“The K’Famir…” Ongamar said between clenched teeth.
Weathereye patted her shoulder. “The Siblinghood has warriors between every pair of gates. They will not stand aside for any but you seven.”
Gardener continued. “M’urgi goes three roads to B’yurngrad; Naumi, two roads to Thairy; Mar-agern, one road to Fajnard, each of you stopping inside the gate. As the Third Order discovered, as Naumi’s friend Caspor discovered, when the roads among these gates are shown in a particular two-dimensional plane, they make a seven-pointed star with a seven-sided space at its center. On star maps, that space is light-years in width and empty. We have reason to believe the interaction of the way-gates around it make the space much smaller than it looks.
“When you are each in your assigned gate, the center of that space will be to your left. I have seven timepieces here, to hang around your necks. When your timepiece says zero, you turn and walk to your left, through the side of the way-gate.”
“And what will happen?” I, Gretamara, asked.
“I don’t know,” said the Gardener, extending her arms in a gesture of relinquishment. “Those of us who planned this and brought it to fruition believe someone will await you there, but this is a blind road with an unknown end.”
Voices murmured a response. The Gardener put the timepieces around our necks. Gretamara reached up to kiss the Gardener’s cheek. Ongamar pulled herself erect, and said, “I walk for an end to pain and an end to Cantardene.”
M’urgi cried, “If I don’t return, give my love to Ferni…”
Naumi murmured, “Same message, to the same recipient.”
“Enough poignancy,” said Mar-agern. “This new brain of mine is equipped with all sorts of hope. Farewell for now.”
We went into the pool, I first, since I had the farthest to go. Light and dark, light and dark, counting, being sure I went six gates. Behind me always a quivering surface, shimmering with something that was not light. It might as well have been the sound of dry leaves rubbing together, or the feel of a draft under a door, the smell of old ice, the rasp of a file on the skin of my hand, any sensation or none. At last, the exit to Tercis was ahead of me.
I turned to my left and checked the timepiece the Gardener had hung around my neck. The others would all be in place by now, all of them waiting for zero. I concentrated on breathing quietly until zero came. When it arrived, I stepped through the wall of the way-gate, then stepped again, the scintillating specks that pulsed around me fading with each step: fading, fading, gone. Ahead was nothingness, and I walked into it, wondering desperately if I would be able to keep a straight line.
After what seemed a considerable time, I heard someone calling “Margaret?” into the silence of the place. Naumi’s voice, deeper than the others’. “Ongamar?” he called.
A sound, perhaps an answering voice. I started to go toward it, then stopped. Better just go on walking. After a while, he tried again, off to my left. “Margaret?”
“Over here,” I called. “Should I come toward you?”
“No!” he said. “Not until we’re all within sight of one another.”
Calls came from left and right and we walked. The sounds came nearer. The nothing below our feet became something. A surface. I saw Gretamara emerging from a dark fog to my left, and beyond her, M’urgi. On my right, Naumi appeared, then Ongamar. Between M’urgi and Ongamar, two shadows came toward us, emerging as Mar-agern and Wilvia.
“Keep walking until we can touch one another,” Naumi called.
We walked for what seemed a very long time. We could see one another, but the distance stayed the same. The floor seemed to roll away beneath us like a treadmill that welled up from some point in the center of their circle and flowed out continuously, keeping us in the same place.
M’urgi called, “Stand still a minute.”
We did so, watching her. She stood very straight, concentrating, and a trail of light shot upward from her forehead, high above us all. I thought of her leaning upon the substance that fills the universe, which separates matter and transmits light and knows and remembers everything.
“Shut your eyes,” M’urgi called. “Hold out your hands. We’re right next to one another.”
I reached out my hands, grasping at others I felt on either side, the three of us tugging and sidling as we connected with the rest.
“Now,” cried M’urgi. “Open your eyes but hold on tight.”
We stood in a circle only a few steps across. In the center, suspended in space, I saw a little creature, legs crossed, a book on its lap. Across the pages words ran endlessly from right to left, left to right, top to bottom, bottom to top, interweaving with one another.
At the same time I saw this, I saw what the others saw, just as I had used to sense as they did when they were part of me. M’urgi saw a pillar of fire, words of smoke pouring up through it. Naumi saw a tree, its roots extending into the depths beneath us, its higher branches beyond his sight above, and every leaf a journal. Wilvia saw a dragon with jeweled scales, each one engraved with a history. Ongamar saw a stone pillar reaching from the beginning to the end of the universe, with little beings swarming all over it, carving words. Mar-agern saw herds of creatures in a meadow, each of them reciting the story of a people. Gretamara saw an anthill, each ant carrying a grain of sand on which was engraved the chronicle of a living race.
I was the eldest. I swallowed deeply, and asked, “Are you the Keeper?”
It looked up from its book, out of the flame, out of the leaves, the dragon’s eyes, the words on the stone, the meadow creatures, the anthill. “Think of it!” it said wonderingly. “One road is seven roads, walked simultaneously
