During all this time, even during the worst of the tremors, the tunnelers had been repairing the trench, chewing up loads of stone and regurgitating them into the ditch, while leggers pounded them down with their many feet. Lit by the fiery light of mid-afternoon, only a rough scar on the stone marked where the ditch had been. All was silent. No Timmy spoke, no creature moved. Birdthings sat silent along the rim, like a fringe.
The watchers waited. Inside the nearest cave, the members of the entourage muttered among themselves. At last, as evening came, a green spring began to bubble up into the depths of the Fauxi-dizalonz, throwing emerald sparkles in all directions. The stone music faded into quiet. The birdthings flew. Fogs rose from the abyss of the Quaggima, thickly roiling upward to fall as cool rain. When the rain stopped, the abyss was flooded down its western side with a fierce and golden light that gave them a transitory look at every detail of the chasm. The great black wings lay quietly upon the walls, and at the bottom the obsidian gleam of the great egg shone beside the still form of the Quaggima. Nothing else.
The world turned. The abyss shifted out of the sunlight, shadow streaming across its bottom and onto the eastern wall.
“Where are they?” whispered Simon. “Madame, where’s Mouche?”
She shook her head. Nothing so small as a mere person could be seen at this distance. But then, Mouche and his companions had not been that small when they had flowed away. She would have asked the Corojum, but it had disappeared while they had watched the moons. Now there was nothing in the upper caldera but the sodden surface, a scar on the rock, the slowly filling pool of the Fauxi-dizalonz, and the trundling back and forth of the tunnelers and leggers who were smoothing the stone where the trench had been. Of that great being who had plunged over the edge into the chasm, there was no sign at all.
They sat without speaking until the sun had fallen well toward the west, at which point they were recovering sufficiently that Madame and Simon were beginning to murmur to one another their grief over Mouche, and the Hags, huddled with Calvy, were beginning to cast aggrieved glances at Questioner.
Seeing this, Questioner rose and said imperiously, “Now is not the time to discuss the future, if, indeed, it becomes a matter for discussion at all. I intend to have a closer look.” She went toward the steep track, and the others straggled after her, for no reason except that it gave them something to do.
They had gone three-quarters of the way down when D’Jevier asked, “Madame, aren’t those your boys?”
Madame searched the caldera, seeing two young men standing beside the rapidly filling pool.
“Bane and Dyre,” murmured Madame. “They were never my boys, but I wondered where they’d got to. Now what are they doing?”
“Making up their minds to enter the pond,” said Questioner, who had amplified her hearing. “Bane is telling his brother to jump, and his brother is saying he’ll wait until the water gets higher.”
A clutch of Timmys approached the two boys, backed by a Joggiwagga. Those on the trail could see the argument that resulted, but they could hear none of it.
Questioner asked Calvy, “These boys killed Marool Mantelby. Leaving aside for the moment the fact that Marool was their mother and that she probably needed killing, what does your system of justice require?”
Calvy replied, “Strictly interpreted, our law would require blue-bodying. For both of them.”
D’Jevier commented, “That’s true. But when we wrote those laws we did not have access to a Fauxi-dizalonz.”
She had no sooner spoken than the pond began to bubble and percolate, shimmering of its own motion rather than from the wind. A tongue of green licked out of it and wrapped around both Bane and Dyre, lapping them down into the depths. At once, several of the Timmys ran around the pond to the opposite side and waited there.
The persons from the ledge reached the level of the caldera floor before two squat, ugly gargoyles crawled from the pond to stare at one another in horror. Their stench could be detected even by those across the pond. The Timmys did not suffer it. Immediately, they pushed the two back into the pond while, across from their point of entry, other Timmys readied themselves.