It took enormous effort to get to my feet. The silent blow bruised me, not visibly, and yet I could feel it in my flesh. Something had struck me. It seemed a punishment after all I had been through, and weary tears gathered at the corners of my eyes. The tree rat chattered once more, but I could not take time to figure out what it was saying. Below, in the city, those I loved must be told their efforts had succeeded. The Oracle and all its followers were gone.
I staggered down toward the city. Around me came small popping sounds, like pods of shatter-grass breaking open, as the gray trees burst into leaf all at once. The soil beneath me writhed with grass, coil after coil of fern sprang up like zeller, leaping into frond. Blossom happened. I walked on a meadow of bloom and green. The world rejoiced. The sound of the Bell fell away to silence.
And from below me, in the city, came a wail, a cry, a heartbroken lament. I stopped, unable to believe it, thinking perhaps the Oracle had done some dreadful thing there in the city before its life had ended. The lament went on, flowing toward me, coming from a clot of people clustered at the nearest gate. I stopped, confused. There was something wrong with my head. A blurry feeling.
Peter was there at the gate. I called out, a harsh, grating cry from a dry throat. He raised his head, saw me, didn’t move, just stood there, his face empty. Then he raised his hand and came up the hill toward me. I waited, unwilling to go closer, afraid.
Even at the distance, I could see his face was wet and he walked as though crippled, haltingly. Behind him those at the city gate went into the city, their voices raised in sorrow, joining another lament by other voices. I began to run, stumbling, as halting as Peter. I was sore, hurt. He, too.
He caught me in his arms.
Always, always when Peter held me, the flesh of his arms Shifted, only a little, becoming warmer and wider, as though to touch as much of me as he could. The first time he had ever really held me, long ago, oh—longer ago than seems possible and yet only a year or two, only that. He had held me then as he did now, and I had felt that Shifting, that softening, as though his arms would cushion me against all the threats and pains of the world. And always when he had held me, it had been like that.
Yet now he held me in his arms and they were only arms. “Wiz-ardry?” he mumbled into my ear. “Some Wizardry, Jinian? Lost. All of us. Our Talents. All. Gone.”
I stared at him stupidly, not hearing him. What idiocy was he talking? I couldn’t understand what he meant. His Talent gone due to some Wizardry? Whose? Who was left?
Over his shoulder I could see a small figure behind him, toiling up the hill. Proom. The Shadowman, looking at me out of great, haunted eyes. He came close to me, stared into my face, took my hand into his own soft, long-fingered one, and spoke to me. I could not understand him.
And it was then I knew.
The Talents were gone. All. Everyone’s. Lom had given. Lom had judged.
And Lom had taken away.
Proom sang to me with tears in his eyes: Lolly ulla lum a lolly lom. Like a bird. All around me was the sound of mystery. A tree rat chattered. I did not know what it said. High on the hill, a flitchhawk called, and I knew it might be calling me, but I could not understand.
I cried out then, something, I forget what. Peter reached out for me. We stood there on the hillside, tight in each other’s arms, weeping for what was lost, and gained.
Lom was alive. Lom the glorious, field and forest, stream and meadow, flitchhawk on the air, bunwit in the copse, all alive. And thinking. And knowing.
And all our Talents were gone. Healer and Necromancer, Sorcerer and King, Tragamor and Elator, gone. All our Talents gone. Taken away. As punishment?
And in that I took hope, for if Lom thought we had no bao, it would not have punished us. It would have done the merciful thing.
We walked down into the city. There was a body at the gate, Little Flitch, a knife between his ribs to the hilt.
“He said it was all he had,” whispered Peter. “All he had.”
“It is not all you had,” I said firmly, choking it out. “It is not all you had, Peter.”
“I keep telling myself that,” he said, holding my hand so tightly it hurt. “I do, Jinian.”
We came to a place where Dodir had been working. A great stone lay on the street, and he leaned against it, trembling, crying as though his life had broken before him. He looked up at me, through his tears, wiping them away as though ashamed. “Jinian?”
I shook my head at him. “They were never our gifts to begin with, Dodir. Lom gave them. And Lom has decided we will be better creatures without them.”
His face turned grayer. Dodir had used his gifts well, always. All those in the city had done. Here, more than any place in the world, might this great loss be justifiably resented.
“I?” He was disbelieving. “I, too?” It was undeserved in Dodir’s case. He knew it.
“All,” I said. “All of us.”
At first nothing, then perhaps a flash in those brown eyes. Anger. Yes. I think so. A little anger. And his shoulders straightened as he stood tall beside the great stone, and I knew of the two things, Dodir or the stone, Dodir was the stronger, for he would not be broken.
“Then we will build it
