“I am of a mind to agree,” Egdod said, “if for no other reason than that your speech rings more clearly to me than that of any other soul.”

“So there are others?”

“Many.”

“But not here.”

“No. This is a place where I abide in solitude, or in the company of particular souls with whom I have an affinity. You may abide here, since you and I were acquainted in life; but I urge you to venture forth and make the surrounding lands known to you, for there is much that remains undone in their shaping and perfection.”

The other soul did as Egdod suggested, and took on strength of mind, and coherency of form, faster than any other whom Egdod had seen. It came into this soul’s head that his name was Pluto.

With the shape of the Land Pluto had a particular fascination. Once he had learned the knack of doing so, he began to walk up and down on the Land—for he had no wings—and to reshape it. In this he did not change the nature or the broad form of what Egdod had made, but improved certain particulars and imbued it with greater complexity and variety. Sheer faces of adamant became cracked and convoluted, and shot through with veins and strata of diverse kinds of stone not before seen. The kinds of rock and other hard materials created by Pluto began to rival the plants of the Garden in their variety and their beauty. Egdod knew Pluto to be troubled by the compounding of errors that had caused the Knot to form, and suspected that if left to his own devices Pluto would smooth it out and do away with it altogether. Therefore Egdod decreed that it must remain as it was.

No longer impeded by the gaze of Pluto, Egdod redoubled his efforts on the building of the Fastness, and made it bigger and more elaborate than could serve any purpose. For his failure in the park had put doubt in his mind. To expel that doubt he needed to satisfy himself that his powers to shape the world according to his thoughts were as great as they had ever been. Of this he soon became certain, and he sensed that the nearby presence of chaos in the depth below helped rather than hindered his efforts. Once his dread foe, it had become a thing he could draw upon when needed. Flying out from under the shelter of the great overhang, where one range of mountains vaulted up over another, he further drew upon the power of chaos to shroud it in hurricanes, and the hurricanes stole spray from waterfalls ranked all about the place to become eternal storms that could only be penetrated by him and by Pluto.