“This stinking thing.”
“This animal.”
“No better than a pombi.” “No more bao than a thrilpat.” “We should loose the shadow on them. . . .”
The meaning conveyed by bao wouldn’t translate for me. It meant something like allness or wholeness or completion, used as a noun. Bao was both a thing and a quality. Something Lom had. Something they, the Eesties, had and we, humans, did not. Presumably. At least so they shouted as they tore at Queynt with insulting words.
Back among the trees there was a great, curved shell, bright red, like the egg of some monstrous bird. Every now and then the Eesties would look nervously in that direction, as though something slept inside it. After a time, another one came out of the trees, larger than the first two, and then the three of them began to touch Queynt, fumble at him, look through his pouch and pack.
When they found the blue crystals in his pouch, they went mad. For a moment I forgot they had not killed him in reality, they seemed so likely to do so here in memory. I started looking for a rock, reaching for the Dagger, anything at all to protect Queynt from their wrath.
“How could he have this? We had them all!” they screamed.
“How did it come by this? They were stored in the monsters’ cavern.” A wrathful bellow.
“Traitors! One of the Brotherhood [Fraternity? Society? Conspiracy?] has betrayed ....
All the time they were striking him, working themselves up into a fury. Though I knew they had not killed him, still I began to worry that history might be playing itself wrongly. I reached for the Dagger.
Then the cry came, enormous and aching. I understood it clearly. “Halt. Stop. Hold it right there.”
The Eesties froze. Queynt was rolled into a ball on the ground, still tied, hands covering his neck. The cry came again. One of the three said, “Ganver,” in a strangled voice. They left Queynt, rolled away from him like naughty boys caught at mischief, running away, afraid to own what they had done, what they had almost done.
And another Eesty came from the direction of the great egg. Much larger, this one, and with no paint or ribbons. Merely a great, starshaped thing with a suggestion of face at its center. No expression. I could not tell whether it was sad or angry. It leaned toward Queynt, moved about him, untied him. It cried again, a great, accusing cry with all the woes of the world laden in it, turned and looked directly into my eyes, itself eyeless, then rolled away toward the scarlet egg again.
And Queynt, patted into consciousness by several of the Shadowpeople who had come from the trees, was on his feet, brushing himself off, looking pale and bruised but somehow indomitable.
“It saw me,” I said to Peter. “That last Eesty, the one that yelled. It saw me.”
“Jinian!” He was sympathetic, pat-patting my shoulder, thinking I was losing my control once more.
“Really, Peter. Honestly. It saw me! Let’s follow it.” This was unlike me, but I was having a very strong hunch.
“If we lose Queynt, we may not be able to find our way back to Betand, and from there to the desert, and from there-”
“We’ll be able to find Betand. And if we didn’t, all we’d have to do is come back here and Queynt would show up here eventually. Again.” I wasn’t sure of this at all. This particular “event” didn’t feel like the others. It wasn’t nearly as discrete and repetitive. None of which mattered at the moment. “Please, Peter. Let’s follow it.”
“Ganver,” he said. “Mavin told me about Ganver. Or wrote about it, rather. She could never talk about it.”
“I know. She showed me what she’d written. It was Ganver’s bone that stopped the Ghoul plague in Pfarb Durim. And Mavin found him in a scarlet egg, so she said. Peter, we have to try.”
“I thought you didn’t like Eesties!”
“I don’t like the Oracle kind. The maskers. The dressed-up ones, all full of false flourishes. One of them called themselves a—a . . .” I tried to find a human word for it. All I could come up with was “Brotherhood,” which wasn’t very close to the actual meaning. “They called themselves a ‘Brotherhood,’ Peter. But Ganver isn’t part of that. Couldn’t you feel it?”
“No,” he said as he always did to such questions about what he could feel or not feel. “I’ll take your word for it.”
Guiding ourselves by that flash of brilliant color, we set off through the trees. When we came to the curving wall, both of us stood there, mouths open. It was huge. Bright. Scarlet as blood. Smooth as stone. Crystalline. Very much like the monuments outside Pfarb Durim, so Mavin had written. We circled it, warily, finding no opening at all. “Damn,” I whined. “We can’t get in!”
“I don’t know why not,” said Peter, leaning himself against the egg and pushing. “It’s only a memory.” He went on pushing, whistling between his teeth. I stared at him for a moment, then leaned beside him, pushing along with him. At first it was hard, stony. Gradually it changed. It felt like pushing the side of a monstrous d’bor. Rubbery.
Not immovable, not impenetrable, merely very, very resistant. When we were half-buried in the wall, I began to fear we might end up smothered inside it. Peter went on whistling. Then we fell through. “See,” he said in a cheerful voice as he picked himself up. “It yields to persistence.”
I had a feeling I would learn to hate that phrase.
The inside of the egg was as Mavin had described it. Many starshaped maintainers bustling about, polishing pedestals, faceting gravel in the walk, doing other things that I found mysterious and totally unfamiliar. The whirling flowers were there; the grass that cried; the gravel that repeated, “What, what,” just as Mavin had said. Even the tall pedestals were there at the end
