I write with a heavy pen, weighed down by the disappointments I have suffered in recent days. No doubt writing these things down will soothe my pain. And yet I have always found it difficult to lose hope altogether, even in the dark days when I first came to this part of the world. There is still hope that she and I might meet again.

Probably I should begin where I left off in my last account, at the festival of the dead. Finally I had been able to speak to Rosédan and express something of my warm feelings towards her. Happily, she reciprocated, and we agreed to meet one another again at the festival of the dead. Despite what some of my readers may think from its gloomy name, this was in fact a common occasion for young and not-so-young couples to attend together away from intrusive chaperonage. I have heard of a similar custom in some northern tribe or other.

Our company consisted of six: myself and Rosédan, my friend Bekrao and the mysterious Ripāti, and our younger friends Adarzamu and Sāletinai. Bekrao’s father still insisted upon his marrying Sāletinai rather than Ripāti, and Ripāti’s father Lord Phumalluo still insisted that Ripāti stay as far away from Bekrao as she could. Not that either father was aware of their children’s contrary behavior, sad to say. It was somewhat scandalous, and Sāletinai was extremely embarrassed, I think. Rosédan seemed to positively enjoy the scandal, while only Ripāti knows what she thought of the matter. I admit this situation was somewhat confusing even to me.

Although I mentioned a lack of chaperonage at the festival of the dead, Rosédan and I were agreed that we would keep a close eye on our companions. Mild scandal was one thing, but there are limits. So the six of us met at Bekrao’s house and listened to Adarzamu explain how he and Ripāti had convinced Phumalluo to let them go. “Actually we just had to convince him to let me go. It’s a strange world when the daughter is allowed to go carousing while the nephew is kept at home. But I persuaded him in the end that it would be better if I accompanied Ripāti to make sure no one ran off with her.”

Bekrao and Ripāti exchanged glances at this. I am not prone to inquisitiveness, but whatever secret they shared, about Ripāti’s birth and Phumalluo’s schemes, frustrated me. Once or twice I had inquired about the matter, but even Bekrao, who had been one of the first to befriend me when I came to Edazzo, had told me nothing.

“My father and mother were delighted to hear that I would be going with Bekrao,” said Sāletinai in her quiet voice.

Already we could hear the sound of singing from somewhere further up in the city. Bekrao lived in a small house his family owned which was relatively close to the docks, though not near enough for the smell and sound to be noisome. We all looked at one another with enthusiasm and set off. I had actually only attended the festival of the dead once before during my stay in Edazzo, and that only out of curiosity to see what it consisted of. Now I was actually to be a participant.

“I hope we don’t have to pay our respects to their Bountiful Lord or whatever they call him,” Rosédan said in my ear. I do not know what land she comes from, but she and I share a similar attitude towards the multitude of gods that are worshiped in Edazzo.

“No, that is reserved for the priests. Despite his name, he is a dark and gloomy deity, and the people aren’t as fond of him as of others. It’s mainly the dead ancestors that are honored tonight.”

She smiled sadly. “There are plenty of people I knew and want to honor who are dead now. I think I have more friends among the dead than among the living.”

“I’m very far from most of my friends too,” I said.

“They’re not dead, are they?”

This was a difficult metaphysical question, and I pondered it before finally deciding that it would be safe to say, “It isn’t quite the same, I suppose. I apologize if I offended you.”

She shook her head. “I am always looking for the magic that will bring them back to me. Tonight, however, there is to be no magic, but simply the pleasure of company. I may be an exile, but I’m tired of leading a lonely life.”

I agreed with her. By this time the others had gone some way ahead towards the source of the noise, and so we followed them. I did not and do not think Bekrao was drunk, but nonetheless he was ranting about how unfairly he had been treated by his family. Unless he was looking for Ripāti’s sympathy, this did not seem to me the proper way to woo a woman. I wondered what exactly he had said to her earlier that had somehow persuaded her of his virtues; possibly he had shown her that trick he could do with a knife and a cup. I myself have little idea what impresses a woman, and especially a woman like Ripāti, who didn’t even make a pretense of friendliness. I was baffled when Ripāti put her arm around Bekrao at this point.

