"We were ashamed to have you know it. We are ashamed to be people without spirits."
"Can we help you and your people? Maybe our magic might help."
"It well might. It would be worth trying. But first, you must help yourselves. You and your people are sinning against the Great Spirit as grievously as did the Terrans of old. Be warned in time, lest you answer it as grievously."
"What do you mean, Mailsh Heelbare?" Old Shatresh was frightened.
"You are making magic to bring the Sky Fire to the World. Do you know what will happen? The World of People will pass whole into the place of the Gone Ones, and both will be destroyed. The World of People is a world of death; everything that lives on it must die. The Place of the Gone Ones is a world of life; everything in it lives forever. The two will strive against each other, and will destroy one another, and there will be nothing in the Sky Fire or the World but fire. This is wisdom which our oomphel teaches us. We know this secret, and with it we make weapons of great destruction." He looked over the seated shoonoon, picking out those who wore the flame-colored cloaks of the fire-dance. "You—and you—and you," he said. "You have been making this dreadful magic, and leading your people in it. And which among the rest of you have not been guilty?"
"We did not know," one of them said. "Mailsh Heelbare, have we yet time to keep this from happening?"
"Yes. There is only a little time, but there is time. You have until the Always-Same passes across the face of the Sky-Fire." That would be seven hundred and fifty hours. "If this happens, all is safe. If the Sky Fire blots Out the Always Same, we are all lost together. You must go among your people and tell them what madness they are doing, and command them to stop. You must command them to lay down their arms and cease fighting. And you must tell them of the awful curse that was put upon the Terrans in the long-ago time, for a lesser sin than they are now committing."
"If we say that Mailsh Heelbare told us this, the people may not believe us. He is not known to all, and some would take no Terran's word, not even his."
"Would anybody tell a secret of this sort, about his own people, if it were not real?"
"We had better say nothing about Mailsh Heelbare. We will say that the Gone Ones told us in dreams."