Toller cautiously raised himself in the bed. He glanced at the mound of rocky fragments intherearofthe cave, then turned his head away quickly, unwilling to risk seeing the tiny lantern gleaming at him. Only when it had ceased to shine altogether would he know for certain that the fever had entirely left his system, and until then he had no wish to be reminded of how close he had come to death and to losing all that Gesalla meant to him.
She looked up from her emergent patterns. “Did you see something back there?”
“There’s nothing,” he said, mustering a smile. “Nothing at all.”
“But I’ve noticed you staring at those rocks before. What is your secret?” Intrigued, and playing a game for his benefit, Gesalla came to him and knelt to share his line of sight. The movement brought her face very close to his, and he saw her eyes widen in surprise.
“Toller!” Her voice was that of a child, hushed with wonder. “There’s something shining in there!”
She rose to her feet with all the speed of which her weightless body was capable, stepped over him and ran into the cave.
Prey to a strange fear, Toller tried to call out a warning, but his throat was dry and the power of speech seemed to have deserted him. And Gesalla was already throwing the outermost stones aside. He watched numbly as she put her hands into the mound, lifted something heavy and bore it out to the brighter light at the entrance to the cave.
She knelt beside him, cradling the find on her thighs. It was a large flake of dark grey rock — but it was unlike any rock Toller had ever seen before. Running across and through it, integral to and yet differing from the stone, was a broad band of material which was white, but more than white, reflecting the sun like the waters of a distant lake at dawn.
“It’s beautiful,” Gesalla breathed, “but what is it?”
“I don’t.…” Grimacing with pain, Toller reached for his clothing, found a pocket and brought out the strange memento given to him by his father. He placed it against the gleaming stratum in the stone, confirming what he already knew — that they were identical in composition.
Gesalla took the nugget from him and ran a fingertip across its polished surface. “Where did you get this?”
“My father… my real father… gave it to me in Chamteth just before he died. He told me he found it long ago. Before I was born. In the Redant province.”
“I feel strange.” Gesalla shivered as she looked up at the misty, enigmatic, watchful disk of the Old World. “Was ours not the first migration, Toller? Has it all happened before?”
“I think so — perhaps many times — but the important thing for us is to ensure that it never.…” His weariness forced Toller to leave the sentence unfinished.
He laid the back of his hand on the lustrous strip within the rock, captivated by its coolness and its strangeness — and by silent intimations that, somehow, he could make the future differ from the past.