Donovan said, “They have a fix, but there are only four signals. They have another signal, very weak, from Roaring Gorge, and ad-Din wants to know what happened? Who’s lost their beacon?”
Teodorq shrugged. “Mine went missing during the fight in Roaring Gorge. I ain’t going back to get it.”
Debly Sofwari ducked his head. “Same thing. When they Harps ransacked my equipment…”
Méarana grabbed him by the sleeve. “You were supposed to keep it on your person! Not stuff it away in your baggage! What were you thinking? If you’d gotten separated from us, we would never have found you!” She had begun pushing and shoving him; and he seized her hands at the wrist.
“Why berate me over what might have happened? If I had told you, what could you have possibly done about it?”
“D.Z. wants to know,” said Donovan, wagging his comm., “if we want pickup.”
Paulie said, “Easier than climbing up that mesa.”
Méarana backed away from Sofwari. “Tell him no,” she said. “We’ll be on top tomorrow morning.”
“The priestess back in Daciiti,” Theodorq said, “said day after is when the god comes.”
“Donovan, tell D.Z. that the ship should search for an approaching astronomical object. An asteroid or something.”
Donovan did so, adding, “And D.Z. it would not be a good idea to let Blankets and Beads come between that object and the mesa.” He signed off and tucked the comm. back in his breast pocket.
Méarana, watching him, said, “How did you hide your comm. from the Harps?”
The Fudir grinned with Donovan’s lips. “There’s always one place you can stick things where most folks won’t look.”
The path to the top of the mesa was steep. Bavyo assured them that there were no turnoffs to lead them astray. He then wished them good fortune and turned to the main trail. Méarana cried with astonishment. “Wait!”
But Chain said through Watershanks, “He walks his own path. The Oorah trail is not his trail.”
Billy Chins grunted. “Some guide.”
“I will go with Bavyo,” Chain announced. “He needs a woman to walk beside him, and how the barbarians used Skins-rabbits will not matter to him.” She, too, turned her feet to the main trail, speaking a few words with Watershanks as she passed.
The others gathered round. Teodorq watched the two Emrikii depart. “That can’t be good.”
“Watershanks,” said Méarana, “what did she tell you?”
“She assured me that the Oorah consider a guest as their most precious treasure.”
“Fine,” said Paulie, “but without we have an interpreter, what can they tell us?”
Donovan stood to the side with a thoughtful frown, running his fingers across his scars. “Oorah,” Méarana heard him say. “The people of the village? Do you think it could be, or is it just a coincidence?”
The way was steep, though unlike the Longfoot trail, there was no point at which they had to resort to toe- and handholds. But the air was thin and cold, and there was trouble catching one’s breath. Coming to a primordial lava flow, the trail passed through a slot cut through the rock and fashioned anciently into stairs. In the rock were carved the runes: 
Donovan stopped and ran his fingers over them, feeling out the shape of the figures. “Kapartār,” he said, as if to himself. “Could that be ‘guhbahdāw’?” He stood, staring and silent.
“I suppose it could be,” said Teodorq. “But for my eyes it could be ‘For a good time, summon Tsuzi Elkhorn.’” Paulie laughed with him.
Méarana said, “Donovan, what does guhbahdāw mean?”
“Hmm?” The scarred man turned from his contemplation of the carving. “Oh. It means ‘beware.’”
Teodorq looke at Paulie. “That can’t be good.”
Paulie said, “Stop saying that.” And the mountaineer made a sign with his left hand to avert the evil.
“Pedant talks about phoneme shifts. A ‘bh’—or ‘v’—tends to become a ‘b,’ for example; and a ‘b’ becomes a ‘p.’ But sometimes people pick up phonemes from neighboring folk and ‘b’ may become ‘bh’ again. This looks to me like the old Tantamiž that we saw in Madéen O’ Loons, or on the old captain’s logs that Greystroke stole from the Harpaloon temple.”
“I don’t mean that,” said Méarana. “I mean, what are we supposed to be wary of?”
“Life.”
“We needed a sign to tell us that?”
Méarana started into the cut, but Teodorq suddenly grabbed her by the shoulders, lifted her up, and set her down behind him. “I think,” he said, “that this is what yuh hired me for, babe. Paulie, you take rearguard. Donovan, Billy, in the middle with the scholar and the lady.”
“I can handle myself,” Méarana told him.
“Yeah? That’s what the late Tsuzi Elkhorn said to me at Whisker Bluff. But she was only half-right, and it was a whole fight. So, shut up, babe. Without yuh, there’d be nobody to sing my story. I mean, yer the reason we’re here an’ not somewhere else. My head would be decorating a spike outside Josang prison, and yer old man would be a drunk in a Jehovah bar. And Debly, here, would be playing with himself and swabbing people’s cheeks instead of being on this here quest where his name might be remembered for something that matters.”
Sofwari began to protest, but Teodorq had already started up the cut. Donovan paused before following him. “I don’t know,” he said with a grin. “The Bar on Jehovah might have been the better choice.”
Méarana pushed him along. “Move along, old man. Mount your head on a spike or mount it on a bottle of uiscebaugh, you’re embalmed either way.”
The passage took them up onto the lip of a wind-whipped parapet. Emerging, they saw that the rim of the mesa was a ridge that encircled a great barren bowl of a valley. It was at least a thousand double-paces from lip to lip. The village of the Oorah was strung around this bowl like a wreath woven of greens and fir branches. Fields were set in terraces in the side of the bowl. Below them, huts nestled. Inward of the huts was barren rock: no vegetation grew, no trees, no bushes.
“Like the caldera of a volcano,” said Sofwari as they made their way around the ledge.
“Except here,” Méarana said, “the fire comes down from the sky, not up from the ground.”
Thin lines of people filed into the caldera, each person carrying something which he laid in a great pile in the center of the bowl. Through the stiff wind they heard the faint murmur of singing and the people swayed to the rhythm of it.
“Offerings to the approaching god,” Sofwari guessed.
One of the supplicants, turning back after dropping her offering, pointed and raised a cry, and heads began to turn their way.
“Perhaps we have interrupted something,” said Watershanks.
Donovan stepped to the edge of the parapet and cupped his hands. “Halloo!” he called. “Nawn inki yergay mbetão!”
This caused a flurry of activity beneath them. People ran to and fro, sleeves were tugged, hats held out to shade eyes, more fingers were pointed. Finally, an old man was led out. Despite the cold, high-altitude air, he wore nothing beside a short skirt and what looked like a dusting of talcum powder over his chest, face, and arms. He bore a staff made of a thick, twisted tree limb and his hair was a rat’s tangle. An acolyte held a megaphone to the man’s lips.