Spring breathed life into a new creature, similar to a bee in most ways, but larger, better equipped for delivering pain, and unable to make honey; she named it Hornet and sent it forth into the Land to build nests out of mud and to visit pain. But it was to no purpose, for no further efforts were made by the souls of Town to molest the bees. On the contrary they began to evince great reverence for the hives, and in particular for the great hive in the tower. As the weather warmed and the need for burning wood lessened, they put their axes to use in building a new structure: four walls that enclosed the tower and the burned place in the ground where Egdod’s thunderbolt had struck. On that spot they kindled a fire, and made a practice of keeping it alight night and day.

Hovering on the spring winds high above the Palace, or standing atop the watchtower of Longregard, Egdod brooded upon the smoke that rose above the park and the queue of souls coming and going with their burdens of firewood. Speaksall had explained to him that they construed these as gifts to Egdod: gestures of apology for the error of Swat, and pleas that Egdod not strike any more of them down with bright thunderbolts. The wooden walls they began to replace with stone. First they broke down the houses that Egdod had made for them and piled the rubble into foundations and walls. Since they had not Egdod’s power to shape adamant from chaos, they instead sought out places where Pluto had bettered the Land by making new types of rocks, and brought those in and piled them up. Certain souls began to make their dwelling there, the better to oversee the feeding of the flame and the expansion of the building. They learned the art of talking to the bees, or so they claimed, and from time to time they would join their auras into one and make a hum that on a quiet evening could be heard in the Palace. Speaksall commonly went there to walk among them and listen to their speech, but he could hear no more meaning in it than in that of the bees themselves.

Egdod found himself grievously distracted by these strange doings. Outright defiance he had prepared himself for, by working with Thingor on the fashioning of bright thunderbolts. But the loosing of a single one of those had sufficed to reduce all of the souls into a state of fearful obedience. Out of this, they had contrived new ways of busying themselves that to Egdod were more troubling than the impudence of Swat.