Pestle.
When summer was nearing its peak, Egdod flew out from the Fastness carrying the form of a bird that Thingor had devised, into which he hoped Spring might breathe life. But before going her way he flew in a broad sweep across the Land, climbing high into the air to seek out the wild souls who made its winds and its weathers, and making a circuit of its coast to speak with the wild souls of the oceans. To each of them he made it known that in a few months’ time, when the apples were harvested in the Garden, there would be a feast, and that each of them would be welcome to take part in it.
When he had made this invitation to the last of the wild souls, who inhabited the eastern sea where it beat against the great rock, he flew up the course of the river and followed its branchings all the way to the Forest, and then likewise all the way up to the abode of Spring. There he found her much as he had seen her before, but strangely different. And before long the nature of this change made itself clear in his mind and he knew that she was creating two new souls just as she had foretold. But because of the greatness of the work it was a thing that would be much longer in doing: not the work of a few moments, as when she had put life into the first bee, but of seasons to come.
Abashed, he showed her the form of the bird that he and Thingor had fashioned, and gave it over into her hands. As she regarded it and caressed its feathers, Egdod said to her, “I see now that you are at work on a task much greater than putting life into a bird, and so I regret that I have so troubled you with what now strikes me as a small matter.”
“On the contrary,” Spring answered, “the toil of making a new soul has given me strength I lacked before and made light work of it.” And the bird’s wings began to flap of their own volition and it took to the air, clumsily at first, but soon acquiring all the skill and grace of Freewander.
“Thus birds,” Spring said. “It is a good thing to have done. But know that while you have been secreted in the Fastness working on such, the souls of Town have likewise been busy, and I think you would do well to spread your wings and fly higher and look farther in that direction.”
Troubled by Spring’s words, Egdod flew to the watchtower of Longregard and perched upon its roof so that he could see what was afoot in Town. And he was astonished by the change that had come over the place in his absence. Formerly, the new building that the souls had been making in the Park had squatted low to the ground, barely rising above the top of the little tower in its center. Only a small portion of the Park had been covered by it. Now, however, its foundation covered the Park entirely, so that not a single blade of grass or bed of flowers could be seen, and in some directions it had expanded across streets to cover ground where houses had once stood. Such a foundation was required to support all that had been constructed above it: a tower that seemed to Egdod like a kind of mockery of the little one he had made there to begin with. For, though it was yet incomplete, this one had a like shape. And as he perceived on further inspection, it had a like purpose, with souls, instead of bees, swarming and humming about it.
The stuff of which the Tower was being made was various and changeable. Its foundations were of rubble and wood. When the Tower’s builders had exhausted their supply of those, they had borrowed the style of building employed by hornets in the making of their nests, daubing mud and leaving it to dry. In this manner they were piling up many more stories, so that the top of their works was nearly of a height with the Palace. Likewise they had begun to copy the manner of construction favored by bees and hornets; while the Tower’s lower courses were in horizontal layers, piled one atop the other, the farther up they built it, the more they had caused it to resemble the style