Klotig motioned for Faro to follow him into the cleft between the two statues. "Come!"

Faro had to go down on his knees again. The rock was rough, but the passage was not long. Beyond the narrows, the cavern opened up again in a red glow. The air was hot and full of steam. Great pools of cloudy water opened in the cavern floor, mineralized rock of various hues sloping away in stepped shelves. The smell of minerals was strong.

"My grandmother taught us that these pools are healing," Klotig said. "But it is not these we seek." He continued along a path that wound through the pools. The steam and heat was oppressive, but heavier still was the flow of power from ahead. They were near.

The ground sloped upward, and now the heat pressed against Faro's face like a wind. They came to a great shelf of dark rock. Carved steps made it easy to climb what would have otherwise been impossibly treacherous. At the top, in the midst of the wide platform, beneath looming stalactites was what looked like a smithy. Light and wavering heat rose from a circle of stone. A great anvil sat upon rock. It appeared to be fashioned of the same living steel that Klotig had shown him before. The anvil vibrated with power, but it was not the source of the power. Faro felt it pouring up from that circle of stone, along with the heat and the light that filled the cavern.

"This is our most sacred place," Klotig said. "The living steel is among the rarest elements in the world. Across the sea, it was found only near a vent like this one. When Risinghand arrived in these caverns, he found this vent and the ore. In the heat of the vent, the living steel is malleable and easily worked, though still it must be coaxed. Away from this vent, it is difficult even with the hottest of forge fires."

Faro struggled to attend to Klotig's words. His whole body vibrated with the power that flowed around him. It was so different from the Currents of the Vien, and yet he knew it was of the same kind. Was this what it was like to be near one of the Wellsprings?

"Is the heat too much for your kind?"

"Hmm?"

"Is it too hot?"

It was hot. Almost unbearably hot. But he didn't want to leave.

"No, it's. . . This is a place of great power," Faro said, his voice low. "Like the sacred wells of my people." Unable to resist his curiosity, Faro squinted against the flow and approached the circle of stones. He tried to lean over the opening, but the air rushing upward scalded his skin. His body trembled, and he held his breath against the heat. This was a Wellspring.

"Be careful," Klotig said, but the dhar leaned over the heat and squinted, looking down. The hair of his beard and head flowed backward. "It goes down to the Pillars of Creation and the birth-halls of my folk."

"The what?" Faro asked, stepping back and releasing his breath.

"The Creator first breathed forth flame, and in that flame he forged the Pillars of Creation to uphold the world. Deep below, his forge is still hot, the embers still glowing from the heat of his breath. The dhar were born there, and there we lived, until the cataclysm drove us to the shallows. From vents like these, the lingering heat of the forge leaks to the surface. The stars likewise show the lights of creation beyond the firmament, and there is yet power there, too, for those who can capture it."

"How do you know this?" Faro asked. "I have never heard it, and you are a short lived people."

Faro was not entirely sure how old Klotig was, but he had deduced that the dhar did not reach three centuries of age.

"Your lives are long but your memories are short," Klotig replied. "Much can be learned without words. I have looked in the faces of your kind, and I have bartered with you. You love secrets and deceit. I am not surprised you forget."

Faro was more startled by this reply than insulted.

"Can you sense the—" Faro cast about for some word to use in their speech— "strength? Can you grasp it?"

"As I said, it is the heat of this vent that lets us work the living steel," Klotig answered.

"But can you grasp it for more?"

"I do not understand you."

Faro reached out his hand, searching for some goal for his will. The flow of power here warned of fire. It was strange. He knew he could grasp it, but there was danger. Near the anvil sat a great stone trough of water, ever replenished by drips from high above. Faro extended his hand to it. The water in the tank boiled in an instant, sloughing and hissing over the sides, steam billowing upward. With the slightest direction, Faro set the steam swirling in a tight spiral.

Klotig stepped back, his shoulders tensing but his jaw going slack. Faro released the Current. The water calmed, and the steam dissipated.

"How?" Klotig asked.

"The strength that comes from your vent is like that which lets my people forge the weather over our land. Humans are unable to sense it. We say they are—" Faro searched for a translation again "—unable. Perhaps you are as well."

The dhar knew of humans though they did not trust them. Human ships had sailed the channel in recent years, armed for war and interrupting trade. During a storm, one such vessel had wrecked upon the dhar shores, but there were no survivors when the dhar found the bodies and wreckage on the strand.

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"We know the effect it has on the living steel."

Perhaps the living steel itself was sensitive. Faro had never considered if something that was not alive could be sensitive. . . but then, the Currents were used to manipulate basic elements of the world—heat, wind, the growth of plants. The living steel was different. It absorbed and held it.

"If your people can work such wonders," Klotig said, "and the humans cannot. . . how is it that you desire weapons of bronze and iron-steel with such greed?"

"The humans raid our coasts, seeking slaves," Faro said. "Sailing has dangers."

"I do not understand how you could fear the humans so. Or are your powers weaker than I supposed?"

Faro looked down at Klotig. The dhar's eyes had narrowed, and there was a new sense of wariness about him. Part of Faro regretted his demonstration. He should have kept such things hidden—learned all he could and revealed as little as possible. He had come to consider his hosts as friends, even if they had ulterior motives in keeping him. They had still saved his life.

