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One of the first things Tzi decided to do when she was able to have conversations with Mirbals was figure out what kind of diurnal rhythm they had.  It was disorienting, waking up and not knowing what time of day it was, or whether “day” was even a thing; the light shifted in color and intensity depending on the position of Dysland relative to Xyzz, but there were always other moons in the sky, and always some illumination.  She had no way of gauging even how long she'd slept.

Regardless, she awoke in a much better mood—not exactly brimming with psy, but feeling ready to whip out some real magic.  Conjuration made a good start to the day, beginning with breakfast.  Already tired of fruit, Tzi took a moment to appreciate having the luxury of being tired of specific foods to further bolster her psy, and then Conjured up a shank of shagga, a salted hunk of something's leg that she'd Divined in the inn's kitchen.  It tasted vaguely like mutton, though tougher.  And saltier, of course; there were flecks in it that were probably spices of some kind.

“It's funny,” she mused between bites, watching the cat chomp down the strips of shagga she'd torn off for him.  “Casting Divination at that vruph's skull got us an entry on the whole animal, but this tells me nothing except what kind of meat it is.”

“The skull was just a piece of the vruph, master.  This has undergone some processing; it has been roasted, smoked and salted at the very least.  It may also have to do with the condition of your psy when you cast those two Divinations.”

“You said it was binary,” she retorted.  “It either works or it doesn't.”

“To gather information about the object being Divined, master, yes.  But using the spell with psy in better condition may extrapolate further information ancillary to the object in question.  Also, it might alter the conditions of the spell; you may be able to consciously determine whether the result, in a case like this, should cover only the chunk of spiced meat or the source animal.  Such modifications are a matter of practice and effort, master.  We could try again next time we visit the inn.”

“Hmf,” she muttered, chewing again.  It was more to think about.  At least it didn't add to the oppressiveness of her situation, the way the Grimoire explained it.  Magic, as she already well knew, was complicated.  And shagga was pretty good, though tough to chew.  Protein was a good way to start the day, even if Conjured protein had less than the real thing.

Her next tasks involved a more creative application of Conjuration.  The sight of the cat, who she had decided to call Rascal, fastidiously washing his face after breakfast reminded Tzi that she was still smeared with a grime of mixed dirt and sweat from her labors yesterday.

Fortunately she had had the foresight to Divine everything she could find in the inn's kitchen and common room.  Less fortunately, that did not include a bathtub, but Tzi made do.  The fire she built the old-fashioned way, gathering sticks and dried leaves that had fallen from the cinnamon stick trees and lighting the ensuing arrangement with a fingertip.  Making little flames was one of the few spells she could do without a wand; the very small amount of energy involved did not require an aid to channeling magical power, but it wasn't necessarily any easier as it demanded far greater concentration than firing off a fireball.  After the trouble she'd had lighting the oil lamp last night, getting the fire going so easily provided a much-needed boost to her confidence.

Tzi Conjured a pot of water and some towels; unfortunately the ones from the inn's kitchen were pretty threadbare, but they would do.  While it would have been lovely to sit in a tub and soak—and soap would've been nice—she at least managed a satisfactory sponge bath and rinse.  Her tunic and pants would take some work to get all the dirt out, but a quick application of Divination and Conjuring produced a new pair.  Fortunately, the Divination did not incorporate the dirt and sweat.  Even as ground in as it was, apparently it didn't count as an inherent part of the fabric.

“Sorry to keep filling you with such mundane little doohickies,” she said to the Grimoire while tugging the crisp new tunic over her head.  Actually, it even felt stiffer than her more well-worn one, as if freshly stitched.

“Not at all, master!  The more information I contain, the better able to assist you I am.  No detail is extraneous!”

It was an imperfect job and a more laborious process than she was used to, but in the end Tzi was fed, washed, and dressed in clean clothes, and feeling the difference it made in her mental state.  She could practically feel her psy on the upswing.  Feeling energetic, she took the time to carefully go over her campsite, Banishing all the sad heaps of wood and stone that marked her failures to construct a hut yesterday.  Aside from simple neatness and the inherent good of not creating a mess in a pristine natural environment, it was far more pleasant not to have those reminders laying around in all directions.

