“I don’t understand.”

“Don’t say that anymore! I mean, why do men attack us in the night? Why do we have to live like this?

What is the power in this horrible place? Where does it come from? How does it work? I’ve lived here all my life and I don’t know.”

“I’m not sure . . .”

“Don’t you understand? I live without history or knowledge. When we were free, that kept us free. Now we are slaves, it keeps us slaves.”

There was a long silence, broken by the sound of splashing water. Finally Prince Abu cleared his throat.

“They hate you,” he began, “because you are heretics. Atheists.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Because you eat meat.”

“I don’t eat meat. I can remember every time I’ve tasted meat in my life. Nine times. We have nothing.”

“Then they are told to hate you.”

“Who tells them?”

Prince Abu tried again. “Have you ever heard,” he asked, “of Nicobar Starbridge?”

“Speak louder,” said a woman’s voice.

“Nicobar Starbridge,” Abu continued, “was the founder of your . . . sect. A great heretic. This was . . .

eight seasons, almost two full years ago.”

“I don’t understand,” said the boy’s voice from close by. “Nicobar Starbridge. A barbarian.”

Abu smiled. “Yes, a barbarian. Did you think you were a different species? There are men in Banaree who look just like you.”

There was silence in the cave. The sensation of gathered human presence vanished suddenly, as if the space had emptied out and he were left alone, talking to the empty dark. “This was not so very long ago,” he said loudly. “Eight seasons, almost. Seven generations. Your father’s grandfather’s great-great-grandfather. I can’t believe you’ve never even heard of him. It was in summertime.”

And then he told them, in the simplest language that he knew, their own story: how Nicobar Starbridge had been born a priest; how he had lived and studied in the capital, in the Twilight Temple. Even as a young man he had been famous as a conjurer and theologian, but he had run away before his first irrevocable vows, the night before he was to offer up his manhood on the altar. A temple servant had unlocked his cell, a woman, a seductress, and he had run away, taking some volumes from the library.

He told them how the fugitive had lived like a beggar on the roads, dressed as the lowest kind of laborer, his tattoos covered with dirt. He had labored in the mines, in the quarries, in the lumberyards, among the poorest of the poor. And about how he had resurfaced in the company of another woman, a Starbridge from Banaree. She had left her husband and her children to join him, and had cut the chains of matrimony to join him on the road and bring him money so that he could print the first of his books—a reinterpretation of the Song of the Beloved Angkhdt, and a new translation.