"Manchild."

He opened his eyes to find her standing over him. He was in a room that was plain but comfortable. Beside the bed a window with an open shutter looked down onto an enclosed courtyard and an overgrown garden of white-and-blue flowers. All of the other windows Barrick could see were shuttered.

"I had a dream…" he began.

"It was not a dream," Saqri told him. "You were on your way to the fields beyond, almost obliterated by the strength of the Fireflower. But my husband is with you now, helping you. Or a part of him is-the part that your need has prevented from going on." Saqri's dark eyes were solemn. "I do not know whether I should hate you for that or not, Barrick Eddon. Ynnir was meant to go on. He chose to go. But now because of the bond of responsibility or shame he feels to you, he lingers."

"Ynnir is… inside me?"

"They are all inside you, it seems, all the men of the Fireflower, in almost the same way the women are all inside me, my mother and grandmothers and great-grandmothers, our family stretching back entirely to the days of the gods. But though a part of them remains with you, the Ancestors of the Father have in truth gone on to whatever lies beyond…" She shook her head. "No. There are no words that will truly speak it from my thoughts to yours. But my husband… my brother… he cannot…" Her face changed and she fell silent again. He heard a batwing whisper in the dark depths of his own being, but from a voice that was neither hers nor his own-"Sad she is sad she misses me even through the fury oh proud sister you are still beautiful…!"

"I must spend some time in thought about this-about everything," Saqri told Barrick at last. "I will go. Harsar will attend to you until I call you."

Shortly after she had left the room, the strange little servant Harsar came to him with a tray containing what Barrick could only regard as a feast-bread and salty white cheese and honey and a bowl of the fattest, sweetest, most thin-skinned plums he had ever tasted. Harsar did not leave immediately, but stood watching Barrick eat.