He sat down, and the two angels, their forms clearer in the moonlight than he had ever seen them before, sat with him. Balthamos took to the air. Is there any boats we could sort of hire? Now for the armory. Both ideas were absurdly wrong for the brighteyed amiability that stood beside her. She settled for, friend. He clambered steadily toward it. The going was loose and he was heavy, and more than once the scree shifted under his feet and carried him down again in a scramble of dust and gravel. But as soon as he slid down, he began to move up once more, relentlessly, patiently, until he reached the rock itself, where the footing was firmer. Between the edge of the burned forest and the mountains, a rocky slope of heavy boulders and scree was littered with. He scored a line with a mighty claw along a strut less damaged than most, and feeling a flimsiness in the quality of the metal, turned away at once and scanned the mountain wall again. None of them expected that. And there are wild creatures there in plenty. Our lives will be different for a while. If we had stayed there, we would have starved. Be prepared for strangeness and for new ways, my bears. And now the time had come to use them. Demented and powerless, the aged being could only weep and mumble in fear and pain and misery, and he shrank away from what seemed like yet another threat. The singing faltered, and some of the bearers looked around in doubt and fear. When do you next bring her food? She looked into the darkness. As far as she could see into that endless silence, more of these ghosts were coming, thousands upon thousands, like refugees returning to their homeland. I never spoke to anyone about it before. Lanselius, he gave me like a kind of a test. Her eyes widened, and she sat down slowly on the bed. She had to watch as he stepped into the village, looking to the left and right, stopping every so often to listen, moving from house to house. You must know that. He liked to surprise her, but she usually managed to see him before he reached her, and there was his shadowy form, flowing along beside the riverbank. The sand they stood on was soft, and the slope of the dune nearby was inviting. Coulter had to gasp. The air rang with the pounding of mighty hammers and the clangorous screech of iron on stone. He had set the tin cup on the stones at the edge of the fire to heat some water, and now he trickled some powdered coffee into it, stirring it with a stick, and wrapped his hand in a handkerchief before picking it up to drink. When you go out of here, all the particles that make you up will loosen and float apart, just like your daemons did. And the dead man, what did he want you to do with the knife? Ama climbed the path to the cave, bread and milk in the bag on her back, a heavy puzzlement in her heart.