For a time nothing changed. Then the thin, tortured shrieking ended, the tears stopped flowing, and he looked more or less like himself. We held him between us, warming him. After a long time he spoke in a distant, windy voice not like his own.
“I thought I was immune.” The words were said so slowly I had to recapitulate the sounds to understand them.
“What was it? What did it do?” He could not or would not answer. He could not or would not say anything. We sat beside him, watching his face. After a time, his eyes closed. After a longer time, he began to breathe as though he were asleep.
We wrapped him warmly. After a long time, we left him there. The two krylobos had come nearby during his shrieking, and they sat by him, keeping him warm.
We prepared a meal, laid out our blankets, fed the birds, who were up now, striding nervously back and forth, staring at Queynt from the sides of their eyes, muttering bird talk that I could not really understand because they didn’t understand it. I took it to be some kind of rote-learned ritual or invocation.
We ate. Chance took a bowl of broth to Queynt and spooned it into his mouth, whispering to him the while. I think Queynt slept then. Later, when we were all almost asleep by the coals of the fire, he began to speak, little more than a whisper, so we had to strain to hear him.
“I thought I was immune. The blue crystal I was given so long ago—oh, it does not seem long sometimes, but now it seems an eternity since that happened. The blue crystal—often I tried to tell myself what it had done to me. All I could think of to describe it was to say I had swallowed a map.” He fell silent again, as though thinking what he might say next.
I sat up, seeing the fire reflected from Peter’s eyes where he sat half against a wagon wheel.
“Perhaps it was not a map or not only a map, but a set of instructions, a guide in cases of perplexity, a set of consistent directions to be used in all eventualities.” He struggled up on one elbow, reaching for the water jug.
I gave him a drink, hushing him. “No, no. You worry, Jinian, that the crystal took my will from me. It did not. If one has a map which shows two routes going to a place, one a good road, the other through a swamp, does it destroy one’s will to know the swamp is there and reject that direction in favor of the better road? You are not sure. You would like all choices to be equal. Only if all choices were equal could one be sure one had free will. Otherwise ... otherwise ...” He pushed himself up, half-sitting.
“Otherwise one always wonders if someone else is pulling the strings. However ... however, I had swallowed the map and it was part of me. From that time to this I have never felt anyone else pulling the strings. Inside myself the map was clear. Avoiding the swamps was simple good sense. Avoiding accident. Avoiding death. Avoiding pit and dragon, both. So. I wandered the world of my map …
“Which, like most maps, did not specify a destination.” I could hear him breathing, deep, fast breaths as though he fought to climb some great height.
“A destination?” I asked at last, prompting him.
“Most maps are tools one uses as an aid in journeying. They do not usually give a destination.”
“And the other crystal?” asked Peter hesitantly. “The amethyst crystal? Did it show a destination, Queynt?”
“A wrong one,” he sobbed. “Yes. A wrong one.”
“Shhh,” I said, putting my arms around him, cradling him to me as though he were a child. “Shhh, Queynt. Tell us. What do you mean, a wrong one?”
“It summons to another place. Not on the map I was given at all. To some horrid cavern beneath the earth where monsters roar in the dark and all dreams are murdered.”
“Summons you, Queynt? Against your will?”
“Not against my will, child. Making it my will to go! That’s the horror of it! But bless you, child, the blue one is there as well, saying, No, not the right place, not the right thing to do.” He could not say any more. Perhaps he would not say. I sat there cradling him well into the night, he still crying without a sound and Peter sitting by, the fire making mirrors of his eyes, glowing disks turned in my direction. At last Queynt slept.
“Well, Wize-ard?” said Peter.
“I won’t let it happen,” I said. “I will prevent it.”
“What will you do to save him?”
“I don’t know, Peter. I don’t know. Whatever it is is inside him. Perhaps by morning it will have worn off. Perhaps it’s addictive, as the yellow ones were. We must watch him, protect him. But I don’t know what I’ll do if he isn’t well by morning. I haven’t any idea at all.” It was some time before we slept.
I woke Chance early, while it was still dark, whispering to him, “I need to know what was said about that amethyst crystal, the one Queynt tasted.”
“What was said? Little enough, girl. Let’s see, there was five of us gaming. Man named Chortle, two brothers from a place somewhere north of Bloome, man named Byswitch, and me. Byswitch had most of the coins and the big crystal. Said it was new, no one had anything like it, very unusual.