The last time I had observed the festival of the dead, I had been struck by the contrast between the somber black worn by its celebrants and the colorfully painted jars they tossed from hand to hand as they proceeded to the caves. The songs they had sung were strange too, alternating between tones of longing and triumphant notes. But things were different this time, to the extent that I was briefly convinced that we had all six of us gotten the day wrong and were inadvertently attending a different festival altogether, possibly the festival of Anu god of madness.

Instead of black, most of the men and women we saw ahead of us were wearing gray. Instead of colorful jars flying back and forth, some breaking on the ground or against walls to the sound of laughter, rods were waved in the air and clashed against one another with a rhythmic sound.

I caught up to Bekrao and asked him about it. He scratched his beard in deep contemplation before saying, “I’m as baffled as you. Ripāti, what do you think? Did we take a wrong turn somewhere?”

“No. This is the right path.” She smiled at both Bekrao and me in a way that almost made me forget my concerns about the festival’s alteration. I looked back at Rosédan, then at Adarzamu and Sāletinai behind her. Only Adarzamu and Sāletinai were not behind Rosédan, and in fact were nowhere to be seen at all. I worried that they’d given us the slip, but Ripāti was gesturing for us to hurry and follow her. Well, I was the father of neither of them, nor anyone’s father, for that matter.

When I spoke to Adarzamu and Sāletinai some time later, they said that they had seen something like a fog fall between us and them, and when it cleared, we were nowhere to be seen. The two of them had gone along with the festival some way before Sāletinai grew worried enough that she urged Adarzamu to return to Bekrao’s house. It should be clear that there was something uncanny about that night, or possibly just the weather.

In any case, I expressed my worries to Rosédan, who is after all a magician in her own right. But she told me that there are many things in the world that are called magic, and she is only familiar with one. “If there is magic here, it is not the kind that I can tell you about. Ripāti probably knows more.”

“Probably, but she keeps her knowledge sealed up behind her lips where it doesn’t do anyone any good.” I thought of a relevant story here, but this didn’t seem to be the time to tell it.

“You’re thinking of a story, aren’t you?” Rosédan asked.

“I am, but now isn’t the time,” I said, impressed by her perception. Certainly I could never tell when someone was about to launch into a fascinating yet relevant digression, which is why I have to supply them myself.

“They’re all wrong,” Bekrao said. He had fallen back from Ripāti’s side to approach Rosédan and me. “I haven’t been drinking, have I? You see it, too.”

“Who’s all wrong?”

“They are,” he said, and pointed at the procession.

As we caught up to Ripāti, I realized what he meant. The members of the procession were moving in a strange flowing manner, almost as if they were boats on a calm lake. There were no children among them, as there should have been. And when one of them turned back to face us, his skin was drawn taut against his skull and he had no eyes.

“Ghosts,” said Bekrao. “Ripāti, what is this?”

“It’s what you wanted to see, isn’t it?” she replied. Unlike her suitor, she did not sound frightened in the least. “This is the reason I was brought into the world. These are the old rulers of Edazzo, before the wild Parako came down from the hills in the north. It is their legends that you sought after so desperately.”

“Why are they here now?” Rosédan asked.

“They never left, but tonight it is easier to see them than at other times. All those people calling for the dead, and none of them thinking that the dead might truly return.”

“Are we in danger?” said Bekrao, thinking no doubt about the bloody way in which his ancestors had conquered the fingers of this peninsula. I don’t know for sure that it was bloody, but my knowledge of history leaves me in little doubt that it was.

“We shall see.” I can only speak for myself, but I did not find this a comforting answer.

“Where are we going?” Rosédan asked with remarkable good sense. But Ripāti, it seemed, was finished with our questions, and we had no choice but to follow her after the phantom crowd, keeping some distance back. I cannot say I have much experience with ghosts, and indeed can’t recall any occasion on which I met a ghost. All I can say is that the Bird was calling out to me in distress, and I didn’t know how to soothe it.

Last year the festival had gone down to certain caves near the shore, from which I had kept my distance, not wanting to entangle myself in whatever rituals were practiced there. But now it seemed that I had no choice: Rosédan and I were plunged into another world, and only Ripāti knew what was happening, so we were compelled to stick close to her.

