“Gone?” she cried.
“Leelson Famber!” exclaimed the Procurator as he joined her in the doorway. “When did Leelson Famber come here?”
The rememberer shrugged, looking from face to face as though trying to decide which question to answer first. “He came, sir, some time ago. And it is believed by those at Cochim-Mahn that they may all have gone to Tahsuppi.”
Jiacare Lostre joined the others in the doorway. “Gone where?”
“Gone to what,” corrected the rememberer. “A ceremony. Held once every sixty years or so. At the omphalos. At the sipapu. At Dinadh’s birthplace, the site of our emergence. The songfather of Cochim-Mahn believes they have gone there, and he is pursuing them. The assassins asked questions about the ceremony, so we believe they’re headed there also.”
“Can we intercept them on the way?” Poracious demanded.
The rememberer turned up his palms helplessly. “Who knows which way they’ve gone. If they intended to avoid other travelers, they would have tried less-traveled ways, of which there are thousands! The canyons ramify, netlike. They go off into pockets and branches. We’d never find them.”
“Well then,” the Procurator said. “How long for us to get where they’re going?”
“Not long, great sir. I can arrange it for tomorrow. We can fly.”
The three shared helpless glances, equally at a loss. Poracious Luv broke the silence, attempting encouragement. “We’ll meet them when they arrive,” she said, patting the Procurator upon the shoulder.
“If they arrive,” corrected the rememberer. “I would be remiss if I did not tell you that their arrival is far from certain.”
The first of us to catch sight of the Nodders was Trompe. He was driving the hitch; Leely was asleep inside the wain; and the rest of us were trudging some way behind, cursing every step we made across the curved pebbles that often twisted treacherously beneath our feet. Trompe’s whoof of surprise brought us stumbling forward to find him gaping, the reins lax in his hands. Gaufers are incapable of astonishment. They simply lay down, snapping and grumbling at one another as they did at every halt. We made no effort to get them moving. There seemed to be nowhere they could go.
It was another place like the Burning Springs, that is, one I’d heard described without getting any idea what it was really like. Songfather had said there were many Nodders, that they were tall, thin pillars of stone, topped with stone heads.
What he’d said wasn’t inaccurate; it was simply a ridiculous understatement. Trompe climbed down from the wagon seat to join Lutha, Leelson, and me as we went slowly forward. The first Nodder was like a sentinel, standing a little forward from the rest. As we neared it our eyes were drawn upward, seeing the tower narrowed to a pinpoint against the massive bulk of the balanced stone head. Perspective, I told myself. It wasn’t really that slender. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be frigidly cold in the vicinity of the stone, either, but we thrust our shivering arms into our sleeves as we backed slowly away. Beyond the first pillar stood two more, side by side, and behind them, hundreds.
Songfather had said they were many, tall, and thin. I also recalled—as we fled in howling panic!—he had said the stone heads moved.
It was impossible to run over that treacherous footing and we collapsed in a confused heap not far away.
“I thought it was coming down on us!” Lutha cried as she scrabbled backwards on all fours, never taking her eyes from the ponderous, impossible nodding of that great stone head.
I still thought it would come down. When it did, it would roll purposefully over us. Behind the three menacing outliers, the great forest of them seemed to whisper to one another in sinister agreement. Yes, yes, let’s roll over on that wagon and squish all the people. Wouldn’t that be fun?
I couldn’t keep from saying this, a mere whisper to Lutha, and she laughed, a wild peal of amusement. The two men turned disapproving looks on her, which only increased her hilarity. All the tension she’d bottled up during the journey poured out in hysterical torrents. She put her hands over her mouth and smothered the sound, head on knees, shoulders shaking.
Leelson, with his usual casual disapproval, pointed to the sharp-edged fragments of curved stone that littered the ground, fragments not unlike those that had been troubling our footsteps for some miles. He said pointedly, “It really isn’t funny, Lutha. They do come down.”
Not the least sobered, she spared a glance for the surfaces around us, then took a quick look at the conspiratorial heads. My eyes followed hers, and the same odd idea possessed us both at once, for we said, as in one slightly echoed voice:
“From where?”
“Why, from …” said Leelson, his words trailing into silence.
“If some tops fell down, then there should be some pillars without tops.” Lutha giggled. Her voice sounded foolish, like that of a petulant little girl. She heard herself, cleared her throat, and said in a more normal tone, “But there aren’t any pillars without tops. So where did they fall from?”
“Strange,” mused Trompe. “Very strange. The shape of the heads, I mean. They shouldn’t be quite that spherical, should they? Or would erosion tend to round them off?”
When one focused on the shape and not on the streaked and blotched surfaces, the roundness was obvious. Lines and smudges of mineral colors—ocher, brown, red—made them appear more irregular and rugged than they actually were. Except for the horns on top, they were ball-shaped.
“The mass can’t be uniform,” Leelson remarked in a troubled tone. “The center of gravity has to be … where?”
“Doesn’t matter,” mumbled Trompe. “It’d have to be below the point of the pillar to keep the thing balanced that way. The way they are, the damn things can’t exist.”
“But they do,” I said.
“It would work if there were a gyroscope inside.” Leelson strode away in a long arc to examine the nearest Nodder from the side. “Or a central support. Or a
