In the early mornings, just after dawn, when the sky was salmon pink and mists curled across the water, and birds flew like the last of dark dreams escaping the shattered towers of the old human city, Moon Jaguar would walk to the edge of the world and stare out to the place where the phantoms lived.

The creatures that lived within the Sea of Ghosts would often come to land and wrap themselves around the broken towers on the shore. The mist beings could make parts of the world disappear and reappear, and they moved quickly. It was best to pay them respect.

Seven Wraeththu clans lived in the ruins of the city, and at one time they had been Uigenna, though prudence had forced them to change their name and their customs, following the Gelaming invasion of Megalithica. Now, they had no tribal name, and in time, no doubt, the clans themselves would become separate tribes, but for now they existed in tenuous alliance.

Moon's father, Snake Jaguar, had come from a land far to the south, but he would never speak of it, no matter how much Moon begged or pleaded for old stories that all harlings loved. Snake was the shaman of the Jaguar clan and held in great esteem by their ruler, Great Jaguar Paw. Moon lived with his father, and his father's protector. Raven Jaguar, in the House of Relics, situated very close to the shore of the Sea of Ghosts. Humans had filled the Reliquary with artifacts that recorded moments of their history, but most of the artifacts had been destroyed during the conflict that had brought the city to her knees some thirty or so years before.

Moon liked the Reliquary: its cavernous dark rooms, its shattered display cases, the bones spilling amid the glass shards. His own room, high in the building, had probably once been an office, although over time he had adorned it with various items he'd filched from the lower galleries. His father lived in the far side of the building, and Raven lived in a storeroom nearby, his senses forever on high alert in case Snake should need him. Moon presumed Raven had gotten to know Snake long before the fragmented Uigenna tribe had had to flee to the north, pursued by Gelaming patrols that were intent on rehabilitating any hara whose beliefs did not emulate their own. Raven lived in ascetic simplicity, in what was hardly more than a broom closet. It was obvious something very bad had happened to him in the past and that it had affected his mind. Now, Raven's dedication to Snake was his entire reason for being. They were not chesna, nor did they ever take aruna together, which in Wraeththu terms was most unusual, if not freakish. They shared secrets and pain, and this, more than physical or emotional expressions of affection, bound them close. Snake too was damaged. Even though Moon lived far from his father, sometimes at night he could hear him limping around his room, never weeping, never sighing — just pacing slowly.

Moon was seven years old, nearly adult, and by then he had realized that other harlings of the clan avoided him, because his father was strange. Even Great Jaguar Paw feared Snake, because his temperament was inclined to prophesy doom rather than joy. The privacy-loving Jaguar clan skulked around the shore of the Sea of Ghosts and interacted with other clans only for trade. Snake, so the other clans said, made sure the rest of the Jaguars were as grim as he was.

A week or so after his seventh birthday, which he'd celebrated alone, Moon went as usual to the shore. Looking back at the Reliquary, Moon realized for the first time that his father, Raven, and himself, although occupying in some regard the same space, lived in isolation from each other. There were not even ghosts for company. Since Snake's chesnari had died, not long after Moon's birth, the idea of family had shattered in the same way the relics had. Moon did not feel lonely — he never did — but today he felt different: an echo of some early childhood warning traveled across the great sea.

The dawn was pink and gray, stealing through brooding cloud and there was a metallic taint to the air. A ship sailed through the mist toward the docks, some distance to the east. Somehar in the rigging blew a mournful salute upon a windhorn. Birds looped drunkenly around the black mast. Moon squatted on the cracked concrete walkway above the water and stared at the ship with his hands funneled around his eyes. He thought about strolling over to the docks to see who or what might have arrived, but then the vague aches that had plagued his belly for some weeks intensified into a cramping pain and he had to lean forward to vomit into the water.

Moon, like all hara, was rarely ill, so this particular seizure, which could not be ignored, filled him with panic. In some places the land was poisoned, and those poisons were strong enough even to kill a har. Moon rarely left his immediate environment, so he couldn't imagine how he could have come into contact with such danger, but now, when he stared out over the water, his whole vision was tinged with red and he had a pain in the back of his neck. He was afraid that if he moved too quickly, some part of himself might fall out of his body. He was poisoned and he was too far away from the Reliquary to call for help.

Moon curled up into a ball on the ground and lay that way for a long time. By the time the sun had hauled itself out of the mist, he realized he had slept and now felt better. But when he got to his feet, he had to hold his stomach with both hands, because it felt loose and unsafe. His skin was crawling as if ants were marching all over it. Slowly, and with great care, he made his way to his father's domain, because despite the fact they rarely spent time together, Snake was the one har Moon trusted in the world.

Raven had already been to Snake's room to deliver breakfast, which the shaman was now eating in a slow and dignified manner. Snake Jaguar's name derived mainly from the appearance of his eyes. One was very dark. Almost black, while the other, on his damaged side, was bright gold. This was his snake eye, his seeing eye, and with it he could see into anyhar's soul, so he was required to keep it covered, out of politeness, for most of the time. His face was very beautiful, unmarked, and so was the right side of his body, but the left side was maimed. A chemical fire, so strong that not even a harish frame could recover from its cruel breath, had ruined him, created his golden eye, and had consumed entirely the har named Silken whom Snake had loved and who had been Moon's hostling. It had been an accident: no rogue hara or humans had done it. Evil had come out of the ground, evil that had waited so long for release, it had become impatient with anticipating human or harish detonation. It had erupted from the ground on its own, to burn out in a moment of glory, which had unfortunately incinerated seven hara of the clans and injured a further three. Two of those had later died, but Snake had survived. To a normal har, to be less than perfect was anathema. Snake, however, appeared barely to care about such things. He lived, for the most part, inside his own head.

Now, Moon went to his father and knelt before him. He said, "Tiahaar, am I to die?"

Snake raised his head. Ropes of black hair hung over his face, down to the floor, and from between these ophidian coils the golden eye glowed, while the black eye contemplated the darkest reaches of the...