The dead did not speak, but the clashing of their rods fell into a pattern that almost reminded me of language, one group calling to another and receiving a response. But if it was language, it was one that my Bird could not translate for me.

The houses of Edazzo, normally so alive even in the middle of the night, were silent now even as they loomed on each side, seeming to be nothing more than shadows. It is hard to put words to the way I felt when the only thing that seemed to be real was the procession ahead of us. And, of course, Rosédan was real at my side. She had her arm around me, which made me almost grateful for the fear that we all felt. When I say we all felt it, I am assuming from Bekrao’s chatter that he too was afraid. Ripāti is another story: whether or not she was afraid was something beyond my perception.

Leaving the shadows of houses behind, we passed under and through a dark cloud like a wall, until the ocean was before us. The trail was one that wound along a ridge overlooking the sea before turning inward again, where it entered the caves.

“We’re going to the underworld,” said Bekrao. “Father Above, help us! We’re going down to the dead!”

It did seem so. The mouth of the cave was wide before us, the dead men were filing into the darkness, and we were right behind them. I took Rosédan’s hand and she squeezed mine tightly. Ripāti offered little such comfort to Bekrao, so that I felt sorry for him. “This is the end,” he said. “This is everything I wanted, but then why am I so afraid? Kiss me, Ripāti. I am afraid.”

From everything I had seen of Ripāti, I doubted that she would be moved by this. And yet she turned to him and kissed him lightly, suggesting that what I had seen of her was not nearly enough to understand her.

Then we entered the dark cave, and I was no longer aware of the dead men. The only thing that I was able to see was a series of thrones (I am not sure of the precise number) against a wall in the distance. Ripāti lead us straight to these thrones and knelt, signaling for us to do the same. I could not see why, since there was no one in the thrones, but I was too alarmed by our surroundings to protest.

At this point it is very hard to describe what I saw next, but for my readers’ sake I will try to put it in words. It was not as if the figures simply appeared on the thrones, but rather that they had been there all along. Certain patterns of light on the rock wall were revealed to be, in fact, figures like those of faceless puppets, but larger than any puppet I had ever seen. It was a puppet show for giants, and I was alarmed to envision the kind of vast children that would be entertained by their dance.

They moved, and either Rosédan or I jumped. I have strong nerves, so it must have been Rosédan. They didn’t move like puppets on strings, but like light shifting in a forest. And though I was half-convinced again that they were illusions, one of them seemed to lean over us and to speak. Words fail completely to describe the voice with which it spoke, so you may feel free to imagine whatever you like.

“Why are you here? Why do you intrude on our kingdom?”

We all looked at Ripāti, who seemed to be the only one qualified to answer this question, but rather than answering she asked a question of her own. This would not have been my course of action when faced with enormous beings of this sort, but no doubt she knew best. “Name yourselves first,” she said.

“We are the kings of the earth. We were here before your fathers and your fathers’ fathers. For you to approach us is an offense against our majesty which merits death.”

I thought Bekrao was about to say something upon hearing this, but Ripāti put her hand over his mouth, which was no doubt a wise precaution. “You are the gray lords of Edazzo,” she said.

There was a rumbling in the ground beneath us. “We are not.”

Ripāti seemed surprised for the first time since Bekrao had made a fool of himself at that dinner. “But you are the true rulers of Edazzo!” she protested.

“We are not. We are rulers of the dead.”

“Then who are they? The council governs Edazzo in one way and the gods in another. The gray lords govern Edazzo in yet another way altogether. We know this: the tablets use symbols and figures to tell us it. I know it myself from my time in the other realm before I took on flesh! If you cannot answer me and my father, then who can?”

It leaned over us all. “We know who you are, child. Come back to us if you choose. Or do you not know your own story, of the earth’s daughter who was taken by the king of the dead?”

“I know the story. But I owe a debt to my father, and I have another reason to stay in the light.” She looked at Bekrao then, who had by this point fallen on his knees. “Or will you come with me into the darkness? In time you will forget even your own name.”

I didn’t entirely understand what was going on, even though Rosédan made some effort to explain it to me afterwards. It held my attention anyway. Bekrao spoke up in a voice that was very far from being confident, “I thought that’s what I wanted, but I was wrong. Like I told you before, Ripāti, what I want more than anything else is to be your husband.”

