They are, in short, frightening. When I realized I was alone in a room with one, I wanted to wet my pants.
However, I took a deep breath, reminded myself that Murzy would do nothing dangerous for me, and bowed. That seemed prudent, under the circumstances.
“You may sit down,” said the Dervish in an absolutely toneless voice. “Over there.”
Over there was a hard bench. The Dervish did not sit down; merely stood concealed in its fringes, like a silver column. “You have something to tell about the Daylight Bell.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. “You may begin.”
So I told about going into Chimmerdong, about the edge of the forest turning to mush, about the flower in the sun, the cone in the brook, the bed that moved, and finally about the bunwit and tree rat who took me into the great tree. Then I told the Dervish about the story, the way we had played it out, the flitchhawk and I. And then I sat very quietly, waiting, because the Dervish didn’t move, didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure it was breathing, even.
At last it trembled, as a tree might tremble in the tiniest breeze. “Your name?” it whispered. This time it was a question.
“Jinian Footseer,” I said.
The figure before me started. “Footseer? Explain?”
So I explained, about the blind runners, and the honey cookies, and running on the Old South Road when I was no more than a baby hardly.
Then nothing, nothing.
Then,” Jinian Footseer, you may go.”
I went.
I went very quietly down the stairs, and very quietly along the corridor to the rooms we occupied, and very quietly in to curl up on the cot and wait. I heard the third bell ring. Not long after that, Cat and Margaret came in. And just after the fourth bell rang, Murzy came.
“Oh,” she said. “You’ve seen one of them.”
“Not merely one,” said Cat. “I think it was Bartelmy.”
“Bartelmy of the Ban? The one who ... ?”
“Yes. That one.”
I heard her, but I didn’t move. I didn’t ask, “The one who what?” even though later I was to wish I had. After a time they went away. Later they came back, bringing a mug of something hot and strange tasting. I drank it. My insides began to settle somewhat, though they still felt twisted.
“It....she ...”I said.
“The Dervish,” prompted Cat.
“The Dervish did ... something to my insides.”
“No. Really not, Jinian. It may feel like that, but the Dervish really didn’t. And you may say ‘she”. All Dervishes are female. Sort of.”
“Then what made me feel that way?” I asked, beginning to recover. “I felt sick, and dizzy, and as though I wanted to crawl into a hole somewhere.”
“You’ve been looked at, very thoroughly, is all. Rather as a Healer might, but with more attention to mental things.”
“That’s exactly it. Someone’s been rummaging through me!”
“Don’t say rummage.” Cat smiled. “Not about a Dervish. One of them would never do anything so disorderly. Well. How do you think you did?”
“Did what?”
“Do you think you told her something new? Something that will earn you initiation? As a Wize-ard?”
I had no idea. There was that tiny shiver, and when I told them about that, they seemed almost excited. About that time, a bell rang, and they all went off to hear something new about the Eesties, or maybe about the Shadowpeople, I’m not sure which. I curled up again and went to sleep and didn’t wake up until they roused me for evening porridge. By that time, my name had been posted as approved for initiation, which pleased them, and me.
“What would you have done if I’d not passed?” I asked, half-teasing, certainly not expecting the answer I got.
“There are Forgetters here,” said Margaret. “You would not have remembered anything at all about the place. And we would have sought another seventh. That’s all.”
That was quite enough.
13
The Forgetter I was introduced to at my initiation took my hand and said, “I hope you will never be brought before me, Jinian Footseer. Hold your tongue and keep your memories—for now—dedicating them to the wize-art.” The threat was explicit.
Which was neither here nor there. My initiation was quiet, almost private. There was one Dervish present, the one who ... or some other one. There was the Forgetter, and the dams as witnesses. And there was the tall, frightening presence of a male Wizard in full regalia, a friend of Murzy’s, who administered the oaths. Then we walked in still procession down endless ramps and stairs to a place hidden in the secret heart of a cavern lit by a thousand candles. At the center of these lights was a circular pool with a raised, star-shaped curbing. Very still, that pool, like some forest ponds I have seen when there is no wind, full of milky, silvery stuff. We knelt around it, all of us, staring at it. At first I thought nothing was there, but then I saw the bits of shadow, coalescing, separating, coiling. And bits of light. Shaping, unshaping. In endless motion. Within the pool. Still ... so still. I know my head fell forward, because Murzy reached out and touched me to bring me to myself.
“The shadow grows,” whispered the tall Wizard, his voice twisting off into the cavern to raise a flock of sibilant echoes, like restless birds in the dark.
Those assembled said, “And yet there is light,” in firm, comforting unison.
The Wizard took a pair of long, curving tongs into his hand. The Dervish held out a shallow bowl. Everyone breathed in, a quiet kind of gasp.
He took a grayish flat fragment of something from the bowl, holding it up in the tongs so everyone could see before dipping it in the pool, carefully not touching the pool with his hands.
There was a thin, high singing when it touched the pool. Then he