“How's this Banishment work, by the way?” she asked, while disappearing a heap of basalt chunks that could only tell was supposed to be a wall because she remembered trying to make one.  “Can I only do this on Conjured objects?”

“Yes, master.  Specifically, only on objects you have Conjured.  Naturally occurring substances have ontological permanence in the universe and are impervious to such efforts.  Also, only the most powerful of wizards can Banish things Conjured by others.  There are variables; for instance, the longer a Conjured item exists, the more a part of physical reality it becomes, until after some years it can no longer be Banished.  I would recommend reading the full entry on all the stipulations and variables involved, master.”

“Good idea, I'll do that,” she agreed.

Not yet, though.  First, she had more immediate magic to attend to than boning up on theory.  The ritual of Mirbal Speech was actually one of the simplest she'd ever seen.  Naturally, the reagents it required were locally available, but the terms were especially forgiving: it specifically called for types of materials “native to the moons of Dysland,” leaving the details up to the caster.  It was the work of minutes to round up some more cinnamon tree sticks (which smelled nice when burned, though more like sandalwood than cinnamon), darkbell flowers, and bits of granite from the crater walls.  For the bone, after some thought, she trekked out to the pass out of the valley and carefully liberated one of the vruph skulls, with a silent apology to whatever Mirbal had put it there.  It was affixed with some kind of tree sap, and hopefully could be reattached when she was done.  Even the ritual circle, as diagrammed in her Grimoire, was obviously meant to be reminiscent of the great ringed planet and its multiple moons.

Since this was a ritual to imbue herself with a permanent effect rather than a castable spell, it was less arduous than most rituals she had performed; there was no need to memorize a sigil and imbue it with power and mental associations.  She did have to memorize a chant, which presumably meant something in some Mirbal language or languages, and sink into a sufficiently meditative state that she could chant it with her mind still and open.  And all this after charging the components laid out in their designated spots around the ritual circle, but charging objects was very basic stuff.  A few minutes each of concentration imbued them with loose power for the purpose of the ritual; it wasn’t anything as complex as establishing permanent enchantments.

All in all, it took about an hour, and by far the hardest part—as usual—was calming and centering her mind enough for the ritual to take effect.  When it did, though, she felt it.  Not as a specific change, but a sense that it was enough.  This was a vague little feeling, easily and immediately second-guessed by an overactive imagination, but familiar to her.  Learning to recognize that sense of enough had been a difficult early lesson for Tzi, but it was vital in knowing when to stop a magical working.  It was the same sense that had warned her against over-Healing the Mirbal boy at the inn.

Tzi opened her eyes to find Rascal sitting a few feet away, watching her curiously.

“Did it work?” she asked aloud.

“You are in a better position than I to know, master.  Of course, we'll only be certain when we have tested it.”

“It was a rhetorical question,” she said dryly, getting to her feet with some stiffness.

“Ah.  Of course.”

Tzi cleared off the flat stone ledge, only realizing belatedly that she might be smarter to Conjure up a level surface for future rituals; this one worked, but it was slightly uneven, and the more complex the magical working, the more unforgiving its terms would be.  But that was an issue for the next problem.

“I think...you'd better stay here,” she said to Rascal.  “There's vruphs and whatnot, and I don't think Mirbals have ever seen a cat.  At least we know there are no predators in this valley.”

He blinked at her, then twisted around and began licking the base of his tail.

“Yep.  G'bye to you, too,” Tzi muttered, bending to pet the cat once, then turned and made her way toward the valley's entrance, vruph skull in hand.

“That is for the best, master.  Cats are too independent to make good traveling companions, but they are territorial.  He will be safer and happier in a defined space.”

“How do you know about cat behavior?” she asked.  “How is that relevant to the magic textbooks I made you from?  Did I accidentally Divine the cat in my sleep?”

“Cats make excellent familiars, master.  There are several chapters on their nature and habits in my component texts.”

