“Min?” I said, kneeling over her. She had a deathly pallor and the alterations in her appearance were frightful. It was as if she had been softened and reworked all down the left side of her face and upper body, but not on the right. Her ear, her nose, her lips, her cheekbones, all bore the mark of the change. She had had fine delicate features but now, on one side, they looked blurred, coarse, as though they had flowed and run. The texture of her skin on the changed side was different too, glossy and unnaturally sleek. I bent close to her. “Can you hear me, Min? Can you tell us what has happened to you?”
She seemed no more than half conscious. Something like a convulsion swept through her for a moment. She rose a little. Her eyes rolled in her head; she grimaced and her lips turned back to bare her teeth in a frightening way. Then she fell back and grew calm again, though her breath was coming in harsh gusts.
Change-fire, I thought. She has felt the touch of change-fire on her body, and it has done this thing to her.
“The Pit—” she murmured. “The Source—Stum—”
Her voice trailed off.
“Min? What are you saying, Min?”
Someone tugged at me. It was Jekka the Healer. He said, “Step aside, Poilar. Can’t you see she’s in no condition to talk right now?”
I gave way, and Jekka bent above her and touched her the way a Healer touches one who is ill. Deftly he redirected the flow of the life-forces through the channels of her body, guiding air and warmth and light into beneficial paths. After a time some color came into Min’s cheeks and her breathing grew normal. She put her hand to her face, her shoulder, her arm, exploring the things that had been done to her. Then she made a little despondent sound and I saw her shape flicker quickly, as though she were trying to return herself to her proper form. A quick shuddering eddy of Change passed over her but when it ended her body remained distorted as before.
Quietly Jekka said, “Save your strength, Min. There’ll be time later to put you back the way you were.”
She nodded. I heard someone softly sobbing behind me. Min was a terrible thing to behold.
She sat up and looked about like one who is awakening from a dreadful dream. No one spoke. After a time she said, very quietly, “I’ve been among the Melted Ones.”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, we know.”
“They stole us in the darkest part of the night, Stum and me, so quickly we had no time to cry out. Hands over our mouths—they lifted us—carried us—”
“Rest now,” Jekka said to her. “There’s time to talk about it later.”
“No. No, I have to tell it. You need to know this.”
Nor would she be denied. Shaken and weak though she was, she forced the story out of herself.
She and Stum, she said, had settled down for the night at the edge of the camp, perhaps in an unwise location, where they were more vulnerable to marauders than the rest of us. But how a party of Melted Ones had been able to steal unnoticed into our camp, Min could not say: perhaps those on watch, whoever they had been at that time, had fallen briefly asleep, or perhaps a spell had been cast, or possibly the whole thing had happened so swiftly that even the most vigilant of sentries might not have noticed. In any event, however they had managed it, the Melted Ones had seized Stum and Min with great efficiency and had taken them quickly off into the darkness for a considerable distance in what Min believed had been the direction of the Walclass="underline" though she had been unable to see anything at that moonless hour, she was certain that her captors had been moving on a steady uphill grade.
“We entered a kind of cave,” she said. “I think it must have been right at the base of the Wall. Everything was very dark all around, but the moment we were inside I could see a strange sort of light, a green glow that seemed to be coming right out of the ground. There was a sort of antechamber, and then an opening in the floor of the cave, which was the mouth of a long steep passageway that slanted sharply downward to form a deep shaft. The light was rising from the bottom of the shaft. The Melted Ones let us look right over the edge. It is the Source, they kept saying. It is the Source. They speak the old language, the Gotarza. We Scribes understand a little of that.”
“Yes. Yes, I know,” I said.
“I couldn’t tell you what’s down there at the bottom. Something bright, something warm. Whatever it is, it’s the thing that melts the Melted Ones.” Min’s hand went to her transformed cheek, perhaps without her realizing it. A deep shudder ran through her and it was a moment before she was able to speak again. “They wanted to change us,” she said finally. “And send us back to you as ambassadors of a sort, in order to show you what a wonderful thing it is to be melted. They pushed us forward—toward the rim of the Pit—”
“Kreshe!” someone murmured, and we all made the sacred signs that ward off evil.
Min said, “I felt the heat of it. Just on one side, the side of me that they were holding toward the glow. And I knew that I was beginning to change, but it was no kind of change I had ever felt before. I heard Stum cursing and struggling next to me, but I couldn’t see her, because they had me turned facing away from her. She was closer to the Source than I was. They were chanting and singing and dancing around like savages. Like animals.” Min faltered. She closed her eyes a moment and drew several slow, heavy breaths. Jekka put his hands to her wrists and held her, calming her. Then she said, “I kicked someone, very hard. His body was soft and it gave against my foot like jelly, and there was a scream of horrible pain. I kicked again and then I got my hand loose and poked my finger into someone’s eye, and my other hand was loose, and a moment later there was confusion all over the place. Stum and I both were able to break free. They came running after us, but I was too fast for them. They caught up with Stum, though. I managed to get to the mouth of the cave, but when I looked back I saw her still deep inside, practically at the edge of the Pit, fighting with half a dozen of them. She was yelling to me to get out, to save myself. I started to go back for her. But then they swarmed all over her and I knew that there wasn’t a chance—I couldn’t see her any more, there were so many of them—like a mound of insects, the whole heap of them piling on top of her, and all of them moving forward, pulling her closer and closer to the Pit—”
“Kreshe!” I muttered, and made holy signs again.
“I knew it was hopeless to try to rescue her. There was no way I could do anything for her and they’d only get me again too if I went back in. So I turned and ran. They didn’t try to stop me. I came outside—it was still dark—and tried to find my way back to camp. I must have wandered in circles for a long while, but finally the sun came up and then I knew which way to head. There were Melted Ones everywhere around, but when they saw me they simply nodded and let me go by, as though I were one of them.” The harsh glitter of sudden fear entered Min’s eyes. She touched her altered cheek again, prodding it fiercely with her fingers as though the flesh were stiff as wood. “I’m not one of them, am I? Am I very ugly? Is it disgusting to look at me? Tell me—Poilar—Jekka—”
“One side of your face looks a little different,” I said gently. “It isn’t so bad. It won’t be hard to fix it—isn’t that so, Jekka?”
“I think we should be able to induce a complete counter-Change, yes,” he said, in that ponderous way that Healers sometimes use. But it seemed to me that there was very little confidence in his tone.
We resolved to go into that cave and see what had become of Stum. By brilliant white noonlight Thissa cast a spell of wind and water that carried her into some other world, and when at last she rose from her trance she pointed a little way to the west and north and said, “There is the path we must take.”