On this night, the enaree, one of the fabled eunuch-seers of Azkhant, had commanded that everyone, even the untried children, gather together to witness, to remember...

Ythrae Daughter of Kosimarra Daughter of Shannivar stood watching with the other young women. Her gaze, clear as the sky after a storm, went to her father, Ishtotuch-chieftain, where he sat gray-faced and sweating in his chair of tooled camel-leather. From time to time, he stroked his left arm from shoulder to wrist as if to ease a secret pain, a pain that came from no wound any man could see.

For the last cycle of the moon, the enaree had dosed the chieftain with foxflower and illbane, had painted dotted circles of protection in indigo paste around his eyes and navel, had forbidden him k'th and buttered tea, had in turns purged and fasted him. Now it was clear that ordinary measures had failed. Only the swearing of a false oath in the presence of a chieftain could resist natural healing. And only the enaree could divine the truth.

The wealth of a clan is not in its camels or armed might, the old poet had said, so many years ago his name was lost. But in the vision of its enaree. Yet behind their backs, people spoke of the "women's sickness" and called the enarees half-men.

Two young strong warriors, one of them Ythrae's childhood friend, Tenoshinakh, lowered themselves to the ground on either side of the chieftain and began drumming, not the passionate heartbeat of the dance, but slow, like the growl of a hunting cloud-leopard.

The flap to the enaree's tent lifted and the seer emerged. His hair was thin and unbound, his face bare as a woman's, the body beneath the ceremonial robes flat and spare.

He carried a bundle of salis branches and rolls of cured linden bark. As he circled the fire, he cast a handful of powdery stuff into the flame, causing it to flare and spark.

Ythrae knew the uses of the linden bark, for the enaree had used it to divine the cause of her baby brother's milk-fever.

The enaree halted before Ythrae. Her nostrils caught the odor of burnt orienna. She steeled herself to answer his piercing gaze. His eyes, bright under pale brows so shaggy the hairs curled and twined with his eyelashes, were a strange pellucid gray.

The enaree examined each member of the encampment. Some flushed coppery-red and a few hung their heads. So guilt reveals itself for anyone with eyes to see, she thought. Where was the magic in that?

The second time, the enaree carried two salis wands in each hand, waving them as he went. After a few moments, Ythrae caught the pattern, the way the freshly-stripped wood gathered energy and then smoothed it out.

The enaree walked the circle for a third time, shaking a fist-sized round box of fire-hardened leather from a camel's hump. From the rattling sounds within, Ythrae guessed it held Tabilit's Sacred Bones. She'd never seen them, only heard the same stories as everyone else, how the goddess in her compassion had cut off her own hand that the knucklebones, polished and preserved through the ages, might guide men to truth.

When the seer finished the third circuit, he withdrew to his tent, presumably to study the bones. The tribesmen let out their collective breath, for such a test might daunt the most stalwart warrior and there was no loss of pride in that. A few talked in low nervous voices, but no one ventured a joke.

Moments oozed by with infuriating slowness. The scent of orienna faded, a camel snored in the distance, a mother sat down to nurse her restive baby. At the picket lines, a pony squealed and made an abortive kick at its neighbor.

Ishtotuch looked paler and sicker on his chair. He slumped, then drew himself upright.

The enaree came back out of his tent. Ythrae expected him to make a solemn proclamation, point out the false-oath, or something equally dramatic. Instead, the seer approached her father the chief and whispered in his ear.

Ishtotuch pulled himself erect in his chair, though he could not entirely control the quaver in his voice. "There is no more to be done." He gestured to Tenoshinakh at his right side. "I will rest now."

Everyone sighed with relief, everyone but Ythrae. Natural healing, herbs and poultices, wards against evil and therapeutic smoke, all of these could be understood and performed by most people, although they had special potency when an enaree did them. But to see falseness in a man's heart, to hear the music of the stars, to bridge the spiritual and material worlds - if that were not the special gift of the enarees, then all of their learning and sacrifice of their manhood was for nothing. This she could not believe, not when the stars called to her in her own dreams.