The Councilors looked, Tad thought, like silver statues.

The eight members of the High Council sat at the far end of the Chamber in a row of high-backed stone chairs. Each wore a wide-sleeved gray robe thickly embroidered with silver thread and fastened at the throat with heavy square silver buttons. There were round silver-embroidered caps on their heads and silver-trimmed leather boots on their feet. In a middle chair, taller than all the rest, sat an elderly Digger with a knitted shawl draped over his shoulders. He was thin and bent, and his short fur was entirely gray except for faint black circles around his eyes. He held a polished metal rod in his right hand, which he rapped sharply three times on the arm of his chair as Tad and Birdie approached. All the Councilors, moving as one, turned their heads to look at them. Tad had never felt so small and so grubby. So . . . barefoot.

“Ah, the Fisher younglings,” the gray Digger said. “Sit down, sit down, both of you. I am Furgo, Head of the High Council of the Diggers.”

Tad and Birdie sat on a low stone bench.

“I am Tadpole of the Fisher Tribe,” Tad said. “But mostly I’m called Tad.” He remembered that Werfel had warned him to be respectful. “Sir,” he added hastily. “And this is my sister, Redbird. Birdie.”

Furgo introduced the Councilors. “There are seven,” he explained, “one from each of the seven workers’ guilds. This is Gerda of the Growers. She oversees our moss and mushroom farms, and directs the cultivation of the Outer Gardens.” Gerda had brown-and-black striped fur and wore silver rings in her ears. She gave the children a small polite smile. “Bodric of the Leatherworkers. He tends our deermouse traps and tanning pits.” Bodric, a short toast-colored Digger, bowed briefly in the children’s direction. “Hadnar of the Stonecutters.” A big burly Digger. “Sindri of the Metalworkers.” An orange-furred female with a delicate white stripe across her nose. “Sidda of the Engineers. Our technological specialists.” A small chocolate-brown female with a serious expression. “Edelbert of the Skalds. Our poets and scholars.” Edelbert was a tall slender Digger with sleek black fur and elegant white patches under his ears. He had an exceptionally long pointed nose on which was perched a pair of silver-framed spectacles. He gave the children the barest of nods. “And Pegger of the Miners.” A plumpish dusty-brown Digger with a friendly look. He winked. Tad and Birdie liked him at once.

“We have few visitors here,” Furgo explained, “so we are most interested in the news of the outer world. And in what brings you younglings so far to Stone Mountain.”

Tad took a deep breath. “It’s a little complicated, sir,” he said.

“Then take time to explain,” said Furgo. “The Council is here to listen. Begin at the beginning.”

But what was the beginning? Tad thought. And then he thought: It began with the spear. He almost smiled. It seemed so long ago that all he had had to worry about was learning how to throw the spear and getting guggled at by a bunch of mudflapping frogs. He was a whole different person now. Words and images tangled in his head. The voice in the water, the journey up the dying stream, the Hunters. The dreadful black lake and the terrible loss of Pondleweed. The Dryad and Witherwood. The Sagamore. How could he begin to explain?

He felt Birdie’s touch on his arm.

“The first part was the water,” Birdie said. “Back home our pond is drying. That was how we knew something was wrong. That was the beginning.”

There was a rustle of movement and a murmur as the Council members turned and whispered to each other.

“The Drying,” Furgo said. “We have seen it too.”

The Councilors, one by one and then all together, nodded.

“The onion crop is a rock-thumping disaster,” said the plumpish Digger named Pegger. He had a crooked ear that gave him a raffish happy-go-lucky look. “And the waterfall has gone dry as a bone.”

“The green plants on the outer mountain have withered,” said Edelbert from the neighboring chair in reproving tones, “and the river that runs through its heart has shrunk to a silver trickle over the rocks. Now that you’re a Councilor, Pegger, you must really try for more nicety of diction.”

“I speak as I see fit,” said Pegger. “And I say what I mean. And when I say ‘dry as a bone,’ I mean ‘dry as a bone,’ and not none of your silver trickles, neither.”

The black-furred Digger closed his eyes briefly. A pained expression washed across his face. “That,” he said, in horrified tones, “was a triple negative.”

“Edelbert,” Furgo said severely. “Pegger. Let the younglings talk.”

Tad — with help from Birdie — began to tell his story. Every once in a while, a Councilor would interrupt, asking Tad to explain further or to repeat a part of the tale in greater detail.

Tad talked on. When he told about his mysterious Remembers and the blossoming of his strange new powers, a startled babble arose.

“Sagamore? . . .”

“The Sagamore! What kind of name is that?”

“I always thought that was a superstition. The belief systems of the primitive tribes . . .”

