“It matters not, Elsha. I would rather it were read by you than by anyone else.” He stopped walking and faced me, his breath white on the chilly air. “The earth grieves, Elsha. The earth grieves, and I grieve, and I am weary of the fight. For almost all my life the burden of the Quelled has been my burden, and I have fought to lift the prejudices and the hate against them. And the Chosen still won’t see, even when I give them you. I grieve that they are so blind. I grieve that it is so hard, and will take so long, to change the laws. I am afraid that when I am gone there will be no one else to carry on the fight.”

He started walking again, slipped, and almost fell. I took his arm. “Lord, I will carry on the fight,” I said.

He smiled and put his arm across my shoulder, and leaned on me a little, and we went on walking.

“What damaged my sign around your neck?” he asked presently.

“I did. The house-owner’s wife told me that you made me your handmaid only to appease the Quelled, and to keep peace in the mines that threaten revolt. For one brainsick moment, I believed her.”

He laughed quietly. “For a purpose far greater than that, handmaid, I chose you. Though they believe what they will, for the moment.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but he suddenly started singing. A rich, deep, chanting song it was, such as my father used to sing when I was a child. “A Quelled myth!” I cried, amazed, delighted. “You know a Quelled myth, lord!”

He looked at me sideways, smiling. “Tell me one you know, and we’ll sing a myth-song together.”

I sang one of my favourites, a song of earth and ice and fire. After the first verse, he sang with me. We were still singing as we walked up over the first ridge, and saw the mountains marching on ahead of us, the world frozen, overshadowed, dark with smoke and cloud.

Then he sang another song, one of the old great Quelled legends, one I had heard long ago from Lesharo and not heard since. It was a song I loved, and it meant all the world to me to hear it from my Firelord’s lips.

Let me remember the earthlight,

Let me remember the warm,

Show me again in my dream-sight

The fire at the heart of the dawn.

Show me again ancient shining,

Tell me again what is true,

Fire all the bright world enshrining,

Encircling, life-giving blue.

Help me remember the fullness,

The hills and the harvest between,

Show me in visions the richness,

The gladness and glory of green.

Whisper to me in the dark-time,

Sing me a morning-star song,

Watch with me here till the warm-time,

Wait, while I unmake the wrong.

Oh, remember with me all the earthlight,