“That place?”
“I don’t know. That’s what he said. “’That Place north of Fangel where the Dream Miner is.’“
“Would you say—Chance, would you say the fellow lost it easily?”
“Didn’t put up much of a fight, that’s true. We gave him a chanst to get even, but he wasn’t up to much. Said he had a woman waiting for him.”
“Who lost, besides him?”
“Nobody much. All the rest of us was more or less even.”
“So he lost, you won, and nothing else much changed hands?”
“You’re thinkin’ it was a plot? Thinkin’ I was supposed to bring that thing where Queynt could get it?”
“Queynt, maybe. Or Peter. Or me. Or all of us.”
“More likely Queynt, I think. He’s been around long enough to attract attention. You, girl, you’re practically brand new.” I didn’t talk with Chance further about the Dream Miner. So far as we all were concerned, it made little difference which of us was the intended victim. Perhaps any of us would have served. If Queynt had not been to some extent immune, perhaps all of us would have been.
I lay down, only for a moment, to wake much later with the sun a handsbreadth above the eastern mountains. Queynt was sitting up, staring at his hand from which the two remaining blue crystals winked and gleamed like eyes.
“Two,” he said, noticing that I was awake. “I have two left.”
“And the other?”
He shook his head. “Like being drunk. I can see the map I have carried for this thousand years: forests and roads. Sparkling. Whizz. Dart. All speed and sureness. Mmmm. Cities, full of Full of people. Not quite. There’s a white road leading to a good place ... an inn. A place to rest. And over that is another, dark and hideous, and yet seductive. Leading to that terrible place. Buried down. Oh, too deep. Too deep.”
“Are you going to take another of the blue ones now?”
“I’m going to wait to see if the other wears off,” he replied with great dignity. “It is less demanding already than it was last night. Foolish of me to have done that. I was so sure I was immune. Why should I not be?”
“Because the crystal you tasted had been sent particularly for you,” I said. “I think. Designed for you. Designed to get through whatever immunity you might have. Hell, Queynt, you’ve been wandering the world a thousand years. You think nobody knows about you? You think nobody knows about the blue crystal? We can’t be the only ones you’ve told. You must have had wives. Lovers. Friends, at least. You must have got drunk sometimes and talked about things.”
He flushed. “Perhaps I have. Long ago. The Eesties knew I had it, of course. And perhaps there are Seers and snoops in various guises all around us. Why me?”
“Why any of us?” I asked. “Perhaps it was designed for any of us or all of us. Why? Why did Porvius Bloster get an order to do away with me from Dream Miner and Storm Grower—it’s no fiction, I saw the parchment myself, read the writing on it. I didn’t even know such a thing as a Storm Grower or a Dream Miner existed. So, if it is nothing in my past, our pasts, then it is something in our future. Perhaps some Seer has told these two, whatever they are, that in the future something will happen which involves one of us, or all of us.”
“I thought your search for these creatures might be a foolish one,” he said. “I did not even think they existed. Now we are sure they exist, perhaps it would be wiser not to seek them!” He sighed. “Though perhaps we will learn more in Fangel.”
Queynt shut himself in the wagon that morning. I did not ask him what he was doing. The art is a secret art. Each Wize-ard had his own solitary ways. I know he worked to do what I could not do for him, protect himself. He did not ask about the amethyst crystal, and I did not tell him it was hidden away in a pouch beneath my skirts. Besides the crystal, it held the locket with my Wize-ard’s fragment in it and a lock of Peter’s hair. Since Shifters could grow hair as they pleased, of any kind and color, I had never been sure why this sentimental gesture had occurred to me. Nonetheless, I carried it just as I carried the star-eye around my neck, as a symbol of what I was and what I intended.
It was a steady climb from the campsite to the city of Fangel. We passed the trail to Woeful at midmorning and stopped only briefly at noon. We walked a good part of it to save the krylobos and by late afternoon could see the walls of the city on the heights above us.
We were no longer alone on the road. Other wagons and riders had filtered in from the east so that we were hard put to it to find a space for ourselves and the fire.
We camped on a rocky shelf separated from the height by a tangle of steep roads and paths with no wood nearer than the jungle far below. A charcoal vendor moved among the wagons, doing brisk business, and we bought a sack to warm our supper over.
“When are the Merchants’ men due in the city?” I asked Queynt.
“Tomorrow, I think. About noon. The Dream Merchant will meet the various Merchants’ men in the residence, according to Brom, to be given their instructions. Merchants’ men change frequently, he said. No one will wonder that I have a face new to them.”
“If it is new to them,” grumbled Peter. “Let us hope none of them have seen you before.”
“Well, I must take the chance of that. However, the rest of you may do better. Remember those half veils the people in Zinter wore? I
