Eiraena took a strong interest in Karux.  He soon learned he couldn't go anywhere, not even the latrine, without seeing her trailing behind him.

One late autumn evening after the men had returned from the mountain pastures, Arrain sat next to Karux at the table for the evening meal.  He cast a glance over his shoulder at Eiraena who stood some distance away staring at Karux.  "Dressela has a lot of kind things to say about you, Karux."

"Oh?" he asked looking up and catching her eye.  He smiled and waved at her but she stared back, unresponsive.

"Yes she appreciates the kindness you've shown Eiraena and thinks all the time and attention you've given her has helped her learn to be around other people."  Arrain paused with his spoon halfway to his mouth and grinned.  "Plus she thinks it's cute to see you two together."

Karux groaned.  "I wish my so-called friends didn't think it so cute.  Most of them seem to think I've been doing something shameful with her."

Arrain frowned.  "Yes, I've talked to some of their parents about that.  Hopefully that sort of talk will cease.  All the same, you need to be careful where you are seen with her."

"That's just it.  I don't invite her along, yet she follows me around everywhere I go like some sort of faithful lamb."

"Do you want me to speak to her parents, make her stop pestering you?" Arrain asked.

Karux sighed.  He knew her attention had nothing to do with romance.  His own patterns, what he'd come to call schemas, had changed since the day he'd spent staring into the smoke.  How could he tell his father that Eiraena seemed to know it and, since he now knew the names of the elements of creation, she followed him around to see what he would do?  "No," he shrugged, "I don't want to upset her.  Hopefully she'll lose interest and wander off."

"Well, when you come south with us for the fall grazing, I guess you'll lose her then."  Arrain shoved some food in his mouth.

"I'm not going."

"Why?"

"I gave my animals to Macander."

"You did what?" Arrain's raised voice turned everyone's heads.

"I thought about giving them to Bazma, but he has his hands full with Garick's herd."

Arrain pushed his trencher away, signaling a long stern talk to come.  "What would ever possess you to do that?"

"They're all going to be dead by spring anyway."

 Arrain's face stiffened and he squinted at Karux suspiciously.

"Why would you say that?"

"I've seen it."

Arrain returned to his food, picking at it.  "The visions have returned while we were gone, haven't they?"

Karux paused as he considered how best to answer him.  Arrain looked up quizzically in Karux's silence.  "Yes and no," Karux finally said.

"What do you mean 'yes and no'?"

"I mean I can see things that haven't happened yet, if I look for them, but they do not haunt me like they used to."

"I'm not sure I understand."

Karux held up his spoon fashioned from horn and stared at it as he talked.  "I used to think that time was like a stream whose destination was certain.  I know now that time sometimes jumps out of its banks and like a stream can even be diverted."

"So you are saying that the future is uncertain?"

Karux lay his spoon down on the table.  It had become a long coiled spiraling shape.  "Certain things can be changed."

As the frowning Arrain reached for the spoon, Bazma came running up to the tables calling frantically.  "Where is Naipho?"

Karux, Arrain and all those nearest froze.  Karux could tell by his voice that something terrible had happened.

"What is it?"  Arrain asked.  "What's happened?"

"It's Theris, he was hurt during practice."

"Where is he?"

"In his house."

Arrain sprinted away and Karux followed.

"Hey!" Bazma called out.  "Where's Naipho?"

"Uh, try the smoke house," Arrain called back.

They found Theris lying on his bed with a bloody rag pressed to his side.

"What happened?" Arrain demanded as he entered.

"He was practicing with those accursed spears," Aunt Sairu said.

Arrain lifted up the cloth.  The ragged wound looked huge.

"It went all the way through," Theris gasped.

"You haven't been able to stop the bleeding?" Arrain asked Sairu.  She shook her head.  "Karux, you keep the pressure on the bandage.  Sairu, go get Mahd Mela, she may have something to stop the bleeding.  I'll go get some water to put on the fire.  We'll need to get it boiling right away."  He rushed out with a bucket, headed for the brook.

Karux glanced over his shoulder to make sure everyone was gone.  "I think I can fix this," he said. 

