Brightness Reef

An element of relief was more personal, if ungallant. My choice in a future mate might go beyond Jenin, Lena, or some surly cousin of Rety’s.

Something still nagged at Dwer, however, making him reluctant to put down the bow. He was counting wallows — the depressions made by donkeys as they lay — and realized there were just too many. Or rather, there were two different kinds of wallow. Nearer the fire they were smaller, closer…

No. It can’t be.

Anywhere else, scent would have hit him long before this. Now a sharp, familiar pungency smacked Dwer in his sinuses. He bent to pluck a clump of stringy fur, still coated from when the owner rolled, in ash after an unpleasantly wet river crossing.

Glossy strands from an urrish mane.

It had been generations since the last war. Regardless, instinctive fear surged in Dwer’s chest — a heart-pounding wave of angst.

An urrish caravan in these parts could not be up to anything good.

Here in the wilderness, far from the restraint of sages and the Commons, with the Six possibly already extinct back home, all the old rules were clearly moot. As in days before the Great Peace,. Dwer knew how dangerous these beings would be to have as enemies.

Silent as a ghost, he crept away, then crossed the river in a zigzag dash, leaping behind a boulder, then swiveling to cover the opposite bank while Mudfoot came splashing behind, clearly as eager to get out of there as he was.

Dwer kept wary watch for a whole midura, till long after his pounding pulse finally settled.

At last, when it seemed safe, he slung his bow and set off downstream, ru

Asx

Can you see the smoke, oh my rings? Spiraling from a fresh cavity in Jijo’s ruptured soil? Two Umoons cast wan beams through that sooty pall, piercing a crater wherein twisty metal shapes flicker and burn.

Distracting thoughts rise from our second torus-of-cognition.

What is that you say, my ring? That this is a very large amount of dross? Dross that will not degrade back to nature on its own?

Indeed it is. Shall we hope that the aliens themselves will clean up the mess? It would take a hundred donkey-caravans to haul so much hard waste down to the sea.

Another ring suggests a stream be diverted, to form a lake. A transplanted mulc-spider might dissolve the sinful wreckage over the course of centuries.

By mass vote, we send these thoughts to waxy storage for later reflection. For now, let us watch events flow in real time.

A roiling mob of onlookers teems the slopes overlooking this savaged vale, held in check by stu

Perhaps even the commanders of those dark battalions don’t yet know for sure.

Meanwhile, closer to the heat, Ur-Jah and Lester Cambel supervise teams of brave urs, men, hoon, and gray qheuens, •who descend into the pit armed with ropes and tools of Buyur steel.

Ro-ke

Vubben urges that Ro-ke

From Ro-ke

The male sky-human, Ra

Ling, the other sky-human, appears in shock, leaning against young Lark as he pokes his foot through debris at the crater’s rim. He bends to lift a smoldering plank, sniffing suspiciously. We perceive his head rock back, exclaiming surprise.

Ling draws away, demanding an explanation. Through our rewq, we perceive Lark’s reluctance as he shows her the smoky plank, a strip of burned wood from a Jijoan box or crate.

Ling drops her hand from his arm. She spins about, hurrying toward Ra

Much closer to this stack of rings, Ro-ke

Why did he earlier claim the right and power to command the Holy Egg, since it is now clear that the sacred stone violently rejects him and his kind?

Furthermore, why did he seek to sow dissension among the Six with his baseless calumny about the human sept? His groundless lie, claiming that our Earthling brethren are not descendants of si

“You Rothen may or may not be the high patrons of humanity,” the spokesman contends. “But that takes nothing from our ancestors who came here on the Tabernacle. Not from their crime, or their hope, when they set us on the Path of Redemption.”

There is anger in the voice of the human intercessor. But we/i also descry thick brushstrokes of theater. An effort to smother the fire of disharmony that Ro-ke

Now our second cognition-torus vents yet another thought-hypothesis.

What is it, my ring? You suggest disharmony was Ro-ke

Our fourth ring rebuts — what purpose might such a bizarre plot serve? To have Five gang up on One? To cause vendetta against the very sept these Rothen claim as beloved clients?

Store and wick this weird postulate, oh my rings. Argue it later. For now the Rothen prepares to respond. Drawing himself up, he surveys the crowd with an expression that seems awesome both to humans and to those who know them — to rewq-wearers and those without.

There is kindness in his expressive gaze. Overstrained patience and love.

“Dear, misguided children. This explosive manifestation was not rejection by Jijo, or the Egg. Rather, some malfunction of the mighty forces contained in our station must have released—”

Abruptly, he stops as Ra

Ro-ke

“So, now the (dire) truth is known. Learned. Verified!

“No accident, this (slaying) explosion.

“No (unlikely) malfunction — nor any rejection by your (overly-vaunted) Egg.

“Now it is known. Verified. That this was (foul, unprovoked) murder!

“Murder by deceit, by subterfuge.

“By use of subterranean explosives. By sneak attack.

“By you!”

He points, stabbing with a long, graceful finger. The crowd reels back from Ro-ke

At once it is clear what the zealots have done. Secretly, taking advantage of natural caverns lacing these hills, they must have laboriously burrowed deep beneath the station to lay chests of eruptive powder — crude but plentiful — which then awaited a signal, the right symbolic moment, to burst forth flame and destruction.