Full of doubts and schemes, you return to Hetch late that night to find the town dark and quiet. Your mother says Shalmek never sleeps and the desert empress hosts banquets until dawn, but the Pine tribe has work in the morning.

The houses of Hetch are all round, with windowless stone walls and thatched roofs. Each is identical except for the adornments outside, such as idols, carvings around the doorways, or flower-gardens. You and your mother occupy a house much like the others, with three knotwork-carved beams that frame its single door. Its thatched roof slopes almost to the ground, where it shields firewood from the rain on one side and serves as the roof of a chicken coop on the other. A little cap on the roof allows smoke to escape without letting rain in. Only the wooden idol of Kadomis, your father's god, marks out the house, as the people of Pine favor Yune, god of crafts.

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Unfortunately, your mother is already asleep behind the carved screen that demarcates her space. Questions will have to wait. You crawl up to your raised loft and rest.

Night brings dark dreams, jumbled images: Gronput scurrying through tunnels on all fours like a rat; a woman with a golden mask who moans with despair; the dark priestess Hareetha as your mother always described her, laughing as flames and wind consume her, both burning hands wrapped around her demonic ax.