He reached out and touched the tiny hand.

"What do you propose?" Ardel asked him.

"Thousands of years ago," Mor began, "we possessed great cities and mighty machines as well as high magics--"

"I've heard the stories," Ardel said. "How does that help us now?"

"They are more than just stories. The Cataclysm really occurred. Afterwards, we kept the magic and threw much of the rest away. It all seems so much legend now, but to this day we are biased against the unnatural tech-things."

"Of course. That is--"

"Let me finish! When a major decision such as that is made, the symmetry of the universe demands that it go both ways. There is another world, much like our own, where they threw away the magic and kept the other. In that place, we and our ways are the stuff of legend."

"Where is this world?"

Mor smiled.

"It is counterpoint to the music of our sphere," he said, "a single beat away. It it just around the corner no one turns. It is another forking of the shining road."

"Wizards' riddles! How will this serve us? Can one travel to that other place?"

"I can."

"Oh. Then ..."

"Yes. Growing up in such a place, the child would have its life, but its power would mean little. It would be dismissed, rationalized, explained away. The child would find a different place in life than any it might have known here, and it would never understand, never suspect what had occurred."

"Fine. Do it then, if mercy can be had so cheaply."

"There is a price."

"What do you mean?"

"That law of symmetry, of which I spoke--it must be satisfied if the exchange is to be a permanent one: a stone for a stone, a tree for a tree ..."

"A baby? Are you trying to say that if you take this one there, you must bring one of theirs back?"

"Yes."

"What would we do with that one?"