Kerrick’s feet were swollen and sore after the long walk the day before. Sitting on a large boulder, chewing a lump of tough yet delicious meat, he bathed them in the cool water of the stream. Although his soles were thickly callused and tough he was unaccustomed to walking on stony ground. Now his feet were scratched and cut and he was not looking forward to the strenuous day that lay ahead. Herilak saw what he was doing and pointed to the long gash that cut through the callus of Kerrick’s right foot.

“We must do something about that.”

He and Ortnar were wearing flexible but strong madraps, made from two pieces of cured leather that had been carefully sewn together with lengths of gut. They did not have the materials here to fashion anything for him this complex—but there were other raw materials close to hand. Herilak found stones that would chip correctly and hammered off small, sharp flakes. Under his direction Ortnar removed the deer’s skin, then scraped the adhering flesh from it in the running water. Herilak cut squares and strips from this, put the larger pieces around Kerrick’s feet and bound them into place with the thin lengths.

“Good enough for now,” he said. “By the time the skin gets stiff and starts to stink we will be far away from here.” Kerrick picked up the rest of the discarded deerskin and found that it would just fit around his waist, where it could be held in place with a prong of the deer’s horn. He scraped it clean of flesh, as he had seen Ortnar do, then took off the soft skin pouch that he had worn for so many years. It lay limply in his hand, the adhering suckers inside it gleaming wetly. With sudden revulsion he hurled it into the stream. That life was behind him forever; he was Tanu now.

But when he turned he tripped over the ring that had been around Inlènu*’s neck for all those years, that was still attached to the ring about his own neck. He held it out before him, loathing its smooth transparency and its solid strength. In sudden anger he smashed it down on the rock that rose from the stream bed, seized up another rock and beat at it until the anger died. It was not even scratched.

Ortnar looked on with interest, stretched out his hand and rubbed it over the unmarked surface.

“Won’t cut, won’t scratch. Stronger than stone. I’ve never seen anything like it. Water won’t soften it?”

“No, nothing.”

“Even hot water, boiling water?”

“I’ve never tried. We had nothing like that in the city. You can’t boil water without fire . . .”