The strangest was the slim figure that was clearly his own. Without a wound, and no sign of rot. He paused for a long time, trying to think if there was another message here, or some new action required, but in the end, he carried his own corpse to the new green mound in the cool green woods.

And then he was done, his task complete, and he stood in sunlight. The pool was clear; potentia bubbled from the ground under his stone, and the stone was clean except for one deep mark, as if of a footprint.

Gas-a-ho came and stood with him. The tree towered over the pool again; the brambles were gone as if they’d never been. The tree was in bud.

“Nice,” the shaman said. “Some people never manage it.”

“Are they real?” Aneas asked. “The dead people?”

Gas-a-ho looked at him, and his eyes sparkled. “That’s up to you, isn’t it?” he asked. “Only you decide if other people are real.”

He took a medicine bag from around his neck and hung it on the tree.

Aneas sat by the spring. He dipped his hands in the spring, which was ops and not water, and washed his hands and arms of all the blood and filth. Fully visible across the meadow was a mound; it stood as tall as a man, covered in beautiful green grass, brilliant in the sun.

Gas-a-ho sat cross-legged by him. “It is good that you have placed them where you can see them,” he said. “You are a strong person. Can you work the ops again?”

Aneas reached into the pool and took potentia in his hand, and formed it.

“Good,” Gas-a-ho said. “But you are changed. You know that?”

“Yes,” Aneas said. “I was dead. Who am I now?”

“Who is anyone, ever?” Gas-a-ho said, but it was said with a sort of self-mocking humour.

And then Aneas was sitting in the real. Gas-a-ho had his hand; Irene had an arm around his shoulders. Nita Qwan handed him a lit pipe and he inhaled deeply of the smoke and shuddered.

He handed the pipe to Irene, and she drew deeply at it and passed it to Gas-a-ho.

Aneas took a deep breath.

Irene looked into his eyes, and he looked into hers.

“You saved me,” he said.

“We don’t have time for your thanks just now,” Irene said. “We think Looks-at-Clouds is possessed,” she said very softly.

Firensi—Tippit

Tippit’s horse was probably the best he’d ever had in a lifetime of making war. His horse was so good he enjoyed riding it; he rose in the darkness, already thinking of the joy of a canter. He didn’t usually name horses; they tended to die faster than he could be bothered to get to know them, but the horse he’d had from the Venikans was a big gelding from Ifriquy’a, with a small, handsome head and a beautiful temperament, and the gelding loved to run.