bed and into a chair by the stove. Her name was Glindrik, she said: this was her home.
'What happened to the others? They were going to auction me off.'
She cackled. 'Your illness took care of that. You slept right through the auction. Old Pradjit was so angry he wanted to finish you off, boil you down to bones, and sell 'em for half a cockle to the Slugdra ghost-doctors. Luckily I got to you in time. Keep that blanket over your chest, dear. And put your feet up on the fender; they're still cold as meltwater.'
She served him a bowl of hot stew, then sat across from him and began to chatter. She was plainly a most unusual Flikker, and knew it-they called her Mad Glindrik of the Westfirth, she observed with a certain pride. It seemed that dying humans were her hobby. For two decades she had lived alone here, just across the river from the 'auction,' whatever that was. And each time the Flikkermen from Uturphe arrived with a captive too sick to be sold profitably, Glindrik bought him cheaply, and set about saving a life.
When Pazel asked her why, she frowned at him. Why not? She had no children. Her husband was long dead. What else should she do with the scant years left to her?
He almost asked, But why help humans? Something in her eyes, however, gave him to know that the question would cause deep offense. And Pazel at once felt ashamed for assuming that no Flikker could wish him anything but harm.
Through her window he saw that the river here was enormously wide. He could make out the far shore, miles away it seemed, and scores of islands thick with dense woods, over which gulls and other shorebirds wheeled.
'We're near the sea, then, Glindrik?'
'Very near,' she said. 'The water's too salty even for Flikkers to drink. But there's a well on the hillside, past the apple trees.'
'Are there many auctions?'
'Every fortnight. But how did you learn Flikker, boy? Were you raised among us?'
They talked the morning away. She wanted to know all about his Gift, and was fascinated by his mind-fits, even turning to her books in search of some other way to prevent or delay them. 'Night-blooming blacksap, maybe,' she said. 'Chew the flowers: they dull the mind's sensitivity to spells. Worth a try, anyway.'
In the afternoon he napped, and when he woke again he felt perfectly cured. He dressed, and stepped ashore by the little gangway connecting her houseboat to the bank. Over her objections he took her hatchet and split several dozen logs into pieces for her wood-stove, and carried them in. Then Glindrik told him that in three or four days an elk-hunter would pass by, an 'honest coot' who would take him back to Uturphe by land.
'How can I thank you?' Pazel asked her.
Glindrik smiled. 'What do you want to do with your life, Pazel Pathkendle?'
Pazel looked at her, startled. 'I've never been asked that before,' he said. 'I don't know the answer, either. Sail like my father, I always thought, but the Code will keep me from that. So perhaps I'll go back to school, one day, if I find one that takes Ormalis. But first I have to stop this blary war, and find my family, of course, and-'
He stopped abruptly. An image of Thasha's face had suddenly leaped into his mind.
Glindrik put out her spindly hand and touched his own. 'Complicated!' she said. 'My own dream was never so hard to tell.' She smiled, rather sadly. 'No, telling was easy.'
'What was it, Glindrik?'
She got up with a sigh. 'After I fetch the water.'
'Let me,' Pazel said, jumping up.
She looked at him, considering. At last she said, 'Fetch it, then, dear, but whatever you do, don't be long. You'll want to lie down again soon. I want you back in ten minutes, you understand?'
'Yes, Doctor,' he said, and Glindrik laughed, delighted.
The path to the well straggled up the sandy bank, through Glin-drik's vegetable patch and a copse of gnarled apple trees. There were bees and grasshoppers, and rabbits growing fat on her cabbage and kale. Pazel reached the well and threw back the wooden cover.
A chill touched his spine: he thought suddenly of hands on his arms and legs. Hands like Glindrik's, lifting and hurling him down a shaft very much like this one.
Shaking off the thought, Pazel filled the buckets and set them down to rest a moment. He looked north, where the broad loops of the river vanished into the Westfirth hills. Dry land, he mused. To think that one could set off into it, as a ship did the open sea, and travel months or years without reaching a shore. The idea always struck him as absurd.
He looked back down the hillside. He could not make out her houseboat, but through the low pines the sea winked back at him. Twenty years, alone, he thought. What was that dream of yours, Glindrik?
Then he turned, and saw the graveyard.
It was laid out neatly beyond the apple trees: twenty or thirty graves in short rows, each one marked with river stones in the shape of the Milk Tree. Human graves, he thought: Flikkers did not worship Rin, or any god of humankind.
The scene might have been touching, but after the awful memory of his deceit in Uturphe, Pazel found himself alarmed, and suspicious. Glindrik had never spoken of those who died in her care.
Suddenly her voice rang out from below: 'Pazel! Pazel! Come back now, boy. Time to rest!'
Pazel didn't move. Why hadn't she mentioned the graveyard, when they had talked of so much else?
Glindrik shouted again, more urgently this time. He lifted the buckets and began to pick his way down the hill. But he dragged his feet. A terrible thought came to him: had she experimented on those boys? Tried out her brews and potions on humans first, to see if they cured or killed?
Pazel stopped behind a rambling shrub. No sound but the buzzing bees: Glindrik had stopped calling his name.
This is rubbish, he thought, she saved your life. Yet some instinctive fear kept him where he was a moment longer. Then he took a deep breath and walked down the bank to the houseboat.
He thought she would be waiting on the shore, but she was inside.
He crossed the gangway and stepped down onto the deck. He heard her voice within the cabin.
But Glindrik was not talking to him.
'Very sick!' she was saying. 'No use to you at all. And now he's gone and hobbled off into the woods. To die, I suppose.'
'Didn't I tell you?' said a male Flikker, laughing.
'You told me, Pradjit. I'll never learn, old fool that I am.'
Pazel froze. They were back, his captors. Silently he put the buckets on the deck.
'We should take his bones,' said another Flikkerman.
'His bones are mine!' said Glindrik, almost shrieking. 'I bought him from you, remember? In any case he ran off days ago. No, friends, he's gone, long gone!'
'Why do you shout, woman? Are you deaf?'
Pazel knew why. Heart pounding terribly, he stepped back onto the gangway. On tiptoe he crossed the plank. Once his feet were on firm ground, however, he found it impossible not to run. Up the hillside path he sprinted, then dashed through the garden, rounded the shrub-
— and collided head-on with a Flikkerman, who croaked, dropped his armful of apples, and stunned Pazel senseless with a touch.
When he woke it was quite dark. He was facedown in one of the narrow Flikker boats: it might have been the very one that brought him from Uturphe. His hands were tied behind his back.
'The lying hag,' a Flikker voice was saying. 'This boy is perfectly healed; we'll get more for him tonight than we would have at last auction. Why does she lie, though? Why not sell them back to us?'
'She cheats,' said a second voice. 'She must have another buyer. Why else would she fight so hard to save them?'
It was all Pazel could do not to beat his head against the hull. Idiot, flaming idiot! Glindrik was exactly what she seemed: a friend. She had wanted him back in bed to feign sickness once more, before Pradjit and his men turned up. Now Pazel was back where he started two weeks ago. How could he have been such a fool?
Groaning with rage, he twisted around and sat up. He could just see Glindrik's houseboat by the dwindling shore, and the old woman watching sadly from the deck.
His captors no longer called him Shplegmun. Already their boat was nearing an island: a great river island, its
