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come to us, weary in body and sick in soul. They have faced the Merciless Ones, the ones who feed on men’s flesh, and they have suffered losses almost too grievous to bear. Their companions they have watched fall, and their hopes they have seen crumble into dust.”
    I stared at him, and he stared back, the scars on his face once again pulling his lips upward in a weird smile.
    â€œOh yes, we know their ways, and their woes, far better than they think,” he said. “Even better, perhaps, than they know them themselves. For long years we have watched thesons of the despoilers vainly struggling for existence within the wasteland their fathers prepared for them. We have seen that they do not learn from the sins of the past, but seek to relive them: to drive their foul machines atop the ashes of their ancestors, to slaughter each other with their weapons of war, to desecrate the ground with their tools of metal. We have walked among them, and sickened at the stench of death that pursues them. And we have seen them wither before the ones sent in judgment of their crimes.”
    He paused, and in the silence it struck me that maybe he had once belonged to a survival colony. He was obviously talking about the Skaldi, and he sounded like someone who had witnessed their attacks. Was that what accounted for the scars across his body, the madness in his mind?
    â€œYet we of the Sheltered Lands have ever pursued a different course,” he resumed after a moment. “We have learned to disdain those false idols that have been the despoilers’ undoing. With clean hands and clean hearts, we have renewed the ground, drawing from it the poisons of the despoilers, restoring it to its former health. Working only with that which is given freely by the land—wood and water, sand and stone—we have healed the land of its sickness. And so we live in comfort and ease, delighting in all the needful things of life: food aplenty, and clean water to drink, and clothing for our bodies, and safe homes for our children. We ask for little, for we have far greater gifts than any man of olden days could claim.”
    His audience was nodding, so whether they understood our language or not, they must have been familiar with the theme. But with a sharp look from him, they froze as perfectly as if they’d been turned to stone.
    â€œAnd so we might live forever,” Asunder said in a voice quieter yet sharper than before, “enjoying what is ours to enjoy, keeping from all others those gifts our wise acts have merited. But we who are wise bear no ill will toward any other. Though we despise the deeds of the despoilers, we do not ignore their children’s desperate need. And so to these forsaken ones we offer what they most sorely lack: rest from their weary struggles, an end to affliction, the comfort and safety that come only to those who follow the one true way. We offer this freely, and without begrudging any man the gifts we have to give. We ask only that they make a choice: to give up the lives they once lived and come to us as children reborn. That is all we ask. And we say to those who accept this offer, come and live with us, and live in joy abounding! But to those who reject what we have to offer, we say: let them be cast out, let them return to the waste their fathers have laid for such as them, and let them be abandoned there to meet the one who lies in wait in the Shattered Lands beyond. Let them stand upon his altar in nakedness and fear, and let them meet their judgment at his hands. Let them face him, the one we name Nidach bar Tivah : the Scavenger of Souls.”
    At the sound of these words, the cave-people bowed theirheads again, murmuring something in their own tongue. Asunder waited for their voices to ebb, then his own voice was raised again.
    â€œThis is what we ask of you, travelers from afar: to choose between the ways of death and the ways of life, the doom of all who doubt and the