“You are perfectly correct, sir. We too, after all, arc animals.”
“Hah! What animal could find more stars in the sky than the sacerdotes say were put there at the Beginning? Oh, take her, and bring me a grandchild if you can. For myself, I’m beyond hope. And—” He hesitated.
“Yes, Father?” Rainbow prompted, taking his claw in hers.
“Dream of me as long as you can after I’m dead. Try not to let the dreams be ugly ones.”
“Look, Jing!” Rainbow exclaimed as they left the Count’s presence. “The skies are clearing! In a little we shall see the sun!”
But there were other matters to attend to. Qat was weak, and his servants in scarcely better shape. All of them bore plague-scars. Apparently the illness began with sacs of fluid under the skin, accompanied by fever and delirium. If they burst outward, the patient might survive, at the cost of being marked for life. If they burst inward, the victim died. Applying cleanlickers was useless; none could digest the foul matter exuded by the sores. Neither Jing nor Twig had heard of any disease remotely similar.
“Maybe this was what the New Star heralded!” said Qat in an access of bitterness.
“Were that so,” Jing responded stonily, “would not I, the most dedicated seeker of its meaning, have been the first to be struck down?”
Thinking how pleased the sacerdotes would be to hear of such a notion.
By then it was midday, and the sun shone clear, albeit not very bright, being at this season close to the horizon. Rainbow was eager to get to the observatory, and Jing—reluctant though he was to abandon these three who might well be his last surviving compatriots—was on the point of consenting to accompany her, when Keepfire came hurrying with news that settled the matter.
“Sir, Scholar Twig is at the observatory with Shine, and they have shown me yet more marvels! Come at once!”
All else forgotten, they rushed in his wake.
“I was right!” Twig crowed. “I did see dark patches on the sun! Now Shine has seen them too!”
“It’s true,” Shine averred. He had stretched layers of furnimal membrane across branches of walbush so that one might look at the sun through them. Even so, long staring with the tubed lenses had made his eye visibly sore. “And something more, as well!”
“What?” Jing seized the tube.
“Look to right and left of the sun’s disc, and you’ll notice little sparks! They’re very faint, but I definitely saw them. Perhaps they’re distant stars, far beyond the sun, which just happen to lie in that direction, but your charts show that some of the brightest stars in that area of sky must lie near the sun right now, and I can’t see any of them!”
Jing did not need to consult his maps to know what stars were meant. Bracing himself on a stout branch, he aligned the tube. At first his sight, after the low light-levels of winter, would not adjust, and he saw only a blur.
“Too bright? I can add another membrane,” Shine proposed.
“No, I’m getting a clearer view now…” Jing’s ocular muscles were adapting with painful speed. “And—oh, that’s incredible!”
What he saw was not a blank white disc. There were three dark spots on it. How could that be?
“Do you see the bright sparks?” Shine demanded.
But his vision was overloaded. He stood back, relinquishing the tube, and for a long while was unable to make out his immediate surroundings.
“I was right, wasn’t I?” Twig exclaimed.
“Yes,” Jing said soberly. “Yes, friend, you were right.”
This too must be added to his report on their discoveries. And, given the delay caused by his grief, it could not possibly be ready for the barq presently in harbor here. At all costs, however, it must be sent by the next one. He said so, and Twig objected, “But if we have to take time to write up our findings—”
Jing cut him short. “Did we not pledge to share what we learn with as many other folk as possible?”
“So we did,” Twig admitted humbly.
“Well, then! Let’s have a score, a score-of-scores, of keen young eyes like Shine’s at work on this! I want a full account of our fantastic news in circulation during the coming summer. Even without the resources of Ntah, there must surely still be people on this continent who will respond and imitate what we are doing—and some of them, with luck, may do it better!”