“It is evil for Kadoumin and for Istara and her children to have wealth that should be our children’s! How to change that—how to make magic that shall change that—!”
“I know a way,” said Mardurbo. “It came to me in the desert while I lay awake. Just like a falling star it fell into my heart!”
“What is it, Mardurbo? What is it?”
Mardurbo looked at the sky and around at the silent town. He made upon the earth at his feet one of Dardin’s signs. He was a bold man, but change is a difficult thing in the world, and what is now has all the honour and observance! “Count kindred another way,” said Mardurbo, and he dropped his voice yet lower and looked somewhat fearfully at his companion. “Have a great council of the tribe and determine it! Let children come into father’s kindred.”
“How can that work?” asked Vana. “How can they be reckoned of fathers’ kin when already they are of mothers’ kin, and the two kins are separate?”
Mardurbo traced another sign upon the earth. “Take them from mother-kin and put them in father-kin.”
Vana’s lips moved. “Is that your way?”
“It came as though there were light all around it—or as though you ate up the desert on the swiftest horse. It seemed so hard, and then it seemed so easy! Everything to stay as it is,” said Mardurbo, “save that, after the council, children take name from father-side. Name makes kindred—when men die kindred take their goods.”
Vana’s breath came quick and thin. “Do you think the folk will agree to that?”
“Men will agree quickly,” said Mardurbo the trader.