“Huh.  You've got some interesting stuff in those pages.”  She stopped by the now-bare post just outside the valley, carefully restoring the skull to its position; it hung a little askew, now, but the sticky substance held it again.  “Makes me wish I'd read more when I had the chance.”

***

She had dithered over her next step, but only briefly; everything pointed toward returning to the inn.  Well, everything except the necessity of interacting with the innkeeper, and even there, he had implied he might have more work for Tzi in the future.  If that continued to pay otherwise-unobtainable ritual components for simple menial tasks, that was well worth putting up with what passed for his personality.  Plus, there were Mirbals at the inn, which provided her a means of testing whether her new ritual had worked.  If it did, she wanted to talk with these Mirbals in particular.  They ought to know their son was cursed, if they didn't already, and with more information Tzi might be able to help them more permanently.

While it was good to help people just for the sake of helping, as the Traveler who had left the monument had advised, being a good neighbor might well pay dividends.  Better to be on good terms with those who lived here, since she wasn't able to leave any time soon.

It was amazing the difference just a little familiarity made.  On her second trip along the path into the forest, she was actually able, to her surprise, to enjoy it.  The alien quality of the landscape had retreated a little bit from her attention, allowing her to appreciate how pretty it actually was.  As she proceeded into the patchy cinnamon stick woods, approaching the blondewood crossroads, Tzi found herself wondering idly how much different this place would look under golden sunlight instead of the paler illumination native to this moon.  Even the other moons in the sky, and the titanic shape of Dysland itself, seemed a little less ominous.

She still tried not to look at them.  The forced perspective was no less disturbing; her confidence in gravity and the ground itself suffered from the reminder of what a tiny, frail speck the world on which she stood actually was.

Approaching the four blondewoods, Tzi slowed, hearing voices off to the left.  The forest was dense in that direction—that was where the sazja vines grew.  Catching flickers of movement through the maze of cinnamon trunks, she came to a complete stop, watching and listening.  They were Mirbal voices, pitched a little higher than the human average.  A grin of delight blossomed across her face.

She understood them.

“...and as usual, nobody died!”

“Slow down, Scio, quit running off ahead.  You make me worry, child, you know that?  Nobody dying isn't a thing to take for granted.  All it takes is once.”

“Yes, mother,” the younger female voice said with distinctive adolescent exasperation.  Apparently that tone truly was universal.

“Anyway, it was worth the trip,” a male voice added.  “It's only jaggabans and Khetri I worry about in this area, Kino.  The stone has never harmed anybody.”

The group had almost reached the crossroads; Tzi was only a few yards distant, watching them maneuver through the underbrush.  Even catching only intermittent flickers, she could tell by their speed and the fact that their conversation never paused that they were much more adept at it than she had been.  Well, after all, they were smaller, and more familiar with the terrain.

“Because everybody has the sense to stay away from it,” the woman's voice retorted.  “All right, Scio, slow now, let me lead on the path.  I don't care if it's never made a peep, there's a new Traveler on Xyzz and that's all the reason we need to stay away from eyaah!”

The group had emerged into the crossroads; standing on the trail, Tzi had a straight view at them, barely more than five meters away.  It was the same family she'd intruded upon yesterday—or previously, anyway, it being an open question whether “yesterday” was even a viable concept here.  They were led by the same Mirbal woman who had chased her with the spear.  A spear which she was again holding, and once again lifted to aim at Tzi while the rest of her family quickly huddled behind her.

Now, they had heavily-laden backpacks, through the tops of which she could see piles of sazja fruit.

“This one again,” the woman said in a lower voice.  “This is why I—agh, never mind.  Shoo!  You run along, you have no business here!”  That last she shouted, jabbing menacingly in Tzi's direction with the weapon.

“Wait!” Tzi called back, raising her hands in a gesture of surrender.  “Please, I'm sorry.  I'm glad I ran into you again, I wanted to apologize for before.”

At that, the girl leaned out from behind her mother with an expression of fascination, and got immediately elbowed back.

