“She’ll lose it,” warned Dannii, looking up from her weaving. We were sitting outside the tent in the morning, watching the children. “She loses things all the time. Tell her to bring it back.”

“It can’t be lost,” I said.

She half smiled, and said jokingly, “Why? Would you divine for it, Elsha?” Then she bent over her loom, struggling one-handedly with a join in the goathair yarn.

“Yes, I would,” I said.

She looked up, searching my face for a hint of a smile, her black eyes uncertain and questioning. I took a deep breath. For some reason, I was afraid of telling her. “I’m not lying, Dannii. I have divined. I have the power.”

She put aside the loom, and folded her arm across her knees. She would not look at my face. She trembled slightly, and her jaw had a stubborn line to it.

“I don’t believe you, Elsha. I think you are mistaken. No human being on earth has divining power, save the Firelord. No woman has it. And certainly no harsha. Even if she is his handmaid.”

“Test me, then,” I said. “Hide some firestones somewhere – anywhere – and I’ll divine for them.”

She gave me a small smile, half amused and half afraid. “Very well,” she said quietly, getting up and going into the tent. She came out with a bag of firestones. “These were new from the mine last night. We’ll go into that valley where the river runs, and I’ll test your power. And if you fail, handmaid, you do all the washing for Ridha’s family.”

“That sounds fair punishment for fraudulence,” I said, smiling. “But what if I succeed?”

“If you succeed, Elsha,” she said gravely, “then everything we have ever believed, vanishes in smoke.”

I sat in a small concealed cave up under a cliff, and covered my head with my arms while Dannii hid the firestones. She was gone a long time, and while I waited I grew more and more tense. My spirit, so certain before, wavered and was afraid. It was one thing to divine alone, with only myself to answer to for failure; but to divine for someone else, to be exposed and answerable to another human being, was to lay my very soul across the ground.

Dannii came back and tapped my shoulder. “It is time, Elsha.”

“I would rather you stayed here,” I said, standing up. “You might distract me.”

“The Firelord had a whole crowd with him, and he was not distracted.”

“I’m not the Firelord, Dannii. Did you leave the firestones in the bag, or take them out?”

“It makes no difference whether they are in cloth or rock or water or dust or wind. If you can divine, you’ll find them. I’ll tell you nothing, Elsha.”

“By God, you’re tough,” I muttered, going out. I heard her footsteps behind me. I went out to the valley, and stopped halfway between the cave and the stream. I knelt down and placed my palms flat on the stones. I bent my head and closed my eyes. It was hard this time, hard to feel the power, the life force running in the ground. I grew hot and panicky. My feelings seemed suffocated, blocked, and did not flow. I stood up again, and walked down by the river. I took off my boots and left them on a stone. The ground was frozen in this place, the rocks still shadowed, dark.