The words were soft and said with love, yet still they hurt. Sometimes I despaired over my thoughts and dreams. They caused me only pain, and my family stress. Yet I could not live without my dreams. Without them, my life was firestone dust and darkness. With them, I held a world of hope. And in the centre of that hope was the Firelord, our life-link to the warmth, the highest person in our world. To the other Quelled he was a god, impossibly remote, a vague and distant power beyond their daily lives. But to me he was a kindred soul. When I lay in the silence of the mine and listened to the firestone heart, I thought of the Firelord and wondered if this unity with stone, this fire, this inner force, was what he felt. It was sacrilege – mad, outrageous sacrilege – and only Lesharo knew of it. And it made him afraid. I was never afraid. Not of the Firelord, anyway, or of firestone power. I looked into Lesharo’s fire, and all I saw was a mountain I had seen only in dreams, a high and sacred place, and an everlasting flame.

Lesharo put his hand against my cheek, gently. “Look at me, Elsha,” he said.

I turned to him.

“I wish your eyes would meet,” he muttered, taking my chin. “I could swear you are having visions.”

“Not many,” I said, “only one.”

He dropped his hand as if it were scorched, took up his pipes again, and played a short tune. I noticed that his fingers trembled slightly, and was amazed that he, who could calm people’s fear and dispel trouble, could be unnerved by me. He played a longer tune then, a haunting one. I moved closer to his fire and bent my head on my arms, and listened.

When it was finished he put his pipes away, got up, and took something from inside a rolled rug at the foot of his sleeping mat. He came back to the fire, sat down, and gave the thing to me. It was a piece of firestone, wonderfully shaped. It was like a small woman, with head and shoulders, breasts, hips and folded arms. The legs were formed in one piece, but that was the only fault.

“It’s almost as it was when I chipped it from the mine,” he said, his eye alight with pleasure at my face. “I did only a little shaping on it, and polished it.”

“It’s beautiful,” I said, and flung my arms around his neck. “I’ll keep it until I die.”

I drew back a little and kissed his cheek close by his lips. We stayed close for a moment or two, and his face slowly became grave. The flames made black shadows in the hollows of his cheeks and scarlet lights on his mouth. He had a fine black beard and his hair was long and thick. It was streaked with grey above his crooked brand, for he was much older than I.