“Oh, so you speak now?” the elder woman said, straightening slightly from her crouched pose, keeping the spear aimed at Tzi's chest.

“Yes, I learned,” Tzi explained, keeping her hands in view.  “It's a spell that lets me understand you.  I only just cast it.”

The Mirbal's lips drew back in an unmistakable grimace, showing long canines.  “More Traveler magic.”

“Well...yes.  I haven't got fangs, I need magic to make do.”

“We don't have fangs,”the younger girl said, affronted, and her mother elbowed her back again.

“Look, I am sorry,” Tzi said quickly.  “I swear I wasn't going to harm you!  When I, you know, pointed my wand.  I was just going to do a Divination—a little spell that lets me gather information.”

“Oh, so you can point your stick at somebody and just learn things about them?” the woman spat.  “You think that's all right for you to just run around and do at people?”

Tzi sighed.  “I...guess I see your point.  I can only say I'm sorry so many times.  I really never meant you any harm!  I'm just lost and trying to figure out where I am and how to get home.”

“Ohh.  Kino,” the man said, nudging the woman from behind.

“Stop it,” she growled out the side of her mouth, not taking her eyes off Tzi.  After a moment, she made another prodding gesture with the spear.  “All right, then, you. Can you fight with magic?”

“Uh...”  Tzi took a judicious step backward.  “I can defend myself, yes.  Seriously, I don't want to fight.”

“Only young idiots want to fight.”  The woman finally shifted her focus, moving the spear to point at a cinnamon tree that grew closer to the path than most, its roots forming a minor tripping hazard.  “Show me.  Do magic at that tree.”

Tzi blinked.  “...what?  Why?”

She just crouched lower, raising her spear again; behind, the rest of her family hunkered down as well.

Apparently this was a standoff, then.  Diplomacy aside, she couldn't get down the path with them on it and didn't want to know what would happen if she came closer, while they were being so defensive.

“Okay,” Tzi said slowly, drawing her wand from her belt.  “Stand back, please.”

The warning wasn't necessary; they retreated a few paces when the wand came out.  Tzi took aim at the hard-packed dirt of the path about halfway between them.

A fireball was one of the mage's most basic spells, one of the first any learned, and the only weaponized magic a junior apprentice like Tzi could be expected to know.  It wasn't just fire, but force;it flashed from the tip of her wand and impacted the dirt with a small explosion, charring the path and scattering embers.

Tzi immediately rushed forward and began stamping out the singed vanilla grass on either side of the impact zone.

“Woooow,”the girl breathed.

“You don't listen so well, do you?” the woman said in a much less impressed tone.  “I said the tree.  That was the ground.”

“And that was a ball of fire,” Tzi shot back, beginning to lose patience with this.  “I'm not going to burn down the forest just to make a point.  I wouldn't even if I wasn't currently standing in it!”

“See, she shows restraint,” the Mirbal man said, straightening up from his crouch, and smiling faintly at the woman.  “More than some people we've known.  Don't you think, warm heart?”

She just snorted, but finally rose to stand upright, and at last lifted the spear to plant its butt against the ground.  “All right, very well.  I guess you're not that dangerous, then.  At least, not immediately.  Or on purpose.”

“Okay, what?” Tzi exclaimed.  “You want me to show off fighting magic and somehow that convinces you I'm safe?”

“What are you, thick?” the woman retorted with what Tzi was beginning to realize was characteristic asperity.  “Words are cheap.  I've heard 'we mean no harm' from enough Khetri to know it's meaningless noise.  But you let me chase you around with a spear, when you could have done that to me at any time.  Actions are what make a point, Traveler.  I believe, now, you truly don't intend any harm.  Whether you are dangerous is a whole other question.”

“I...guess I take your point,” Tzi replied slowly.

They stared at each other for a moment, the woman tilting her head to one side, one of her ears twitching to emphasize her contemplative expression.  Behind, the others watched her for cues—the two older ones, at least.  The young child held still in his father's arms, staring at Tzi in wide-eyed silence.

