“I blame myself,” Walksfar said, “for welcoming new souls to town and allowing them to proliferate and to spread. I assumed that they would acquire wisdom. Instead there seems no end to their straying.”

Whirr turned her back to the river and directed her gaze into the north and the west, where high mountains could be seen, white with snow. “There are other places,” she said, “where souls could live and be left alone, at least for a good long span of years.”

“Sooner or later the same thing would happen as happened here,” Thunk demurred, “unless measures were taken to prevent new souls from drifting in willy-nilly and establishing the same habits and practices.”

Walksfar nodded. “I should have foreseen as much long ago, but I was too comfortable alone in my cabin to trouble myself with the doings of the new ones.”

“What business do you suppose the cairn that walks might have today on the hill?” asked Whirr, now turning back to look that way.

“We had all hoped to go yesterday,” said Adam, “and ascertain whether those ancient souls are still of a mind to engage in conversations. But the boatmen refused to take us. Therefore Cairn went alone. I would suppose that he is talking, in his own way, and listening for any answers that might be forthcoming.”

“Supposing he makes himself understood,” said Thunk, “and conveys the information that the tree is in danger, what of it? If I warn a member of my band that a stone from Whirr’s sling is headed for him, he can duck out of the way, and he is not altered by having moved. But once a tree or a hill has created a form for itself and put down roots into everything and dwelled there for many years, can it move out of harm’s way? And supposing it could, would it still then be the same tree? Or would the act of moving change it into something else, so that it was as dead as if it had been chopped down?”

“All good questions,” said Walksfar, “to which I lack answers at present.”

Adam for his part thought back to the fight between Thunk’s and Feller’s crews. He remembered in particular the man whom Bluff had so mercilessly beaten with his iron rod, utterly destroying his form so that the aura spilled forth and reverted to chaos. And in the same vein he thought of Messenger of El, likewise splattered, in such a way that he had not been able to form himself again. Could the same fate befall any soul? Even, perhaps, Egdod himself when El had come for him? Did the soul then go away and cease to exist forever, or could it spawn again and begin the slow process of re-forming itself?