingers. Still, she hadn’t much choice, and she wasn’t working against them; from what Head said and the impressions she picked up at dinner they weren’t that enthused about the Ajin and his cause. “Maybe it was a freak thing; maybe I can’t do it again.” She looked around at the quiet faces. “What dream would you like me to try?”

  Perolat smiled. “Something simple, something you know as well as we do.” A chuckle. “Forest walking?”

  “Hah. You’ve got a loudmouth forest.”

  Soft laughter from all four.

  “Mmmh, I should have the harp. Awas, would you let me borrow that?” She pointed at the large gourd.

  “Why not?” Awas hefted the gourd. “Watch out, it’s heavier than it looks.” She tossed it to Shadith, who grunted with surprise when she caught it, then watched in interested silence as Shadith plucked at the strings, listening to the various sounds she could elicit, tapped and slapped at the belly to produce assorted tunks and booms, gradually putting what she learned together until she got a complex music going using about every possibility for sound the gourd possessed, a feat not as remarkable as it looked, since she’d done this sort of thing again and again on one world or another in that first part of her life when she was still in her original body. She let the music die, looked at the expectant Avosinger faces, then closed her eyes and sought through her memory of Shayalin patterns and finally chose one that seemed to fit the things she’d felt during her lucid periods as she walked through the fringes of the forest. She drew her hand over her face. “Right, walking through the forest.” She looked down at Linfyar. “Come in when you feel it’s right, Linfy.”

  She began with a muted strumming, clicking her nails against the varnished surface of the gourd, humming almost inaudibly, gathering up the stillness of the room, the night sounds drifting in, watching the flickers of the dying fire; she let the humming expand into the pattern song, the word sounds twisting and turning through the rhythms her hands were coaxing from the strings and body of the gourd; she stared at the flames and did not see them, saw instead her sisters in a circle swaying beneath the giant tress of Avosing. Giant trees stretching out before her, away and away and away and away, canceling wall and window, caught in an elusive balance between stillness and motion, there in all their thereness, their extension into time-was and time-will-be, grazing the sky and sounding the underworld. Her sisters dancing in their shadows, singing polyphonic patterns, singing tranquillity in power, singing forest heart and forest folk and how they twine together, strong in serenity, quiet in deed, gentle in their power, singing the miners of the amber, the fragrance of the amber, the shine and shimmer of the fires in amber heart. Her sisters dancing in light and shadow, life surging up through them like sap rising. The energy of the croon built and built, Linfyar weaving his liquid lilting whistle through her voice and hand-music, then it broke off. Linfyar broke off at the same moment, leaving the room to a shattering silence.

  Shadith sat blinking, holding the gourd with trembling hands, her mouth dry, her throat a little sore, her body drained of energy.

  Perolat was lost in dream still, staring at nothing, tears drifting unchecked down her angular face, a slight smile curling her lips.

  Ticha and Derek swayed together, faces slack and quiet, lost utterly to a dream it seemed they shared, her hand resting in his, her lips moving with his in brief smiles that lifted the slack muscles of each face at the same time in much the same way. Shadith was startled. Two clients linked in a common dream—that she couldn’t remember ever happening even when her mother’s sisters, master weavers, wove the dreams; similar, yes, variations on a single theme, never the exact same dream. Well, she wasn’t truly a weaver, and her family had never visited a world like this. She blinked, startled by a sudden thought—or worn the body of a mindrider. Could she possibly do this without the pervasive pollens of Avosing? Was her dream back in the k’shun not just wishful thinking but a real possibility? Did she even want it to be?

  As Shadith sat silently watching, Awas came swimming up out of dream. She looked around, dazed incomprehension on her face for the first few breaths, fixed her eyes on Shadith, wariness and a little fear in them, then she grinned, her dark eyes disappearing into nests of laugh wrinkles, her nose and cheekbones suddenly prominent. “I’ll be humbler next time I play that,” she said, half amused, half serious, nodding at the gourd.

  Shadith flushed. “That’s silly and you know it. What you heard was part suggestion and part funny-dust.”

  Perolat blinked slowly, looked around, raised her brows at Derek and Ticha, turned to Awas. “I didn’t really believe it.”

  “The Po’ Annutj.”

  “You too? You think them?” Perolat nodded at the still-dreaming pair. “I expect so.”

  Perolat switched her gaze to Shadith. “And you don’t know what you did, I’m fairly sure of that.”

  “Did?”