“There is a mention of a ‘Sagimore’ or ‘Sagamore’ in one of the Alternative Elder Epics, but the precise meaning of the term is a matter of debate. Only a fragment of the original text remains. It seems to have been some sort of magical fish. . . .”

“Did you say a fish?”

Furgo rapped his metal rod again, and the Councilors fell silent.

“You, of all Diggers, should know the tale of the Sagamore, Edelbert,” said Furgo. “It appears in the third of the Original Orations, and it agrees, in all particulars, with the story we have just heard from the lips of this youngling.”

Several of the Councilors nodded.

Edelbert looked furious.

“It is not a question of a Sagamore, Councilors. A Sagamore, if described in the ancient texts, is certainly more than a primitive superstition.” It was Hadnar of the Stonecutters, in a gruff raspy voice that sounded a bit like scraping chisels. “It is a question of the Sagamore in the person of this boy. A boy, Excellency, and younger than my own apprentices. We all know that younglings are prone to exaggeration and that their imaginations often run away from them. You should hear my lads, with their boastings and teasings, and their tales of stonegoblins and ghosties. . . .”

“You must admit,” said Gerda regretfully, “that the boy’s story is a trifle hard to believe.”

“If you will pardon me, your Excellency, it is impossible to believe.” It was Edelbert, sounding as if he’d just found a bug in his dinner. “This . . . Fisher . . . is wholly uneducated. He is not even clean.“

The orange Digger — Sindri of the Metalworkers — nodded.

“Surely, if there were such a mental phenomenon as this child describes, it would appear to us in a more likely form.”

“Clearly a misinterpretation of the facts . . .”

They were talking about him as if he weren’t even there. Tad clenched his fists.

“Form is as form does.” It was Pegger, sounding angry. “Did you never see a thunder egg, Edelbert? No, you’ve not been down in the mines, now, have you?” He leaned toward the children, making a cupping motion with his hands. “A thunder egg is a ball of gray rock, looking like nothing so much as an ordinary stone. But if you hit it with your hammer, so” — he made a downward striking gesture —“the ball splits open, and inside, it’s filled with crystals, big and bright and beautiful like none you’ve never seen before. You do remember that thunder egg, Edelbert, for some things you can’t tell by their outsides. The Fisher sounds a truthful lad to me, and we’ve no call to name him liar.”

“I saw him,” said Birdie. Her eyes were narrowed fiercely and her lower lip was sticking out. “I was there and I saw him. Tad is just what he says he is. And if you’d been with him, you’d believe in him too. And the ha — A friend of ours says there’s a shine around him. He can see it. The Shining One, he called him.”

Tad rose to his feet. He straightened his back, lifted his chin, and let his gaze travel from face to face, meeting each Councilor’s eyes. The Diggers stared back at him, waiting.

“I know it’s hard to believe,” Tad said simply. “I don’t understand it all yet myself. I don’t remember this place, but I know that I — or a part of me — was here once, long ago. I had a friend” — his voice caught for a moment on the word —“a friend named Burris.”

Oh, Burris, if you were with me now.

Time seemed to stand still. And then the scene changed.

Trees rose dark behind him. The sky above was velvet-black, star-studded, with a thin sliver of silver moon. The campfire was nothing but red coals. He was too wound up to sleep. Tomorrow . . . something momentous would happen tomorrow. Tomorrow he would meet the Witches face-to-face. Everything depended on him. His thoughts refused to lie still.

Someone stirred beside him in the darkness.

“I’ve had a Foreshadow,” the familiar fur-soft voice said.

His breath caught in his throat. “A bad dream, old friend.” But to his own ears his voice sounded shaken. “A bad dream and Hunter firepeppers for supper.”

A movement, shadow on shadow, as Burris shook his head. The warm grip of strong fingers on his forearm. “Hear me, Sagamore, and remember,” the husky voice said softly.

The next words were strange words, in a language he had never heard before. He could almost feel these words. Some were as heavy and thick as blocks of granite, some sharp as metal picks, some as clear as crystals.

Hicht yar logh und ostrem berraen

Alt alben lithag rebicht ferraen

Und ghawone ac averraegd

Harta twinnen syntaghraegd

Und ombichten clannenbain

Hicht erth und hord untwinnentwain.

“Now you,” Burris said.

He repeated it back, stumbling, the foreign words awkward on his tongue.

“Again.”

This time it was easier. He could understand the phrases now. They rolled from his lips like polished pebbles.

