The settles on which the best people sit are covered with rather smelly goatskins. The goatskins cannot have been properly cured. The smell of the eucalypus logs they are burning is nicer. There are bright blue flames in the fires. The seats of the more unimportant people are innumerable, I mean the settles they’re sitting on, and lots of them are placed under the parts of the roof where the rain comes in. The rain goes drip drip. It goes gurgle splutter splash plish plink. It is falling through the roof and from the leaves on to the ears of the Forest men sitting on the settles. And there are other people too—everywhere—it really is too much—one of them is offering me a huge plateful of roast rodent-hams. But I shake my head. I’m not hungry any more. I was hungry when we arrived here, ages ago, after coming through the suddenly turned-on downpour of rain over the swinging bridge woven of grass ropes, swing-sway-swinging over the river all milky in the fierce light as it frothed over the rocks. We had to leave our mounts behind us, they couldn’t cross the bridge to this noisy secret hall of the Forest owners. I hope our birds are safe with the Forest people we left them with. I was afraid the bridge would not hold even our weight together with that of the beating rain. I was very hungry, but not now, no longer hungry. We have been here ages.

“Falicq,” I said, sitting up and grasping his arm, “why are the rafters up there all black?”

“From the smoke,” he said, looking round at me, interrupted.

“Centuries of smoke … ? Oh, but, Falicq, the smoke is blue, why has it made the rafters black? They should be blue?”

He shrugged uselessly and, pouring me more wine, went on talking. Now I was sitting up, I seemed to understand him better.

“Oh, Falicq, I’m sorry,” I said, “I thought you were talking about grain-stooks, I didn’t realize it was fish-hooks.”

He looked at me in surprise.

I drank and sat back and nodded at him to go on.

But I found that sitting up had also widened my eyes a little. I looked across at Zerd and the Chieftain’s daughter. They were absorbed in each other.