His impenetrable eyes rested on the humblest of the garment-heaps, one made up of the common gear of a Steppes horseman—a side-fastened shirt of heavy undyed linen, embroidered in Rismai designs at the cuffs and collar and hem by his mother's hands; a long fawn-colored coat belted at the waist, the skirts vented deep for riding; soft leather leggings, and supple riding-boots that might be drawn up above the knee or downgathered in folds around the calf. Next to these garments were Jinn's saddlebags, containing things Ryel had cherished or thought needful. Such was the Mastery girding Markul that despite the eternal damp, each of these objects was as whole and unweathered as the day he had flung it from him, as indeed was everything left by others.

Were I to believe what the voice said, I could don those clothes again, Ryel thought. Belt them about me, pull on those boots, toss that bag upon my shoulder and leave this place even as I came. Leave behind the learning of the Art, I that have already learned more than any man living, and take up the World's way. The world of clear light, and blue water, and golden towers...

He half-rose from the window-embrasure where he sat, but another thought made him return to his place, and lock his arms around his knees.

"The voice wants that," he whispered. "Wants me to venture forth alone, and without doubt wishes me harm."

He rested his chin on his knees, and stared as far into the fog as he could, and remembered his first years in Markul. From the beginning he had been fortunate in having his kinsman Edris as his teacher. No blood-ties united the celibate wysards of the City, and newcomers were by custom given shelter and instruction by whoever it was that first saw them from the walls—not always a fortuitous circumstance. The first year had been hardest. Ryel had been required to put away all recollection of his past, to force his mind and body into the complete calm and mental readiness requisite for the second year's learning—difficult enough for a grown man, but far harder for a boy. The second year he had begun to experiment with and inure himself to the many drugs used by the Art-brotherhood to channel concentration and heighten perceptual acuity. And he learned his first spells, those that would harness the servant-spirits of the Outer World, an urgently necessary but dangerous test of will that had ever proven the winnowing-threshold separating live lord adept from mere dead aspirant.