The Wars of Gods and Men

Book 0: Immortal's Blood

by Chris Humphreys

Genres: Fantasy; Epic Fantasy; Historical Fantasy

Synopsis

After the Coming of the Dark, most immortals in the world have been killed. The religion of the Four Tribes has taken over the world, and any who resist it are crushed. They await the return of their prophesised One, who is both male and female, and neither. They have not been seen for fifteen years, but belief rules all.

A few still fight. A handful of surviving immortals, once seen as gods, have hidden away. In each of the four lands of the world, there are mutterings of rebellion.


And over the mountains, kept secret from the world, the One has grown into their adulthood. It is time for them to return and see what is being done in their name. And that means going to war.

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 368

Sample

I am Sirene.

A name that will do, in this place where now we meet, which is no place. In a form that you can hear, which is no form. Sirene is the name I am known by in the world of four lands you set me to watch. There, I am the distillation of a plant, a way of seeing you gave to the world. Here I am thought, moving through your minds.

You wish to know what have been the results of your three gifts.

The first, immortality, an inheritance in the blood, passed on randomly to a few, differently in three of those lands.

The second, the ability for those immortals to possess another entity.

Finally, to another people, a different kind of gift: Hope. Hope in the prophecy of the One, come to save them all.

I can tell you much of it – but not everything. For I may only see each world when people in it use me, travelling within the smoke in the glass. I cannot tell you what transpires with those who do not travel, only what the traveller observes or learns. Yet enough do use me and so I can report most of what happens, what has happened, what may yet happen.

It has been nearly sixteen of their years since last you summoned me.

The largest of their lands is an empire and a city both known as Corinthium, though renamed by its conquerors Saghaz-­a-akana – ‘The Little Land of Joy’. Most who live there call it rather ‘The Land of Little Joy’ because many of their former pleasures are gone, replaced by a formal, restrictive worship of the One.

Of all the lands, I see that one most easily, for many there travel with Sirene. One man is the clearest, the monk known as Anazat, leader of the conquering Four Tribes of Saghaz-a. It was Anazat who travelled with me most to begin with, who used me and his belief in the One to change the whole world utterly. With a world so vast, so different in all its parts, its problems are vast as well and this requires Anazat to move constantly between lands. So he has left two immortals in charge of what was Corinthium, to rule it for him and for the One. Makron is one. He lets me see some things there, for he uses Sirene to communicate if not to travel, and so lets me in. His wife, the immortal Roxanna, does not use me. I glimpse her through him. This allows me to see their great ambition: to rule separate from Anazat. To restore, perhaps, the control of the Corinthian Immortals. Their control at least.

Their opportunity is fast approaching. For Anazat will be distracted by what has transpired in those other two realms – Midgarth and Ometepe.

In the north, since the battle known as ‘The Coming of the Dark’, in which the majority of the immortals there, whom they named gods, were killed, a man named Peki Asarko has ruled on behalf of Anazat. A sexually deviant tyrant, he has subdued most of the realm in the name of the One, putting down with great cruelty any brief flarings of rebellion. He is one of my most devoted followers and I see his desires clearly: to rule Midgarth alone and throw off any restraints of the sort Anazat puts upon him.

His problem, and his master’s too, lies in the far west, on the island of Ometepe. For the only immortal male there, Intitepe, is finally poised to crush the revolution that exploded when he left his lands for the new world he’d discovered. When he does, he will want to return to Midgarth and claim what he was promised: its throne. He does not follow me but he has advisers from the Four Tribes who do, the monks. And they show me a god who does not think to stop at Midgarth.

For Intitepe, you will remember, is the father of the One. And though at first he tried to kill the child – fearing an ancient prophecy that, just as he killed his own father, so his son would kill him – he has now come to believe something quite different: that since the One is neither son nor daughter but both, so father and child are destined to jointly rule the whole world.

The whole world. From Toluc, the volcano that is his brother god in Ometepe, across the waters to Midgarth, and beyond that through the Lands of the Four Tribes, Saghaz-a. Finally to what was the empire of Corinthium itself. He has only seen that in visions told him by his advisers, those monks sent by Anazat. He sees it as his place of destiny. Where he will be emperor of … everything.

As you have realised, there is an element missing. Something on which everything else depends. Someone.

The One.

