“No!” Pulling away, Dani clutched the clay vial around his neck. “For what?” he asked angrily. “For this? It’s not worth it! It’s not fair, uncle!” He yanked at the vial with all his strength. For a moment, the braided cord on which it was strung burned the skin of his neck; then it parted with a faint snap. Dani held the vial in one hand. Hot tears burned his eyes, and his voice trembled. “I didn’t ask to be the Bearer! What’s Satoris ever done to the Yarru-yami, anyway, that we should seek to destroy him? It’s not his fault Haomane’s Wrath scorched the desert, he was just trying to hide from it! And if he hadn’t … if he hadn’t, we wouldn’t have found the Water of Life! We wouldn’t be the keepers of Birru-Uru-Alat. We wouldn’t even be what we are!”

The ghost of a smile moved Thulu’s cracked lips. “These are fitting questions for the Bearer to ask,” he whispered. “But you will have to answer them alone.”

Dani unclenched his hand, staring at the vial. It lay on the starry, radiating lines of his grimy palm; a simple object, fragile and crude. Clay, gathered from a scant deposit at one of the Stone Grove’s water-holes, fired with baari-wood and dung in a pit dug into the desert’s floor.

Inside it was the Water of Life, water he had drawn from the Well of the World and dipped from the bucket, holding it in his cupped palms as old Ngurra had told him to do, filling the vial with care. The lifeblood of Uru-Alat, the World God; the secret the Yarru-yami held in trust. A gift only the Bearer could draw; a burden only the Bearer could carry. A choice in the making.

In the apple orchards of Malumdoorn, while the sun slanted through the trees and the Dwarfs stood watching, a single drop had caused a dead stick to burst into green life; planting roots, sprouting leaves and blossoms.

A dawning certainty grew in him. For the first time, Dani saw clearly the divided path before him and understood that the choice between them was his, and his alone, to make. Not for the sake of Malthus, whose impassioned words had swayed him; not for the sake of Carfax, who had given his life to save him. Not even for his uncle, who would gainsay it. The choice was his, and his alone. This, and not the Water itself, was the Bearer’s true burden.

Dani lifted his head. “No, Uncle. Not just yet.”

“Ah, lad!” There was alarm in Thulu’s weak voice. “The Water of Life is too precious to waste—”