“I am Kino,” the lead Mirbal said suddenly, touching her chest with her free hand.  “These are my family: my mate Okser, our daughter Scio and our son Kaer.”

“I'm Tzi.”  She repeated the gesture—which, now that she thought of it, was the one she had made to them previously.  “And I'm very glad to meet you.  I mean, properly, this time.”

At that, she finally got smiles from them, even Kino.  At the very least, some of the tension had gone out of the situation.

“That aside,” Kino said, her faint smile already melting away, “what are you doing here?  The Gate to Xyzz is under Khetri control, and has been for more than two full turns.  Are you with them?” Her eyes narrowed on the last word, and though she didn't lift the spear again, her grip upon it shifted nervously.

“I...don't know who them is.  Are.”  Tzi shrugged.  “You keep mentioning Khetri; the innkeeper mentioned them, too.  Who are they?”

“Trouble,” Kino said curtly.  “You've had a happy life if you don't know of Khetri.  That relieves my concerns a little, but it still leaves the question.  What are you doing here?  There's nothing on Xyzz a Traveler should want, unless you've come to sniff around the Syrr ruins like the Khetri do.”

“I barely know what any of that means,” Tzi said with a sigh.  “I'm not even here on purpose.  I was sent against my will.  I'm...just an apprentice,I only barely know enough magic to survive.  So far, anyway.  I caught my master doing blood magic and he...got rid of me.”

“You poor child,” Okser said with clear concern.

“What's blood magic?” Scio asked eagerly.

“We do not need to know what blood magic is!” Kino practically shouted.  “By the memories, it even sounds evil!  That's too much curiosity, Scio.  Stay out of Traveler business!”

“Yes, mother,” Scio replied with a heavy sigh.

“It's good advice,” Tzi added.  “Blood magic is nasty business.  I wasn't even doing it, and look how much trouble it got me in.”

“Anyway,” Kino said sharply, focusing her attention back on Tzi, “Travelers always come through Gates.  How'd you get away from the Khetri without apparently noticing them?  There's only one Gate on Xyzz and they are all over it.”

“I'm not sure what a Gate would look like,” Tzi admitted, half-turning to point up the path behind her.  “I just woke up on Xyzz, on a stone circle back that way.  There's a little valley up the hill through a crack in—”

“You came from the Hollow?” Kino exclaimed, aghast, and took a step back, holding out her free arm to herd Scio along behind her.

“I came...to the Hollow, if that's what it's called,” Tzi corrected, frowning.  “I saw the vruph skulls, and I figured that must be a warning, but the place looks pretty peaceful.  What's so bad about it?”

“Syrr ruins,” Kino said grimly.  “Nothing but evil comes from Syrr ruins.  And that place is especially bad.”

“How so?” Tzi asked warily, feeling a sudden prickle of concern for Rascal.

“There are stories,” Okser said, placing a hand on Kino's shoulder.  “Only stories, but told by enough people and bad enough stories that everyone knows to stay away from there.  And the stories are told by the ones who come back, because some of them didn't.  There is some kind of hidden door in the Hollow, that goes deep into an old Syrr temple.  If you find it, well...”

“Nothing but evil comes from Syrr ruins,” Kino repeated firmly.  “It's impossible to completely avoid Syrr junk—it's everywhere.  You can't dig a latrine without unearthing old bits of stone and metal.  All Syrr leftovers are bad; half of it's cursed and the rest attracts Khetri.  The ruins,though, are the worst.  Anything the Syrr left that's still standing, and still working, is full of evil.”

“The Syrr made the Gates, though,” Scio pointed out.

Her mother turned to give her an irritated look.  “Yes,they made the Gates, and the Gates are the only good that ever came from the Syrr.  Even they had to pass through them, so it wouldn't make sense to cover them with traps and curses.  Their old temples and houses, though, that's where they did their vile magic, and traces of it linger.  Only the Khetri are daft enough to mess around with Syrr magic, and I wish on them whatever they get from it.”

“Who are these Khetri?” Tzi asked.  “You make them sound almost as bad as the Syrr.”

