She cried at me with the last of her strength. “Why does the world want its creatures dead? We have known this for some time. But we do not know why.”
“Listen to me!” I stamped my foot in my frenzy then, knowing I must be blazing red to their perception, seeing them shiver in an agony of what? Anger? “Listen. You’re not understanding me. The messages are not to the creatures. The messages are to all parts of itself.
“Do not ask me why the world wants its creatures dead! Ask why it wants itself dead!” Stillness then. A thousand Dervish pillars standing around me, not moving. The fringes did not shiver but merely hung, still, as though extruded of some hard metal. The anger was gone as suddenly as it had come.
Nothing moved, and yet I felt something go out from them, a hard blow, a wave of... something. Pain? No. More a question. I looked up to see them there in their thousands. I stood at the center of an ominous circle, so silent, so utterly silent.
I made the gesture of release.
“Itself,” said Bartelmy at last. “Sisters. Dervishes. Could we have been mistaken?”
“Mistaken?” A breath. A sigh.
“Mistaken?” I demanded. “Mistaken in what? What have you done?”
“Not done,” breathed Cernaby. “Been.”
“Long ago,” said Bartelmy, “far in the past, there were creatures who ran the roads of Lom. Looking deep into the past, we have seen them.”
“I saw them, too,” I said impatiently. “When I looked into the past in Chimmerdong.”
“But those creatures run the roads no longer. Not since we came. Lom cries for this journey to be made, this endless journey.”
“The blind runners do it,” I said. “All the time. Every year.”
“Not correctly. Not as it should be done. They cannot. The roads are broken. And they are still too near to ... to humanity.”
“And you are not?”
“We have bred ourselves for centuries to run the roads of Lom as we believed another creature did before us. We have believed this to be Lom’s will. But if this is Lom’s will, then Lom would not will to die. If Lom wills to die, then what does Lom will for us?”
“To die also,” I said flatly. “I don’t know what you Dervishes have been up to all these centuries, Bartelmy of the Ban. I don’t know what Barish thought he was doing fooling around with that hundred thousand Gamesmen under the mountain. I don’t know what any of us thought we were doing. All I know is that every sign points to this world wishing itself dead.”
“But this must be recent...”
“Not all that recent, no. Within old Buttufor’s lifetime, certainly. He can remember the crystals coming out blue and green when he was young. He is over a hundred now. But it has not been long.”
“Why? Why?”
“Listen to me,” I said again. “I’m not going to waste my time asking why. I’ve been thinking about this for days now. In Bloome I thought about it. Outside Fangel, it seemed sure. After leaving the others, I did nothing but think about it. If a person wished himself dead, we would assume he was sick. Injured, perhaps. Well, we know well enough this world is injured. You told me that, Bartelmy. It was you told me to fix the roads in Chimmerdong. Was that only an exercise? Some kind of lesson you wished me to learn? Or did it mean something?
“And if it meant something, then why are you here? Why are you doing your dances when there are roads broken everywhere? Why are we wondering why the world wishes itself dead when we are doing nothing to heal it?”
“How do you know this?” A sigh again. Was there a hint of anguish in it? Of injured pride?
“I know it because I am Dervish born, Gamesman reared, wize-art trained. I know it because I am Jinian Footseer and have run those roads while you all were studying to do so. I know it because I have seen all its signs and portents across all the lands, seen the clues to it where I have walked and ridden, heard its voice in the quiet reaches of the night. I know it because I know it.
“I know it because logic tells me it must have happened. A world, this one, Lom, which has existed for untold time, which is in balance with itself, which is healthy, which sends messages to all parts of itself in order to stay in balance, to stay healthy. Messages to groles and Shadowmen and Eesties. And into this world comes man, the destroyer, for whom no message has been made.
“What then? What does logic say must have happened? It says that Lom must have made a message for men and about men. A blue crystal, telling men their place in this world. Showing them the balance. And the message was sent.
“But evil walked upon the roads of the world, evil and envy and pride. Evil which did not want man in this world at all. Evil which believed man would die if deprived of the message meant for him. Not knowing Lom would die, instead. So the message meant for man was stolen away, taken into deep caverns and hidden there, where no creature might receive it.
“Except Queynt, who was given the message by the Shadowpeople in the long ago.
“Except a few, here and there, who found it without knowing what they found.
“Except the people of a chasm far over the sea, who found it, knew what they had found, and brought it to Mavin Manyshaped, their