“Now answer me! Who are the gray lords?” This persistent questioning did not seem to bode well for the prospect of Bekrao ever being the husband of a living woman. Or for any of us to be among the living, for that matter. I asked Rosédan, whispering, if she had any magic that could help us, but she shook her head.

Dust fell from the ceiling above us as the figures rose from their thrones, moving as one. “Ask yourself this, half-mortal child. Your father learned the art of summoning the chthonic from their underworld graves. Do you think he is the only one with that power? We are the kings of the old forgotten dead. Do you think we are the only ones with that title? Now leave this place before we swallow you. Your light burns our eyes.”

I did not need them to repeat this last command, but I did make sure that Rosédan was ahead of me and that Bekrao and Ripāti were following before I quickened my pace. Although it was evening and the sun was hardly visible over the coast of the western peninsula, it felt like we were emerging into the dawn of a new day. There was no sign of the crowds of phantoms that had poured into the cave.

None of us had any heart for the real festival of the dead after what we had seen. I made an immensely clever remark to this effect (which I have forgotten), but no one else seemed to find it as humorous as I. We found Adarzamu and Sāletinai standing and talking in the street outside Bekrao’s house. They asked us, of course, where we had gone. The others looked to me to answer, but the only thing I could think of to say at the moment was, “Down to the caves.” Not very witty, I admit, but most of my wit had been used up in my clever remark earlier. (I still cannot remember the remark, but I can assure my readers that it was clever.)

Rosédan wanted to speak with me immediately afterwards, and I indulged her, finding a place to talk in privacy nearby. “I was terrified out of my wits,” she said, staring at me with what can only be described as a shining face. “But you! You were as calm as the desert sands!” Then her expression changed. “You did realize that we were in grave danger, didn’t you?”

“Of course I did,” I said, bewildered by her question. “Why wouldn’t I? Do I look like a fool?”

Seeing the wisdom of this response, she didn’t argue any further. Instead she put her head to one side and said, “I shouldn’t be so forward, I suppose, but I know it isn’t the custom of this country for men and women to kiss before they are at the very least betrothed.”

I reminded her that I wasn’t from this country.

“I know.”

She seemed to expect me to say something more, but I had no idea what it was exactly she expected. Eventually it grew awkward enough that she kissed me to break the tension. This diverted our conversation into a new and I think a more productive direction which was only interrupted when Bekrao cleared his throat. Detaching ourselves from one another, we looked at him, and he seemed exceedingly embarrassed.

“I only wanted to tell you that Ripāti says you should stay away from the water for a few nights. Something to do with doorways that I didn’t really understand. She seems disappointed by how tonight turned out, but on the other hand I’ll be meeting her father soon to discuss marriage. I think this is the end of their quest for the gray lords. As for me, my quest is at an end too.”

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I wish that Bekrao had been right! But it was not to be so. A man like Lord Phumalluo of Edazzo does not give up on his designs that easily, as I learned when, much to my own surprise, I was summoned to his house some days later. I had not heard from either Bekrao or Adarzamu (who was, if I have forgotten to mention it, Phumalluo’s nephew and Ripāti’s cousin), so I had assumed that both of their romances were prospering. When the messenger brought me the invitation, I asked him what it meant.

“That is beyond me,” he said. “Most things in my lord’s household are beyond me, and I am happy to keep it that way.”

It was an appealing philosophy. I myself would be much happier if I had never learned anything about Phumalluo’s affairs, but my stars dictated otherwise. That evening, at the time appointed in the message, I went to Phumalluo’s house and presented myself there.

“I am told that you are a fool,” was Phumalluo’s unpromising greeting.

“Slander,” I replied.

“We shall see. I have need of a fool. The world as we know it is coming to an end. I hoped that Ripāti would be able to forestall it, but she failed. All that I can do know is find out who it is that hates us before we die.”

“You mean the gray lords?” I asked, putting several pieces together in my mind.

“I don’t know anymore,” he said, his old anger appearing again for a moment. “But you are going to find out for me.”

I was perplexed, and said so. “I know far less than you do about these matters,” I added.

“Ripāti!” he called. “Come here and explain to this fool why you were born.”