“Almost as bad as the Syrr is a good description,” Kino said darkly, twisting her grip on the spear in an unconscious gesture of aggression.  “Khetri are Mirbals from Ankhetris, way over on the other side of Dysland.”

“It has an opposite orbit from Xyzz?”

“No, no, that's...”  Kino trailed off, then looked up at the spreading canopy.  The four blondewoods effectively blocked out the sky overhead, and the surrounding cinnamon stick trees did nearly as good a job themselves.  “Well, have you seen the brown moon with water and clouds?  It passes overhead very often.”

“Yes, I remember that one,” Tzi said, nodding.  “It's the closest right now, I take it?”

“Right now, and always,” Kino said with a slight smile.  “That's Vaila, the home of the Claedh.  Vaila orbits Dysland; Xyzz orbits Vaila.  There's only one Gate on Xyzz and it goes to Vaila, which has Gates to...  Well, there are five main moons in a ring around Dysland, you see?  And a network of Gates that leads to each of them in sequence.  Vaila to Caladel to Ankhetris to Daang to Siona to Vaila.  And then there are smaller moons around the bigger moons; each of the Five has Gates that lead to these small ones.  Xyzz is an outlier moon around Vaila.”

“I...see,” Tzi said slowly, digesting that.  “And...there are Mirbals on every moon?”

“Amost every one; nothing can live on Daang.  You can't even travel across Daang, it's so dangerous, so in truth the chain leads from Ankhetris to Siona and stops; I never heard of anybody making it between the Daang Gates, much less finding out if Daang has any outlier moons.”

“Guess I won't be going to Daang, then...”

“You won't be going anywhere unless you convince the Khetri to let you use the Gate,” Kino retorted, her expression darkening again, “or clear them away from it.  Either way, I wish you luck.  Khetri are obsessed with owning things.  Food, water sources, Syrr relics, land... Everywhere they show up, they say it's all theirs now and nobody else can use it.”

“Why do you let them do that?” Tzi asked, tilting her head.

Kino bared her teeth in a snarl, but Okser answered, gently rubbing his mate's shoulder.  “There are a lot of Khetri.  Nobody knows how many; they just spread. Everywhere they go, more follow.  They've been spreading across Caladel and Vaila for a generation, and started making it to Siona and Vaila's outlier moons more recently.  And they have better weapons than the Claedh, metal almost as good as the Caladel tribes make.  Plus strange food that lets large numbers of them live in lands without enough game to support them.  I don't know what kind of world Ankhetris must be,” he added, frowning in thought.  “I would think it must be a harsh place to make such harsh people, but then again, only a gentle place could produce so many.”

“And they like Syrr stuff,” Tzi said thoughtfully.  “What do they do with it?”

“The Khetri admire the Syrr,” Kino spat.  “If they catch anyone not of their tribe, they'll use them to test out Syrr curses they find to see what they do.  I've heard it said the Khetri are trying to learn how to do magic, and that's why they study Syrr artifacts.  I don't know whether I believe that or not.  I can see the Khetri being that crazy, but I don't know if anybody could be that dumb.”

“What's dumb about doing magic?” Tzi asked a little defensively.

Kina shrugged.  “Nothing, I guess, if you're a Traveler.  It seems to work pretty well for you lot.  I suppose with no fur or claws and barely any teeth you need whatever advantage you can get.  But Mirbals can't do magic.”

“Wait—no Mirbals?”  Tzi frowned in confusion.  “That doesn't make sense, you're obviously intelligent.  The way magic works, anybody with a mind should be able to do it.”

“Yeah, well, Mirbals can't,” Kino said bluntly.  “It's not a question of learning how, it just can't be done.  We were made that way.”

“Made?”

“By the Syrr,” Okser said, nodding.  “They created Mirbals to be slaves.  When they all died, we were freed, but we're still what they made us.  They never wanted Mirbals to have power like they did, so they created us unable to do their magic.”

“And that,” Kino said with grim satisfaction, “is why the Khetri are just crazy.  None of their fooling around with Syrr relics is going to change what we are. They're wasting their time and ruining everyone else's hunting grounds for nothing.”

