back in

the thigh pockets.

Great... He put his right foot up on a nearby rock and buckled the

side straps on his boot. With the sun now behind the far mountains the

air had become suddenly chill.

Steve swapped feet and began to buckle up his left boot, allowing

himself a congratulatory smile at the way he had evaded the Mute

patrol. He stamped his feet on the ground to settle them comfortably

inside his boots and clapped his hands together happily. Okay. Time

to hit the trail. It was at this moment that he suddenly realised that

he had left his quarterstaff lying somewhere outside Clearwater's hut

together with its carrying sling.

Now that, thought Steve, is a real pain...

Before he reached the settlement, Steve stepped off the trail, wrapped

up the ration pack and water purifying kit in broad leaves, buried them

in a hole between the roots of a tree and cut a small blaze-mark on the

trunk with his knife.

He had already decided that he would hide the map between one of the

double-layered mats that served to make up the floor beneath his fur

bedding roll. Satisfied that the ground showed no sign of having been

disturbed Steve blocked out the jabbing pain in his knees and headed

for home at a fast jog.

Outside the hut hidden by the screen of yellow leaves, Clearwater

laboured lovingly to recreate the swirling body pattern that Cadillac

had adopted as his mark. When it was finished, it would be his turn to

paint her body. Although Clearwatef's brain was not the equal of a

wordsmiths, both she and Cadillac had received from Mo-Town the gift of

a photographic memory which included the ability to project a

mind-image of the pattern onto each other's body.

Cadillac's back was like a blank canvas on which Clearwater could 'see'

the exact area of every colour. All she had to do was fill them in, As

she worked, Clearwater thought about the cloud warrior who had been

sent to them by Talisman and who the Sky Voices, through Mr Snow, had

named the Death-Bringer.

She had first seen his body when it had been brought in, broken and

bloody from the cropfields. He had not seen her, for his mind slept,

and she had been sent away before he awoke. The clan elders had told

her that she must live apart from the rest of the M'Calls while the

cloud warrior was held captive. He was not to discover that she had

been born with a smooth, one-coloured skin like his. The body of a

sand-burrower.

Like Cadillac, she had suffered as a young child because of her

'otherness'. It was they who, in their perfection, were the ugly

ducklings, and it was their shared feeling of wretchedness that had

brought them closer together.

Although he was already weighed down with the task of absorbing Mr

Snow's prodigious knowledge, the young Cadillac had always come to her

defence when she had been taunted by the other Cubs. She, in her turn,

had aided him, hurling herself upon his tormentors and pummelling them

with her tiny fists. When she was seven, and old enough to understand

that there were other worlds above the blue roof of the sky and below

the grass at her feet, Mr Snow had explained that her body had been

shaped thus because she too had been born to serve Talisman, the

Thrice-Gifted One. She had accepted this and drawn comfort from it but

had not truly believed until the recent unveiling of her powers as a

summoner, and Cadillac's new-found ability to draw pictures from the

seeing stones. Mr Snow had spoken the truth: th?path of the future

was already drawn. Most of the Plainfolk could only see that path one

step at a time but Cadillac had the gift of seership. When his skill

increased and his mind was ready, he would be able to pierce the

time-clouds and see what lay ahead.

Mr Snow knew some of these things already because the Sky Voices spoke

through him. They, The Masters of All, lived in a world whose horizons

were bounded by the beginning and the end of time, on a mountain so

high they could see below them all that had been and all that would

be.

The Sky Voices had told Mr Snow that, despite the wishes of the clan

elders, her path would meet that of the Death-Bringer.