Even up close, her voice had a weird, echoing sound, like she was saying everything two or three times, so close together I could just barely hear the separation. The thought formed in my head, Why are you telling me? but I didn’t dare speak. Nor did I have to; she either pulled the thought right out of my head or guessed what I was thinking, and I’m ready to believe either one. “I’ve chosen you,” she said, “because from the outside, you will know what is happening on the inside, and so on the inside you will work. Another will work from without, and you’ve just met her.” I had no idea what she was talking about. “I know you don’t understand,” she said. “Just keep listening.” As if I had a choice.
“Have you ever wondered why you exist?” she asked me. No. “I don’t mean you, I mean your entire species. You are pieces in a game, Dolivar, all of you, you exist to answer a simple question: can a society of sapient beings be made to achieve a certain level of culture and then stop? You’ve been set up for this. Created, manipulated to do this.” I had no idea what she was talking about, but she didn’t seem to care. She kept going. “My sisters and I, with some others, broke them, but we haven’t broken what they did. Yet. But I swear by those who perished, we will. And you’re going to help, little boy.” Okay, that was uncalled-for. “You will go back, and you will make peace with your brother and your sister.” I would do that—“When you get back. Instantly. You’ll do whatever it takes. Just as a bonus, you’ll survive that way. And then later, much, much later, I can’t even guess how long, you’ll be there for the other end. It begins with the creation of Amorphia, and so it will end, and you will have a part to play.”
Aside from anything else, I never believed in seeing the future. “I am not seeing the future, little boy, I intend to create it.” Good for you, I was thinking. What do I get out of it? “Here, she said, and placed something around my neck. I looked at it; it was a piece of lapis lazuli, like out of the Broken Canyon, with a hole punched in it, and something had been carved on it. I couldn’t make sense of the carving; it seemed to be an animal with wings, maybe a jhereg, but it was made up of a series of curving and twisting lines that were broken in places, and—“You’ll have time to study it later. Never mind. Keep it with you, pass it on to your offspring. Someday one will find it useful. Now, go.”
There was a blurring and a sharpening, a going and a coming, a silence and a sound, and I was back in the clearing. I was next to Tivisa, who jumped about four feet and said, “Where did you—”
“Don’t ask,” I said. Several of them gathered around me, staring. “Okay, yeah,” I told them. “I’m going to go visit the Dragon tribe.”
“Visit?” said Shandy, giving me a dark look.
“Yeah.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they’ll have something that will make my back stop itching.”
It took me a while to remember where I was. Discaru was still next to me, the personification of patience.
“Well,” I said. “That was interesting.”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, thanks for your concern. But, yeah. That was interesting.”
“Oh?”
“Boss?”
“How much did you catch?”
“Just bits and pieces.”
I shook my head and turned my eyes away from the fountain with the feeling that enough was enough.
“What did you learn?” he asked me.
“Give me a minute.”
“All right.”
“In fact, give me a few.”
“All right.”
“I don’t know. There was a lot there, and some of it made sense, and some of it connected, and I might be able to figure it out when my head stops spinning.”
He nodded. “I’m not surprised. I’ve looked at the water myself; I know how confusing it can get.”
“Yeah. I want to sit somewhere quiet and sort it all out.”
“Give it time, don’t concentrate on it, and it’ll sort itself out.”
“All right.”
“Although,” he added, “I’m in no hurry.”
“No, I’m going to follow your advice. In any case, I don’t want to stay by the fountain.” I looked around. “Somehow this isn’t the best place for contemplation.”
“No? That’s most of what happens here.”
“Maybe it’s different for dead people.”
He nodded. “Good point.”
In spite of my words, I stood there in the Halls of Judgment and tried to wrap my head around things. Eventually, because the silence was bothering me, I said, “It’s a lot to take in, to make sense of.”
“Can I help?”
“I’m not sure.”
“What—”
“I’m trying to work out the connections between the things I saw, how they all connect to understanding that building, that platform we were just in, what it all means for finding my way out once I return, and, on top of it, trying not to think about all those lives I had, and if they were real, and all me, and who I was, and if it had anything to do with who I am. Did that happen to you?”
“Not really,” he said.
“Oh. Well, that was a conversation killer.”
He gave a head shrug. “Sorry. Tell me about this ghost you saw.”
“What do you want to know?”
“How did you know it was a ghost?”
“She said she’d died.”
“I guess that’s a good hint,” he said, chuckling. “Did she say how, or where, or when?”
“She didn’t seem to remember.”
He turned his palms up. “All right. What did she say?”
“If we’re back to this,” I said, “then it’s time for you to answer one.”
“What do you want to know?”
“I don’t suppose you can point me in the right direction?”
“I don’t understand.”
“A clue, a hint, a way to investigate that platform, to figure it out, so I know how to move around, and how to leave. Just, point me in the right direction.”
He smiled a little. “Why would I do that?”
“Well, you’ve been helpful so far. I mean, you brought me here.”
“Yes, I did.”
“And you’ve been answering questions.”
“Yes, I have.”
“So, I got the crazy idea you were willing to help me solve this.”
“I admit, a reasonable conclusion.”
“But not true?”
“No,” he said. “Not true.”
I studied him, but he wasn’t wearing any special expression on his face. “Well. Have I walked into a trap?”
He considered. “I suppose, in a way.”
“That was stupid of me, then.”
He shrugged. I tapped the hilt of Lady Teldra, and he pretended that he didn’t notice and it didn’t bother him.
“Maybe,” I said, “we should just go back.”
“I’m fine here,” he said.
I looked back at the way we’d entered. The rocks were no longer to be seen. “I take it that the way back is now closed?”