venom they were putting in my blood doesn't seem to hurt any more."

"Fine. Means the Sather Karf must believe we killed you--he must have
the report by now. If he thinks you're dead, there's no point in his
giving chase; he knows I wouldn't let them kill Nema, even if she is a
little fool. Anyhow, he's not really such a bad old guy, Dave--not, like
some of those Satheri. Well, you figure how you'd like it if you were
just a simple man and some priest magicked her away from you--and then
sent her back with enough magic of her own to be a witch and make life
hell for you because she'd been kicked out by the priest, but he hadn't
pulled the wanting spell off her. Or anything else you wanted and
couldn't keep against magic. Sure, they fed us. They had to, after they
took away our fields and the kine, and got everyone into the habit of
taking their dole instead of earning our living in the old way. They
made slaves of us. Any man who lets another be responsible for him _is_
a slave. It's a fine world for the Satheri, if they can keep the egg
from breaking."

"What's all this egg nonsense?"

Bork shrugged. "Plain good sense. Why should there be a sky shell around
the planet? Look, there's a legend here. You should know it, since for
all I know it has some meaning for you. Long ago--or away, or
whatever--there was a world called Tharé and another called Erath. Two
worlds, separate and distinct, on their own branching time paths. They
must have been that way since the moment of creation. One was a world of
rule and law. One plus one might not always equal two, but it had to
equal something. There seems to be some similarity to your world in
that, doesn't there? The other was--well, you'd call it chaos, though it
had some laws, if they could be predicted. One plus one there