“If we live. If the shadow does not catch me.”
“You know,” it whispered to me. “You know. They may send it after you, human-girl, but they have not done so. Yet.” It left me then. I had not had the foresight to realize the hut would be very wet when it left. That night I slept beneath the stars, nervously.” Peter returned in the morning. He woke me where I slept, rolled in my cloak.
“There was a flood in your hut?” he asked in a despondent voice. “I thought maybe you’d drowned.”
“Peter, what’s the matter?” He hugged me sadly, almost absentmindedly. “Oh, Jinian, from worse to worse yet. Himaggery and Barish were arguing when we left there two years ago. While we’ve been away it went from argument to open animosity, and from that to a split at the Bright Demesne. Barish is for raising all the hundred thousand at once to make what he calls ‘massive changes’, not that he’s raised even one of them yet. Himaggery wants them raised a few at a time to make what he calls, “balanced programs’. Mavin got disgusted with them both and left. No one knows where she is. Mertyn went back to Schooltown.” He seemed about to weep.
“Shh, shh,” I hushed him. “Bad enough, my love. But I know you. I know my sly, snakey Peter. What did you get done?”
“I talked to Barish and demanded that the old Windlow part of him listen to me. He heard the warning. I said it over and over until he really seemed to have heard it. Then I put a blue crystal in his tea.”
“I thought you would.” I wanted him to know I did not disapprove. Himaggery and Barish were stubborn, pombi-proud idiots. Heaven save me from male Wizeards who want to play politics. “And then?”
“Then I told Himaggery he owed it to me as his son to listen to me. Which he agreed to. I warned him. Then I put a blue crystal in his wine.”
“Ah.”
“Then I left. I made a stop in Schooltown. Mertyn did believe me and he will send word to Mavin—somewhere, somehow, if he ever figures out where she is and though no one knows how long it will be before she gets the message, if she gets it at all. The two of us together went to see Riddle and Quench in the land of the Immutables. I gave crystals to each of them. I was sure the Immutables would be immune, just as they are to Talent, but they weren’t. None of them doubted me.”
I cursed. “Doesn’t it prove what I said, Peter? Only three disciplined forces in the world. The Immutables; the Dervishes; the sevens.”
“Well, we’ve got three alerted. A Dervish arrived about the time I left Schooltown. Don’t ask me how she got there that fast, because I flew the whole way. She said her name was Cernaby and to tell you your message had gone to the sevens.” He sighed, stretched out beside me, and pulled half my blanket over him. I didn’t even worry about his closeness. Oath or no oath. It just wasn’t that important anymore.
“What did you do with the other crystals? You had several dozens of them?”
“Gave them to Riddle and Quench and Mertyn. One for Mavin, when they find her. Six to be sent by trusted messenger to the others of your seven in Xammer—if they are still there ...”
This astonished me. I had not thought of it myself, but Peter had. He continually surprised me by being more thoughtful and intelligent than I expected him to be. He didn’t notice my surprise but went on.
“The others they will use as they see fit. I told them what you said about the hundred thousand good Gamesmen who are still frozen under the mountain. When I left them, Quench was talking with Cernaby about starting the resurrection, Barish or no Barish. Quench has the resurrection machine, you know. It’s his people who fixed it, and they were the ones who were going to do the work anyhow, if Barish ever got around to it. The problem is, of course, that Quench hasn’t enough of the crystals to be sure all of the resurrectees are given them, and you said that was important.”
“I think it’s important. Why bring them back at all if not to help? Otherwise, they only return to die with the rest of us. I would have thought Barish would have started bringing them back to life by now, Himaggery or no Himaggery.”
He turned toward me, laying an arm across me, tugging me close. “He’d rather argue than do. I think the mixture of Windlow into him has immobilized him. He still remembers what he planned to do once, but with Windlow inside his head he sees all the flaws in his original plan. I felt sorry for him.” He breathed very deeply in my ear. I lay very quietly, not discouraging him. If something was going to happen between us, I was not going to talk about my oath. What did happen between us was a gentle snore. So much for breaking my oath to make love beside the limpid waters. I laughed at myself and fell asleep.
When he wakened, I told him what I had learned about the shadow. Peter had heard Mavin’s story of the shadow. “It lives in the Great Maze?”
“So the lake creature said. It lives in the Great Maze, among the memories of the world.” I did not realize what I had said until I had said it. Cernaby had told me that.
“Among the memories of the world? Jinian. We store our memories in our minds.”
“In our brains,” I corrected him. “The mind is something else. It, too, lives in the brain, but it is something else. So I was told long ago by a Healer who saved my life. Peter, if the shadow lives in the brain of Lom, of the world, then is the shadow part of this
