Yet still when he returned to the front of the Palace he found it difficult to raise the fourth tower overlooking Town. Ward, who seemed to have recovered, looked on with bewilderment. A short distance away, Speaksall and Freewander looked on too, and Egdod was aware of more souls’ eyes upon him from Town in the distance.

Brooding upon all of this later in his Garden, he hit upon an understanding, which was that it was all a matter of other souls and their ability to perceive the changes that he was wreaking upon the world. Alone, he had the freedom to make changes at will and with as little effort as it took to imagine the desired result. When other souls were watching, however, it became much more difficult. He guessed it was because any changes that he made, for example in raising a tower, were wreaking concomitant changes in the minds of all of the souls that were perceiving it. And souls, it seemed, were powerful things in their own right, with a kind of inertia about them, not easily moved. Particularly when all of them had to be moved in a kind of unison, all agreeing as to the shape of what was being made despite seeing it from many different points of view. As if all things in the world were webbed together by bands that had to stretch or break in order for change to occur, and those bands were woven by the perceptions of souls.

He sent Ward, Freewander, and Speaksall away, then caused a mist to gather around the top of the hill. For weather of various kinds was a common enough thing in the skies above the Land. While the Palace was shrouded in fog and mist, he went to the fourth corner and tried once again to erect a tower there, and found it easier. Too, he added more rooms to the front of the Palace: an antechamber between the Gatehouse and the main room, where he fancied that Speaksall might lodge and do the work of talking to other souls, and a tower above the Gatehouse where Freewander could perch if she found it to her liking.