  “Showed us the Po’ Annutj.”

  “I know what the words mean. Forest Heart. But …”

  “Loudmouth forest.” Perolat chuckled.

  “Hunh.”

  Ticha and Derek began to blink, eyelids clicking to a different rhythm, their eerie synchronization lost.

  Perolat looked relieved. “Where did you learn that music?”

  “Part of it from my mother, part of it’s improvisation, things I’ve learned in my wanderings.”

  “Shayalin. That’s what you called your homeworld, isn’t it? I have not heard of it.”

  “It doesn’t exist any longer. I’m a double orphan. Lost my family, lost my world.” She yawned, almost not getting her hand up to cover the gape. “I said that before, didn’t I?”

  “You’re tired,” Perolat said.

  Shadith grinned sleepily at her. “Understatement.”

  “Go home and get some rest. Your meals are on me tomorrow. Thanks for tonight.”

  Shadith swallowed a second yawn, her eyes watering. “If you could tell me where it’d be all right to perform, I’d appreciate that.” The words were clear enough in her head, but slurred and slowed when they came out.

  Perolat looked around at the others. They nodded. “Any k’shun that’s not being used.” She hesitated. “But you won’t be in the k’saha long—the doawai will be calling you into the cathedral soon as he hears about you. Inside the walls.”

  “Walls?” Shadith shook her head. “No.”

  “You’ll take in more coin.”

  “Depends. I know those places—lot of strings on your take. At least, that’s what I’ve seen before, and I don’t expect it’s different here. I could have had lots of berths like that otherwise. Un-uuh.”

  “You might not have much choice.”

  “Warning?”

  “Too strong. Just be careful. City”—she jerked her head toward the north where the walls were—“and doawai, he’ll invite you first. Turn him down, he’ll make your life a misery. Keep turning him down, he’ll send his engiaja after you.”

  Shadith yawned a third time, got heavily to her feet. “Then I’ll move on.” She stirred Linfyar with her toe. “Wake up, Linfy, time we got to bed. Too bad if that happens, Perolat. I like it here, like to stay awhile.” She patted Linfyar as he got groggily to his feet and stumbled against her. “No use inviting trouble.” She yawned a fourth time, surprising herself.

  “And you’re asleep on your feet, child—no don’t tell me again you’re older than you look. Derek, carry the boy. Ticha, give young Shadow your arm. Sleep as long as you need to, child, then come see me and I’ll fry you up some breakfast.”

  A nineday passed.

  Shadith lounged about, getting to know the place, saying little, listening much, picking up threads here and there, finding nothing that would get her to the Ajin without him suspecting what she was after. Hints of rebellion, yes, whispered gossip, harangues by rebels sneaking into the bebamp’n trying to stir up excitement and anger and recruit Dusters into their cause. Nothing enough to give her a line on him.

  Church spies snooping along the talishi, the wandering ways that were the local streets, and through the k’saha; church enforcers stumping arrogantly through the bebamp’n hunting down the negligent. These men wore respirators and protective clothing; even so, one of them would slide into a trance now and then and whoever he was harassing would take off before the rest of the troop could react. Enforcers never walked alone. Too many disappeared the time they tried that. Avosingers yielded before these troops, fading into the narrow talishi, vanishing into houses, shops, factories, taverns, whatever; vendors who couldn’t wheel their carts away tuned out on the world. Behind the troop, life took up its ordinary ways, a touch of wariness in the most casual conversations.

  A pervasive resentment of all church and Authority forces, outright hatred in some quarters. The amberminers and their kin standing aloof—except when they helped the kin of those that disappeared or provided escape routes for those the enforcers were after.

  As the days passed, she confirmed what she’d suspected that first night. Perolat and the twelve were the invisible government in Keama Dusta. They took care of order in the bebamp’n, sentenced thieves to tending the local gardens, repairing the water system, doing just about anything that needed work to keep the community life flowing smoothly, they warned wifebeaters, took rapists into the forest and left them (these weren’t seen again, not hide hair or bone), warned merchants who were cheating customers, especially folk in from the grasslands with money to spend, and if they didn’t listen, they disappeared; they settled boundary disputes and quarrels about goods and kinship problems with nothing but moral force to back their decisions, moral force and community consensus, an elaborate system of obligations, a web of services that bound man to man, woman to woman, built up wholly outside the oppressive Colonial Authority and the officials the Pajunggs appointed to uphold homeworld law.