The others exchanged glances.

“Bring the child, then,” Sangae eventually said. “Let him see her.”

“The child?”

Sangae nodded. “She is a beautiful child, Kelis. She is hope for us all. Call her, Benabe, and let her come on her two feet.”

Hope for all of us? Kelis felt his fingertips begin to tingle. Hope for all of us?

Benabe rose and walked to the door at the other side of the room. The four men sat in silence as she spoke to somebody in the hallway. A few moments later she returned, leading a girl of perhaps nine years of age. The tingling in Kelis’s fingers became a throb, a heartbeat that moved to the center of his palms.

Benabe said, “This is my daughter. She named herself. She likes us to call her Shen.”

The girl walked with her eyes downcast, but as soon as she stopped before them, she raised her head and looked candidly at the four men. Her face was round and gentle, her mouth small, with thinner lips than her mother’s. Her skin was a rich brown, but it had been stirred with a cream that lightened it. She looked out at them with remarkably large eyes. Though she said not a word, Kelis could not help but think her quite intelligent. Her features were familiar. They were Benabe’s, yes, but that was only one way in which he knew them, had known them since before he ever saw her, before she was ever born. There was no denying it. The girl, Larashen—Shen—was Aliver Akaran’s daughter. How could he have lived those years and not known—felt—her living?

“She named herself?” Kelis asked.

Benabe nodded but did not explain.

“Kelis Umae,” the girl said. Her voice was clear and high, and the two words on her tongue were neither a greeting nor a question. Just a statement.

“You—you know me?”

“Yes. They’ve told me about you. You went as far as the river of the southern basin. There you waited, as good as your word.”

“These people told you that? Your mother? Sangae?”

“The stones told me.” She smiled, and then lowered her gaze, at moments looking no different than a shy girl.

“Stones …” He almost framed a question, but let it fade. The fine hairs on his forearms and the back of his neck were bristling. The pulse in his palms was actually painful now. He looked up at Benabe. “Who is this girl’s father?”

“You know that already,” Benabe said.

“She is a child of two nations,” Ioma said. “Look at her, Kelis. She is our future. She is a trembler, but others have been so.”

“Do not call her a trembler,” Benabe snapped, and then rubbed her fingers into the girl’s shoulders soothingly. “She has visions. She has fits during which she falls on the ground, shaking, insensible, but that is only what we see on the outside. Her mind goes to another place—that is why she trembles. She says that in those moments the stones call her. It is they that possess her body and seek to put things inside her. You know what stones she speaks of. Did not Aliver first see the Santoth as stones? He saw them rise and walk toward him. My daughter sees the same.”