She was right. I didn’t care, but I knew she was right.
“I have seen some persons so sunk in shadow they do not move for years,” she said. “Standing like stones. I have rescued some such. Perhaps you have some immunity to it, for you have managed to go on living. Pay attention now.” She reached for me, touched me.
She hurt me.
She hurt me and went on hurting me.
It was worse than the time the Healer had come when I was a child. Worse than the time at the citadel when she had looked at me in the Dervish way. Worse than anything I’ve ever felt. Worse than the pain of thorn or bruise or insect bite. Fire running down every nerve, meeting obstruction, then leaping across that obstruction in an explosion of heat and color that was felt, not seen. Bridge! my mind screamed, agonized. Bridging broken places with fire. Oh, stop, stop. Oh, gods, stop. Please. I babbled. I twitched, fell down, the Dervish’s hand coming with me. Back, ribs, chest, arms, then down into my groin, my legs, every toe, liquid fire running everywhere.
How do I describe pain? Everyone knows pain. The bitter companion, the hated protector. I learned in that one, endless instant to know pain. And when it was over, to value it. But not until later.
“There,” breathed the Dervish over my sobbing, thrashing body. “The shadow breaks all webs, shatters all nets. The shadow disrupts all continuity. I have bridged the places that were broken. It is painful, for the broken places must be shocked into awareness, realigned and reconnected. Now they are alert again.”
She made me look at her, made me follow her pointing finger with my eyes. “Shhh. Settle now. It is over. You have done a similar thing yourself, Jinian. There.” And she pointed to the length of road, clear to the north. “You, too, have bridged the broken places. Consider whether there may have been pain when you did so.”
I looked at the pale line of road in shocked amazement, suddenly granted an insight which I cursed myself for a fool that I had not seen before. The tingle I felt when I walked upon the road. Dissimilar only in intensity to that I had just felt.
“You see.” She nodded at the charcoal pattern upon my hearth, pointing it out with that preemptory finger. “There is a pattern of the roads of Chimmerdong, and there”—the finger directed my attention out through the open door—“there is the reality. There”—indicating the swept white line leading away north—“there is the reality restored. Now you see.” She stood away from me. “And now you must decide which pain you will bear. That of being as you were. Or that of being as you are.”
I brought myself up to my knees. That was as far as I could get. The hand that had held the teacup appeared again, a full cup in it, the steam rising into my nose. I gulped it, interrupting the gulps with sobs. “Pain of being as I am? I don’t understand.”
“But of course you do. The pain of curiosity unsatisfied, of ambition unfulfilled. The pain of love unreturned, of devotion undeserved. The pain of friendship rejected, of leadership ridiculed. The pain of loneliness and labor. Silly child. Did you think living was easy?”
Well, I had, of course. Not really easy, perhaps, but easier than this. I guess all children expect life to be easy. It seems easy, just looking at it from outside. Being half-dead as I had been for the past while was easier than this.
“It’s easier to be dead,” she said, seeming to Read me. “Always.”
“I think I would rather be alive,” I managed to say. “Even if it hurts.”
“As it will,” she said firmly, standing back from me to become the silver pillar once more. “Now, Jinian Footseer, you had questions. You ask what it is you are to do. I will try to answer that.
“Long ago when our people came here—that is, when human people came here—there were creatures already here governing this world. They were not simple beasts or people. That much we can infer. They were not discrete things with edges and centers, brains, hands, feet. They were different from that ...
“And our people were arrogant. What they did not understand or perceive easily, they either attempted to kill or dispose of. And so they did with these old entities.”
“Old gods?” I asked wonderingly. “Gods?”
The Dervish pondered. “That is what some of the Wize-ards call them. What are gods, after all? Do we know? Call them old gods if you like. And say our people wounded them or imprisoned them, though I do not believe we succeeded in killing them or any one of them.”
“How could they imprison a god?” I demanded. I didn’t think it could be true.
“As you were imprisoned, Jinian, alive in your own body, only minutes ago. Reduced to small volition. Living from little rage to little rage. With your nerves cut. So your brain might live and your lungs pump and your heart beat, but you would be isolated, imprisoned in your own skull, helpless. Separated. Cut off from the world,
