Sparrow knew the Searchers were gone before he took in the fact that their battlesuits were missing. The lodge felt empty; as empty as a tomb.
The mirror he had given to Krita winked from between the boots of his own armor.
"And except for that damned fox, we'd have another three martens," Gordon grumbled to Sledd as they entered behind their brother. "Hey Julia!"
"They've left," said Sparrow in a quiet voice.
"Race!" called Sledd as he shifted the straps of his pack that doubled in apparent weight as he tried get it off. "Damn. Help me with this, Sparrow."
"They've left us," Sparrow repeated. He didn't move from where he stood when the realization hit him.
"Hey, where's the battlesu . . . ," Gordon began. His voice trailed off. He and Sledd stared at their brother, finally taking in his words.
"They can't have gone!" Sledd insisted. He hunched his shoulders and flexed himself away from the straps of his pack. The bundle of fresh furs hit the floor with a thump.
"Are they walking, then?" said Gordon. "But they took their battlesuits."
"They've found their dragonflies," said Sparrow as certainly as if he had watched the women leave, "and they've ridden away on them."
Sledd ran his fingers over the carved wooden panel of his bed closet. Race's battlesuit had stood there.
"I don't believe—" Sledd began; but he did believe, and his bunched fist slammed through the lindenwood panel with a sound like the first stroke of lightning.
"Why did they . . . ?" Gordon said. He knelt and removed his own pack, thumbs beneath the straps. His eyes were closed in concentration.
Gordon couldn't get out the rest of the question; and anyway, the brothers all knew the answer.
Sledd flexed and massaged his right hand as he wandered toward the further end of the room. Objects that he and his brothers had made winked in perfect wonder. A silver cabinet opened for him as he came near. Its trays held every piece of the splendid jewelry he had fashioned for Race.
Sledd kicked at the cabinet morosely.
"It doesn't matter, does it?" he said. "We can go back to the way things were, that was plenty good enough. If we want women, we can always buy time from the nomads down south, the way we did before."
"Wait, there is a way!" said Gordon gleefully. "Sparrow, we'll use that mirror of yours to find them again, and then we'll—"
As Gordon spoke, he bent down and reached for the mirror. "—talk with them, conv—"
"No!" said Sparrow, bear huge and bear quick as his bulk slid between his brother and the object. "That's Krita's. Nobody touches it but—"
"You made it!" Sledd objected.
"Nobody but Krita!"
No one spoke for a moment. The beads of light continued their stately dance in the center of the lodge. Their illumination was dimmed by the blaze of sunlight through the east gable and the open door.
"We can still find them, you know," said Gordon, the words coming out faster as the wish clothed itself in the trappings of reality. "We can! They'll go—"
"They'll go back to the gods," said Sledd. He sucked the knuckles of his right hand. "We'll never see or hear of them again."
Sparrow turned slowly, lost in his own thoughts. His pack bumped the bed closet. He absentmindedly twisted one hand behind him to lift the massive weight, then removed the other arm from the unloaded strap.
"They'll want to see their homes, won't they?" Gordon protested. "They'll spend some time back where they were born, now that they're free."
Sparrow opened his bed closet. While the men were gone, Krita had pinned sprays of fresh flowers to the railing within. The stems had wilted and half the petals were scattered on the bedding.
"That was years ago," Sledd said, but he was commenting on the proposal rather than dismissing it out of hand. "Time isn't the same with the gods."
"It's not so long for Julia," Gordon said. He threw open a clothing chest, choosing quickly among the linens and woolen garments for which the brothers traded on their infrequent journeys to the fringe of the settled world. "Her father was King Tournalits. He may still be alive."
"Race had brothers," Sledd remarked. Though he spoke softly to hide the hope that might tempt fate to deny him, his normally harsh voice trembled with something close to tenderness. "But that was in the far south, Pallaia."
"Then we'll go to Pallaia!" Gordon said. "And to Tournalits' fortress in Armory. If they aren't there, they'll at least visit some time—and we can c-c-convince them. To return."
Sledd opened a chest and began to set out a trading assortment—rings and bracelets and lights brighter than jewels; pots that heated by themselves, and boxes that sang in tones of inhuman purity. The brothers did not keep baggage animals, but their own massive shoulders could carry enough of the products of their craft to buy a duchy.
Gordon paused. "Sparrow?" he said. "Your Krita . . . ?"
Sparrow looked at his brothers. "Oh, she'll come back to me, you know," he said. There was no emotion in his voice. "You go on, yes, look for your, your . . ."
The smith's mind hesitated between 'women' and 'wives.' In the end he chose neither and continued, "You go look for Race and Julia, and maybe you'll find them. But I'll stay here, because I know my Krita will come back to me one day."
Sparrow's brothers stared at him. The master smith's eyes were opaque.
If Sparrow was looking at anything, it was deep within his heart.
But his heart was probably empty as well.