“Where are we going?”
“The pervasion of the Dervishes is nearby.”
“What is your name?”
“Cernaby of the Soul.”
“What do they mean, your names? Bartelmy of the Ban? What is that? Of the Soul? What sense does it make?”
“If you have ever lain beneath Bartelmy’s Ban, you would know. As for me, I can see souls, Dervish daughter. As you would see a flame burning. I see yours now, hot and red with angry pity. It must itch you, burning like that.”
This surprised me, sure as I was I had achieved a kind of balance. “I suppose yours are never like that.”
Cernaby did not answer, merely turned to lay her hands upon my eyes, like a mask. I could see through them to the flames that surrounded her, blue as the noon sky, cool and limpid as water. I looked down at myself to see my hands and arms, blossoming with heat.
“You can dim it,” the Dervish whispered. “Watch it, concentrate upon it, think of it turning orange, then yellow, then green. Finally blue, blue as water.” She laughed a little. “As your dams of the seven would say, ‘Consider water.’“
With Cernaby’s hands across my eyes, I could do nothing else. The flames upon me leapt and danced as I watched them, thinking them faded, thinking them cooled. At last they were green as grass upon me, only an occasional flicker of yellow lighting the edges of the flames. I could cool them no further than that. Cernaby took her hands away and I blinked up at the evening stars. I had not been conscious of the time passing. “It will come easier next time,” said Cernaby. I felt a little calmer, that was all, together with a little core of anger at her having wasted so much time.
We walked farther then, along the winding flat among the jungle trees, then up a rising trail that wound above the trees toward two pillars of stone high upon the ridge. We looked down to our left to see mighty hedges, solid as walls, twisting, turning, winding upon themselves as far as I could see.
“The Great Maze lies below us,” said Cernaby, “league upon league of it, from the mountains to the sea. When last the band marched here, it spent ten years marching through the edges of the Maze. It is said there are cities in the Maze lost from all outside contact for millennia. It is said no man knows the extent of it or the way to its center.” She pointed to this impenetrable wall of foliage below the trail we were on. “That is the edge of it.”
“What is it, exactly? I had always thought it was roads with walls or hedges, full of misleading turnings.”
Cernaby again made the sound of quiet amusement.
“More than that, Jinian. Men can climb walls, cut through hedges. We will go a little way in and I will show you.” Along our trail several little paths went down the slope into openings in the hedges. She spun down one of these. I followed.
A narrow door was cut into the solid green. A narrow path stretched inward. Cernaby stood upon it at some small distance, where it made a turning. “Here,” she called. “Come to me here.” I took a step.
Onto the rim rock of a high cliff, so near the edge I staggered back in fear. Below me lay a shadowed bowl of green. The dawn, or sunset, was on my face and on the rock at my feet. From above came a shrieking, a banshee howl, mightier than any number of voices. I looked up to see a dart of silver falling, bellowing as it came, downward and downward, the sound shivering the rocks on which I stood so that I fell to my knees, hands over ears, watching in amazement as the thing landed in the bowl, as a door opened in it and something strange came out. Strange? So I felt, and yet it was obviously human. Nothing strange about it? Why this feeling of intense curiosity, this thought of weirdness?
“Jinian,” I heard the voice. “Turn to your left and walk toward that midnight tree, the first one. Go behind it.” Cernaby’s voice. “Jinian!” Commanding now. Obediently, I turned and made my way to the midnight tree, outpost of a grove. I moved behind it...
Onto the Wastes of Bleer. It was as I had seen it last, barren and cold and dry. Full of thorn and devil’s spear. Heaped with wind’s bones, which were not wind’s bones at all but the bones of the ancient creatures of this place. Coming toward me out of the eastern sky was a glowing ball of flame. No sound, only this ball, hurtling toward me. “Jinian. Quickly, to your right, and down into that little empty crevasse.” I did not like the look of the doom approaching so made quick work of the directions; half a dozen steps to my right and down ...
Into a hall, vast and gray, where my footsteps echoed whispering down corridors of pillars. From a high window came a crowd roar so threatening I turned instinctively to flee.
“No!” cried the voice in warning. “Turn again. The other way! Beside the pool.” Resolutely I turned back, stumbling across a fallen pedestal, kicking a silvery lamp that lay there in my path. I caught myself. Another pedestal lay across the way, the book it had held flung against the far wall. I walked beside the low coping of a pool, coughing as a fitful draft blew smoke into my eyes, so that I stepped blindly...
Onto a road. Cernaby was beside me. “Here,” Cernaby said, stepping in a certain direction. I followed. We stood outside the Maze on the path we had left only moments before. High on the ridge the tall stones brooded above us.
“What is it?” I asked. “I can’t believe it!”
“Who can? One time long since, Mind Healer Talley came here to confer with the Dervish paramounts. She spent long