"What do you mean fix it?" Theris asked suspiciously.

Karux took the reformed stone out from beneath his tunic where it hung and placed it on the bloodstained cloth.  He stared at it, trying to shift his perceptions to the world of shapes and patterns.  "I mean I think I can heal your wound."

"Heal it?  How is that possible?"

"Ever since the day Eiraena made that fire, I've been able to see things differently and in seeing them, change them."

"As you changed Somek?  You did more than give him a bloody nose that day.  He's not the same person he was.  Granted, he's not as unpleasant, but he's not himself anymore."  Theris' whole body tensed.  His back arching as he gasped in pain.  "I don't want you to do that to me."

"Don't worry," Karux stared at the stone until the elemental shapes formed in his vision.  "I won't go anywhere near your head."

"You're sure you know what you're doing?"

"Absolutely.  I've been practicing on the goats."

"Goats!  Tell me you've done people."

"Hey!  Most of them survived.  Now shut up and let me concentrate."

"Oh, no.  Oh no."  Theris' breath came in short pants.

Karux shifted his vision to Theris' side and saw an amazingly complex array of shapes in tightly coiled schemas.  "You won't believe how complex the human body is," he muttered.

"Don't tell me that," Theris groaned.

He focused on the wound and he could see a plane of destruction cutting through the patterns.  He could even tell the shape of the spearhead just by the damage it caused.  "Don't worry.  It's just a matter of lining up and connecting the broken pieces."

Theris let out a wordless groan as Karux began calling the names of the elements, the vibrations of his voice resonating in the realm of schemas.  He focused on those shapes associated with blood.  He had to clear out a mess of random elements, but he was careful not to unmake anything that looked like a connected pattern.  It took a great deal of concentration and every time he thought he'd gotten all the threads of one pattern connected, he'd find a stray bit hanging loose. 

"How is he doing?" Arrain asked as he came in with a pail of water and set it over the fire which he stoked up. 

"Sh!  Don't disturb me," Karux replied.

"What?  Why?"

"I'm concentrating."  Karux finished with all the patterns he'd thought of as related to blood and began to work on the rest. 

Karux heard loud voices outside, then the door burst open.

"He's lost a lot of blood," Naipho warned.

"How long ago did this happen?" Mahd Mela asked.  "Never mind.  Take me to him.  Where is he?"

"Hang in there, baby.  I brought help," Aunt Sairu cried, dashing over to Theris and cradling his head in her lap.  Theris and Arrain tried to shush them up and pointed to Karux.

"What is he doing?" Mahd Mela demanded.

"I think he's trying to heal Theris." Arrain said.

"Heal him?  And just how does he think he's going to do that?  Move aside!"

"No!  Don't!" Theris called out.  "I can feel something happening.

"What?  Are we supposed to just stand here and let him bleed to death?" Mahd Mela asked.

"The bleeding's stopped," Karux said.

"Move aside, I'll be the judge of that."

"I'm almost done.  Give me a moment more to knit up the flesh."

"Look, if there's any suturing to be done, I'd best handle it."

"One minute more."  Once he got past the muscles, the skin proved easier to repair.  He quickly learned its pattern and rapidly reconnected the broken schemas.  "Done!"  He stood up, was struck by a wave of dizziness, took a backwards step and sat down hard on the floor.

Mahd Mela pulled back Theris' rent tunic and lifted the blood-soaked bandage while Naipho looked over her shoulder.  Only a pink strip of fresh new skin betrayed where the wound had been.

"How?"  Mahd Mela shouted.  "How is this possible?"

"What?  What?" Theris tried to sit up to see his own abdomen while his mother clung to him with a shocked expression.

Naipho's stared at Karux, his face pale.  "You did this?"

Karux started to rub his face, but noticed his hand covered in blood.

His father looked from Theris to him, wonder and horror on his face.  "He did."

-=====|==

The city of Nur was huge.  Just as a dozen koria could have been set inside the river market towns, a dozen of those could have been lost in the sea of buildings comprising Nur.  Amantis paused at the northeastern entrance and smiled at the maze of streets running through it.  Someday, it would all be his.