This seemed an odd philosophical question. In the trivial sense, of course, we are all born out of the love of our father and mother. Then there are our duties in life that we are meant to fulfill (though I have been placed in circumstances that make me uncertain what exactly my current duties are), and then there are the unknowable designs of the Flame. I wondered which of these Ripāti meant to answer, but hoped it wasn’t the first, which would be awkward for everyone present.

“I don’t know where I was before I came into this world,” said Ripāti as she came down the stairs from the upper room where she had been. “I dream sometimes of another place, but I don’t know if I have ever been there or not. Wherever I came from, whoever I was, my father took me from there and gave me the body of an abandoned infant. He raised me as his daughter, and I am grateful for him. But he raised me for a task.”

“Yes,” Phumalluo said, nodding. “The tablets that I used to summon Ripāti also speak of the gray lords and their magic. Like calls to like. Ripāti was made to call to the gray lords.”

“When I reached the years of adulthood, I went out into the world to lure the gray lords. But my attempts misfired. I drew Bekrao to myself, as you well know, and the only hidden world I discovered was that of the dead.”

“But what does this have to do with the end of the world?” I hadn’t understood much of what Ripāti said, but I don’t think she had mentioned that.

“Before we came to rule Edazzo, it was ruled by the sea folk, whose kings had grown cruel and tyrannical, or so the legends say. Their world came to an end when my forefathers descended from the wild east to make themselves kings and lords throughout this land. Are we arrogant enough to think that our world will never come to an end? The Ikkësa of the far east, the pirates of the southern sea, our wild cousins in their high northern hills; we do not lack for enemies, do we? And the gray lords were here before us. It is they who tip the balance and give the city to one or another. They play games with us, but we aren’t allowed to know anything about them?”

This was starting to remind me of things I had heard lunatics say. Cautiously, not wanting to alarm a lunatic, after all, I asked him how he knew all this. Without saying anything, he looked to Ripāti.

“It is all written in the tablets,” she said.

My own theory was that these tablets had been written by some prankster and that the gray lords were a delusion, but I knew better than to contradict a lord of Edazzo. These were, after all, the men who led their retainers to war against whatever coastal city seemed the weakest target at the time, and even the noble Agamnu had shed more innocent blood than I liked to think about. “How can I help?” I asked. “All this seems well beyond my understanding or power.”

“But you are not from Edazzo,” said Ripāti. “You’re from very, very far away, aren’t you? The same is true of your friend Rosédan.”

“If you’re not willing to help us, she might be,” said Phumalluo.

I knew better than to argue with a lord of Edazzo, but I did anyway. “No,” I said, successfully hiding my anger. “But what do you want me to do?”

“If the tablets are right,” said Ripāti, a conditional that I found to be dubious, “you are outside the scope of the gray lords’ rule. You can escape their game, go to them, and ask them what they want with us. Why it amuses them to play with us like they do.”

“All well and good, but how do I do that?” I began to worry that Phumalluo would ask me to ingest some bizarre substance and to see visions.

“I built this mansion, you know. I tore down whatever building had been here simply so I could live at this specific point. Do you know why?”

“A pleasant view?”

“No. Beneath this mansion is a cave, and in this cave is a door built before even the sea folk came to Edazzo, or so I believe. On the other side of this door, the gray lords are waiting.”

“Do the tablets say that, too?”

“They do.”

“Very well,” I said. “If it will keep you from drawing Rosédan into this, I’ll do what you say.”

“Follow me,” Ripāti said, and led me through a door behind the stairs into a tunnel that sloped downwards. After a time, the smooth stone walls became rough rock, and Ripāti told me that this was the cave her father had spoken of. “It was a holy place once, but I am not sure to whom it was holy. Not its architects, but their servants perhaps.”

It is very dark beneath the earth, as any child knows, and by the light of Ripāti’s torch I couldn’t see much, but the tunnel seemed to be narrowing as we walked until it at last closed itself off, all but an aperture only large enough for a single person to crawl through.

“Is this the door?” I asked.

“No. The door is on the other side,” Ripāti told me. “Good luck, and the gods’ blessing.”

I pointed out that it was pitch-black beyond the aperture.

“That won’t matter.”

