On Blue's waters

After writing that last I got out my old black robe, the robe that Olivine stole for me and that His Cognizance Patera Incus persuaded me to wear when I sacrificed in the Grand Manteion. Will I be wearing it still when I arrive at New Viron to report my failure? It seems likely I will. I have my jeweled vest under it, and am going to keep my rings. They owe me those, at least.

Good luck, Hari Mau!

Good luck, all you good folk of Gaon! You are better than most peoples I have met, hardworking, cheerful, and brave. May Quadrifons of the Crossroads, and all other gods both new and old, smile on you. No doubt they do.

Having written that, I cannot help adding that the very same things might be said with equal justice about the people of Han. They are argumentative and love to shout their displeasure at others (I have seen something of it in Evensong) but that does not mean they are vindictive, and in fact they are the exact reverse, quick to laugh and forgive everything and be friends again. They deserve a far better government than the Man’s.

Will Hari Mau’s be better? Beyond all question. But if Hari Mau is wise, he will appoint one of them the new Man, some leader whom everyone there respects, a kind and steady man, or even a woman, who has seen life and learned moderation and compassion. I should put that in the letter I am leaving for him, and I will.

Listen to Rajya Mantri, Hari Mau, but make your own decisions. Let him think that you confide in him.

Still no Evensong. I have been talking with Oreb, who has flown over this entire whorl-or says he has. When we fall silent I can hear Seawrack, faint and far, her voice keeping time with the beating of the waves.

Pajarocu is a portable town, as Wijzer said. I should say, rather, that it is a portable city, the shadow of the real City of Pajarocu, which must be somewhere in the Whorl. There are a few huts and a few tents; but they are not Pajarocu, and are in fact frowned upon. Let me explain what I mean, Nettle.

When you and I, with Marrow, Scleroderma and her husband, and all the rest came here, we looted the lander that had brought us and named the new town we hoped to build after the old city in which we had been born, and thereafter, for the most part, forgot it. (I remember very well how you and I had to rack our brains to recall the names of certain streets while we were writing our book; no doubt you do too.) We spoke of “Our Holy City of Viron,” or at least our augurs did when they blessed us; but save for the fact that it was the center of the Vironese Faith, there was nothing particularly holy about it.

Things are very different with Pajarocu and its people. In the Long Sun Whorl, their city seems to have been not so much a city like Viron as a ceremonial center, the place where they assembled on holy days and feast days. Each of the Nine had his or her lofty manteion of stone, there was a processional road like our own Alameda, a vast public square or plaza for open-air ceremonies, and so on.

So attached to it were and are they that they have refused to duplicate it here on any lesser scale, although duplicating it on its original scale is still far beyond their reach. What they have done instead is to duplicate its plan to perfection-without duplicating, or attempting to duplicate, its substance at all.

There are “streets” paved with grass and fern between “buildings” and “manteions” that are no more than clearings in the forest marked in ways that are, to our eyes, almost undetectable. When the adult citizens we sought to question were willing to talk to us, they talked of gateways, walls and statues that did not in fact exist-or at least, that did not exist here on Blue-and described them in as much detail as if they loomed before us, together with colossal images of Hierax, Tartaros, and the rest, called by outlandish sobriquets and the objects of strange, cruel veneration.

But when the streets are too badly fouled or the river rises, this phantom Pajarocu goes elsewhere, which I think an excellent idea. Our own Viron was built on the southern shore of Lake Limna; when the lake retreated, our people clung to the shiprock buildings that Pas had provided when they ought to have clung to the idea that he had provided instead, the idea of a city by the lake. Many (although certainly not all) of Viron’s troubles may ultimately have been due to this single mistaken choice.

Listen to me, Horn and Hide. Listen all you phantom readers. Buildings are temporary, ideas permanent. Rude as they are in so many ways, the people of Pajarocu understand it thoroughly, and in that respect they are wiser than we.