I thought of Mavin’s story in which she had said, “Once you’ve interfered, you simply have to go on. You can’t say it isn’t your responsibility.” I wanted to laugh, somehow, even though there was nothing at all to laugh about and Ganver would probably get angry and do something drastic to us at any moment for what we’d said already.
But that didn’t happen. It simply stood there, looking inward at something we would never see, in a sadness too deep to measure. And at last it said, “Then I must atone. If it is not too late for atonement. And your safety must come first because the Oracle threatens you, Jinian Star-eye.”
“Why do you call me that?” I asked, curious.
“Because of the Eesty sign you wear upon your body. The sign of the eye. The sign we taught to some of your people early in their lives upon Lom, trying to teach them other ways than the way of destruction.”
“It was you who taught the sevens?”
“It was we who taught them some things. And we who taught the Dervishes some things. And I who laid myself upon Queynt to teach him some things also, after he had been abused by those. . . .”
“The Dervishes believe you are one of the old gods, Ganver. Is that true?”
The being before us was silent. Perhaps stunned? Perhaps offended. “I am to the old gods as you are to me, Jinian,” it said at last in a voice that shook a little. “We are not unlike, and yet we are not equal in what we are.”
Ah, so it would at least allow we were not unlike. “I thought you hated us.”
“We hated what you did. In some of you we could find no bao at all. Some of you did not have it. Would never have it. You have a type of person who assists at birthing. . . .”
“Midwives.”
“Your midwives. One of the “Talents given by Lom allowed them to seek bao in your children, to let only those young live who had it. Perhaps, if the midwives had been more respected . . .”
I took the pendant out of the neck of my shirt, staring at it. I had worn it ever since Tess-Tinder-my-hand had given it to me when I was a child. Tess the midwife. Who had, evidently, found some bao in me. Something about the shape tickled at my memory. Someone had said something about it. Someone else had called me Star-eye recently. The memory fled away, refusing to be caught, leaving a trail I sniffed at. The memory was important. Why couldn’t I hold it? “What does the stareye mean?” I asked.
“It is a lesson which must be learned from observation,” it said. “We say, `Watch and learn.’ It is a knowledge with five parts. Though we have no midwives, it is a knowledge we have always believed all Eesties have at birth, as the warnet knows the meaning of his hive and the gnarlibar the meaning of his teeth.” Ganver spoke in a grieving voice, and yet there seemed no reason for sadness in what it had said.
We hung there in the haze, nowhere. At the edges of vision were roiling movements as though something struggled to shape itself. Inside my head—or what passed for my head in the Eesty shape—there was similar roiling. It was Peter who broke the lengthy silence.
“It is profitless to discuss this now,” Peter said. “We must do something, Ganver. The Oracle is hunting Jinian. Is she safe here?”
“We are between forevers here,” the star replied. “The gray land in which nothing changes. Though the Oracle cannot find us, we can do nothing here. Of such a space was Ganver’s Grave created. It is a space in which nothing may occur.”
We hung there a time longer, saying nothing, meditating, I suppose, on all we had seen and heard. It would do no good to stay where we were. At last I sighed.
“Take us out of here, Ganver. If we can do nothing here, we must leave the place.”
It nodded. We spun once more, out through the flickering lights of memory travel. Ganver gasped, and I glimpsed a pursuing shape, wildly flapping. In an instant we were in the gray once more.
“The Oracle?” I asked hopelessly. “Did it find us?”
“It caught sight of us.” A pause, the silence of thought. I perceived in Ganver a slight red flush, as of the merest hint of anger. “The Oracle seeks these shapes we wear. So, we will shape ourselves differently.” Ganver turned to Peter. “You, I will take to the edge of the Maze, where you may go away before it knows you are gone. The Oracle seeks three, not two.” Ganver turned to me. ‘`I will return to hide you away where it will not find you, then I will trick the Oracle away, far away, to a place from which it cannot return quickly.”
“But . . . but,” said Peter.
“It’s all right,” I murmured at him, feeling something inside me melt like hot sugar, a flood of bittersweet anguish. “It’s all right, Peter. Go, get out of here. One of us has to get back to Himaggery and Mavin and the rest. They have to know about the Daylight Bell. About the Tower