I pointed out that I wouldn’t be able to find or use the door if it was completely dark.

“You will.”

There seemed to be no arguing with her, so I sighed and crawled through the aperture into the chamber beyond. The light from Ripāti’s torch in the previous room was just strong enough to shine onto a glistening column, but I was without any other guidance. I stumbled forward into the dark, and my feet splashed in water.

I have never been the kind of person who gets dizzy or loses his balance easily, but at that moment I quite suddenly lost any conception of where I was. Left and right, forward and backward, up and down, all seemed the same to me. I tripped over my own feet and fell, plunging my face into ice-cold water. Gasping for breath, I pulled myself out, and much to my surprise discovered that I was no longer in the cave.

I was, in fact, on a sandy beach, the grit of the sand covering my hair and face. It was no longer dark, but the sun was shining brightly down from the apex of the sky. It was no longer chilly, but as warm as I had ever felt it in Edazzo. And I was not alone.

There was a bench built on a flat outcropping of rock a few yards from the ocean’s edge. I didn’t care about the bench, of course. I have seen many benches in my years, and very few of them have ever stirred any particular emotion in me. What I cared about was the woman sitting on the bench with her mouth agape as she stared back at me. She was, as my readers will no doubt have anticipated, Rosédan.

“He lied!” I said, then reconsidered. These were, perhaps, not the ideal opening words. “I mean, what are you doing here?” Perhaps these were not ideal either. “I mean, I’m glad to see you, but why are you here? Phumalluo sent me through the gate on the promise that he wouldn’t send you.”

“Did he say that?” She hopped down from the bench to approach me. “He did lie, then. Poor Kësil, going off to save me from doing what I had already done! Now we’re in danger together.”

“But where are we? I have, on a previous occasion some years ago, passed through a door to another place and time, but that was nothing like this.”

“It was a new experience for me too,” she said, and squeezed my hand, which I hope comforted her. It certainly comforted me. “Phumalluo and Ripāti told me that there was a chance I would learn something about the door that brought me to Edazzo from my home, but the door I passed through was like a window in the open air. This was entirely different, wasn’t it?”

“My door was like yours. But there is one thing it had in common with this door,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“Once through, there is no obvious return.”

This was a sobering thought for both of us, but Rosédan took it in good humor, I think. “Very well,” she said. “At least I’m not alone anymore. We’ll go along the coast until we meet someone who can tell us where we are. Though I hope there isn’t any difficulty with languages.”

“There won’t be,” I assured her.

But as we walked along, the water on one side of us and the land on the other, it became steadily clear that we were not in the world that we had known. A mist hung over the seaward horizon that seemed almost orange in hue, but the sun was directly above us and did not move. As for the land, it was shadowed by a thick forest whose trees seemed to shift their position every time I looked away and then back. Doubting my eyes despite my usually excellent vision, I asked Rosédan if she had noticed these things, and she told me she had.

“It frightens me,” she said. “Something is wrong here. It feels like a dream that’s about to turn into a nightmare. Don’t you agree?”

I wasn’t entirely sure what she meant, but I agreed anyway. It is always good to be agreeable, I have frequently advised my friends.

After some time I saw a bench up ahead and pointed it out to her. “It looks like the one you were sitting on,” I said.

“By Heaven, it is the one I was sitting on!”

“Are you sure? Two benches can look as similar as two eggs, they say.”

She gave me a baffled look. “Who says that? Never mind! We’re going in circles!”

“I don’t see how we could possibly be going in circles. If this were a small island, perhaps, but the coast goes on straight as far as my eyes can see. It must be another bench,”

She ran ahead and pointed out markings she had made in the sand near the bench, so I was forced to admit that it was the same. “Maybe we should try going into the forest,” I suggested. This simple suggestion was met with such a fierce stare that I retracted it.

“The forest is not a good place,” she said after a moment of silence in which I contemplated her stare. “I went a little way into it when I first arrived, but there are shadows there that remind me of dark things I saw in my youth. There are beasts in there, I think.”

“Then what can we do? I suppose we can keep going and see if we run into this same bench again. Can you swim?”

“Not a bit. Anyway, what’s out there to swim to?”

