“Except for Jinian, who took that message and carried it with her and carries it now!” I staggered. Suddenly my legs wouldn’t hold me and I plopped to my knees, shaking. “A message meant for me. And you. And every human person here. And for all other creatures as well.” I had given almost all of them to Peter, retaining only eight or ten. I took one of the small blue crystals out of my pouch, almost dropping it from trembling fingers. I passed it first to Bartelmy. “There isn’t much of it. Make it go as far as you can ...”
“Hold!” The voice hummed from the back of the throng, a reverberating, gonglike sound. “Hold, Bartelmy of the Ban! I, Marno of the Morning, speak. You hold a crystal in your hand. Has Jinian Footseer tasted it?”
“I have not.”
“Then why should we?” The voice was cold and scornful. My heart sank beneath the weight of it.
“I will if you wish. I have not.”
“Why have you not?”
“Because I know what it says. And I am vain and proud and would do the message’s will of my own will, knowing I do it of my own sense and intelligence, without compulsion. But if I cannot gain your understanding in any other way, I will taste it.”
“Taste it, then!”
“No!” This was Bartelmy, in a voice that ached. “This is a Dervish daughter. My daughter. If she would do a thing of her own will, is there any Dervish would say her nay? And if I would do a thing of my will, is there any Dervish who will deny me? So, what I do, I do of my own will.” The crystal disappeared beneath the fringes of her veil and in a moment reappeared to be thrust into Cernaby’s hand.
It passed from there beneath the concealing fringes, here and there, mouth to hand to hand to mouth, from one silver pillar to another. Some refused it. Most tasted it. I gave them all the others but three. Fringes shook, quivered, bodies turned. One reeled into another. Some cried out. Then stillness. The Dervishes were there in their thousands, assembled rank on rank, and the rear ranks quivered now as the remnant of the crystal passed.
“How long?” asked Bartelmy. “How long, Jinian?”
“How long? How long ago did this world send us that message? You guess, Bartelmy. Soon after we came here, I would suppose. If we came here a thousand years ago, perhaps a few hundred less than that. More or less.”
“And who robbed us of it?”
“I don’t know. I suspect, but I don’t know. A race of creatures, ambitious, proud, who did not want this man on this world. A race of beings who sought to drive me away, who gathered the message crystals up, every one, and who took them to the cavern where the giants dwelt. Some creature which hated man.” I could not identify that creature. I suspected. Only suspected.
“Is it too late?”
“It may be. I suppose we could give up with good grace. Lie down and die. Disport ourselves for a time, like lice on a corpse. Or go on dancing while the shadow comes. The shadow is part of this, I’m sure. You’ve seen it Bartelmy. I’ve seen it. Perhaps all you Dervishes have seen it. It flows now, from somewhere, like a flood. Where is it coming from?” Silence greeted this, but they did not disagree. “Of one thing I am very sure. If this world dies, we will not survive it long, but we might play while there is time.
“Or we might try, whether it is too late or not. Try to get the roads fixed. Try to get some runners on them. Yourselves, since that’s what you’ve been breeding for. What race ran these roads before we came?”
“Eesties. We have seen so with the deep look.”
“Eesties? Really?” This did surprise me. “I thought it might be Shadowpeople.”
“No. Eesties. We look into the past and see them spinning upon the roads, spinning into the ancient cites. They spin. As we do. Those odd doors in Pfarb Durim? Larger at the top? They are Eesty doors. It was an Eesty city. All across the world there are ruins with those doors.”
“That’s why you’re Dervishes. You copied them.”
“We tried. It is said one of them helped us originally.”
“You copied them, but then just sat about waiting?”
“We thought ... we thought the day would come. We were holding ourselves in readiness for the day.”
“The day when someone else would fix things?”
“The day things would be fixed, somehow. Yes.” A collective sigh. Then, “Jinian, why was it you who saw this?”
I considered this. How had I known it? How did anyone know things? “I don’t know, Bartelmy. There always has to be someone to see things first. By the time Queynt gets to Himaggery in the south, others may have seen. Surely—oh, surely you will not merely stay here in your pervasion and let it happen.”
“What can we do?”
“Mavin told me you have powers. You changed Himaggery into a beast one time.”
“We made him think he was.”
“Then you can make Tragamors and Sorcerers think they are road builders. You can make Demons think they are hunting fustigars to seek out whoever robbed us of the message. You can make Healers think they are Lom fixers. I don’t know. You can do something!”
“If there are more of these crystals across the sea,” said Cernaby, “they must be brought here. Shared out.”
“Better late than not at all,” came a voice from the ranked multitude. “Better a tardy lover than a lonely bed.” A quiver of what could have been laughter ran through the ranks. Laughter? I was shocked at this, realizing only later that it was the laughter of despair.
“You can help Himaggery decide how to get west over the sea and back again. It took Beedie and Roges three years, and we don’t have three years to spend. Mavin flew there, Beedie said. Which means Shifters can fly there and
