The voice brings him all the way up and he turns toward it. A uniformed Edek stands in the gloom at one end of the street, her white-smocked aid at her side.

“ATTENTION-UH!”

The Ghuard snaps to attention.

He stands in a circle of cooling, blue white light that steadily increases in brightness and in cold as the Edek continues seeing him. The Edek brightens the light by darkening her own mind. There is a cold inner suppression hollowing her, so that she speaks and acts from her muffled face even as her awareness still lives buried in a winter night.

“SALUTE-UH!”

The Ghuard salutes, his armor rattling. Steam plumes out the snarling mouth of the ass. He is brightly illuminated now, like a star gleaming amid all the red fire.

“YOU WILL PUT AN ENNND-UH TO THIS ACT OF FAITH-UH! YOU WILL ACT TO RESTORRRE! / YOU WILL NOW / YOU WILL NOW ACT TO RESTORE ORRRDER! YOU WILL PUT AN ENNNND / TO THIS ACT OF FAITH-UH!”

The Ghuard turns at once and, his armor now bright and cool, rushes purposefully back into the town.

You grope along the sandy bottom, bizarrely red and flickering in the firelight through the water. There above you, the aid leads the Edek onto the empty pier. The Edek keeps hold of a pinch of the aid’s smock, just above the right shoulder, as described.

The Edek’s black eyes pick you out at once, and the mouth begins to work violently inside the cloth sack.

“NAR-RA-TIVE SPIRIT-UH! COME FORWARD-UH AND LISTENNN! I HAVE SOMETHINNG-UH TO SAY-UH! COME FORWARD-UH AND LISTENN!”

You climb one of the pilings until you are able to raise your streaming head from the water. Heat billows over you from the land, and you rise and fall with the water. The Edek bends stiffly at the waist to stare down over the side of the pier, down at you. She drops to her knees, thrusts a finger into one of her black eyes, and brings it out all streaked with black.

Now she is writing with it on your face. You feel the light, scraping sensation of her fingernail spelling TRUE TO OUR MONARCH.

The Edek straightens up and points to where a few lights dwindle away on the sea, toward the horizon.

“NAR-RA-TIVE SPIRIT-UH! FOLLOW NOW / FOLLOW NOW AND ATTENND-UH! YOU WILL SERVE-UH THE ONE MASTERR! FOLLOW NOWWW-UH AND ATTEND-UH!”

Third Chapter

Daylight discloses land already far out of sight, blue profundities below, and a sky thickly striped with clouds that cross our line of travel at a right angle and high overhead. The clouds are curdled white and grey or fine black like dirty little heaps of slush, all in rows. Nothing all around but a mind-cancelling low hill of water sloping off to the horizon, its subtle peak travels along just beneath us. I can’t tell if it is really peaceful or not. I mistrust it for its own sake and not as someone from the mountains.