dried fruits and I suddenly realised that it and the other shrivelled ones were the same that Colonel Momentous Spearjab’s party had taken Dar’sayn from. The larger and now empty shells, by contrast, had, as far as I knew, escaped the Yatsills’ attentions.
“Others of your kind?” Even as I asked it, the truth flashed into my mind—a terrible revelation. Reaching up to one of the gourd-like objects, I touched it and said, “Your people come out of these?”
“Yes, after we are banished from Phenadoor.”
They weren’t fruits. They were cocoons. Dar’sayn was some sort of placental fluid.
Stunned by this realisation, I stood speechlessly gazing at the Zull. Its four silvery eyes glittered as it regarded me.
“You are a curiosity,” it said.
My mouth worked silently before I was able to utter, “My—my name is Aiden Fleischer.”
“I am Gallokomas.”
I looked around me at the broken and shrunken cocoons, then back at the creature. “Why do you say you’ve been cast out of Phenadoor?”
“Because I feel it.”
“You remember being there?”
“No. I am newborn. I have no recollection of the blissful life that went before. I know only that I lived it, and now cannot, for it is forbidden to return. I must have done something very wicked to have been punished this way.”
I moved closer to the Zull and knelt beside it. I felt light-headed. My clothes were hanging in ribbons, red-stained, and my skin was smeared with dried blood.
I said, “Do not judge yourself harshly. I have learned that one should not presume evil in oneself without irrefutable evidence of it.”
“I am no longer in Phenadoor. Is that not evidence enough?”
“It is no evidence at all. Perhaps when you join with the rest of your kind, you’ll find out more about where you have come from and why you are here.”
“The rest of my kind,” Gallokomas echoed. “Yes.” He pointed to the East. “I am drawn in that direction. I think they are there.”
I nodded. “I’ve heard they live in eyries between the Shrouded Mountains and the Shelf Lands.”
“I do not know those places. And you, Thing—where are your people?”
I didn’t have the strength to explain Earth and space and the planets, so nodded toward the South and said simply, “There. Some distance away. A place called New Yatsillat.”
“I feel that you are anxious to return. Why did you leave it?”
Not wanting to confess that I’d come to the forest to extract Dar’sayn and unwittingly kill the Zull’s fellows, I answered with a question: “Is my anxiety so apparent?”
“I am aware of those things that are absent within you.”
“How?”
“It is obvious to me. You are joined to another of your kind and are currently lacking that one’s presence. You think of this New Yatsillat place almost as a home but lack confidence that it can offer you safety. You are uncertain and are searching for something to believe in.”
“Can you hear my thoughts, Gallokomas?”
“No. Your mind is closed but your emotions play over its surface. I understand your need and must help as best I can. I will take you to New Yatsillat.”
“You would assist a stranger?”
“Of course. Why would I not?”
“I am grateful, but it is a vast distance to walk.”
By way of reply, Gallokomas stood, the cloak of skin on his back suddenly inflated like a balloon, and he rose five feet or so above the ground.
“You propose carrying me?” I asked.
“Yes, but first we must eat. Remain here. I will return.”
He shot upward and disappeared over the treetops.
I sat and rested my head in my hands. I hadn’t yet seen a single source of Dar’sayn, and even if I had, I wouldn’t extract the liquid now I knew that, in doing so, I’d kill an intelligent being. So what would become of New Yatsillat? Without a fresh supply of Dar’sayn, could the Magicians muster strength enough to preserve themselves for the duration of the red sun’s day?
Gallokomas wasn’t gone for long, and when he returned he was carrying a large bunch of black banana-shaped fruits.
“Much of what I found on trees and bushes was poisonous,” he said, “but these will not harm us. Eat, Thing.”
We filled ourselves with the bland-tasting stuff, then the Zull hooked a pair of hands beneath my arms and lifted me into the air. Propelling himself forward by means of a rippling fringe that ran along the top and sides of his buoyancy sac, he transported me to the river in the bottom of the valley and there settled that we might drink from the clear,