Though years are long and men forget,

The stone-cored mountains do stand yet

And, staunch as they, we do avow

To keep the faith between us now

And stand together, kindred-true,

Though world and time divide us two.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It is called the Magelith,” the soft voice answered. “Spoken in the Old Tongue of the Diggers. It is a password and a pledge, taught by parents to their children generation after generation, always kept secret, known to the Diggers alone. With the Magelith, I make you a member of my Tribe. We are as brothers, you and I, and your sons must be as mine, for tomorrow —”

Tad thrust the words away from him in a sharp gesture of denial. “A thousand Foreshadows never come to pass,” he said.

“Perhaps nor will mine,” the familiar voice said, a fur-warm murmur in the darkness. “But Great Rune has whispered in my ear, old friend. Speak the Magelith and any Digger in the land will welcome you and give you aid, for now you, too, are of the line of Burris. Remember.”

Furred fingers closed briefly over his.

“Sleep, Sagamore . . .”

Time shuddered and dissolved. He was in the Council Chamber once more, all eyes watchfully upon him, the stone floor cool under his feet. He felt dizzy and disoriented. The Remember was over. Except . . .

“Burris did me a great honor,” Tad said. “He made me a member of his Tribe.”

Edelbert — It would be Edelbert, Tad thought — gave an incredulous snort, as if to say that no Digger would ever stoop to such a thing.

Tad began to speak, softly at first, then louder. The foreign words this time felt utterly familiar in his mouth, as if he had recited them many times before. They echoed in the high stone chamber like chords of music, as if the stone itself recognized and welcomed them. When the last echo died away, the Councilors were staring at him goggle-eyed. Edelbert’s mouth was sagging open. Pegger wore a broad gleeful grin.

“The Magelith,” Furgo said in a shocked whisper. “How did you come to know this?”

Birdie tugged at Tad’s sleeve. “The what?” she whispered.

Tad kept his eyes on Furgo.

“I am what I say I am,” he said, “and I have come to ask for help from the Diggers of Stone Mountain, as is my right as a man of the line of Burris.”

“That it is,” Pegger said robustly. He shot a triumphant look sideways at Edelbert, who was staring fixedly in the opposite direction and looking as if he had just stepped on a weaselpat. The other Councilors murmured excitedly among themselves.

Furgo slowly rose from his seat, stepped forward, and placed his hands on Tad’s.

Then the moment shattered.

A shrill squeal cut through the air, followed by another and another. It sounded as if someone had caught a mouse and were stepping meanly and repeatedly on its tail. Squee! Squee! Squee!

The heads of the Councilors jerked up as if pulled by strings. Tad ducked, Pippit dodged behind his legs, and Birdie dived off the stone bench and wrapped her arms around her head. Something huge and dark flashed past, high above them. It zipped around the Council Chamber, still squealing, and then abruptly plummeted to the floor. It was a bat. Clinging to its back, looking embarrassed, was a Digger boy who seemed to be about the same age as Tad. He had rusty-red fur with brown-tipped ears and nose. An enormous bulging bundle was strapped to his back, giving him the peculiar look of a furry turtle.

“I’ve tamed my own bat, Grandfather!” he said. “I’ve tamed him! Everybody said that I couldn’t do it, but I have!”

He slid awkwardly to the ground.

“He comes when I call and everything,” he said. “I’ve named him Skeever.”

“This is my grandson Willem,” Furgo said. He sounded resigned.

He directed a repressive look toward Willem. “And what if you had fallen off the bat; had you thought of that?” he demanded sternly. “You could have been killed. Or worse, you could have fallen on top of someone else and killed them.“

“I did think of that,” Willem retorted. He reached behind him and patted the bundle on his back. “That’s what this is for. I invented it, Grandfather. It works like a sort of air brake. The cloth unfolds and spreads out and just floats you down to the ground like an umbrella seed. That’s what I’ve been calling it — a floater. Here, I’ll show you.”

Before Furgo could protest, he seized a cord dangling over his shoulder and yanked on it. The bundle on his back promptly exploded, spewing out enormous tangled folds of cloth. Willem looked guiltily over his shoulder.

“Of course, it only works when you’re up in the air.”

Birdie giggled. Furgo sighed gustily.

“Sit down, Willem,” he said, “and try to stay out of trouble while we finish our business here.” He gestured politely toward Tad. “Please continue with your story.”

Tad went on with his tale, taking it up where he had left off, conscious of the bright curious regard of the Digger boy. He told of the meeting with Witherwood and Voice and what they had learned in reading the ancient record books.

“We think the Nixies have regained the Waterstone,” he said. “That’s how they’re taking all the water. Witherwood’s book said that all that time ago, the Sagamore came to the Kobolds of Stone Mountain, and they helped him somehow. But we don’t know how. The words on the next page — the page that would have explained it — were all washed away. So we’ve come to find the Kobolds and ask them if perhaps they could help us again.”

