Bunja had news. “We’re on our way to Merhaven to pick up our people. We received a far-talker summons from the emissary. All the members of the embassy staff, those still living, are assembling in Merhaven. The place is destroyed.” He looked a question. “I presume you know which place. And, Xu-xin, I am sorry to tell you, but your friend Bear has been killed. The emissary is Xakixa for him. The emissary told me to tell you Bear did not die forsworn. I don’t know why that is important, but the emissary said it was.”
“Ah,” said Precious Wind, grieving. Her grief was echoed by Xulai. Both of them felt both sorrow and a kind of shamed relief. Bear had not been forsworn. His memory would not be soiled to those who had known him.
“How?” they asked in one voice.
“Ul monga-paf, the thing we do not mention, killed him. It killed several of the embassy warriors as well. Ul monga-paf escaped. It moved like lightning, so quickly it could not be seen.
Xulai looked at Precious Wind, who nodded. The thing had an ul xaolat.
Cursing silently, Precious Wind asked, “And we are expected?”
“Lok-i-xan knows you are coming. They are in council, debating how ul monga-paf is to be killed. Again, it has gone away and we do not know where.”
“Were the women mentioned? The queen, Mirami, and her daughter, Alicia?”
He smiled grimly. “Oh, yes! Cleanse them from memory! Those evil ones are dead! The oldest witch died in the castle in Ghastain of some quick, terrible disease. Her daughter died in the same manner in her cellar at the place. Where her machines were. Where Bear died.”
“The Old Dark House,” said Abasio.
Bunja made a gesture of revulsion. “Gol mongapaf! We do not mention that, either. It is no more. It is gone.”
Precious Wind had a very strange expression on her face. “Just a moment! When Alicia died, when her mother died, did anyone describe the illness?”
He nodded, face screwed up in revulsion. “They had a smell, like rotted meat, like one long dead, vomiting of blood, much blood.”
Precious Wind held up her hand as though to say, Don’t talk, let me think. “Is it possible ul mongapaf got any of that blood on it?”
Bunja considered this. “As the emissary described it, it would have been hard to avoid. He said she spewed blood everywhere . . .”
“Ah,” said Precious Wind. “Then let us get to Tingawa as quickly as we may. That information may give us a way to find the thing!” She took a paper from her pocket, folded and sealed. “Bunja, old friend, I have written here something I need you to take care of for me when you reach Merhaven. Read it when you have time. Justinian’s old friend Genieve lives there in a place called the Watch House. She can help you find someone reliable to do what we need done.” She put it into his hand and folded his hand around it. “It’s important. If you cannot find Genieve, find someone else. And do not forget to have your divers examine your hull before you leave Merhaven. It has been suggested the thing we do not mention might possibly make some kind of oxygen device and attach itself, like a barnacle, to the hull of a ship. If so, tell them not to notice it, not to touch it, to use the far-talker first and talk to me!” She leaned forward to kiss his cheek. “We will see you soon in Tingawa, Bunja. Sail safe. Be well.”
The few remaining days of the trip, though they seemed endless, were in fact very swift, for the winds held true. They began to pass little islets that had been, so Precious Wind said, sizeable islands fifty years before. They passed between two mountainous and still sizeable islands that marked the entry to the Tingawan Sea. The capital city of Ushiloma al Koul, Great Mother of the Sea, lay before them. It had obviously been recently moved. As in Merhaven, there were buildings on skids, and the piers were floating. They saw the umbrellas even before they reached the pier, tall, fringed, golden umbrellas.
No, Xulai told herself, they were parasols. Parasols were the symbol of nobility in Tingawa. Precious Wind had told her about them when she was only a child. “Here, in this world of Norland, a crown is put onto the head of a person at a coronation, making that person the king. Both the act and the ownership of the crown can lead crowned heads to the belief that they have some inherent right to rule. In Tingawa, the parasol, a symbolic shield against evil, is held over the head of the leader by representatives selected by the people. The ruler is thus always reminded that power is not inherent but is granted and can be taken away.”
The ship docked. The walkway went down onto the pier. Two parasol bearers came aboard to stand at either side of the walkway. “This honor is for you,” said Precious Wind. “You have to go first, then Abasio, then Justinian. Then the rest of us.”
Xulai went first, suspended in time, suspecting that all this business of honoring was silly, believing at the same time it meant much to those who gave it, thinking that this land could never be home, wondering at the same time whether it might not be more of a home than any she had yet known. Those holding the parasols came with her. Well, her mother had been a princess. Perhaps that was enough reason. She made herself stand up straight and walk gracefully as Precious Wind had taught her. Precious Wind had also told her who the man at the end of the walkway was: her grandfather, Lok-i-xan.
He smiled at her, leaned forward to kiss her gravely upon her cheek, gave her his right hand and Abasio his