“What about the Pathwalkers?” Scio piped up.

“Never mind about the Pathwalkers!” Kino barked.  Her daughter subsided again, not without a roll of her eyes.

Tzi was beginning to feel lost; this was way too many new terms, too rapidly.  “And...what are Pathwalkers?”

It seemed Kino shared her assessment; at any rate, she narrowed her eyes, apparently tiring of answering questions.  “Never you mind about Pathwalkers either.  They're almost as much trouble as Khetri, and they're all on Siona so it's not like you're going to meet any.  What are you planning to do, Traveler?”

“Get home,” Tzi said promptly.  “Unfortunately, that's going to be...complicated.  I don't know the magic to get there.  And on Xyzz, I don't know where to go about learning more magic.  Or if that's even possible.  The innkeeper seems like my only chance, and...he doesn't seem like a helpful sort of chap.”

“Hmf,” Kino grunted.  “The Innkeeper doesn't help people, but he does like giving people the means to help themselves.  He probably is your best bet, so long as you don't whine or try to rely on him too much.”

“Great,” Tzi said sourly.

“Sounds like you've got a real problem, then,” Scio added with a wince.  “If it's magic you're after, that means Syrr ruins and Khetri.  Big danger,” she added quickly under her mother's gimlet stare.  “Don't go near either of them, they're nothing but trouble.”

“Gotcha,” Tzi agreed with some amusement.

“Well, in the meantime, it seems you are here,” Okser said, smiling.  “Most Travelers come and go; they either find what they're looking for among the Syrr's leavings or die trying.  But some settle in and make themselves a part of life on the moons.  Everybody knows the Innkeeper and the Tinker, and nobody bothers them because they don't bother anybody.  Or the Librarian.”

“I'm not convinced the Librarian is real,” Kino retorted.  “All you hear are stories from people who've met somebody who's seen him.  Nobody has actually seen him in person, apparently.”

“Well, he's supposed to be on Caladel, and it's not like Claedh travel widely there,” Okser said reasonably.  “Anyhow, that doesn't settle anything about the here and now.  Tzi's all alone on Xyzz and doesn't even know the paths.  You know, warm heart—”

“Stop right there!” Kino snapped, tugging her shoulder from under his grip and turning to scowl at him.  “This is a Traveler, Okser!  A wizard from another world.  She's not a pet, or a lost child!”

“She's lost,” Okser said calmly, “and she's someone's child.”

Kino swelled up physically with indignation, and Tzi decided to head off a domestic squabble, if just so she could continue along the path unimpeded.  “Actually, it's really nice of you to think of me, but I wouldn't feel right getting you guys involved in my business.  Scio's right; I'm probably going to have to poke around the Syrr ruins eventually, and it sounds like the Khetri are my best bet for understanding anything I find.  If those are as dangerous as you say, I don't want to drag you into my problems.”

“Too right, you don't,” Kino snapped, though she looked considerably mollified.

“Anyway,” Tzi added with a smile, “you've helped me a lot as it is.  Until I talked to you I had no idea what anything was in this place.  At least now I have a starting point and a warning about some of the dangers.  I wish I could do something to help you in return.”

Kino grunted, but continued to look more amicable now that the discussion had shifted from the prospect of bringing danger to her family.  “We're Claedh—wandering people.  Fair trade is fair trade for goods, but wanderers warn each other of dangers on the path without expecting payment.  Anyway, there's not a lot you can do for us, unless you want to clear away the Khetri so we can go back to Vaila—or at least hunt these grounds without having to worry about being ambushed.  The best game during this turn is in this forest, but with the Gate just a tenth's walk to the north, it's too dangerous.  And I think even you and your fireballs might have trouble with dozens of armed Khetri,” she added wryly.  “As it is, best we can do is stow as much sazja as we can carry and head back toward the equator.  It'll mean a turn of living on eggs and lizards, but...we'll survive.”

Tzi, though, was frowning in thought, but only briefly.  A smile broke across her features and she raised her wand.  “So...you need food?”