The child who is neither man nor woman but both. The child who is now nearly sixteen of their years old.

Poum.

If the child lives. For they – I have come to think of Poum in the plural – disappeared fifteen years ago. Vanished into the high mountains between Midgarth and Saghaz-a after that same Coming of the Dark. Only Peki Asarko knows in which direction they headed and he has told no one, not even Anazat, fearing that if the One was brought back and established as the God of All Worlds, his own power would end. Anazat has organised searches all over the world and has found not a trace.

The god known as Luck, and the child’s mother, Atisha, have kept the child hidden all this time.

It is strange. Of all who ever journeyed with me, the one that roved the furthest, who revelled the deepest, was this same Luck of Midgarth. I believed that he was bound to me for ever in chains he could never break. But he has not journeyed with me once these fifteen years. He has a will as strong as anyone I have ever encountered, across the galaxies and throughout time.

Yet this I know – he plans to return to me one day. For just before he betrayed Anazat and vanished with the child, he asked for, and was given, not a supply of the distilled drug but the plant itself.

Somewhere at the top of the world, Luck is creating his own store of me.

I know you do not fear. Why would you, when you have lived so long, have the power to change worlds almost on a thought? Yet I will tell you – this Luck has come closer than anyone you have ever thought of to being able to see you. For he asked me, when last he travelled with me, something I’d never been asked before.

He asked me why I am.

I am Sirene. I do not lie, or evade questions. So I told him. Told him that I was the watcher. Told him that I watched for you. Told him of the gifts you gave to the world, two of which he had received – immortality, and the power to possess.

Then I answered his question. His why. Told him that you gave each of the peoples those gifts to see what they would do with them.

He was not pleased to hear that he was a part of what he called ‘an experiment’.

Still, you are the only true immortals, are you not? He cannot threaten you.

However, this I believe – that if he has survived, he has been living with the answer to all mankind’s hopes, the source of all its worship, and so many of its dreams.

He has been living with, and shaping the mind of, the One.

We cannot know what powers the One will have until Luck allows me to see. Until he travels with me again. And next time, I believe he will not travel alone.

I am Sirene. I have told all I know. Now I will return to learn the rest. When next we meet, I shall tell you more.

‘Where are they?’

Atisha turned to the doorway. To the angry man standing in it. ‘They, Luck? Which they do you seek? Bjorn and Freya? They are picking daisies in the meadow.’

‘Not them.’

‘Oh, the sheep? Or do you mean the goats? You will find the one in that same meadow, competing for flowers. The goats are on the hillside.’

‘Atisha, you know who I mean.’ Luck marched into the centre of the hut. ‘Where are they?’

‘Oh, is it Poum you are referring to in that furious voice?’ She put down the carrot and the knife she was using to chop it. ‘No wonder I was confused. For Poum is no longer “they”. Poum is “he”.’

‘What? Since when? Last week he was they!’

‘And the week before, she.’ Atisha wiped her hands on her smock, and came and stood before him. ‘You have to accept that Poum is still discovering … who he is.’

‘It is what else they – he – is discovering that worries me.’ He gestured to the door. ‘Call him, wife. He will come for you, when he will not for me.’

‘He certainly won’t now he’s heard the tone in which you call.’ She reached and pulled a wood shaving from his beard. ‘You have been shouting for him with all that fury for a while now.’

‘You heard?’

‘Husband, they heard you over the mountains in Midgarth.’

Luck dropped heavily onto a stool by the table. Pushed one hand through his forelock, leaving more traces of wood there. ‘I waited for him in the woodshed for an hour. Today was his carpentry lesson.’

‘I thought it was the writing of tolanpa-sen that you taught him today?’

‘That was this morning. Carpentry this afternoon.’

‘All day at his studies? With the last of the summer sun on the land?’ She glanced outside. ‘He should be frolicking with his brother and sister and the sheep in the meadow.’

‘They are children. It is different.’

‘He – they – are different.’ Atisha sat on the next stool. ‘He has but fifteen summers. It is a life still caught between the child and the adult. And Poum is … such a special child. Turning into such a special adult.’ She took Luck’s hand, rubbed at the calluses on his palm for a moment, then spoke again. ‘Husband, it is time to tell him.’

He frowned at her. ‘Tell him what?’

‘Everything. Everything you have not already told him.’

