as stronger than he
looked.

"Hold your miserable tongue!" he told Vahr, who was getting to his
feet. "We're guests of Raud the Keeper, and we'll not have him
insulted in his own house by a cur like you!"

The man with red hair turned. "I am ashamed. We should not have
brought this into your house; we should have left it outside." He
spoke the Northland language well, "It will honor us to share your
food, Keeper."

"Yes, and see here," the younger man said, "we didn't know you'd be
alone. Let us help you. Dranigo's a fine cook, and I'm not bad,
myself."

He started to protest, then let them have their way. After all, a
guest's women helped the woman of the house, and as there was no woman
in Keeper's House, it was not unfitting for them to help him.

"Your friend's name is Dranigo?" he asked. "I'm sorry, but I didn't
catch yours."

"I don't wonder; fool mouthed it so badly I couldn't understand it
myself. It's Salvadro."

They fell to work with him, laying out eating-tools--there were just
enough to go around--and hunting for dishes, of which there were not.
Salvadro saved that situation by going out and bringing some in from
the airboat. He must have realized that the lumicon over the table was
the only light beside the fire in the house, for he was carrying a
globe of the luminous plastic with him when he came in, grumbling
about how dark it had gotten outside. It was new and brilliant, and
the light hurt Raud's eyes, at first.

"Are you truly from the Stars?" he asked, after the food was on the
table and they had begun to eat. "Neither I nor any in the village
have seen anybody from the Stars before."

The big man with the red hair nodded. "Yes. We are from Dremna."

Why, Dremna was the Great World, at the middle of everything! Dremna
was the Empire. People from Dremna came to the cities of Awster and
fabulous Antark as Southron traders from the Warm Seas came to the
villages of the Northfolk. He stammered something about that.

"Yes. You see, we...." Dranigo began. "I don't know the word for it,
in your language, but we're people whose work it is to learn things.
Not from other people or from books, but new things, that nobody else
knows. We came here to learn about the long-ago times on this world,
like the great city that was here and is now mounds of stone and
earth. Then, when we go back to Dremna, we will tell other people
what we have found out."

Vahr Farg's son, having eaten his fill, was fi