Lucky us, we do not see Ky Gota much. Her joints hurt her too bad. Tobo helps care for her, our cynical exploitation of his special immunity from her vitriol. She dotes on the boy—even if his father was foreign slime.

Sahra told me, "These two claim they've found a more effective way to materialize Murgen. So you can communicate directly." Usually Sahra had to talk for Murgen after she raised him up. I do not have a psychic ear.

I said, "If you bring him across strong enough so the rest of us can see and hear him, then Tobo ought to be here, too. He's suddenly got a lot of questions about his father."

Sahra peered at me oddly. I was saying something but she did not get what I meant.

"Boy ought to know his old man," One-Eye rasped. He stared at Goblin, waiting to be contradicted by a man who did not know his. That was their custom. Pick a fight and never mind trivia like facts or common sense. The debate about whether or not they were worth the trouble they caused went back for generations.

This time Goblin abstained. He would make his rebuttal when Sahra was not around to embarrass him with an appeal to reason.

Sahra nodded to One-Eye. "But first we have to see if your scheme really works."

One-Eye began to puff up. Somebody dared suggest that his sorcery needed field-testing? Come on! Forget the record! This time—

I told him, "Don't start."

Time had caught up with One-Eye. His memory was no longer reliable. And lately he tended to nod off in the middle of things. Or to forget what had gotten him exercised when he roared off on a rant. Sometimes he ended up contradicting himself.

He was a shadow of the dried-up old relic he was when first I met him, though he got around under his own power still. But halfway through any journey, he was likely to forget where he was bound. Occasionally that was good, him being One-Eye, but mostly it was a pain. Tobo usually got the job of keeping him headed in the right direction when it mattered. One-Eye doted on the kid, too.