‘They are not ready for that!’ He pulled his hand from hers, looked away. ‘Poum is disobedient, moody, quick to anger, holds a grudge. Can be cruel, mischievous—’

‘Like every other near-sixteen-year-old you ever knew. Like you were then, I suspect.’

‘I can’t remember. That was …’ He looked above her head, thinking. ‘Four hundred and one years ago.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘No, I can remember. Because I killed a man when I was fifteen. For the first time. In my first battle.’ He looked at her. ‘Can you see Poum killing a man?’

‘No. And I pray he never has to. For it is a horrible thing.’

‘Atisha, you say he is like every other fifteen-year-old. But he is not. They are not. For no other fifteen-year-old is called “the One”, and worshipped throughout the world.’

‘The One? Ha!’ she exclaimed. ‘The One is just a title. A prophecy dreamed by men to serve their purposes.’ She shook her head. ‘My Poum is … an excuse. A way to rule, to control. Poum isn’t important to the world. Only the idea of him is.’ She shuddered. ‘You saw the terrible things done in the name of the One. You lost many whom you loved because of it. And you know, because you visited it five years ago, that the world has become even more terrible during our absence.’

‘And worse since, no doubt.’ Luck shuddered, as he remembered that trip he’d felt he had to take five years before. Midgarth in the hands of that perverted madman Peki Asarko. A land of terror, where the few remaining immortals were hunted down and killed, and mortals were slaves to whims of the tyrant. He’d learned all this when he’d managed to track down one of the few surviving gods, Petr the Red, he and a few others still trying to fight, living the squalid life of outlaws in caves. Petr had also told him what little he’d heard of the world beyond Midgarth. The Empire of Corinthium that was now the Empire of the One, governed by monks every bit as cruel as Peki Asarko. By one especially, Luck’s former gaoler, Anazat. The black-eyed monk who had introduced Luck to Sirene – and who would never cease looking for the child that Luck had stolen, that his brother and sister gods had died for. Yet they had died for a small hope – and Luck would not betray their sacrifice by not believing in that hope still.

He took Atisha’s hand now, to try to chase away the darkness that had come into her eyes. ‘My love,’ he said softly, ‘ideas are what change the world. And think, if the idea of Poum brought the darkness, might not the actual Poum bring the light?’

‘Oh, only that? He brought the dark and now he must bring back the light?’ She laughed. ‘And you wonder why he is moody!’

Luck gripped her tighter. ‘You haven’t told him?’

‘Only as much as we agreed. Of the darkness across the mountains. Of his birth across the sea in Ometepe, where his father tried to kill him. Of the prophecy of the One, though not that he is it. But the omission is starting to feel more and more like lying.’ She placed her other hand on top of Luck’s, squeezed it, sought his eyes. ‘Now we must tell him the rest. We must!’

Luck stared at her for a long moment, then nodded. ‘You are right,’ he said. ‘Also, I think that is why I have been so angry with … them. Because I knew that we must tell them everything.’

‘Really?’ She grinned. ‘Is that why you have been angry? Or is it … moody?’

‘You knew?’

‘Husband, your moods are like the words you teach from the books you stole. Easy to read.’

He smiled back, then sighed. ‘But when we tell him, everything will change.’ He looked to the open door, stared out at the autumn sunshine. ‘I know it has not been easy here all this time. Those first years were hard, and to live in a land where winter lasts so long?’ He broke off, turned back. ‘But I have loved this life we have made. The children we have made.’ He sighed, squeezed. ‘I have never been so happy.’

‘You have, my love,’ she replied. ‘With Gytta.’

He looked at her a long moment. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘with Gytta, for a short time, it is true.’

She lifted her hands, took his face in them. ‘I do not mind, husband. We both have loved, been loved, before. Those we loved … left. But love, its memory, lasts for ever.’ She leaned forward and kissed him, then sat back, looked where he’d looked, out the door. ‘Love is one of the things that Poum must discover alone. Another of the reasons we must tell him the rest.’

‘Where to begin? With immortality? With possession? He does not know that I am immortal. We do not know whether he is. It is rare, and so would be unlikely. Yet his father is. And he – they – are so different.’ He ran his hand over his head, leaving more wood shavings there. ‘But how to begin to tell? Where do we start?’

