“The ruined roads?”
“The ruined roads. And those that ran them, those who carried the messages to and fro. They were cut off so that forest was sequestered. And mountain, or great tree, or river. Or beast. All the great old entities. All, we believe, but one.” She fell silent for so long I thought she had forgotten me.
“One?” I prompted her at last.
“All but shadow. We do not know what it is. We call it shadow because we can see only the darkness it draws about itself. Even that is not easy to see. We can infer it was not so great before we came. Without the other forces to balance it, however, it seems to have grown.”
“I saw it in the forest. More than once.”
“Most of our kin have seen it. Seen it near the Old Road where the blind runners go. Seen it near the shadow tower where I have seen it often myself. Oh, yes, we have seen it. Studied it as best we could, though that is a dangerous occupation. And from what we have inferred about its nature, we believe there must once have been something to control it. Those you call the old gods, perhaps. We have been searching for them for a very long time.”
“I should think they would want to be found,” I said.
“Want to be found? By us? Wounded already by us? Hurt? Untrusting of man? Go into the great marshes of Firth, Jinian, seeking a wounded zeller in the limitless swamps. It would be easier to find that zeller than to find a wounded god who has no reason to trust us.
“Still, over the centuries, we have learned some things. Those who could feel the Old Road seemed to have an advantage in understanding, so we bred for that. Those who are tough and resilient learned more, so we bred for that. Women learned more than men most times, so we built the sevens mostly and the Dervishes entirely of women. And increment by increment we learned, tiny inference piled upon tiny inference.”
“What do you truly know?” I begged, afraid she would not tell me.
“What do we know firmly? Without question? There are creatures called Eesties,” she said. “Among them is at least one of the old entities. The Shadowpeople know of it. It is called Ganver. There is an old entity in Chimmerdong, and you tell me you have spoken with it. There are others. We have not seen them, but we know they must exist. Perhaps you have spoken with one of them, also?” I thought of the flitchhawk and nodded. Perhaps I had.
“We know the roads are the key to understanding, and on this key we have based our existence, our future, our destiny. And we believe, for very ancient songs and chants speak of it, that there is a shadow-master somewhere. Something that controls and guides what we call the shadow. It may have something to do with the ancient tower the blind runners sing of. I may have seen that same tower. Others have seen what I saw. Himaggery the Wizard. Chamferton the Wizard. Mavin Manyshaped, the Shifter.
“And there is something in legend called the Daylight Bell ...”
“Little Star and the Daylight Bell. The story I played with the flitchhawk!”
“A very old story. There are truths in these old tales, Jinian. They persist. The very words persist, century after century. Like rituals. Not merely tales for amusement, but rituals of truth. Perhaps the thing itself exists. And those are the things we know, Jinian Footseer. Little enough, you may say, for some hundreds of years at the task of learning more. That is the task we were given by our founder: to learn more yet. To await the renewal of the roads. To prepare for the destiny of the Dervishes.”
Came a long silence then. There were many things I should have asked her. About Porvius Bloster and the things he had said. About the Dream Miner and Storm Grower, which—who?—had ordered my death. About the enmity of the Basilisks, so deadly and so unexplained. About the Oracle, who or what it was, and why I had sensed malice from it, and danger. So many things. I asked none of them. I was so awed to think I had talked with an old god that I couldn’t think of anything much to say. I moved a finger, tentatively. It felt good to move. It had not felt good to move for a very long time. I rose on my toes, wiggled my arms. The silver Dervish stood, watching me.
At last, however, the sight of that still, silver pillar became oppressive and I murmured, “I thank you, Dervish. I confess I did not think one of your kind would tell me anything, and though I do not know why you have treated me so kindly, I thank you for it.”
“You are my child,” she said.
The words were senseless. They might have been spoken in gnarlibar growl or bunwit squeak for all the meaning they had.
“You are my child,” the Dervish repeated. I saw one arm quiver, as though she wanted to reach out and could not. “We cannot bear as others bear. The way we are reared makes our bodies ... different. We have not some of the essential parts for bearing. So, we beget, but we do not bear. We choose healthy, strong women to bear for us, and we pay them well.”
“My mother?” I asked. “Not?”
“The woman in Stoneflight Demesne, not.” It was a final word. Odd as it was, what she had just said, I did not doubt it, not for an instant. “When we came for you, she would not let you go. Sometimes women do that out of love for that which they have carried. It was not love with her. She demanded other payment, of a kind we could not make. We could have forced her. But one
