Yama remembered how Angel’s aspect had seemed to show him certain places inside the brain of the baby of the Mirror People; she had used him to find out where they were, but he had not known it then. Subtly altered, those places had become the nodes where the tiny machines could excyst and begin to amplify complexity into true consciousness, the change which was the miraculous gift of the Preservers, the miracle with which he had been entrusted.
He concentrated on recalling everything about that moment. What Angel’s aspect had said, subtly prompting and probing him. How he had felt, what he had seen, how he had acted without knowing he had acted. Without thought, he took down a book and ran his finger over the rows of zeroes and ones faster than he could see, changing them in a blur. Put the book back, pulled down another. Over and over until it was done.
He sat up inside a green tent, for a moment unsure if he were dreaming or awake. Pandaras had woven a kind of bower of fern leaves around him. He pushed the fronds aside. It was evening, the air hot and still, light deepening between the soaring trunks of the trees. The forest folk were moving about; they had lit several small fires and were roasting meat over them.
“I have found out where the temple is,” Pandaras said. “Yoi Sendar wouldn’t talk at first, but I told him that you would kill all of the Mighty People if he didn’t tell me. I made them go and get food, too. It isn’t like it was before. No singing, no joy. They are very afraid, I think because they do not understand what has happened to them.”
“That will change.”
“Here, master. Drink this.” It was a gourd half-full of foamy, sweet-smelling juice. Pandaras said, “There’s a kind of hollow vine which gushes water when you cut it. It’s good.”
Yama took the gourd, but did not drink. He said, “Give me your bit of stone,” and used it to slice open his palm. The stone was so sharp that the wound scarcely hurt, although it bled quickly and freely. Yama let blood patter from his fingertips into the gourd. Not much blood would be needed, but he counted off a full minute before he let Pandaras bandage the wound.
Then he called the forest folk together and had them each take a single sip from the gourd. There was just enough. Yoi Sendar swallowed the last of it and handed back the gourd without comment.
“Sleep, then do as you will,” Yama told them. “I cannot live your lives for you. You must discover how to do that yourselves. And when you have done that, remember this. You can free others as I have freed you. Let them drink a little of your blood mixed in wine or in water and they will be freed too.”
They did not understand him then, of course, but soon enough they would. He tried to explain it to Pandaras, but he was so very tired that he fell asleep halfway through the telling.
When he woke it was dawn. The forest folk were gone. Pandaras said he had not seen them leave, although he swore that he had stayed up all night, and said that they must have melted into the forest as mist melts into air. He pointed to a pile of rags, and added, “They left behind their loincloths. Maybe they’ll go back to the way they were before all this started.”
“No,” Yama said. “Now they will begin to be something else.”
“Like the baby of the mirror people? I remember how you made the fireflies dance around it.” Pandaras yawned. “There is a little fruit for breakfast. They ate all the meat last night, and I do not think you are the kind of man who can chew hide and hooves.”
“You are becoming too used to miracles,” Yama said, and smiled. The half-healed wounds in his face tugged against each other. For the first time he could allow himself to feel that this might soon be over. He could allow himself the luxury of hope. He told Pandaras chidingly, “Not only do you dismiss the miracle at once, but you do not bother to try and understand what it means.”
“If you changed them all, then it really was a miracle, master. You took a whole night over that baby.”
“I have machines in my blood and so do you. Everyone does. It is the greatest gift of the Preservers. The miracle was simply a matter of persuading them to do the work for me.”
Pandaras touched his throat. He had mended the fresh rents in his shirt, wrapped the stump of his left wrist in a bit of bright red silk, sleeked down his hair and strung a chain of yellow orchids around his neck. The coin hung at his chest like a brooch and he wore the fetish on his left arm. He looked like a jade about to embark on the long and complex wooing of a fair lady.
He said, “We are all filled with the breath of the Preservers, master. It’s well known. All except the indigens, of course, unless someone like you works a miracle.”
“No,” Yama said. “Everything in the world is touched by the breath of the Preservers, for everything comes from them. All I did was help the forest folk recognize what they already possessed. I have changed the machines in my blood so that they can infect all the indigenous peoples of the world. That was why I made the forest folk drink my blood. And in turn their blood will become active, and change any who drink it. I have freed them to be what they will. If they choose, they can free all the other troops of the forest folk which come here to find food for the Mighty People.”
The first rays of the sun had begun to shine through the understory of the high canopy of the forest. Pandaras pointed aslant the light. “I’m not sure if I understood all of that, master, but I would guess that our work here is done. Yoi Sendar said that the temple is a day’s walk in that direction. I’d guess it would take us twice as long, as we’re not used to the forest.”
They walked through the green silence of the forest for most of the day. They spoke very little, each absorbed in his own thoughts. For the first time since he had leaned at the window of the room above the stables of The Crossed Axes, the inn where he had met Pandaras, and looked out across the great city of Ys, Yama felt an immense peace. He was who he was, no more and no less; he gave himself to his fate as a leaf borne on the River may be carried the length of the inhabited world. The day was beautiful, and their walk enlarged and celebrated that beauty.
Toward evening, they stopped at the edge of a bluff which looked across the valley. The thorn-fenced villages of the Mighty People stood here and there amongst the network of ditches, canals and paths that webbed the grassland. Hills rose on the far side of the valley, with more hills behind them. The sun was setting beyond the Rim Mountains. Its light spread out as if it were trying to embrace the world.
Parasol trees grew in this part of the forest, the tapered columns of their trunks ringed by widespread green fronds. As light drained from the sky, the midribs of the fronds collapsed, folding against the trunks with a stealthy rustling and creaking, like so many dowagers arranging the underskirts of their gowns.
Yama and Pandaras lay down to sleep on layers of fern fronds the boy had woven together. He said that he had learned this trick during a stay with one of his uncles, who had been a basketmaker. “A squire must know a little of everything, I reckon,” he said, “so it’s as well I had such a large family.”
He had discovered a clump of water vines that scrambled around the trunk of one of the parasol trees, so that they had been able to quench their thirst, but he had not found anything to eat. “But we’ll reach the temple tomorrow, master. I’m certain of it, unless that gargoyle was lying to us.”