When he had tried to ask for more details, Kennit had become impatient. “Wintrow, stop dithering. When the time comes, you will know what to do. If I could tell you everything you would find and do on the island, we would not need to go there. You cannot always depend on others to live and think for you.”

Wintrow had bowed his head and accepted the rebuke humbly.

Increasingly, Kennit said such things to him. Sometimes Wintrow felt the man was grooming him for something, but he was not sure what. Since Divvytown, he had accepted that there was far more to Kennit than he had ever suspected. He had followed at Kennit's heels all of one long afternoon, dragging a bag of stakes and a mallet. Kennit paced the distances, and jabbed a hole with his peg where he wanted each stake driven. Some described the edges of a road, others the corners of the houses. When they finished and looked back, Kennit seemed transfixed. Wintrow had stood beside him, trying to see what he saw. Kennit broke the silence. “Any fool can burn a town,” he observed. “They say that Igrot the Bold burned a score of towns.” He gave a snort of contempt. “I shall raise a hundred. I shall not be remembered with ashes.”

Wintrow had accepted him then as a man of vision. And more. He was a tool of Sa.

He scanned the scene from left to right. Kennit had told him to walk the beach. Where was he supposed to start? Did it matter? With a shrug, he turned his face to the wind and began walking. The tide was still going out. Once he reached the tip of the beach's crescent, he'd turn and start his search. He would walk the whole beach seeking for his destiny.

The bright sun beat down on his head. He muttered at his stupidity in not bringing a bandana. He kept his eyes down on the beach as he walked, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Tangles of skinny black seaweed, empty crab shells, wet feathers and bits of driftwood marked the limits of the tide's reach. If objects like this were to foretell his future, he did not think the prophecies would be earth-shaking.

Towards the tip of the crescent beach, the sand gave way to outcrop-pings of black rock. The tableland behind him had risen to the height of a ship's mast and showed its underpinnings of slate and shale. The tide had retreated fully, baring the normally covered black shelves. Their cracked and pitted surfaces cupped tidepools full of life. Such things had always beckoned Windrow. He glanced back at the trail from the forest. There was still no sign of Kennit and Etta. He had a bit of time. He wandered out onto the rocks, stepping carefully. The seaweed underfoot was treacherously slick, and a fall would land him on barnacles, blue mussels and cone caps.

The isolated pools harbored anemones and seastars. Tiny crabs scuttled from oasis to oasis. A gull came down to join him in his inspection. He knelt briefly by one tidepool. Anemones of red and white bloomed in its shallows. A touch of his finger stirred the surface of the still water. In a flash, the delicate petals of the creature folded away from him. He smiled, rose and went on.

The sun was warm on his back; it eased the ache in his shoulder. There were no sounds save the wind, the water and the gulls. He had almost forgotten the simple pleasure of walking an isolated beach on a pleasant day. He did not realize he had rounded the headland until he glanced back. He could not see the beach anymore. A survey of the cliffs above him showed him that it would be death to be trapped here by an incoming tide. They rose black and sheer. Except . . . He stepped back farther from the bluff and squinted up. There was a fissure there, or perhaps something more. A narrow sloped trail led across the cliffs face. It was not very high, no more than the height of two men. Before he had truly considered the wisdom of it, he had started up it.

If it was a trail and not an accident of nature, whatever had made it was more sure-footed than he was. It was not wide enough for him to walk comfortably on it; he had to face the rock and edge up it. It ascended the face of the rock sharply. It shone underfoot with sparkly slime like a slug's dried track. One moment it seemed slippery, the next tacky. It suddenly seemed higher than it had from the beach; if he fell there were only rocks and barnacles to land on. Still, he had come this far, he would satisfy his curiosity. He came to a sudden indentation in the rock, the beginning of the chimney. He stepped inside and found his way blocked by bars of metal. He stepped close to peer past them.

A very narrow fissure in the rock extended all the way to the cliff top. Sunlight reached down timidly from an opening high above. Someone had chiseled and ground out a cave within it, not much larger than a coach. Inside the wrought cave, the rock floor sloped sharply away. Water from a high tide was trapped there in a dark still pool. He could see light reflected from its surface.