Because of this, I sat still as a stone with ears before Peyuan, the chief of the black krarl village, and let him tell me the story of her coming there, and her going away. How at the onset she had appeared in their midst like a demented orphan, lacking home or people, how she had passed from them like the Priestess of the Mystery, into water or air.

The Book was precious to his tribe, and he did not say much of it. It had contained the contrition of gods at their fall, a race of unparalleled magnificence, magicians without equal, ruling the lands like emperors; dying like ants when the hill is crushed. The black krarls, by their rite, strove to glean some glimmering of the old race and its powers, the arts of healing and of mental control, rejecting only the hubris and the cruelty that had evolved from them. Even the Circle the krarl formed about the Book had significance—Time, the never-begun and never-ending wheel, the link of all men to all that had been, all that was to come.

When the white witch broke the Circle, Peyuan saw her, the way you could see such things, he said, though the soul was gone to ride the winds. He became certain afterward that Morda (that was the name the krarl gave her, sufficiently similar to mine, so that I winced at it) had been a survivor of the lost Magician Race, her abilities destroyed or mislaid. And this heritage of glory and fear drew her, repelled her, drove her to strange deeds and sorrows.

When the Circle disbanded, Peyuan and two others, Fethlin and Wexl, were also drawn, or driven, peculiarly, to follow her. They had no reason for this action. It was like the urge to shift ground with the seasons, the nomad’s instinct, yet it was stranger. They knew it came from their gods, or from Morda’s gods, and there was no resisting it. Nor did it exactly trouble them to do it. They had a saying: At some hour, every man must sacrifice. Their hour had arrived and they were ready. It was she, Peyuan remembered, who had been uneasy, almost frantic when she glimpsed them, crying out they must go back, go away, that she would not be responsible for their lives, which they would lose if they remained. But she could not shake them off, and in the end she was silent, hanging her head, as if in despair or shame, letting them accompany her.

Southward from the tower lay a bay and white ruins, the decayed cities of the Lost Race of the Book. It was to these ruins she had gone, and into those ruins she went, they going behind her.

She was plainly searching, this woman—exhaustedly, proudly, and wildly searching for some clue, some hope, or maybe merely for death.

“Sometimes,” said Peyuan, “she was like an animal, swift and alert, trembling with a sight of things men never see. Sometimes she would walk like a little girl, like a daughter who is seven years old and asks to be carried because she is so tired; and it would need all my strength not to pick her up in my arms. Then you would see abruptly the witch-power, the royalness. She would move like a white spear through the shadows, and there would be gold binding her hair and golden scales her body, though she wore the krarl woman’s dress and no ornament of any kind.”