The difference in attitudes between the Pelahin tribesmen and the people of Nur still managed to surprise Amantis.  Any visitor to their korion would be questioned by the elders, eager to hear tales of the outside world.  Depending on how interesting the visitor was, he would find himself invited to stay with one or the other families while staying among them.  When Amantis and his damp bride arrived, no one even seemed to notice.  When he asked around about a place to stay, a disinterested merchant pointed them in the direction of an old widow, who sometimes took in borders.

They stopped before a large old house. Most of its plaster had fallen from the clay bricks and its roof seemed to struggle to stand upright.  An old woman swept the area before the door. "Pardon me, bimah," Amantis began, "is this the house of the late merchant Martor?"

"Yes.  He was my husband.  You may call me Bimah Aedra, most folks do."

"My new bride and I have only today come to this city and we were told you could provide us with a room."

The old woman looked Amantis up and down, took in his two donkeys, and Charissa's hunched and bedraggled form.  "What's wrong with her?"

Amantis glanced back at her then gave the old woman a shrug.  "She's pregnant."

Mahd Aedra's face lit up.  "Oh, the High Lord's blessed you with a child already!  Congratulations!"  She paused, looking at Charissa expectantly, but Charissa's only response was a quiet snuffling.  She gave Amantis a knowing look.  "It's the weepies, a common affliction among pregnant women.  I myself spent the first twelve years of married life crying."  She stroked back Charissa's hair, hooking it behind one ear.

Amantis tried not to groan at the thought of twelve years of sobbing.

"I sometimes think that was the reason Dra Martor spent so much time at sea.  Still, he never failed to come home and leave me with yet another child.  We'll get you settled in right enough."  She turned back to Amantis.  "So what do you have in trade?"

"Trade?" Amantis echoed, startled.  He couldn't believe she would be so miserly, but then maybe things were done differently in Nur.  "Only what you see here," he gestured at the donkeys, hoping to hide his surprise.

Bimah, or Granny, Aedra poked through the goods piled on the second donkey.  "These skins aren't bad," she said after a few moments of rooting around.  "I should ask for five in exchange for a fortnight's stay, but for the sake of your pregnant wife, I'll only ask for two."

Amantis swallowed.  He hadn't realized how much it cost to live in a big town."

"Very well, it's agreed."

Mahd Aedra led them to a quaint little room that she said had once belonged to her eldest son.  She went on to give them the story of her whole life, her twelve children and all their occupations, marriages and grandchildren.

Amantis heaved a sigh of relief when she finally left them in peace.  But after a few minutes alone in the quiet room with Charissa, who just sat in a chair in the corner like a wilted plant, he decided he had to get out, and so he left in search of a tavern.  On the way a glint of light in the muddy street caught his eye and he picked up a colorful murex shell button.

Amantis found a tavern near the river run by a man named Destrin.  The building was a small square box with short wide windows whose shutters folded down into counters.  The building being too small to hold the customers, they were forced to sit at the counter and be served through the windows or take up one of the handful of tables in the short-walled courtyard.

"Greetings stranger."  Destrin set a drinking bowl on the counter as Amantis entered the courtyard.  "What'll you have?"

"I would have a bowl of your best beer, that is if I had anything to trade."  Amantis put the shell button down on the counter.  "How much would this get me?"

Destrin examined the button, poking his bottom lip out thoughtfully.  "It's a good size, well made, very pretty shell...not much really."  He put it on the counter and slid it to Amantis.  "Sorry."

Amantis held it up to the few scattered patrons.  "Anyone need a button?"

An old man held up his hand.  "Give us a look."  Amantis handed it over.  "Very fancy," the old man said, holding it up to the light.  "Might get mistaken for a wealthy merchant with that."  Everyone in the tavern laughed.

"You wouldn't want that, Gedis.  Then everyone would come round expecting you to pay your debts."  That brought even more laughter.

"I'll trade you for it," offered a fat man smoking a pipe next to Gedis, looked at the button over his shoulder.  "I'll give you..." he rummaged around in his sash and pulled out a fragment of cloth with half a palm of dried leaves in it.  "...a bit of pipe weed."

