"You don't understand," Quorl said again. Then he looked at the boy and was quiet for a minute. "No, you don't," he repeated. "Come." They turned off the main path now, going slower. "It's a ... custom. An important custom. Yes, I know it hurt him. I know he was afraid. But it had to be. Tloto is one of those who--." (The word was some inflection of the verb to know.) Quorl was silent for a moment. "Let me try to tell you why I had to hurt your friend. Yes, I know he is your friend, now. But once I said that Tloto was _malika_. I was wrong. Tloto is more than _malika_--he and the others that were marked. Somehow these people know things. That was how Tloto survived. That's how he knew where you were, when you were hurt. He knew inside your head, he heard inside your head. Many are born like that, more of them each year. As soon as we find out, we mark them. Many try to hide it, and some succeed for a long time. Can you understand? Do you? When Tloto showed me where you were, he knew that I would know, that he would be caught and marked. Do you understand?" Again he paused and looked at the boy. The eyes still showed puzzled hurt. "You want to know why. I ... we.... Long ago we killed them when we found out. We don't any more. The mark reminds them that they are different, and yet the same as we. Perhaps it is wrong. It doesn't hurt that much, and it heals. Anyway, we don't kill them any more. We know they're important...." Suddenly, having gone all through it with this strange boy, it seemed twisted to the giant, incorrect. Then he gave the boy what the boy had been sent to the forest to get, what the Duchess had found and knew was necessary. "I was wrong," Quorl said. "I'm sorry. I will speak to the priest tomorrow." They walked until the dawn lightened the sky behind the trees. Once Quorl looked around and said, "I want to show you something. We are very near, and the weather is right." They walked a few minutes more till Quorl pointed to a wall of leaves, and said, "Go through there." As they pressed through the dripping foliage, bright light burnished their faces. They were standing on a small cliff that looked down the mountain. Fog the color of pale gold, the same gold the boy had seen so rarely in the sunset, rolled across the entire sky. The center flamed with the misty sun, and way below them through the fog was the shattered traces of water, the color of magnesium flame on copper foil, without edge or definition. "That's a lake that lies between this mountain and the next," Quorl said, pointing to the water. "I thought...." the boy started softly, his tongue rough against the new language. "I thought it was the sea." Beside them appeared the crouching figure of Tloto. Drops from the wet leaves burned on his neck and back, over the drying blood. He turned his blank face left and right in the golden light, and with all his knowing could communicate no awe. CHAPTER IX