The Councilors put their heads together. There was a buzz of worried chatter.

“But . . . there are no Kobolds,” Sindri said. “Not now. The name is just a fairy tale for children.”

“There are poems about them,” Edelbert said. “They are mentioned — in a wholly legendary sense, of course — in the Elder Epic The Saga of Stone Mountain. Verses 346 to 407.”

“How can they be?” asked Pegger. “What rhymes with Kobold?” He began to mutter to himself. “Bobold, dobold, fobold, gobold . . .”

“It’s in free verse,” said Edelbert coldly.

“You must forgive us, Tadpole,” Furgo said. “In these modern times, we Diggers have grown away from belief in the ancient histories and the old tales. The Witches returned . . .” He hesitated. “This all comes as a shock to us.”

Tad could hardly listen. He sank down on the stone bench and sat there miserably, staring at his knees. No Kobolds! Such a possibility had never occurred to him. He hadn’t realized just how much he had been counting on finding them.

“But that doesn’t mean,” one of the Councilors was saying, “that there may not be other ways of defeating these creatures. We have, after all, made considerable technological advances over the past centuries.” It was Sidda of the Engineers.

“Periscopes . . .”

“Pumps . . .”

“Mechanical arms . . . We could snatch the stone. It’s a simple engineering problem —”

“Traps!” Bodric of the Leatherworkers said, sounding excited. “What do Nixies like to eat?”

They don’t understand, Tad thought. They have no idea what she’s like. She’s not some kind of animal.

Then Willem spoke. He was crouched on the floor beside his bat, trying vainly to bundle the floater back together again. Billows of cloth seemed to be everywhere. “What about the faces in the rocks?”

A puzzled murmur from the Councilors.

“What do you mean?” Tad said. “What faces?”

“They’re on a cliff on the outside of the Mountain,” Willem said. “Faces frozen in the rock, dozens of them. Old men with beards. I used to pretend that they could come alive, that they were wizards.”

“A game,” Edelbert said dampingly. “A play for children.”

“Faces,” the burly Councilor said. Tad struggled for a moment to remember his name. Hadnar of the Stonecutters. “I remember those faces. Masterful work. Masterful. Wasn’t there some sort of story about them?”

“Pure imagination,” said Edelbert tartly.

“It wouldn’t hurt to take a look,” said Pegger.

It was, in any case, too late to investigate today. As Pegger spoke, a reverberating gong echoed through the stone cavern.

“Day’s end,” Furgo said. “Time for the evening meal.”

He turned to Tad and Birdie. “You will be my guests for tonight, and in the morning Willem will take you to see these . . . rock faces. And we of the High Council must discuss this further.”

The Councilors, again moving as one, rose to their feet and inclined their heads toward Tad and Birdie. Tad bowed awkwardly in return. Then he turned and, with Birdie beside him and Pippit hopping awkwardly behind, followed Furgo out of the room.

Furgo’s house was large and rambling. Stone rooms led into stone rooms in confusing order, and much of the furniture — large, blocky, and massive — was carved in place. Stone tables and benches seemed to grow right out of the floor. Tad and Birdie had thought that so much stone would be cold and uncomfortable, but instead the house was beautifully welcoming and warm. A fire blazed in the big hearth, and the stone seats, worn into comfortable polished hollows by generations of Digger bottoms, were invitingly heaped with squashy cushions.

The house was full of people. There were Furgo and his wife, Freyda, a comfortable round-faced Digger in a puffy cap shaped like a muffin; an elderly aunt with white circles around her eyes that gave her the look of a surprised owl; a couple of grown cousins; and Willem’s mother and father and his four little sisters, who all ran around a good deal and had high piercing voices. They reminded Tad of the bat.

They were fourteen at dinner, after which Pippit fell asleep in a corner (on his back with his mouth open), and Tad and Birdie — who had eaten too much — could barely keep their eyes open. Even so, Tad, who was sharing a bed in Willem’s room, found himself staying awake to talk to the Digger boy in the dark.

“The faces,” Willem said softly. “Councilor Edelbert is all wrong about them. I’m sure of it.”

“He didn’t seem to like me much,” Tad said tentatively.

“Skalds!” Willem said. “They’re all like that. Snooty. And the things they make you learn in school. Verses and verses of the great epics, and if you make one little mistake . . .”

His voice trailed off.

“But he’s wrong about the faces,” Willem repeated. “They’re not frozen all the time, exactly. I’ve heard them.” He paused for a moment in the dark. Then he said, “They whisper.“