“I care as little for your Kadair as you do for Ermanpadar who guides the Tanu. That is the truth. Now we put aside this talk of the invisible powers that control our lives and talk instead of what we ourselves must do. I talk instead of two of my hunters . . .”

“I will not hear their names, do not speak them aloud for their offense was great. The porro sacred to Kadair, they stole it and drank it.”

“To you sacred, to them a very interesting thing to do. The other hunters envy them and have asked me to ask you for more of this drink.”

“You cannot mean this!”

“I do, and there is something else, still more important, that we must talk about. The hunters who drank your porro have been banished from this valley. They now have their tent far up the river. It comes to me that the sammads will join them there.”

Sanone looked back down at the flames, stirred them with a stick before he spoke. His voice was quiet again, the anger gone. “I have been waiting for you to say that, my friend. We will talk of that, not of the porro, never again must you speak of it. Has the time come for you to leave?”

“It has. When we fought together we lived in peace together. In the city by the ocean, then here in the valley. In the war against the murgu all else was forgotten. Now the battle is over, the murgu are gone, and my hunters grow restless. Drinking the porro was just a sign. To you this valley is a home. For them it is a trap that keeps them away from the plains and the forests, the freedom to move, stay, do as they will. And there is another reason for me.”

Sanone saw Herilak’s eyes drop to the knife again and he understood.

“It is Kerrick. You have spoken to me of the differences that grew between you. Do they still exist?”

Herilak shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. And that, I think, is what I must find out. He is alive, that I believe, or the murgu would have pressed their attack and we would all now be dead. But is Armun alive—and his son? If they are dead then it is my doing. I must tell him that. I no longer see him as my enemy, I wonder why I ever did. But he may still think of me as one who has wronged him greatly. That must be ended. It should never have happened at all. Now I have come to believe that it was all my doing. My hatred of the murgu filled me full, welled out and embraced any who thought different from me.”

“Do you still hold those hatreds within you?”