Amantis shrugged.  "Why not?"

Gedis made the swap, giving the fat man the button and passing the cloth to Amantis.  Amantis took the cloth and looked at the dried leaves, then held it up, turning to the other customers.  "Anyone willing to trade for some pipe weed?"

A gray bearded fisherman with a face like leather sitting among a group of men who all might have been his brothers, spoke up.  "What kind is it?"

Amantis looked to the fat man who called out across the courtyard, "Western shore."

"Here."  The fisherman held up a kerma, a token representing one fish with his mark on the backside.

Amantis had learned such tokens were practically accepted anywhere, as long as the mark on the back was recognized.  He held the cloth out to the fisherman who held up a token.  "How about two?" he suggested with a smile. 

The fisherman thought about it.  "Why not?  Fish are plentiful and so not worth that much."

Amantis set the cloth on the table.  "That may be true now, but come next year, those fish will be worth a lot.  You might even build a bigger house."

"Really?"  The fisherman brightened as he handed the two tokens to Amantis.  "How do you know?"

Amantis smiled, patted a leather pouch hanging from his belt and walked back to the counter.  "How about a meal with that drink?"

Destrin smiled and shook his head in apparent admiration.  "I think I can give you a couple skewers of meat.  So tell me, stranger, what's your name and where are you from?"

"My name is Amantis.  I was actually born near here, but I was tragically orphaned as a child," he lied.  "I was sent north to live with my aunt in a goat-herd korion in the shadow of the sacred mountain."

"That's a shame," Destrin commiserated.  He set out a bowl of beer and a small trencher of roasted meat onions and peppers on skewers.

Amantis wasn't sure if he was referring to the orphaning or the being sent to live with the goat-herders.  He rather leaned toward the latter as the greater tragedy.  "One good thing did come of it all.  The fathers of the korion had a tradition of taking their young sons into the wilderness surrounding the sacred mountain and trying to lose them.  It was on one such expedition that I found this."  Amantis pulled the black pouch from his belt and flopped it on the counter.

"What?  The bag?"

"No," Amantis laughed.  "Inside the bag.  It's a stone from the sacred mountain.  A special stone.  A seeing stone."

"Really?"  Destrin reached for the bag.  "Let's see."

"No!" Amantis snatched the bag back.  "It mustn't be exposed to the light."

"Why?"

"Then it won't be a seeing stone."

"So what is a seeing stone?  What does it do?"

"It shows me things, secret and hidden things."

"Anything?"

"Of course."

"Can it tell you where my wife lost her ring?  She's been quite upset, for days now."

Amantis shrugged and started to look into the bag, then paused.  "What'll you give me for the answer?"

Destrin laughed.  "I see you are learning to bargain like a native.  If you can tell me where the ring is, your food and drink are free."

Amantis smiled, put his head to the neck of the bag and carefully opened it so his face blocked any light from falling inside.  "I see her removing a brass ring from her left hand.  She is making bread and moves a pan, knocking it to the floor."  Amantis closed the pouch and looked up.  "It rolls in among some bags of flour."

"We searched the store room already.  It wasn't in there."

Amantis looked in his bag again.  "I see you searching.  You are moving some boxes and bags of flower.  I see flour spilling, covering the ring.  You missed it and covered it back up with the bag of flour."

Destrin shrugged.  "I guess it doesn't hurt to look again."  He left and in a few minutes returned with the ring in his hand.  "By the mountain you were right!  I don't believe it."

Amantis raised his bowl in a toast.

"That thing really works!"

"Does that mean the thing you said about the fish will happen?" the fisherman asked.

"Absolutely," Amantis replied.

"I may have to pickle some of my extra catch."

"I would store up grain if I were you."

"Why?"

"Because there will be a severe drought next year.  Grain of all types will be hard to come by.  Even the demand for fish will increase."

The others gathered around asking questions ranging from the location of buried treasure to the identities of wives' secret lovers and Amantis bargained for a variety of trinkets.  Finally he got the question he had been waiting for all night.

"Do you have a job?"