‘Do you remember, love,’ Atisha said, leaning forward and picking more chips from his red-brown locks, ‘when you met Sirene on your last journey with her, the question you asked?’

Sirene. At the mention of her name, Luck looked across the room. The cuttings he’d brought across the mountain he’d grown into a plant, distilled its essence, then placed it into a pot; sealed that, then locked it away in the wooden chest he’d fashioned, asking Atisha to hide the key from him. Yet through clay and wood she still called to him. Every day, for fifteen years – hearing, yearning, refusing the call. The hunger as strong now as it had ever been. ‘Remind me,’ he replied, not looking at her, his voice suddenly thick, all other thoughts lost in desire.

‘You asked her … not who she was, but why she was.’ She leaned into his vision, brought his eyes back to hers. ‘Now it is time to give Poum the answer to that same question. The one they have been asking all their life.’ She smiled. ‘Why they are.’

Fingertips found the tiny ledges, toes the little cracks. With a final burst of lung power, muscle power, Poum surged up the last of the cliff face, powered over the lip, flopped onto the ledge. Only then, and for the first time in a while, did they look down. Gasped.

Poum had never climbed this peak. It had been hard enough on its lower slopes, which were steep and rubble-strewn. It looked impossible from the base of the final cliff – which did not look any more feasible from its top. ‘Did it!’ they whooped, arms thrust high in triumph. Lowering them, Poum took in the view.

It was spectacular. The homestead was far below and to the left, its every detail clear in the cool, late afternoon, late summer mountain air. The turf roof, with its solitary sheep – an aggressive older male known as Bull. It attacked any other ram, many ewes and any human it caught on open ground with no provo­cation and no warning. It was not to be trusted with the rest of the flock grazing in the meadow above the steading. Poum suspected that before long Bull would mostly be appearing to them in the form of sausages.

Between the streams that threaded the valley were the fields where the last of the oat was waiting to be cropped, and the water meadows where the sheep grazed. Twenty of them, roaming free, and, roaming among them, Bjorn and Freya. The boy was nine years old, the girl seven. His siblings had been named for relatives of Luck, great warriors who had died in battle when Poum had less than a year. A battle that, as Luck never failed to add when he talked of it, had been fought to save Poum’s life. Though he was always vague as to why.

Poum glowered, turned away. They had never asked anyone to die for them. Him, Poum thought, I am him this week, though that was more to annoy his parents than anything else. Mostly, Poum accepted that he and she were they. That the otherness at the core of them, so different from Bjorn and Freya and, yes, Luck and Atisha, and Bull, and any of the beasts, made them them. But of the three languages he spoke – Midgarth’s, Ometepe’s, even tolanpa-sen, the ‘one word’ of the Land of the Four Tribes – none of them produced a word that could sum them up. He would just have to accept that.

The Land of the Four Tribes. To glimpse it was the reason for climbing this peak, for its better view. Turning away from the steading, facing the opposite way, Poum now looked east.

While there were two lines of mountains between their farm and Midgarth, only one separated it from Saghaz-a. Luck had told him that it was from the west that killers might come for them, sent from his homeland; which was one reason, apart from its fertile siting, that he and Atisha had chosen this place to settle – to be further from that danger. It was less likely any would come from the east.

But the east was what Poum dreamed of. As soon as they had heard of Horse Lords, Seafarers and Huntresses, Poum had wanted to be one of them. Since they were different anyway, why be the same as the peoples their parents came from? But to sail the seas looking for fights and booty? To ride mighty steeds across the Sea of Grass seeking honour in battle? To hunt wild beasts by bow in the vast dark forests? Luck had made all of them out to be savages. But his own people of Midgarth did not sound so very different in their desires, and neither did the men and women of Ometepe.

The only tribe he wanted nothing to do with were the monks. To spend your life in prayer for a saviour called ‘The One’? Though they were also meant to be extraordinary fighters, it still did not sound like the life of adventure that Poum craved.

And speaking of adventure …

There was another reason they’d climbed up there. The week before, from the next peak over, and with their keen sight, they’d spotted an eagle’s nest, and they wanted to confirm that what they’d discovered by chance one week before was true.

That they could dissolve into an animal.

