The spirit was the mage Brycothis, who had abandoned her body and been absorbed into the magic walls to draw power from the earth and channel it to the uses of her people within those walls forever.

Sometimes he wondered that everyone in the Keep did not guess. At other times, after he had been dealing with these civilized people for a while-mud-diggers, the Talking Stars People called them, these people who had lived so long so fat and easily, with their wheat fields and their furniture and their clothing that tied up one's sword-hand-it did not surprise him at all. Civilized people would have trouble guessing what was amiss should a uintatherium take up residence in their parlors.

"But why here?" he asked. "Why make up such a tale?"

"Because we've got food here." Gil shrugged. "And we've got the only setup that guarantees production of food. Since those bandits took over Prandhays Keep last summer, we're just about the last stronghold for the length of the Great Brown River, from Penambra to the Ice in the North, and the most productive.

You know how many bandits these days are from the Alketch, soldiers displaced by fighting there since the old Emperor's daughter gathered troops and threw out the general who thought marrying her against her will would be a good way to become Emperor himself, the more fool he."

"They are fools," said the Icefalcon dismissively, "the Alketch." The original owner of the finger bones he wore in his braids had been a prince of the Alketch.

A door in the Aisle's south wall, and a dark vestibule, led them into the watchroom of the Guards. The triple-sized cell was bright with glowstones-ancient crystal polyhedrons that shed a kind of stored magelight-and redolent of the warm reek of potatoes, venison stew, and sweaty wool. Sergeant Seya was playing pitnak with one of the rookies-Gil glanced at the sergeant's tiles and shook her head.