his physical strength had returned, yet having no will to drive it)
he felt a spark of emotion, almost human, that held him there with a
hollow aching in the center of his chest. He stood before a fading
portrait, a mark left on the uncaring stone.

At his feet lay the scattered and broken armor, all that remained, of
another who had tried. This melancholy work, drawn in the creature's
own browning blood and severed foreclaw, had been its death-act of
remembrance, its struggle still to forge some meaning from the
emptiness of its failure. It had not been mai---he knew from the
broken shell and the drawing---and this more than anything else,
thundered shame at his growing feelings of surrender and despair. He
remained silent, head down, wrapped in rage. At length he looked up to
study the creature's last act of flesh.

It was the image, subtly changed, of a winged chivit, roaming insects
living to the south of the mai. The outlines of its frame, like the
edges of a fisherman's net, were opened at the center of the body and
joined shut at the limbs and single arching wing. Its left foreleg and
right hind (it had only four digits in all) extended from the main in
almost Egyptian caricature, drawn with a trembling hand. The effect of
the whole was that of a shriveled and shrunken Phoenix, macabrely
adorning the tomb of some lost pharaoh. Subtly changed, like
himself..... But the thing that held him---one strange detail. A
smoky blur emanated outward from the body, like Spirit growing out of
flesh. A fearful banshee image, or dying vision of the Life After?
The long journey.

Aura.

Breaking away at last he continued downward, seeking the source of the
light, finding passages as best he could. He tried to read what signs
there were, the faint flux of incandescence, feeling called but never
sure, taking what nourishment he could, for three days more. Always
the strange tingling of flesh against his armor increased, as did
internal body heat. And ever as he went he came across more of the
striped-brown creatures, male centipedes, some running it seemed, from
what he could not guess, all fearing him, all bearing the marks of
battle. Yet none were ever wounded to the point of near-death, and all
appeared strong of their kind. It was a puzzle he could not dissect.
Their fear held his confidence, but drawing steadily downward, he felt
a growing reluctance to trespass the source of their being. It seemed
to c