It had happened like this. Once more avoiding Luck and his shouting – the man was obsessed with teaching his boring subjects, going on and on and on – Poum had fled to the waterfall. It was a long way for Luck to limp in pursuit and the tumbling water drowned out his father’s shouts. Ufda had come along, grandaughter of the first sheepdog that had accompanied them over the mountains. There was something strange about the dog – Luck said all the dogs were a little strange as their father was also their brother and that didn’t make for sense. Luck had found wild sheep he’d been able to breed with the ones he’d brought, but there were no wild dogs. So confused Ufda would chase things only she could see, barking furiously at nothing. She was also on heat again, which made her doubly mad.

She’d behaved like that at the falls. And Poum was so bored, and the dog so excited by her nothing, that Poum called her over. ‘What is it that you see, Ufda?’ they’d said. Taking the hound by her head, they stared into her eyes, ‘Show me!’ they’d cried. ‘Show me!’

Which was when it happened. Their body – they – were gone. Except they weren’t. They were her – seeing through the dog’s eyes, sniffing the world through her snout. They were Poum still … but they were also Ufda. They could control – run down there, pick up that stick, bark at the waterfall. They’d discovered though that it felt better to let the dog do all that for herself. To feel the animal yield to her desires. To run, jump … howl as her.

Until Ufda went to leap into the pond beneath the waterfall. Poum knew how freezing it was. Poum hated swimming. So Poum decided to leave Ufda – and discovered that it was as easy going out as going in. But it had also been too late and they’d fallen into the pond anyway.

They’d been right. It had been freezing. But the cold faded fast in the sunny patch they’d found – while the wonder about it, and the desire to try it again, only grew.

They hadn’t, not once during the whole week since. They had too many questions about it. Was it only dogs they could become? It seemed limiting. They thought of trying Bull the ram. But what if you became trapped in a beast? And Bull had his rendezvous with the butcher’s block. Could Poum die, even as the beast died?

They’d thought it through carefully. If they were going to be stuck in any animal it had to be something magnificent. Something with opportunities.

Something that could fly.

That was why, a week later, Poum was peering along the clifftop. No, they couldn’t see the nest from here. But it was there, built into a hollow in the crags. They could hear the high, sharp-pitched shrieks of eagle-kind. When they’d observed it the week before, they’d seen the mother and two huge chicks, near full grown. They’d even observed her teaching her offspring to fly. From the cries there was another lesson going on now. I should be at my lesson learning how to build a chair, Poum thought, grinning as they rose. This is better. To learn how to fly?

But would it work again? Was a bird even possible to … possess? Possess. That would be the word. What if they leaped over the crag they were stealthily approaching, looked in the eagle’s eyes – and nothing happened except the beast wanting to peck out theirs?

Poum reached and drew out their knife. The sounds ahead had changed; the eagle was now feeding its young. If it was the same as with Ufda, he would only need a moment.

Thrusting the knife out, Poum took a deep breath – and leaped over the crag.

The mother eagle saw them on the instant. Rising from the nest, wings spread wide over its two fledglings, she shrieked, lunged, black eyes fixed on Poum’s …

Gone. In the gap between heartbeats. Possessed.

There was a moment, far more powerful than the one Poum had felt with the dog, when the eagle tried to eject them. A moment when they felt … between. Half bird, half human. Yet though they had almost never done it, they knew what to do. It was like … like spreading out inside an old shirt, too small for them now, stretching their body to fit it all. Poum pushed … and the seams between them did not split.

Eagle and mortal were one.

To the shrieks of her offspring who did not understand why their meal had so suddenly ceased, the eagle flapped hard, rose straight up from the nest, and dived over the cliff edge. Poum discovered that they did not need to fly – the bird did that. Flapped its wings when it needed to, spread them to catch the warmer air rising from the heated rocks below, rising on that, tilting its body to change direction, at Poum’s command. The methods were hers, the path through the sky theirs.

The eyes! Poum’s were sharp but the eagle’s? Extraordinary. Swooping towards the steading, they could make out its every detail. Bull, on the turf roof, aware of the bird of prey descending, eyes narrowing in challenge. The daisy crowns on Bjorn and Freya’s heads, each flower distinct as they rose, pointed, cried out; those cries drawing Atisha fast from the hut, to see that the children were well, then follow the arms that pointed at the gliding bird. Ufda barking wildly, trained to scare off carrion birds who would sometimes try to kill the newborn lambs. Lastly Luck, stepping from the woodshed, where Poum was meant to be studying, a hand raised to shelter his eyes from the glare.