So we walked on. It was tiring under the hot sun with nothing to drink. Rather, it should have been tiring, but for some reason it wasn’t. I wondered if we were dead, and this was some hell we had been condemned to for our sins against the Flame. Then it occurred to me that it would be a very strange fashion of hell that put me in Rosédan’s company for countless ages, which ruled out that theory.

For the third time we came across the bench, and we sighed as one. But there was something strange about it this time: from a distance, it almost appeared as if someone was seated on it. And as we got closer, it was obvious that there was someone sitting on the bench, a thin, almost skeletal figure wrapped in a cloth like a burial shroud.

“You won’t get very far that way,” he said to us. There was something familiar about his voice that I couldn’t place at that moment.

“What is this place?” Rosédan asked sensibly.

I added my own sensible question. “Who are you?”

“This place is nothing,” he replied with a wave of his skeletal hand. “It shouldn’t have ever been. A momentary bubble on the surface of a river, soon to pass away. As for who I am, do you not recognize me, either of you? It was not long ago that we met, at least not by your reckoning.”

I still had no idea what he meant, but Rosédan gasped and said, “You’re one of the dead kings!”

There was a certain similarity between his voice and that of the beings that had been seated on thrones in that cave, though I wasn’t entirely persuaded. Maybe I just didn’t want to draw the obvious conclusion from our meeting the king of the dead in this place.

“I am.”

“And you’re one of the gray lords, aren’t you?” I asked, my wits catching up to me at last. “Phumalluo sent us to find you.”

“He is growing tiresome.”

“But you said you weren’t the gray lords,” Rosédan protested.

“Why did you expect the dead to be any more truthful than the living? We have no wish to reveal ourselves to the light, and especially not to that abomination of light and dark, of living and dead, that Phumalluo has created.”

“Is it true what he says about you?” I asked. “Are you the true rulers of Edazzo?”

“What do you think?”

“A few hours ago I would have said that Phumalluo is not entirely sane. Now I wonder if I am entirely sane. All this around me would be easily explained as a dream, or the delusion of a fool or a lunatic.”

“You are not a lunatic,” said Rosédan, slipping her hand into mine again.

“Phumalluo stumbled across wisdom for which he was not ready, and it broke his mind. But he was granted this much, at least. He saw us who stand half in this world and half outside it.”

“Do you rule Edazzo like he said you do?”

“We protect ourselves, nothing more. Once, so many years ago that it seems a long time even to us, we hated our enemies the Parako with a very great hatred, and would gladly have put the yoke on their necks. But our people are dead now, or enslaved, or call themselves by the names of our enemies. And with the passing years our power over your world wanes. Once, perhaps, we could have shown ourselves in dreams and drawn the lots that we chose, but no more. Now we only hide and wait for the end of our imprisonment.”

“You’ve lied to us before,” I remarked, spotting the flaw in all this rhetoric with my usual acuity. “Why should we believe you now?”

“Because it won’t make the slightest bit of difference whether you believe us or not. Go back to your lord and tell him whatever you want. Leave us to pass away. The gate is behind you.”

I looked and saw that a shadow had been cast on the shore by no visible object in a shape that vaguely resembled the cave mouth through which I had come here.

“We fled you when you came to burn our homes, but we were not the builders of the doorway. Something went wrong, and we were trapped halfway between worlds. That is all that matters, and soon even that won’t matter anymore.” There was a subtle change in the shadow, accompanied by a darkening of the sky above us. “Ah!” the skeletal figure cried, in a deeper voice than he had used before. “What is she doing? But it’s too late. These centuries have passed like blinks of an eye. She will send us to join our brothers and our sisters, our fathers and our mothers, among the dead.”

Rosédan squeezed my hand until I felt her pulse beat against mine. I can almost feel it now. I can almost see her face in front of me. Maybe if I pray to the Flame, she will appear to me.

It was not so. But the Flame is good.

She told me to go through the door and to see what Ripāti was doing. Fool that I am, I listened to her. She assured me that with her magic she would be safe. Fool that I am, I believed her. I kissed her and stepped into the shadow. Again I lost my balance, the sky seemed to switch places with the sea, and I found myself stumbling out of the tunnel into the chamber where Ripāti had left me.

