Chapters (77)
- Title Page
- Contents
- Dedication
- Book 1
- Part 1
- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 5
- Chapter 6
- Chapter 7
- Chapter 8
- Part 2
- Chapter 9
- Chapter 10
- Chapter 11
- Part 3
- Chapter 12
- Chapter 13
- Chapter 14
- Chapter 15
- Chapter 16
- Part 4
- Chapter 17
- Chapter 18
- Chapter 19
- Chapter 20
- Chapter 21
- Chapter 22
- Chapter 23
- Chapter 24
- Part 5
- Chapter 25
- Chapter 26
- Chapter 27
- Chapter 28
- Chapter 29
- Chapter 30
- Chapter 31
- Chapter 32
- Part 6
- Chapter 33
- Chapter 34
- Chapter 35
- Chapter 36
- Chapter 37
- Chapter 38
- Chapter 39
- Chapter 40
- Chapter 41
- Part 7
- Chapter 42
- Book 2
- Part 8
- Chapter 43
- Chapter 44
- Part 9
- Chapter 45
- Chapter 46
- Chapter 47
- Part 10
- Chapter 48
- Chapter 49
- Part 11
- Chapter 50
- Chapter 51
- Chapter 52
- Chapter 53
- Chapter 54
- Chapter 55
- Chapter 56
- Map of The Land
- Acknowledgments
- About The Author
- Also By Neal Stephenson
- Copyright
A few nights after the first bee had been brought to life, Egdod drew a mist about the Garden and changed the shape of the mirror pool that he had fashioned there long ago, when he had first conceived a desire to see himself and to give himself a face. He broadened the pool and then caused a little tower to rise up in the midst of it, then made it so that water would spout from its top and trickle down into the pool. Its overflow found its way into a tiny stream that ran through the Garden before vaulting down into the Forest to join its waters with those that had emerged from Spring. The rim of the pool he broadened into a flat place where a soul might sit or recline. Egdod hoped that Spring might find her way up to this fountain and use it as a kind of abode, within the precincts of the Palace and yet of a nature that suited her. For he now understood at long last that it was she who had been the author of the many different kinds of plants that had sprung forth in the Garden from the early days of the Land. He desired that she should make a home in the place that she had created.
At first Spring seemed to take little note of the fountain, but one morning Longregard let Egdod know that, the previous evening, looking down from her tower, she had seen Spring emerge from the pool in moonlight, shaping herself into a form with arms and legs and sitting on the edge, much as Egdod had hoped that she might. After that she began to frequent the place and even to walk about the Garden and the Palace in that form.
The sight of bees swarming among flowers confirmed to Egdod that his thinking about souls-that-were-not-souls had been correct, and emboldened him to consider more small forms into which life might be breathed, supposing that Spring was willing to so use her powers. He brought Thingor and his teams of delvers back from the Fastness laden with materials of many kinds that they had quarried and refined in the deeps of that place. Together they devised other forms that were akin to those of the bees, but variously larger or smaller, with bodies of diverse shapes. Few of them, as it turned out, were capable of being imbued with life, and many that were lived only for a short time. None propagated more of their kind. Neither Egdod nor Spring could fathom the reason for these failures until Longregard explained it one evening.