"It is not the humans they fear the most," Faro said. He had revealed too much. Should he say more? Klotig waited. The silence grew long. At last the dhar spoke:

"I hope to send my folk with yours. I hope to send Nesht. What should I fear?"

"My people have been at war among ourselves for thousands of years," Faro said. "The steel is for our own kind above all. Using the strength of the vents to overcome our own comes with great price."

"That rings like truth."

Klotig unslung the bags from his shoulder and back, setting them upon the rock. He was silent as he did so, obviously pondering Faro's statements. He motioned for Faro to lower his own burden, which he did. A great table of natural rock spread out near the anvil, and upon this table Klotig unpacked the burdens. To Faro's surprise, one of the bags was full of tools—hammers, tongs, and other instruments Faro did not know, all made of the living steel. Klotig also produced skins of drink and other wrapped parcels that Faro suspected contained food. At last, Klotig reached down to the bottom of one of the bags and drew forth a billet of metal. It was living steel. Even as a billet not yet crafted into any usable form, the luster was mesmerizing in the varied lights of the cavern.

"Did you plan to use your powers on the bear, when first we met?" Klotig asked.

"No," Faro answered truthfully. "I could not sense any power on the surface. I don't know if this flow is weaker than in our lands, or if the caverns encase and trap it."

"It is our way that debts must be paid. Debts of gold. Debts of blood. And debts of life," Klotig said, laying his tools out in a particular order upon the stone. "I owe you a debt of life for my daughter."

"But your daughter was in no danger, and you have saved my life by taking me in. If anything, I am in your debt."

"I trust you will repay that debt, but it is owed to all beneath this stone," Klotig said, not looking up. "Though my daughter was not in the danger you thought, still you acted. There is nothing more precious than my daughter. Not even living steel. I will not lose face."

Klotig grasped the billet of living steel with a pair of tongs and stepped over toward the vent. He set the billet atop one of the encircling stones.

"It is not wise to fight a bear with a knife," Klotig said, his back turned. He was watching the billet, though Faro could see no change in it, except maybe a greater luminosity next to the light of the vent. His body still trembled from the heat and the Current.

Minutes dragged on. Faro needed to sit and found a rock.

"Drink, if you need," Klotig said. Faro didn't require more permission, and he took long drinks of küg from one of the skins, ignoring the repulsion of drinking from the hide of a slaughtered creature. The liquid had warmed already. Klotig stared at the billet without turning, his breathing slow and deep. Faro half suspected the dhar's eyes were closed, but he could not see his face. It might have been an hour later when at last Klotig spoke again:

"It is well that you have told me these things," he said said. For a few moments, Faro suspected Klotig was finished, but he continued after a long pause. "It is against our traditions to pry into the affairs of a guest. My grandmother taught me this. I know not what brought you to our shores, nor whether you were fleeing or seeking. I should not ask. But I have been honest with you, Faro of the Thin Ones."

Now it was Faro's turn to hesitate.

"Fleeing," he said at last. "My teacher. . ." How could he explain? There was so much. "Some of my people use the power to control others, to make slaves of them. This power is not all blessing. It curses as easily. I fear my people use it more for cursing than blessing. I did not understand. . . I do not wish to curse."

"Then do not."

Faro sighed. How could he explain the burden that lay upon him, the weight that had followed him all his life? He had already spilled blood in the war. He felt shame at that thought, now.

"There are those who seek me. I do not know who I can trust, or if I can ever go back." He saw Coir and his mother in his mind. Few hours passed when he did not wonder after them. What had Vireel done? Was she vengeful? Would she take it out upon them? Had she already, while Faro did nothing? But what could he do?

"You may remain as long as you wish, Faro," Klotig said. "Our hospitality will not end." There was another of Klotig's long pauses, but the dhar carried enough tension in his shoulders for Faro to know he was not finished. "We have a saying. The one who will not face his task, faces his ossuary."

"You mean, he will be killed?" Faro asked.

"No. He has nothing left but to die."

"I wish there were no. . . vents," Faro said, using the dhar word. "That all were as my mother, or like the dhar, who have not felt it. You say it is the Creator's power. Why would the Creator cause such evil?"

For the first time during the conversation, Klotig turned around, fixing Faro in his sight. Faro expected him to be angry, but his expression looked more like confusion.

"Did not the Creator also give your people hands?" he asked. "I have seen the glasswork of the Thin Ones, and the calligraphy. Do your hands not caress the ones you love? Do they not swaddle your babes?"

Faro stared.

"Tell me," Klotig commanded.

"We have hands," Faro said, holding up his own. His fingertips bore the pigmentations of the Change.

"These same hands kill your brothers and make widows and orphans of your wifs and children. So is the Creator evil to give you hands?"

"It is not the same," Faro said, turning his palm outward to ward off Klotig's argument.

"It is the crooked who blame others for their own doings, Faro of the Thin Ones. A dhar does not deny the work of his own hands or the product of his own forge, straight or bent. If it is true you are a child among your folk, then heed this lesson. Do not squander and abuse your gifts and blame the giver. Do not be so small-hearted."

Klotig turned back to the vent again and grasped the billet with his tongs. As he drew it away from the light of the vent, Faro saw that it shone. Or perhaps it was the inner vibration of power within it, so strong that it deceived his eyes. Grasping a hammer from the stone, Klotig set the billet upon the anvil, still clutching it with the tongs. The dhar loosed his strength upon it, and the sound of the forging rang in the cavern.

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