e was
a little swirling in the air, and then both gems vanished, and the case
of surgical instruments lay in their place.

Still Kyral did not move, but held the three fingers out for a full
minute. Finally he dropped them and bent to pick up the case
instruments. Again the little swirl in the air, and the instruments
vanished. In their place lay three of the blue gems. My mouth twitched
in the first amusement I had felt since we entered this uncanny place.
Evidently bargaining with the Silent Ones was not a great deal different
than bargaining with anyone anywhere. Nevertheless, under the eyes of
those shrouded but horrible forms--if they had eyes, which I doubted--I
had no impulse to protest their offered prices.

I gathered up the rejected lenses, repacked them neatly, and helped
Kyral recrate the tools and instruments the Silent Ones had not wanted.
I noticed that in addition to the microscope lenses and surgical
instruments, they had taken all the fine wire. I couldn't imagine, and
didn't particularly want to imagine, what they intended to do with it.

On our way back through the streets, unshepherded this time, Kyral's
tongue was loosened as if with a great release from tension. "They're
psychokinetics," he told me. "Quite a few of the nonhuman races are. I
guess they have to be, having no eyes and no hands. But sometimes I
wonder if we of the Dry-towns ought to deal with them at all."

"What do you mean?" I asked, not really listening. I was thinking mostly
about the way the small objects had melted away and reappeared. The
sight had stirred some uncomfortable memory, a vague sense of danger. It
was not tangible enough for me to know why I feared it, but just a
subliminal uneasiness that kept prodding at me, like a tooth that isn't
quite aching yet.

Kyral said, "We of Shainsa live between fire and flood. Terra on the one
hand, and on the other maybe something worse, who knows? We know so
little about the Silent Ones, and those like them. Who knows, maybe
we're giving them the weapons to destroy us--" He broke off, with a
gasp, and stood staring down one of the streets.

It lay open and bare between two rows of round houses, and Kyral was
staring fixedly at a doorway which had opened there. I followed his
paralyzed gaze, and saw the girl.

Hair like spun black glass fell in hard waves around her shoulders, and
the red eyes smiled with alien malice, alien mischief, beneath the dark
crown of little stars. A