to learn more about how to be human or how could she lead them? This journey had changed her, she could see that. No longer did she count every step. Once, she would have had a total for the number of rocks in this room she’d touched, the number of words she’d spoken in a day; even on a bad day the number of stars visible in the night sky. She’d stayed indoors at night for that reason.
Was it wrong to want to be like others? To be thought of as human and not as some kind of animal?
Yes. If it meant losing her gift, yes. Yes, if it meant becoming someone different. Yes, if it meant she was condemning her friends to a slow death in this many-roomed trap.
But there was no danger of that, not now. The key had fallen into her hand. So simple. She sighed. Time to be Lenares as hard as she could.
She woke them, ignoring their complaints—they were just ordinary people, after all, ruled by their bodies—and made them stand in a circle around the bronze map.
“I have a question for Torve and Captain Duon,” she said. “Why did Umu return the bronze map to this room?”
“What do you mean?” Duon answered her, but even as the question slipped out of his mouth, comprehension dawned on his face.
Lenares willed him on, wanting him to work out what it implied. The four southern survivors of the Valley of the Damned—Lenares, Torve, Duon and Dryman—had been corralled into Nomansland, where they were trapped in the House of the Gods. There, in the Throne Room, they were snatched up by a god, chair, bronze map and all, and deposited in Raceme. The huge, circular bronze image had landed on top of Lenares, knocking the breath from her.
Torve saw it more quickly even than the explorer. “The map was ripped away from this room when we were taken up by the god and dropped in Raceme. Yet here it is now. Umu must have gone to a great deal of effort to bring it back.”
Lenares smiled. “Umu has rebuilt the chairs and retrieved the bronze map. There can be only one reason. They are the components of the secret mechanism.”
She scrambled up onto the chair she associated with the Father. “Cylene!” she called excitedly. “Get up in the chair nearest you!”
Dear sister, she did what she was asked without question. Who else should Lenares ask but Torve?
“Torve! Please, Torve, could you climb the remaining chair?”
Yes! she exulted as Cylene reached the seat and sat herself down in it. Immediately her rear made contact with the stone, the numbers embedded in the bronze map changed… amplified… began to make sense. There were just as many lines and names on the map as before, but some of them thickened and changed colour, making the whole map easier to read. Now, if only there was a legend.
Torve sat on the third chair. For the first time in who knew how long, all three chairs were occupied. Not by gods, but did that matter?
Everyone in the circle gasped as the map began to glow as though backlit with sunlight. The room filled with light, and the travellers cast huge shadows on the walls behind them.
Yes, yes, yes!
The legend appeared. Not that it was really needed now: Lenares could read the map as though it was a part of her own mind.
Oh, of course. The centre of the map wasn’t in the same place as she remembered from Marasmos, because they were much further north now. The bronze map was centred in the Bhrudwan continent, and Elamaq and Faltha were small and stretched around the periphery of the map. Bhrudwo was much larger, and many places were marked. One colour for towns, another for roads—all named, if she looked closely enough—a third for rivers. And so it went. Forests, bays, oceans, mountains.
But the legend had far more on it than mere physical features. It was the oddest legend Lenares had ever seen on a map, and she had seen—and drawn—plenty of them as part of her training. She focused on the heading “Fear” and the map changed. Muttering from below indicated the others saw the change too. The names were still there, but they had turned grey and become smaller. Instead, the map was covered by shades of red. A pinprick of bright red pulsed in the room at the centre of the map—the room they were in. She desired to see this