"May I see it?" he'd asked the old sailor, as he cleaned the table nearby.

"See it? You going to fetch me a drink if I do, boy?" the sailor had asked, not angrily. Deep in his cups, he'd offered to pawn it for more drinks; Marc's mother had refused sensibly, how was she to turn it into coin herself?

"I can't," he'd replied.

"I shouldn't ask a boy like you to abet my drinking, anyhow," grunted the sailor. But he'd pulled it out of his worn coat anyhow, and let Marc hold it.

"Don't put your fingers on the glass. That's not just any spyglass, boy. Fitted into a sextant, you can sight the north star with it at twilight; on a clear night, you can sight Castrovel, and I've even found its moon, before."

"The stars can have moons?" he'd asked, fascinated.

"The wandering stars are worlds just like the one we're standing on," the sailor had replied, proudly. "They can have anything we have, like moons. But they're far distant, very far, though they say the old archmages could go there in the blink of an eye."

"Do the stars talk to you if you look at them?" he'd asked. "Only, when I have dreams, the stars can talk, and I think that's real, stars seem like the sort of things that can talk to you. But maybe they're too far away?"

"Don't speak of that, boy," the sailor had replied, serious and perhaps a hair more sober. "Not out loud, where it might get back to a priest. No stars, no dreams."

He'd looked very grave, and Marc understood about not letting priests hear things. He'd nodded quietly, and they hadn't spoken further, though the sailor let Marc hold the telescope for a bit more.

The sailor hadn't woken up in the morning.

Marc wasn't going to say anything out loud about the stars. But he took the telescope from his coat, with none the wiser, and snuck out nights, to point it aimlessly at the stars.

"Do the priests hate you?" he'd asked the stars one night.

Yes, the stars had replied. Stars are free. Those who walk under the stars are free. Those who fly among the stars are free.

But one day the priests weren't priests any more, and no one had to listen to them, or pray to their awful god.

"Can I tell them about you, now that the priests are gone?" he'd asked the stars, which had shown him secrets, like how to heal people with a little carving of a butterfly, secrets which it would be good for people to know.

Yes, the stars had replied. But for some reason no one could get the knack of healing people, so he did it himself when it was needed.

One day, the stars had told him he could go to Westcrown, and so he'd made the long journey alone, and the stars showed him how to speed along his steps, how to pay merchants going the same way for escort by mending their things and filling their canteens. He'd looked up at the stars often, but even with a telescope, they only spoke in dreams.

"The stars told me to go to Westcrown," he'd explained to any who asked after his business. "In my dreams."

And whenever this had made any sense to anyone, they had seemed to agree that this was the sort of thing the stars in one's dreams would say to a young boy.