“I was right?”
“R-I-G-H-T. Yes, I admit it.”
Nell looked over at Susan.
“This is a magical place.”
Susan thought it would be even more magical if it had been Nell who’d admitted she was W-R-O-N-G, but she kept her mouth shut. The three of them stood looking at one another a minute more, and then Nell shrugged.
“Well, the old man did have a nice voice,” she said.
Max smiled a little painfully.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “He did.”
A warm breeze made the wheat stalks flap and brought the smell of smoke down the hill. The forest had burned for half a day, until the scholars who remained had been able to douse it. But with the odor of charred wood there was also the smell of late summer in the air, and wildflowers growing in the clearing above the valley. Finally, the quiet was the good kind. They went together down the hill to look for Kate and Jean.
Once before, Laysia had stood in the heart, on the day years ago when she had been made exile. There she had seen Tur Nurayim’s chair, turned to the wall. There she had seen her brother’s face gone hard. The thought of it brought the shadow of old pain, and yet here now was Lan, abashed, his face almost his own again, come to summon her back.
Few words had passed between them, but they had been enough. Lonely souls still, she thought, both of us. And yet he walked beside her and led her through the iron gate to the center garden, open and waiting.
“Who sits there now?” she asked him as they made their way along the path, thick with its summer beauty. Tur Kaysh had vanished from the battlefield along with many of the watchers when the last change took them. If any had expected them to join the red cloaks and those of the city who streamed down to the valley now, returned, they had been disappointed. And so amid the joy at victory, there was also shock and horror at the Guide’s betrayal. Like people reviving from too long a trance, the scholars shook their heads and exclaimed at what they saw now, though it had been before them all along. Children used as bait for the madman! So many years of waste and anger! Some spoke of punishment, but the old man was beyond retribution. He was dead, some said. Mad, said others, taken by the mist he himself had made.
Laysia did not know, and not knowing, she had feared to approach the inner garden, even as the bewildered scholars read the old visions anew and spoke to one another of exiles and children, even as the remaining watchers sought her out.
“Tur Sarom,” Lan said.
She paused at the gilded door and nodded. Tur Sarom had been the last of the council to abandon Tur Nurayim near the end. Laysia remembered seeing them walk together, even when the others had shunned him. She recalled the old man’s praise of him. Thoughtful. Wise beyond his years. Perhaps that thoughtfulness had saved him. Alone among the council, he had withstood that final, withering change.
“Come,” Lan said. “Don’t keep them waiting.”
She smiled. Again the teacher. Ever the elder brother.
Beneath the prism of sunlight, the council table was mostly empty. Tur Sarom sat on one side; four watchers had taken seats nearby. Like Lan, they had nearly regained their smooth faces. At the wall, Tur Nurayim’s chair still stood out of place.
Tur Sarom thanked her for coming. He had grown into his years now and was gray headed and vigorous. She nodded but said nothing. The weight of that room pressed on her, and she could feel the cold that still flowed out of its side chamber.
“As your brother explained, we are leaderless,” Tur Sarom said to her. “The returned flow in from the city, and we must teach them, guide them, even as many of our number are gone. They call for us, and we must respond. So we have convened a new council, small as it is, and turn to you to lead us.”
“Me?” She stared at him.
Lan had said nothing. All she knew was the commotion of the returned, so many of whom had come that they were camped now beneath the fruit trees in the valley.
The gray head nodded. “You withstood the mist. You nurtured four of the five. Who else would better serve?”
She glanced toward the side room. “I would not be accepted, I think, among the mass of watchers and scholars. Perhaps you, Tur Sarom, should rise to be Guide.”
The man shook his head. “A new time is upon us. We must step forward to meet it. None of the old will serve. You are the new, and you will guide us to embrace it, as your teacher counseled long ago.” He indicated the watchers seated near him and nodded in Lan’s direction. “These are the senior watchers that remain to us. We are all of the same mind. Once, we failed to listen. We are not so hardheaded that we will be deaf to the counsel of the wise again.”
She longed to catch Lan’s eye, but he stood behind her now. She looked around the room. This was what she had desired. Long ago, she had wanted the door open. Now it was.
“Finally,” Tur Sarom said, “at last, let us change for good.”
Laysia thought of Tur Nurayim, hopeful to the end.
“Very well,” she said.
She walked over to the old man’s chair and turned it from the wall.
And still they could not get home.
Susan had been half sure that just the end of the Genius would bring the window, as if some silent bell had been rung.
Time to go home! it would tell the universe. And then, like a machine with the right button pressed, Ganbihar would produce the window, snap, and they’d climb through.
But Ganbihar turned out not to work like that. So she made her way, with Laysia, to the center garden,
