We were not totally surprised when the voice addressed us from behind. “You followed me,” it said accusingly. We turned, stepping back involuntarily. This Eesty was very large, larger than it had seemed when assisting Queynt. It was also very troubled. The trouble was in the tone of its voice, in the way it stood before us, almost trembling. The vague facelike structure at its center showed nothing. Its voice did not come from there. It came from the creature itself, needing no lung, no mouth, no tongue.
“Yes,” I replied, keeping it simple. “We followed you. We need you.”
“How could you come here, into our dreams, our memories? Into our timeless place from which all times are spun? Is there no place you cannot come, you intruders, vandals, you who usurped our children’s heritage? Oh, humans, go away from here.”
I would have sworn it was crying, such a tragic weeping it put me off and I could not answer.
I heard the misery, but Peter didn’t. “We can’t,” he said. “My mother came to you. You helped her. Now I have come to you and you must help me. You must help me help the world you live in.”
“Why must I?” it cried. “We have put that all away. We have let it go. Let come what will come!”
For some reason this made me furiously angry. “Oh, very nice,” I snarled. “Cause this great tragedy, this death of a world, the world which bore you and nurtured you, and then simply turn your back. Go off into some dream dimension of your own. Selfish. Horrid. You’re responsible for this, Ganver. Your people did it. Your people, those Oracles, those beribboned mischief makers. They’re killing Lom. They are the ones who are killing Lom’s bao!” I still didn’t know what the word meant, but it was the right word to use. Before us the Eesty stiffened, became rigid, began to shake, shook for a time that seemed endless before crying out a sound.
Around us the world trembled. The great egg quivered. I felt it roll. The sky cracked, broke, and blue distance showed through rents in the scarlet shell. Black lightning struck from the blue sky. A feeling like hard smoke went through me. A sound that tasted of` rotten flesh startled the air, and my skin felt sour, acid.
We were standing in the forest. The egg was gone, all its parts and contents gone, there was only the giant Easty there, still as the light of a distant lamp, cold and far.
“You have accused me of complicity,” it said in a chill, tiny voice. “You have accused Ganver.” There was a threat in that voice, a threat and a wounded pride so deep and massive it made me tremble, and I felt Peter’s hand shake a little in mine. That he had felt.
Never mind. We had to go on. We had come too far not to.
“We have accused you of betraying this world,” I said, struggling to keep the tremor out of my voice. “Of killing your parent.”
Silence. Silence full of danger. In my hand, Peter’s fingers changed, became covered with horn. He was preparing to Shift, to defend himself and me if need be. The moment stretched into an endless, breathless age.
“You need not think of weapons,” it said at last, contemptuously. “Ganver does not retaliate against infants, against children, against sillybeings.” It was thinking of small chattering birds, of tree rats in their nests. All of that was implicit in its voice.
“Silly-beings may have more good sense in their simplicity than great minds in their pride.” I don’t know where the words came from. Out of something Murzy had said, I think. Or perhaps one of Cat Candleshy’s scholarly epigrams. Whatever their source, these words were the key. The word “pride” was the key.
“You have accused. Among our people, we treat accusation seriously. We are accused seldom. Never by . . . others.” It meant inferiors. I was depressed. Mavin’s account of her meeting with Ganver had led me to expect something more understanding and godlike than this. It went on, “If you accuse, then you must judge.”
“You let your accusers be your judges?” Peter, astounded.
“Who else should be satisfied?” it asked. “If one’s accusers cannot be satisfied, what is justice?”
“One’s accuser might be mad,” Peter suggested, very unwisely I thought, considering where we were. “Mad, and incapable of being satisfied.”
This stopped it, but only for a moment. “We would deal otherwise with defective creatures,” it said very softly. “Are you defective?”
“I believe we are not,” said Peter.”As a matter of fact, we may be far less defective than many.”
“Of your kind,” it said. There was no sneer in its voice, but the words carried enough to shut Peter up.
“How must we judge?” I asked, eager to change the subject.
“You must see, experience, be one with the events which occurred. You must know. Feel. Only then can you judge.”
“And how do we do that?”
“Thuswise,” it said.
It began to spin, spin and sing, words I could not afterward remember. It spun, and as it did, so did I, and Peter, both, up on our toes, spinning like Dervishes.
“How?” I cried. “How?”
“Can a human Dervish do anything which an Eesty cannot? They who were taught by us and then sought to usurp our functions? Can they do what we cannot?” There was anger there, and hurt. Even if I’d been able, I would not have pursued the subject, and I was not able. Dervishes could change the shapes and natures of other beings. I knew that. Mavin had said so. Evidently Eesties could do the same, for we were being spun, Peter and I, into Eesties, small copies of the great Eesty before us, small creatures otherwise identical to Great Ganver, who whirled and sang.
“We go,” it cried, and we rolled away, spun away, sometimes one and sometimes the other, upon a