Waggling her wings as if waving hands, the bird soared over them all, on, up, climbing high. The world opened, they were above all the peaks now, could see east towards the range that gazed down on Saghaz-a. Tempted to fly there, to begin to explore that world they yearned to see. But in a glimpse the other way, towards Midgarth, they saw something glimmer. Sunlight on water. There was a huge lake in that next valley. Every spring the whole family would make an expedition there, to camp for a few weeks on its shore, and fish for what Luck called, in the Midgarth tongue, the sorghan. To eat fresh flesh after the deprivations of one winter and to catch many more to smoke or salt for the next one. It was fun too, for the sorghan ran big, as big as the length of an arm, and were mighty fighters on the hook. Luck and Poum competed each year for who would catch most. Poum had won the last two years.

Poum liked fish, the cleanness of them, better than any meat with its ruddy taste. Yet they realised that the eagle liked it even more. Sorghan was its diet. Also it was hungry. Its chicks were hungry.

Letting the eagle take them, Poum passed over the crag, rose on its heat, glided again. Her sharp eyes looked in the water, saw the shapes at the surface, feeding on insects. Folding her wings, she dived.

Poum was good at taking fish. The eagle was brilliant. At the very last moment, just as she was about to crash into the lake, she shot her wings out, slowing in an instant. So it was her outstretched talons that hit the water and sank deep into a sorghan’s back. Another surge, like leaping off a branch, and the eagle rose. The fish twisted and jerked, and the eagle shot its head down, driving its beak into the sorghan’s head. It ceased moving, and the eagle turned back, climbing more slowly with the weight she carried towards the crags, depositing it on a rock shelf.

Something moved beyond the lake. There were wolves, bears, a type of ox sometimes too. But the glance showed something moving differently than any beast.

On two legs.

Poum had let the eagle carry them, revelling in its flying, its killing skills. But now they exerted their will. The eagle was reluctant, wanted to take the sorghan back to the nest, feed her young. Poum was in command though, and took off from the crag, gliding lower, closer.

Even without the eagle’s sight, Poum would have been able to tell that it was a man walking along the western edge of the lake. He wore a wide-brimmed hat to keep off the sun, had a bow slung across his back, a quiver of arrows at one hip and a short sword at the other. At his heels trotted a dog so big it made Ufda and her kin look like stunted puppies.

Poum turned the eagle and flew fast over the crag and down to the base of the cliff they’d climbed only a little time before. The going out was again as easy as the going in. The eagle looked dazed for a moment, then furious. Shrieking at them, she rose in the air, and flew up the rockface.

Poum didn’t watch her reach the crest. They began to sprint hard for the steading, their heart beating fast from the exertion, and from the fear. Luck had warned about this possibility for years, warned that they must always be on their guard. For this.

For the day a killer came from Midgarth.

‘You are certain, Poum? Certain that it was not a bear, walking on its hind legs?’

‘With a bow on its back, and a dog at its heels? It was no bear.’

‘And you saw this where, love?’

Poum turned to Atisha. ‘From the top of Hawk’s Crag,’ they replied, adding the lie, ‘I climbed up there to hunt for plovers’ eggs.’

‘After I told you not to? It’s too dangerous a cl—’

‘It does not matter,’ Luck interrupted. ‘For once their disobedience has aided us.’ He turned back to Poum. ‘You are also certain there was just one killer? It would seem odd for Peki Asarko to send but one.’ He did not say what he truly thought – that killing was intended for just him and Atisha. That the world still awaited the return of the One. And a single experienced killer should be able to accomplish both tasks easily enough, for neither he nor Atisha truly had the skills to protect themselves.

But what they did have was surprise and a little time. ‘You have done well,’ Luck said, reaching out to lay a hand behind Poum’s neck. ‘But next time, obey your mother, yes?’

He said it with a grin, and Poum grinned back. ‘Maybe,’ they replied.

Luck sat back, thought. He may not have been gifted in the art of killing but he had accomplished it when he absolutely needed to. As he did now. And his one advantage was that he had this warning. And something else, of course. Though he was quite sure Peki Asarko would have warned his killer about Luck’s ability to possess an animal, being warned and being able to deal with it were different. In the difference lay a little hope.

He turned again to Atish