Some five hundred years ago, most of Jamaillia had burned to the ground. The Satrap of that time had then decreed that his royal city would be rebuilt more magnificently than ever, and that all of the buildings should be of stone so that such a disaster could never befall Jamaillia again. He called together his finest architects and artists and stonemasons, and with their aid and three decades of work, the Court of the Satrap was raised. The next-to-highest white spire that pointed to the sky denoted the residence of the Satrap. The only spire that soared higher was that of the Satrap's Temple to Sa, where the Satrap and his Companions worshipped. For a time Wintrow gazed at it, filled with awe and wonder. To be sent to dwell in the monastery that served that temple was the highest honor to which a priest could aspire. The library alone filled seventeen chambers, and there were three scribing chambers where twenty priests were constantly employed in renewing or copying the scrolls and books. Wintrow thought of the amassed learning there, and awe filled him.

Then bitterness came to darken his soul. So, too, had Cress seemed fair and bright, but it had still been a city of greedy, grasping men. He turned his back on it and slid down to sit. flat on the deck. “It's all a trick,” he observed. “All a rotten trick men play on themselves. They get together and they create this beautiful thing and then they stand back and say, 'See, we have souls and insight and holiness and joy. We put it all in this building so we don't have to bother with it in our everyday lives. We can live as stupidly and brutally as we wish, and stamp down any inclination to spirituality or mysticism that we see in our neighbors or ourselves. Having set it in stone, we don't have to bother with it anymore.' It's a trick men play on themselves. Just one more way we cheat ourselves.”

Vivacia spoke softly. If he had been standing, he might not have heard the words. But he was sitting, his palms flat to her deck, and so they rang through his soul. “Perhaps men are a trick Sa played on this world. 'All other things I shall make vast and beautiful and true to themselves,' perhaps he said. 'Men alone shall be capable of being petty and vicious and self-destructive. And for my cruelest trick of all, I shall put among them men capable of seeing these things in themselves.' Do you suppose that is what Sa did?”

“That is blasphemy,” Wintrow said fervently.

“Is it? Then how do you explain it? All the ugliness and vicious-ness that is the province of humanity, whence comes it?”

“Not from Sa. From ignorance of Sa. From separation from Sa. Time and again I have seen children brought to the monastery, boys and girls with no hint as to why they are there. Angry and afraid, many of them, at being sent forth from their homes at such a tender age. Within weeks, they blossom, they open to Sa's light and glory. In every single child, there is at least a spark of it. Not all stay; some are sent home, not all are suited to a life of service. But all of them are suited to being creations of light and thought and love. All of them.”

“Mm,” the ship mused. “Wintrow, it is good to hear you speak as yourself again.”

He permitted himself a small, bitter smile and rubbed at the knot of white flesh where his finger had been. It had become a habit, a small one that annoyed him whenever he became aware of it. As now. He folded his hands abruptly and asked, “Do I pity myself that much? And is it so obvious to all?”

“I am probably more sensitized to it than anyone else could be. Still. It is nice to jolt you out of it now and then.” Vivacia paused. “Will you be going ashore, do you think?”

“I doubt it.” Wintrow tried to keep the sulkiness from his voice. “I haven't touched shore since I 'shamed' my father in Cress.”

“I know,” the ship replied needlessly. “But, Wintrow, if you do go ashore, be careful of yourself.”

“Why?”

“I don't know, exactly. I think it is what your great-great-grandmother would have called a premonition.”

Vivacia sounded so unlike herself that Wintrow stood up and peered over the bow railing at her. She was looking up at him. Every time he thought he had become accustomed to her, there would be a moment like this. The light was unusually clear today, what Wintrow always thought of as an artist's light. Perhaps that accounted for how luminous she appeared to him. The green of her eyes, the rich gloss of her ebony hair, even her fine-grained skin shone with the best aspects of both polished wood and healthy flesh. She flushed pink to have him stare at her so, and in response to that he felt again the sudden collision of his love for her and his total benightedness as to what she truly was. It rocked him, as it always did. How could he feel this . . . passion, if he dared to use that word, for a creation of wood and magic? His love had no logical roots he could find . . . there was no prospect of marriage and children to share, no hunger for physical satiation in one another, there was no long history of shared experiences to account for the warmth and intimacy he felt with her. It made no sense.