“Well—” He squatted down on his heels, so that he could look the boy straight in the eye. “I would say that it depends on just who was doing the promising. And where he got his information.”

The child grinned at him. “It would be me that was doing the promising, but the promise wasn’t mine, it was the Prophecy. And it all came out of the Writ, of course. I know the Writ very well!” He struck a pose, and began to recite. “Alcar, Canto Seven, Verse Nine—And the children shall be reft from the people, and they shall suffer in the hands of the infidel, but those that keep faith shall endure and the rulers of light shall redeem them. Porphyr, Canto Twelve, Verse Twenty-two—And lo! in the moment of despair, I shall be with you, I shall guide you, as you were a child, out of the camp of iniquity and into the hands of the saviors, and great spirits of white shall succor you. Werthe, Canto Fifteen, Verse Forty-nine—And a rider of the purest white spirit shall—”

Alberich held up his hand to stop the flow of words. “I would say that you do, indeed, know the Writ very well,” he admitted gravely. “But I am not at all certain that there is anything in those verses that I would recognize as being part of the—the Prophecy.”

He was going to add, if there ever was a Prophecy, except that what this child had done, and the hope he had given the others, the way he had organized them and kept them going—how had that been so wrong? Even if it had all been a childish tale concocted out of the scraps of Writ he knew, the tales the Valdemaran children babbled, and his fertile imagination, it had essentially saved them.

“But I suppose it depends on how you interpret them,” he finished instead. And smiled. “I wanted to meet you primarily because I wanted to thank you for helping all of the others so much.”

The boy looked at him unblinking, but with a smile playing about his lips. “Isn’t that what we’re all supposed to do? Help each other? No matter who we are and where we come from? That’s what the Writ says, in the Great Laws.”

Where had the child learned that? Not from any of the Sunpriests that Alberich had served… “Absolutely right.” He stood up, and gazed down at the child. “You are a very remarkable fellow.”