Amantis turned to address the middle-aged man who had asked.  He wore a fine linen tunic and a rich blue-dyed robe.  As a merchant, he was obviously doing well.  "Not currently," Amantis replied.  "Do you have a position available?"

"As a matter of fact, I do.  I trade in many goods, but mostly grains and I could use a clever lad who is good with people."

"I hope you aren't making any long-term supply contracts right now."

"If what you say is true, I won't be."  He smiled.  "Are you interested?"

Everything was happening just like the stone had shown him.  In a little over a year's time he would be the wealthiest and most powerful man in the city, and soon after that, he would own virtually all the land between the two rivers.

Amantis smiled.  "Absolutely."

-=====|==

The attack came in winter.  Karux and Arrain woke to the sound of drwg howling and the cry of goats in distress.  Arrain leaped for his spear and, with unusual caution, peered carefully from his door before stepping outside.  A man's blood curdling scream sounded out of the darkness and Arrain dropped to a crouch in the doorway.  "Put on your boots and grab your spear."

Karux slipped into his boots, and threw on a heavy cloak.  "What is it?  He grabbed his spear and stepped up to his father, peering over his shoulder into a starless night sky."

"I don't know yet."  Arrain took a cautious step outside.  They heard more animal squealing and the snarl of wolves.  "Normal wolves don't do this.  This isn't right."  He looked back at Karux.  "Let's get to Naipho's house."

They scurried across the commons, bent low, trying not to be seen.  Karux kept glancing back over each shoulder, expecting the rapid pad of wolf feet and the snarl of a beast leaping at his back.  They had just made it to Naipho's door when they heard a man shouting near the animal pens.  Arrain paused, looking back as the shout climbed to a high-pitched scream ending in a choked gurgling.  He thrust the door open, stepped inside, pulled Karux in after him and slammed the door shut.

Naipho stood half-dressed, Sairu holding his tunic over his head.  Theris, nearby, held a pair of spears.  They all turned questioning glances on Arrain.  "Wolves?" Naipho asked.

"Yes, and possibly worse."

"Angorym?"

"I fear so.  No telling how many."

"Heaven help us if there be more than one."

"I think it would be best if we got the women and children out of here."

"The stoma?"

Arrain hesitated.  "I think not.  They'd be trapped in there and it is not so far the drwg would fail to sniff them out.  No, they should go south, to one of the other koria."

"Very well."

Arrain addressed Karux, Theris and Macander.  "Take Sairu and the children with you.  Take the track around behind the midden pit.  Perhaps it will mask your scent.  At any rate it will take you away from the animal pens and the wolves.  When you meet up to the southern trail, head straight for the nearest korion and warn them.

"You're coming too, aren't you?" Karux asked.

"Yes, but we have to first rouse the others.  I want you all to leave now.  Don't stop and don't look back." 

"Are you ready?" Naipho asked Sairu.  She nodded solemnly.

They left the house together.  The men stopped at the next house and opened the door calling softly to those inside.  Karux, walking as slowly as he could, looked back with a terrible sense of foreboding.  Naipho, already fading behind the curtain of falling snow waved him on angrily.  Anzell stepped out of the house, spear in hand and they ushered out Bazma and his family.

Wolf howls suddenly rang out and dark shapes loped toward them though the snow.  "Run!" Arrain shouted.  Bazma's mother and his sisters screamed.  Everyone ran except the men, who stood between them and the wolves, spears lowered.  Behind the wolves a dozen large shapes, each larger than a man, lurched forward.  Karux gripped his spear tightly.  He took a step toward the men and halted.  Behind him Bazma's sisters squealed as they ran toward the midden pile.  He knew they could never survive on their own. 

Arrain's head snapped around, his eyes searching as if for a new threat.  His gaze fell upon Karux and, with a faint smile, gave him a slight nod before turning back to the monstrous silhouettes stumping toward them.

Karux turned away from the attack and raced after the girls.  As they neared the midden pile, a shape appeared in the shadows, low to the ground.  Karux raised his spear and started to charge before noticing Eiraena staring up at the falling snow.  He slid to a stop and she looked at him as if she'd been expecting him all along.  Behind him wolves snarled and men screamed.  He took her by the wrist and they ran.