Marcovefa looked thoughtful. “A spell like that shouldn’t be too hard to shape,” she said. “The law of similarity would apply. One word for a thing or an idea is bound to be similar to another for the same thing or idea. They both point toward the same original, which makes them point toward each other, too.”

That probably made perfect sense to her. It made more sense to Hamnet than the way the Rulers counted, but not much more. He would never make any kind of wizard, and he knew it. The aptitude wasn’t there.

“Do you want to go on, or do you want to make a magic?” Dashru asked in the Bizogot language.

“We go on,” Hamnet replied in the Rulers’ speech. That seemed a simple enough answer, but Dashru’s wince told him he’d made a hash of it somehow. Resignedly, he asked, “What did I say wrong?”

First, Dashru told him what he did wrong asking what he did wrong. Then the prisoner told him what he did wrong saying they would go on. He could hear the mistakes, too. He doubted he would ever speak without making them fairly often. If he could get the Rulers to understand him and could understand some of what they said, that would do.

“I don’t aim to be a poet in their tongue,” he told Marcovefa.

“It is an ugly language,” she agreed. “It is even uglier than Raumsdalian.” So there, Hamnet thought.

Dashru was offended. “The Rulers’ tongue is not ugly!” he said. “It is full of strength, full of power. It is fit for . . . well, for rulers. No wonder you folk do not care for it. You are part of the herd, for us to milk and shear and slaughter as we please.”

“If you think that way, if you act that way, you will make everyone on this side of the Glacier fight you to the death,” Hamnet said.

“So what?” Dashru returned. “After we kill you all, we settle the land ourselves. We do what we want with it.” For a moment, he sounded like a proud warrior, part of a proud folk. But only for a moment. As he remembered where he was, he deflated like a pricked bladder. “I will not see that, I who am nothing.”