Ripāti was still there, but she was drawing on the wall of the cave. I wasn’t sure what she could be drawing with until I approached her and saw, in the light of the torch, that she was bleeding from a cut on her forehead. “I finally remembered,” she told me. At least, I assume she was talking to me even though she didn’t turn away from the wall. For all I know she had been holding a conversation with herself for the past hour. “Phumalluo wanted to dig up one of our servants to advise him, but he dug too deep and brought back me instead. This foolishness has gone on long enough. We did not intend for our gateways to remain to be used by servants and those who are less than servants. Our time is past. The time of the Rela is past.”

The thing that Ripāti was drawing on the wall was some immensely complicated diagram that I can only presume had some magical function. It should have been Rosédan who came back, not I. She would have known what to do, and if not, she would at least have been safe from what was about to happen.

Ripāti considered her work for a moment, muttering under her breath, then took more blood from her forehead and smeared a crooked line across the diagram from top to bottom. The earth shook under our feet. She thrust the torch into my hands and pointed to the exit. “Go! It’s too dangerous for you here, little intruder.”

“I’m not going to leave Rosédan!” I protested. “I’m going to stay here until I know she’s safe.”

“It’s far too late for that,” she said. “Or are you so much of a fool that you intend to stand proudly in the middle of a gateway as it dies all around you?”

“I am.”

She suddenly smiled at me in a way that was, I think, rather sad. “Very well. But Rosédan will want you to live.” She held out her hands to me and cried out in a language that my Bird utterly refused to translate (I think I know why now, but at the time I was perplexed). “There. I have set her free. You will find her on the docks, or somewhere near the shore. The boundary between earth and water is a place of great power, you see.”

“But what about you?”

“This is my home. I will not leave it again, no matter what happens to this flesh Phumalluo gave me.”

“What about Bekrao?”

She flinched at this pertinent reminder of mine, or at least I like to think that she did, for Bekrao’s sake if nothing else. “I was never meant to be Bekrao’s wife, or even his lover. My time is past. And so will yours be if you stay here any longer.”

The cave shook again in confirmation of her words. I fled back through the tunnel and up the stairs to Phumalluo’s hall, where I found Phumalluo himself pacing back and forth. “What’s happening?” he demanded of me. “What did you find?”

“I have to go to Rosédan,” I told him.

He seized my arm with an unnecessarily firm grip. “You’re not going anywhere until you tell me what happened down there.”

“Ripāti remembered who she was, and she destroyed the gateway. I’ll tell you what we learned about the gray lords once I’ve found Rosédan. Ripāti sent her out to the docks. Now let me go!” I startled myself with the force of these last words. Phumalluo seemed startled too; he let go of me and I ran out.

I have no desire to write this, but I must. I did not find Rosédan, not anywhere on the docks or around them. I have searched the coastline as far as I dare, but neither I nor my friends have found any sign of her. I had expected the dead to be truthful, and I had been deceived.

The portion of the cave where the gateway had stood was buried in the earth, and Ripāti was as absent as Rosédan. Phumalluo listened to my account of what I had seen and heard, then dismissed me, telling me never to come into his presence again.

As for Bekrao, he was stricken by my news of Ripāti, as well he might be. For some time he kept to himself, then he intimated one day that he wanted to talk with me. We went down to the coast, with me hoping against all evidence that I would see Ripāti there at last. I didn’t see her, of course, only a rather large elderly woman doing her washing.

I made some comment expressing my sympathy, and Bekrao shook his head. “It’s all right,” he told me. “I’ll find her. I know I will. I’ve been looking for her all my life, and I won’t stop now.” I am not ashamed to say that these words inspired me as well. “And Kësil, you’ll find Rosédan too.”

May he prove right on both counts. The sun was rising in the east, its light shining on the water, which may be part of the reason that I felt so optimistic at the time. I am not so sure of myself now. I don’t know how much longer I will be staying in Edazzo. Ripāti mentioned the name “Rela,” a name I have never heard before in this part of the world or any other, but maybe if I discover its meaning I will discover where Rosédan has gone. I end this account with the simple hope that someday I may show it to Rosédan. Not that she’ll be able to read it, written in the script and language of my home as it is, but my readers will understand what I mean. For now I put down my pen.